Six verses, and the shortest distance in the whole book from despair to song. The question at עַד (ad, v.2) and אָנָה (a-na, v.2) is asked four times across two verses and then never again: verse 4 turns it into a request, and verse 6 answers in a tense for something that has not happened yet. It falls on the second day of the monthly cycle, where the reading runs from Psalm 10 to Psalm 17. The verb the enemies get at יָגִילוּ (ya-gi-lu, v.5) is the verb the heart gets at יָגֵל (ya-gel, v.6), and that single root is the psalm in miniature.
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1
לַמְנַצֵּחַ מִזְמוֹר לְדָוִד
לַמְנַצֵּחַ
lam-na-TZE-ach
for the choirmaster
מִזְמוֹר
miz-MOR
a psalm
לְדָוִד
le-da-VID
of David
For the choirmaster. A psalm of David.
A bare heading: choirmaster, psalm, David. Nothing in it prepares a reader for the question the next verse opens with, and the drop from one to the other is part of how the psalm works.
Four words in and the complaint has already reached forever. The two halves ask about memory and about face, which in biblical idiom amount to the same complaint twice: to be forgotten is to be out of sight.
How long must I hold counsel in my soul, sorrow in my heart by day?
עַד
ad
until
אָנָה
a-NA
when
יָרוּם
ya-RUM
will he be raised
אֹיְבִי
oi-VI
my enemy
עָלָי
a-LAI
over me
How long will my enemy be raised over me?
The question turns inward before it turns outward: two clauses about what the speaker is doing to himself, and only then the enemy. Sorrow is dated to the daytime at יוֹמָם (yo-mam, v.3) and no night is named, which leaves the line short of the balance the rest of the verse keeps.
The pivot. Three imperatives in a row and the complaining stops. Note that death here is the thing slept, not the thing slept through: the Hebrew makes it the object of the verb.
The argument handed to God is about reputation rather than about the speaker's comfort. Quoting the enemy makes the danger concrete: what is feared is not death but a sentence somebody gets to say afterwards.
Three clauses, each further ahead than the last: a trust already given, a joy not yet arrived, a song offered for a deliverance the psalm never reports. The final verb is a perfect, so the thanks is given for something treated as done.
♦ 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
A lament with every part visible and none of them padded. Verses 2 and 3 are the complaint, four times how long. Verse 4 is the petition, three imperatives with nothing between them. Verse 5 is the motive clause, the reason God is given for acting, stated as what the enemy would otherwise get to say. Verse 6 is the trust, and it arrives without anything having changed in the meantime. Nothing in the text reports a rescue. The turn happens inside the speaker, which is why the psalm can be this short.
רמז · Remez: allusion
The idiom at הָאִירָה (ha-i-ra, v.4), give light to my eyes, is ordinary Hebrew for strength coming back into a body; the same expression is used in 1 Samuel 14 when Jonathan eats honey and his eyes brighten. Against it stands the sleep of the same verse, where death is named as the thing slept rather than a state slept through. The root that closes the psalm is worth tracking on its own: at יָגִילוּ (ya-gi-lu, v.5) the foes would rejoice, and at יָגֵל (ya-gel, v.6) the heart will rejoice, one root doing both jobs, so the last verse takes the enemy's own verb away from him.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The fourfold how long reads as a descent rather than a repetition: forgotten, then hidden from, then left to one's own counsel, and last overtaken by someone else, so the questions travel from God's memory down to the enemy's advantage. The verb at גָמַל (ga-mal, v.6) belongs to the vocabulary of a benefit given freely rather than a debt settled, and it stands in the perfect, so the psalm signs off thanking God for something it never says has happened. Read that way it is a training exercise: it does not record a rescue, it rehearses the sentence a person will need on the other side of one.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
The mystical reading takes the hiding of the face as a technical term rather than a mood. Concealment is a stage in a process, not a punishment, and the four questions of verses 2 and 3 measure how far down the concealment reaches. What ends it here is not the face returning but light entering the eyes, which is the smaller and nearer of the two gifts: the seeker is given enough to see by, not the thing seen. The song of verse 6 therefore belongs to the dark rather than to the dawn, and that is exactly why it can be sung before anything has changed.
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).