Verse 6 is an extension of verse 5, with a shift of focus to ruins and destroyed cities in lines a and b, while line c returns to the image of oblivion, or no more remembrance of them. In translation the extending of verse 6 beyond verse 5 and building on it should be reflected. For example, verse 6 may begin “What is more, our enemies are for ever in ruins…” or “Furthermore our enemies….”
The text of this verse is not easy to figure out; the general sense is clear enough, but the specific relations among the words is in doubt. The Hebrew seems to say “The enemy (a collective term interpreted as plural) are finished, ruins forever; their cities you have pulled up; disappeared is the very memory of them.” Most translations render these words as Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation have done; An American Translation, however, connects “ruins forever” with “cities,” as follows: “Perpetual ruins are the cities which thou hast rooted up”–which gives more sense but which does not conform to the Hebrew division of the lines. If the translator follows the Good News Translation expression “Our enemies are finished,” there may be some problems, since in many languages only processes can be said to “finish.” In some cases one may say “our enemies are lost forever to our eyes,” or in an active construction, “never again can we look upon our enemies, because they are gone forever.”
Have vanished in everlasting ruins: “have been completely destroyed and have disappeared forever.”
The same fate that fell on the wicked came also upon their cities: God has “rooted them out.” The verb is used more naturally of plants or trees; only here is it applied to a city, but it refers to nations in Deuteronomy 29.28; Jeremiah 12.14. Here Bible en français courant uses a modern equivalent: “you have emptied their cities of people.”
The very memory of them has perished: Good News Translation seems to give the meaning of the Hebrew line, “they are completely forgotten,” which is literally “perished their memory, they,” with the pronoun at the end providing emphasis. However, that pronoun is placed at the beginning of the following line (in order to provide a line beginning with the Hebrew letter he), but it is not separated from the preceding line, so that it is taken as emphatic by Revised Standard Version, the very memory; this is also the judgment of Hebrew Old Testament Text Project. New English Bible and Bible en français courant take the Hebrew consonants of that word to represent the verb “to thunder, to roar,” and New English Bible translates “The LORD thunders,” placing this clause at the beginning of verse 7. The Good News Translation rendering, if taken literally, can mean that people will try to recall them and be unable to do so. Since the idea here is that the remembrance of these persons will disappear, it is sometimes necessary to say “no one will ever think of them again” or “their names will disappear from people’s thoughts.”
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 .