Fifteen verses in two panels that do not obviously belong together: the first six are sky, sun and the silent speech of creation, the next four are the Torah, named six different ways in three verses, and the last four are the speaker, who has said nothing until then. In the Ashkenazi rite it is one of the psalms added to the morning service on Shabbat and festivals, and its closing line is the sentence that ends every Amidah. The thing to watch is verses 8 to 10. The same skeleton runs six times: a noun bound to the divine name, an adjective, then a participle with its object. Learn one and you have learned all six.
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♪ TuningE A D G B E
| AmAm | EmEm | AmDm | EmAm |
~70 BPM · 4/4 · gentle thumb-index-middle arpeggio · one bar per stich, two bars per verse · to reset the progression:
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1
לַמְנַצֵּחַ מִזְמוֹר לְדָוִד
לַמְנַצֵּחַ
lam-na-TZE-ach
for the chief musician
מִזְמוֹר
miz-MOR
a psalm
לְדָוִד
le-da-VID
of David
For the chief musician. A psalm of David.
The heading. Three words fix the psalm as a piece handed to the temple singers, before a single image arrives.
The paradox stated flatly: speech with no sound. Whether that means the testimony is silent or that it reaches everywhere is the crux of the first half.
The sun's route is total, end to end, with nothing outside its heat. This closes the first panel, and the idea of what can be hidden carries into the second.
The teaching of the LORD is whole, restoring the soul;
עֵדוּת
e-DUT
the testimony of
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
נֶאֱמָנָה
ne-e-ma-NA
is trustworthy
מַחְכִּימַת
mach-ki-MAT
making wise
פֶּתִי
pe-TI
the simple one
the testimony of the LORD is trustworthy, making the simple wise.
The subject changes without warning from sun to Torah. Two clauses, each a noun bound to the divine name, an adjective, then a participle saying what it does to a person.
the judgments of the LORD are truth, they are righteous altogether.
The sixth and last of the terms, and the only pair that ends in a finite verb rather than a participle: the judgments do not act on you, they simply are right.
The speaker enters his own psalm for the first time, and enters it as a servant rather than as an observer of the sky.
13
שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי יָבִין
מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי
שְׁגִיאוֹת
shgi-OT
errors
מִי
mi
who
יָבִין
ya-VIN
can discern
Who can discern his own errors?
מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת
mi-nis-ta-ROT
from hidden things
נַקֵּנִי
na-ke-NI
clear me
Clear me of what is hidden.
The turn from praise to petition. Nothing is hidden from the sun's heat, but a person's own faults are hidden from him, and that asymmetry is the problem.
The psalm ends by submitting its own words for inspection, applying to the poem the same request it just made about hidden faults.
♦ 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
Two panels and a hinge. Verses 2 to 7 are the sky: heavens, firmament, day, night, then the sun crossing from one end of the world to the other. Verses 8 to 11 are the teaching, named six times in three verses with the same grammatical frame each time. Verses 12 to 15 are the speaker, who has been absent until then. Nothing states what joins the panels, but the vocabulary builds it: נִסְתָּר (nis-tar, v.7) says nothing is hidden from the sun, and six verses later מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת (mi-nis-ta-rot, v.13) asks to be cleared of hidden things, the same root both times. The psalm moves from a light nothing escapes to a light that reaches what a person cannot see in himself.
רמז · Remez: allusion
Verse 4 is the known difficulty. Read one way, בְּלִי (bli, v.4) makes the line say there is no speech and no words and their voice is unheard, so creation testifies in silence. Read the other way it says there are no words whose sound is not heard, so the testimony reaches everyone, and translators still split over it. Verse 5 has a second crux: קַוָּם (ka-vam, v.5) is the ordinary word for a measuring line or cord, which sits awkwardly in parallel with words in the next clause, and the ancient Greek version renders it as their sound, which points to a different reading of the consonants. The sun's tent in verse 6 is מֵחֻפָּתוֹ (me-chu-pa-to, v.6), the noun that later Hebrew uses for a wedding canopy, which is why a bridegroom follows it so naturally.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The six terms of verses 8 to 10 are the compact source of a much longer list: Psalm 119 runs the same vocabulary of teaching, testimony, precepts, commandment and judgments across all twenty-two of its acrostic sections. Verse 13 has left the clearer mark on practice. Asking to be cleared of faults one cannot discern is the logic behind confessing sins known and unknown, and the psalm keeps the two categories apart: מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת (mi-nis-ta-rot, v.13) is what a person cannot see and asks to be purged of, while verse 14 is what he can see and asks to be restrained from. One is cleansing, the other is protection, and the psalm does not treat them as the same request.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
In the kabbalistic reading the six terms are stages rather than synonyms, one teaching received at six depths, each named for the faculty it reaches: soul, then untrained mind, then heart, then eyes. The sun in its canopy carries the standard image for light that has to be housed before it can be given, since bare light burns rather than illuminates, and note that the tent of verse 5 is set among them, inside the created order rather than above it. The last verse offers speech and the unspoken movement of the heart in one breath, יִהְיוּ (yih-u, v.15) governing both, which is read as the moment a person hands back his outer and inner levels together.
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).