Translations
But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.
But I—I have trusted in Your chesed; my heart shall leap for joy at Your yeshu'ah.
But I—I have set my trust in Your covenant-love; my heart will burst with joy over Your salvation.
But I have trusted in Your loving devotion; my heart will rejoice in Your salvation.
Footnotes
The emphatic va'ani (וַאֲנִי, "but I—I") is the psalm's great pivot: a fronted, emphatic first-person pronoun that sets the speaker's choice in stark contrast to everything the preceding verses have described. The turn is not explained or argued—it is simply asserted as an act of will against all experiential evidence. This is the grammar of faith. Chesed (חֶסֶד) is among the most theologically dense terms in the Hebrew Bible: covenantal loyalty, steadfast merciful love, committed faithfulness that flows from relationship. No single English word contains it. F.O.G. preserves chesed untranslated to force the reader to sit with its irreducible weight; F.O.G.M. uses "unfailing-love" to make its character immediately accessible. Yeshu'ah (יְשׁוּעָה) means deliverance, rescue, salvation—and shares its root directly with the name Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ, rendered Jesus in English). F.O.G. retains yeshu'ah as a transliteration to surface this etymological and typological depth; F.O.G.M. uses "salvation" to draw out the full redemptive and eschatological freight the word carries forward into Messianic hope.

