Send you help in both Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation is somewhat redundant because it is God who sends and God who helps. Therefore in order to avoid giving the impression that God sends someone else to do the helping, it may often be clearer to translate, for example, “May he (the LORD) help you,” or if the element of “send” is to be retained, “From his sanctuary may he reach out and help you” or “May he come to you and help you.”

Sanctuary translates the word “holy (place),” that is, the Temple, which is holy because it is the dwelling place of Yahweh, the holy God. Sanctuary, which translates the Hebrew word meaning “holy place,” is more concretely focused in line b with Zion. Zion refers to the hill on which the Temple was built (see also comments on 2.6) and is used here synonymously with the sanctuary. Sanctuary is sometimes rendered “God’s great prayer house” or “the worship house of God in Jerusalem.” Because of the close parallelism of lines a and b, it will sometimes be best to reduce these to one line; for example, “May he send you help from his great prayer house on mount Zion,” otherwise such close parallelism may strike the reader as unnecessary repetition.

It should be noticed that the and at the beginning of line b may lead the reader to infer that two separate and distinct requests are being made. Of course line b is a poetic restatement of line a, with a more specific form of reference. It may therefore be better to make the two lines two complete sentences, not formally connected.

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 .