My tossings translates a Hebrew noun that occurs only here in the Old Testament, and whose form and meaning are quite uncertain: “grief” is one rendering, also “lament” (New English Bible, Dahood) or “sorrows” (New Jerusalem Bible). Anderson takes the word to mean “homelessness,” and this is the meaning expressed by New Jerusalem Bible “wanderings” (see also Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). Hebrew Old Testament Text Project also takes the Hebrew to mean “wandering,” which “expresses the fugitive’s unresting, moving life, its sojourning far away from his home, his family and his land, as in Ps 11.1.” It indicates some form of distress.
If the translator takes line a to refer to distress, in some languages this may be expressed idiomatically; for example, “You know how my heart hangs up” or “You know how my stomach trembles.”
The vivid picture “put my tears in your waterskin (or, wineskin)” in line b is a way of telling God (or reminding him, if the verb is understood as indicative, not imperative) to notice how troubled the psalmist is. Dahood takes the word “skin” to mean here a parchment for writing on: “list my tears on your parchment” (see New International Version “on your scroll”). This fits well with the next line. Good News Translation has abandoned the figure and translates “you have kept a record of my tears” (so Biblia Dios Habla Hoy); a similar possibility is “You have taken note of my grief.” In some languages, if the expression put thou my tears in thy bottle is used, it will be necessary to make explicit the reason for such a request; for example, “put my tears in your bottle so that you can see how much I have cried.”
The next line Are they not in thy book? is taken by some to have originally been a note in the margin (see New Jerusalem Bible, Bible de Jérusalem); the copyist wrote, “Shouldn’t this [that is, the word for ‘your waterskin’] be ‘your book’?”–which was introduced into the text by a later copyist (New English Bible puts this line in a footnote). This is quite possible, but it is best to stay with the traditional interpretation of the Masoretic text. Hebrew Old Testament Text Project also considers it possible that the line was originally a marginal note, “is it not: ‘in your reckoning’?”
In some languages line c, if translated as a rhetorical question, will require a reply; for example, “Yes, they are.” In many languages it will be necessary to say regarding the tears, lines b and c, “have they not been counted and the number of them written in your book?”
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 .