Good News Translation has restructured this verse, placing first the statement about God and then the request for him to act. In the first half of the verse in Hebrew (see Revised Standard Version), there is a particle which expresses a strong wish; so Revised Standard Version O let … but establish. Good News Translation has expressed the meaning by using the imperative of the two verbs, “Stop” and “reward.” New English Bible follows Jerome, who understands the Hebrew noun to say “righteousness,” and therefore New English Bible has in the text “establish the reign of righteousness”; in the margin it has “the cause of the righteous” (following the Hebrew text).

Let … come to an end (Good News Translation “Stop”) is not a request to permit evil to end but a command in the third person that this evil must stop. Good News Translation‘s “Stop the wickedness of evil men” makes this clear, but even this may need to be recast in translation, since it may not be natural to speak of stopping an abstract quality. One must often say, therefore, “Stop bad people from doing evil acts.”

Establish thou (Good News Translation “reward”) is literally “make firm, cause to prosper, establish.” “Reward” must sometimes be translated by “give good things” or “give gifts”; for example, “give gifts to people who do good things.”

God, who is righteous, judges people’s minds and hearts. The verb translated triest means to put to the test, to examine, to prove. Minds and hearts (Good News Translation “thoughts and desires”) translates what is literally “hearts and kidneys” (so King James Version “hearts and reins”). The heart is often spoken of as the place in the human body where thinking is done, and the kidneys were regarded as the center of feelings and desires. New Jerusalem Bible has “conscience” as a translation of “kidneys”; in some cultures this may not be an appropriate concept, so something like “feelings,” or “emotions,” or “desires” will be better. Minds and hearts is often expressed idiomatically, “what the heart thinks and what the insides wish.”

There is an advantage gained by placing thou righteous God as an identifying statement, “You are a righteous God,” at the beginning of verse 9, since verses 8, 10, and 11 (see Revised Standard Version) also begin with similar expressions. Righteous refers here to the nature of God and is rendered idiomatically in some languages as “straight,” “clean,” or “white heart”; for example, “You are a God who has a white heart.”

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 .