Psalm 18:4, 27

While reading Psalm 18 in my German Psalter last year, I found a couple points to note.

Verse 5 is:

Es umfingen mich des Todes Bande, und die Fluten des Verderbens erschreckten mich.

In the ESV (where this is verse 4), it's:

The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction assailed me

The German is a bit redundant (literally:  "it encompass me of the death [the] cords"), but this does result in a somewhat literal picture of what the verse is describing:  "me" really is "encompass[ed]," between "the cords of death" and the pleonastic "it."

In the Hebrew, this clause is:

אֲפָפוּנִי חֶבְלֵי־מָוֶת

The verb has a pronominal suffix and is followed by an explicit subject ("encompass-me the cords of death"), but if a less specific subject (a generic "they") is understood as inflected into the verb, the structure is the same as the German:  "they encompass me, the cords of death."

The Latin Vulgate is comparable:  "[ei] circumdederunt me funes mortis."

---&---

Verse 28 has a chiastic structure, although some of the elements are equated a bit loosely:

Denn du

hilfst

dem elenden Volk,

aber stolze Augen

erniedrigst

du.

For You

help

the miserable people,

but proud eyes [accusative]

lower

You [nominative].

This structure highlights the difference between "dem elenden Volk" (miserable people) and "stolze Augen" (proud eyes) and between "hilfst" (help) and "erniedrigst" (lower).

This structure isn't in the Hebrew, but in the ESV (in which this is verse 27), the order is as similar as English syntax will allow:  "For you save a humble people, but the haughty eyes you bring down."