In these verses the psalmist once more pleads desperately with the LORD to save him from his enemies, whom he calls dog, lion, and wild oxen.

Verse 19a is practically the same as verse 11a. In verse 19b Revised Standard Version my help translates a word meaning “strength, power,” found nowhere else in the Old Testament. Good News Translation has failed to represent this phrase, which can be translated “My helper, come quickly to my rescue!” or “My helper, come quickly and rescue me!”

In verse 20a Deliver my soul (Good News Translation “Save me”) translates “save my nefesh” (see 3.2). The parallel in line b is the adjective used as a noun, “my only one,” which in parallel with “my nefesh” always refers to something like “the only life I will ever have”; so Revised Standard Version my life, as in 35.17. There is no need to imitate Revised Standard Version and provide the literal Hebrew phrase in a footnote. Some may have “the life that is precious to me.” New American Bible translates “my loneliness,” which it explains as “his desolate soul,” but this is not a good model to follow.

From the sword in verse 20a means “from violent death”; and verse 20b is literally “from the hand of the dog,” where “hand” means power. Dahood and New English Bible take the Masoretic text to mean “from (the blade of) the ax,” but this interpretation is not certain. Good News Translation has “these dogs,” and in verse 21 “these lions” and “these wild bulls,” to indicate that these are metaphors for cruel enemies, not animals.

Deliver my soul from the sword presents a particularly difficult set of problems for a translator. In many languages it is not possible to be saved from an inanimate object such as a sword. In these cases it may be possible to say, for example, “Don’t let my enemies kill me with their swords” or “Protect me from the swords of my enemies.” If the term sword is not familiar, it is better to say, for example, “Don’t let my enemies kill me.”

In verse 21 there is a parallel between the mouth of the lion and the horns of the wild oxen, both of them metaphors for the psalmist’s enemies.

In line b of verse 21 the Masoretic text is “and from the horns of the wild oxen you answered me.” Instead of the Masoretic text “you answered me,” the Septuagint, Syriac, and Jerome have translated as though the Hebrew text were “my oppressed (self),” without a verb in this line; so Good News Translation, Revised Standard Version, An American Translation, New American Bible, Bible de Jérusalem, New Jerusalem Bible; New English Bible has “my poor body.” But some stay with the Masoretic text, in the sense of “you defended me”–so Kirkpatrick.19-21 Hebrew Old Testament Text Project stays with the verb “to answer” (“B” decision) and says it can be translated “you will answer me” (an expression of confidence), or “answer me” (a prayer), or “you have answered me” (an expression of gratitude). Traduction œcuménique de la Bible separates it from the preceding words and makes it independent, as the beginning of the next section: “You have answered me!” Weiser and New Jerusalem Bible translate it as though it were an imperative, “Answer (or, Rescue) me!” Dahood has another way of handling the Masoretic text: “make me triumph.” It seems better to follow the Versions, as Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation have done, and it is preferable to join line b with line a as Revised Standard Version has done, as part of the psalmist’s plea, with the verb of line a carrying over into line b. In line with the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project recommendation, however, a translator may choose to follow the Masoretic text, taking the verb “to answer” in the sense of “to defend” or “to rescue,” as follows: “You have rescued (or, protected) me from the horns of the wild oxen.”

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 .