Nine verses about speech, and almost every line is somebody talking. Smooth lips, a doubled heart, a boastful tongue, then God's own sentence quoted in the middle at verse 6, then a claim about what divine words are made of. It falls on the second day of the monthly cycle, where the reading runs from Psalm 10 to Psalm 17. The heading at הַשְּׁמִינִית (hash-mi-nit, v.1) names something musical that nobody can now define, and the same word heads Psalm 6.
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1
לַמְנַצֵּחַ עַל הַשְּׁמִינִית
מִזְמוֹר לְדָוִד
לַמְנַצֵּחַ
lam-na-TZE-ach
for the choirmaster
עַל
al
upon
הַשְּׁמִינִית
hash-mi-NIT
the eighth
For the choirmaster, on the sheminith.
מִזְמוֹר
miz-MOR
a psalm
לְדָוִד
le-da-VID
of David
A psalm of David.
The heading carries a performance instruction that no longer means anything to us. The JPS line above leaves the word untranslated rather than guessing at a string count, an octave, or a mode.
for the trustworthy have vanished from among humankind.
One imperative, then two clauses that explain it, both built on verbs of running out. The complaint is not that the wicked have grown strong but that a certain kind of person has stopped being produced.
They speak falsehood, each man with his neighbour;
שְׂפַת
sfat
a lip of
חֲלָקוֹת
cha-la-KOT
smooth things
בְּלֵב
blev
with a heart
וָלֵב
va-LEV
and a heart
יְדַבֵּרוּ
ye-da-be-RU
they speak
with a smooth lip, with a heart and a heart, they speak.
The diagnosis is linguistic rather than moral. The doubled noun at בְּלֵב (blev, v.3) and וָלֵב (va-lev, v.3) is literally a heart and a heart, one Hebrew way of saying that the inside and the outside of a person no longer match.
The petition asks for surgery on organs of speech rather than on people. The phrase for smooth things carries straight over from the previous verse, so the request is aimed at exactly what was just described.
Those who have said: with our tongue we will prevail,
שְׂפָתֵינוּ
sfa-tei-NU
our lips
אִתָּנוּ
i-ta-NU
are with us
our lips are with us.
מִי
mi
who
אָדוֹן
a-DON
is master
לָנוּ
la-NU
over us
Who is master over us?
The boast is quoted so that it convicts itself. It claims ownership of the tongue, then asks a question, and that question is the only place in the psalm where the wicked mention a master at all.
For the robbery of the poor, for the groaning of the needy,
עַתָּה
a-TA
now
אָקוּם
a-KUM
I will arise
יֹאמַר
yo-MAR
says
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
now I will arise, says the LORD;
אָשִׁית
a-SHIT
I will set
בְּיֵשַׁע
BYE-sha
in safety
יָפִיחַ
ya-FI-ach
he pants
לוֹ
lo
for him
I will set in safety the one he pants at.
The centre of the psalm and the only direct speech from God inside it. The reason given for rising is not an insult to God but the sound the poor are making. The last clause is the hardest in the psalm.
silver refined in a crucible on the ground, purified seven times.
The counter-statement. Against words that are smooth and doubled stand words that have been through fire, and the metallurgy is exact: refining is the process that takes out what was mixed in.
The consequence for the people who have to live among such talk. The two verbs carry different suffixes, and that difference has kept translators busy for a long time.
The close refuses a tidy ending. The wicked are still circling in the final line, exactly as the bow was still bent at the end of Psalm 11, and the psalm lets both things be true at once.
♦ PARDES analysis: פרדס
The four levels of Jewish reading of the sacred text: פשט Peshat (literal meaning), רמז Remez (symbolic allusion), דרש Drash (midrashic interpretation), סוד Sod (mystical meaning). The word פרדס means "orchard", each level is a fruit.
פשט · Peshat: literal meaning
The architecture is simple once you notice the psalm is about mouths. Verses 2 to 5 are human speech, first described and then quoted. Verse 6 is divine speech, quoted. Verse 7 is a statement about the material divine speech is made of. Verses 8 and 9 are what follows for people who have to live among the first kind. The turn in the middle is not a rescue, it is God speaking, and the psalm treats that as the answer to the problem of everyone else speaking.
רמז · Remez: allusion
Three cruxes, all in the second half, and none of them settled. At יָפִיחַ (ya-fi-ach, v.6) the verb means to blow or to pant, and the clause has been read as the one who is panted at, the one who pants for safety, and the one who is treated with scorn; the JPS line above chose the puffing reading. At בַּעֲלִיל (ba-a-lil, v.7) the noun is rare enough that it is read either as a crucible or as an adverb meaning plainly, and the JPS line chose crucible. At תִּצְּרֶנּוּ (titz-re-nu, v.8) the vocalized suffix is third person singular, him, although the verb just before it is them, and the JPS line above renders it us. The printed translations do not agree with one another here.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The seven of שִׁבְעָתָיִם (shiv-a-ta-yim, v.7) does what seven usually does in the Bible, standing for completeness rather than counting to a number, and the image was read as a claim about kind rather than degree: divine words are not truer on average than human ones, they have had the alloy taken out of them entirely. The doubled heart of verse 3 reads as a plain description of a divided self, and the correction it implies is not to speak less but to have one heart, so that whatever gets said matches what is behind it. Read that way the psalm is not a complaint about liars, it is a complaint about a whole society in which nothing said can be relied on.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
In the kabbalistic frame speech is the medium of creation, so a psalm about corrupted speech is a psalm about a corrupted world, and the furnace of verse 7 is the standard image for a process that removes without destroying. The seven of the last word of that verse lines up with the seven lower measures through which, in that reading, anything spoken above has to pass before it arrives here. Each passage costs something and each one purifies, which is why the number reads as a count of stages rather than as an intensifier.
Hebrew text: Miqra according to the Masorah (MAM), after the Aleppo Codex, via Sefaria, CC BY-SA. English: The Holy Scriptures, a New Translation (JPS 1917), via Sefaria, public domain. Transliteration generated by this site's own engine (assets/translit.js).