Psalm 140:2 (Hebrew: v. 3):
stir up battles. The
Masoretic Text appears to say “fear [yaguru] battles.” A minor
emendation of the verb to yegaru, which is the reading reflected in
three ancient translations, yields the more likely “stir up.” (Robert Alter, The
Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:319)
Psalm 140:8 (Hebrew: v. 9):
They would rise. At this
point, continuing to the end of verse 12, the text shows numerous signs of
mangling in scribal transmission. Attempts to reconstruct it have not been
notably successful, though one might adopt the proposal of adding the negative ʾal,
yielding “Let them not rise.” “They would rise” (a single word in the Hebrew)
does not make evident sense in context, and the doubts about its textual
authenticity are compounded by the fact that as one word with one accented
syllable it does not scan and could not constitute a verset. (Robert Alter, The
Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:320)
Psalm 140:10 (Hebrew: v. 11):
May He rain. The Masoretic
Text has a plural verb, yimotu, which means “will slip down” and is not
the word that would be used for the coming down from the sky of a shower of
fiery coals. This translation follows one version of the Syriac in reading yamteir,
“May He rain,” the same verb used in Genesis to describe the destruction of
Sodom.
ravines. The Hebrew mahamurot
appears only here. It seems to mean a deep pit or a natural crevice, as this
translation guesses. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:320)