I am weighted down with many an iron fetter: See Psa 107.10-16, but also 2 Chr 33.11, where Manasseh is a captive in chains. The description may be metaphorical, or the writer may be giving us a picture of the king in real chains. It could be both. Good News Translation makes it metaphorical (more likely) with the pronoun “its” referring back to “my sin” in the previous line. But Good News Translation has transposed lines 1 and 2. Translators are urged to consider this line as referring to actual chains (see the model below).

So that I am rejected because of my sins: Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation (with its frank note that the Greek is not clear) as well as New English Bible are trying—somewhat desperately—to wrest some sense from the Greek text in Rahlfs’ edition. The basic meaning of the verb here in Greek is to “lift up,” and is used of a gesture of refusal; hence it comes to mean “deny, reject, refuse.” This Handbook suggests translators follow a slightly different Greek text here (found in the New Revised Standard Version footnote), which reads “so that I cannot raise my head.” This is not only the text in one of the major Greek witnesses to the Greek text, but it is also the reading of the Syriac. A model then, for the first three lines of this verse, would be:

Bowed down by heavy iron chains,
I cannot raise my head;
I can find no relief.

This fits very nicely with the last lines of verse 9. With the line “I cannot raise my head,” a footnote would be appropriate: “I cannot raise my head: some manuscripts have a different text, but its meaning is unclear.” (Please note that the phrase translated because of my sins in Revised Standard Version is part of the reading being rejected here; if the alternative text is read, as suggested, that phrase should not be part of the translation.)

For I have provoked thy wrath and have done what is evil in thy sight: “I have made you angry” in Good News Translation apparently combines both clauses here into one; it is a weak approximation to the writer’s heartfelt lament. “I have made you angry by the evil things I have done” would surely be better, especially since the writer is now about to name some of the evil things.

Setting up abominations and multiplying offenses: Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version, and New English Bible are correct in interpreting abominations as idols; see 2 Chr 33.2-3. Contemporary English Version makes the meaning of abominations even clearer with “disgusting idols.” The Greek word translated offenses is literally “hateful things.” Good News Translation renders multiplying offenses as “I have done what you hate,” and New English Bible has “piling sin on sin” (which Revised English Bible has changed to “multiplying offences,” exactly the same as Revised Standard Version). Something is being overlooked here, however. The word translated offenses is almost surely a parallel term to the word translated abominations. Compare its use in the Greek of 2 Kgs 23.13, where Revised Standard Version translates the Hebrew as “abomination.” Read 2 Chr 33.2-9 for a list of some of Manasseh’s actions, which included not just erecting idols and altars to other gods, but even offering his own sons as human sacrifices, and practicing sorcery. All this is surely what the composer of this prayer has in mind, and it would be legitimate to render this line something like this: “I set up disgusting idols, and did one horrible thing after another.” In this model the verb “set” is past tense. The purpose of “one … after another” is to catch the force of multiplying.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Shorter Books of the Deuterocanon. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2006. For this and other handbooks for translators see