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Psalms

About this book
Psalm 69

1 For the music director, according to the tune of “Lilies”; by David. Deliver me, O God, for the water has reached my neck. 2 I sink into the deep mire where there is no solid ground; I am in deep water, and the current overpowers me. 3 I am exhausted from shouting for help. My throat is sore; my eyes grow tired from looking for my God.⁠ 4 Those who hate me without cause are more numerous than the hairs of my head. Those who want to destroy me, my enemies for no reason, outnumber me. They make me repay what I did not steal. 5 O God, you are aware of my foolish sins; my guilt is not hidden from you. 6 Let none who rely on you be disgraced because of me, O Sovereign Lord of Heaven’s Armies. Let none who seek you be ashamed because of me, O God of Israel. 7 For I suffer humiliation for your sake and am thoroughly disgraced. 8 My own brothers treat me like a stranger; they act as if I were a foreigner. 9 Certainly zeal for your house consumes me; I endure the insults of those who insult you. 10 I weep and refrain from eating food, which causes others to insult me. 11 I wear sackcloth and they ridicule me. 12 Those who sit at the city gate gossip about me; drunkards mock me in their songs. 13 O Lord, may you hear my prayer and be favorably disposed to me. O God, because of your great loyal love, answer me with your faithful deliverance. 14 Rescue me from the mud. Don’t let me sink. Deliver me from those who hate me, from the deep water.⁠ 15 Don’t let the current overpower me. Don’t let the deep swallow me up. Don’t let the Pit devour me. 16 Answer me, O Lord, for your loyal love is good. Because of your great compassion, turn toward me. 17 Do not ignore your servant, for I am in trouble. Answer me right away. 18 Come near me and redeem me. Because of my enemies, rescue me. 19 You know how I am insulted, humiliated, and disgraced; you can see all my enemies. 20 Their insults are painful and make me lose heart; I look for sympathy, but receive none, for comforters, but find none. 21 They put bitter poison into my food, and to quench my thirst they give me vinegar to drink.⁠ 22 May their dining table become a trap before them. May it be a snare for that group of friends. 23 May their eyes be blinded. Make them shake violently.⁠ 24 Pour out your judgment on them. May your raging anger overtake them. 25 May their camp become desolate, their tents uninhabited. 26 For they harass the one whom you discipline; they spread the news about the suffering of those whom you punish. 27 Hold them accountable for all their sins. Do not vindicate them. 28 May their names be deleted from the scroll of the living. Do not let their names be listed with the godly.⁠ 29 I am oppressed and suffering. O God, deliver and protect me. 30 I will sing praises to God’s name. I will magnify him as I give him thanks. 31 That will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hooves. 32 The oppressed look on—let them rejoice. You who seek God, may you be encouraged. 33 For the Lord listens to the needy; he does not despise his captive people. 34 Let the heavens and the earth praise him, along with the seas and everything that swims in them. 35 For God will deliver Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah, and his people will again live in them and possess Zion. 36 The descendants of his servants will inherit it, and those who are loyal to him will live in it.

Texts in conversation

Compare Psalm 69:29 and 1 Enoch 108:3

Hebrew Bible · Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

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Summary

1 Enoch 108 says the unrighteous are erased from a divine book. This echoes Psalm 69 where the unjust are removed from the book of the living, drawing on ancient Near Eastern traditions where gods and kings kept records that shaped a person’s fate.

Passages

Psalm 69:29

Hebrew Bible
27 Hold them accountable for all their sins. Do not vindicate them. 28 May their names be deleted from the scroll of the living. Do not let their names be listed with the godly. 29 I am oppressed and suffering. O God, deliver and protect me. 30 I will sing praises to God’s name. I will magnify him as I give him thanks. 31 That will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hooves.
600–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Psalms

1 Enoch 108:3

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
2 You who have done good will wait for those days until an end is made of those who do evil and the power of the wrongdoers comes to an end. 3 You, however, wait until sin passes away; for their names will be erased from the book of life and from the books of the holy ones, and their offspring will be destroyed forever, and their spirits will be slain, and they will cry and lament in a place that is a chaotic wilderness, and they will burn in the fire; for there is no earth there. 4 I saw there something like an invisible cloud; because of its depth I could not look over it, and I saw a flame of fire blazing brightly, and things like shining mountains circling and sweeping to and fro.
300 BCE – 100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Enoch

References

"... In Revelation the expression “book of life” (τὸ βιβλίον τῆς ζωῆς) occurs a number of times (Revelation 3:5; 13:8; 17:8; 20:15; 21:27), while elsewhere in the New Testament it appears only in Philippians 4:3. An approximate form of the expression, “book of the living (ones)”, is attested in the Book of Parables at 1 Enoch 47:3 and in Psalm 69:28 (“let them be blotted out from the book of the living and let them not be enrolled among the righteous”). A more exact equivalent is preserved in the Eschatological Admonition of 1 Enoch 108:3, where it is twinned with “the books of the holy ones”. The latter text announces that the names of the wicked “will be erased from the book of life”, a phrase that has its negative equivalent in Revelation 3:5: “To those who conquer … I will not blot your name out of the book of life”. Both Revelation 3:5 and 1 Enoch 108:3 are allusions to Psalm 69:28 and, perhaps secondarily, to Exodus 32:32 (“but now, if you will only forgive their sin – and if not, blot me out of the book you have written”); they go beyond the texts from the Hebrew Bible, however, in regarding the book of life as a list of names of those who will survive the eschatological judgment, an idea which among literature composed before the Common Era is also found in Daniel 12:1 and Jubilees 36:10 (compare also 1 Enoch 103:2; 104:1). Since the motif is broadly shared, it is difficult to isolate influence on or an immediate link with Revelation from either the Book of Parables or Eschatological Admonition ..."
Loren T. Stuckenbruck, The Myth of Rebellious Angels: Studies in Second Temple Judaism and New Testament Texts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 317–318.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Psalm 69:29 and 1 Enoch 108:3

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