In verse 9a You will make them as a blazing oven means that the king (or Yahweh) will destroy the enemies with fire; they will burn up like the fire in an oven. Should a translator retain the word oven, it should be remembered that this was one made of hardened clay or of brick; it would not be made of metal.

When you appear translates “at the time of your face,” in which “face” stands for presence, here an angry presence (see 34.16).

In the second half of verse 9, swallow and consume are used synonymously, appropriate to wrath and fire. The fire is to be thought of as an expression of Yahweh’s fury; and Dahood translates “his fire,” carrying over the “his” of “his anger” to “fire.” In some languages it will be necessary to indicate an object of the destroying fire; for example, “he will destroy them as a blazing fire destroys things,” or idiomatically sometimes, “he will eat them as fire eats things up.”

Swallow them up in his wrath may require more recasting than was done in Good News Translation. One way is to expand the expression into two clauses, one the cause and the other the consequence; for example, “because he is angry he will swallow them up.” Swallow as an idiomatic expression of destruction may need to be replaced by other figures such as “eat,” “wipe away,” or “blow into dust.”

The parallel lines of this verse display intensification. In line a God (according to some, the king) makes them as …; in line b he will swallow them up; and in line c the fire will consume them, which is literally “eat them.” If the heightening in the succeeding lines is to be preserved with God as the subject of the first two lines, it may be translated, for example, “When the LORD appears he will turn them into a fiery oven; more than that, he will angrily swallow them up, and fire will devour them.”

Translators should be aware that the structure of intensification is often changed when recast as cause and effect clauses. However, in some cases there will be little or no choice. The main task of the translator is to determine the devices in the receptor language which most clearly reveal the heightening effect found in much of biblical parallelism.

In verse 10 the two Hebrew phrases used for “descendants” are “their fruit” and “their seed,” both used metaphorically of offspring.

Their offspring is commonly rendered as “their children” or “their grandchildren.” It is possible sometimes to say “those who follow after him” or “those who came down from him.”

From the earth serves to express the totality of the action of destruction, and is rendered in Good News Translation through the use of “None … will survive.” In some languages it will be more natural to say “he will kill every one of their children” or “he will not stop killing until he has killed the last child.”

In order to avoid needless repetition the translator will note that Good News Translation has employed the pronoun “them” in line b instead of using another synonym for descendants.

For the phrase the sons of men, see 11.4.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on the Book of Psalms. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1991. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .