In vivid terms the psalmist prays to Yahweh, asking him to defeat and destroy his enemies, so that they may be put to shame and dishonor. For shame see comments on “be ashamed” in 6.10; dishonor is a synonym, “Let them be … humiliated.” The expression put to shame and dishonor may have to be recast as direct commands; for example, “Defeat and disgrace those who try to kill me,” or idiomatically, “Heat their faces with shame and stop those who want to kill me.”
He also prays that they may be turned back and confounded. Turned back uses a military figure, “driven back.” For Let them be turned back in the sense of repelling an invading force, one may sometimes say “Stop them and send them away” or “Don’t let them advance further, but push them back.”
Be … confounded is the same verb which in 34.5 is translated “be ashamed.” Confounded can sometimes be rendered idiomatically, “with dizzy heads” or “not remembering who they are.” Verse 4 is practically the same as 40.14; 70.2.
The poetic structure of verse 4 is impressive and effective. For readers with a fairly high degree of literary appreciation, the form of Revised Standard Version may be more appealing; for many readers, however, the gap between them and the who phrase in each half of the verse may be difficult. For such people the more direct form of Good News Translation may be more appropriate. Or else something like the following:
• LORD, defeat and disgrace
those who are trying to kill me!
Confuse and put to flight
all those who make plans to harm me!
For the figure in verse 5a, like chaff before the wind, see 1.4 and comments. Like chaff before the wind may in some languages require that the verb be explicitly stated; for example, “I ask that they be blown away by the wind as the chaff is blown away.”
Angel translates the Hebrew “messenger”; here it is a supernatural being, not a human one (see comments at 34.7).
In verse 6a the adjectives dark and slippery in Hebrew are two nouns, “darkness” and “slippery places.” They portray a difficult and dangerous situation. Dahood takes the nouns as names of Sheol: “Darkness and Destruction”; this, however, is not very likely the primary meaning of the terms. Let their way be dark and slippery may have to be recast to say, for example, “May they take a slippery path in the darkness” or “When they go, may the place they walk be slippery and dark.”
The verbs used to describe the action of the angel of the LORD in verses 5b-6 in the Hebrew text are, respectively, “push, strike down” and “pursue, run after.” Good News Translation, following Briggs and others, has transposed the two verbs, since “pursues” goes better with “like straw blown by the wind” in verse 5, and “strikes … down” with “path be dark and slippery” in verse 6.
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 .