Twelve verses in which a man asks to be put on trial and then supplies the case against himself, on the assumption that it will not hold. It is worth reading with Psalm 17, which makes the same move; the two share the verb of the assayer refining metal. Grammatically this is the psalm of the first person singular perfect: I have walked, I have trusted, I have sat, I have hated, I have loved. Learn that ending here and you have half the narrative verbs in the book. Verse 8 is the one most people already know without knowing where it comes from, because it stands in the short prayer said on entering a synagogue.
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The request is the opposite of what people usually pray for. He asks to be judged, not spared, and the reason he gives is not that he is good but that he has leaned somewhere.
The verb of sitting comes back from the verse before, and both times the company is a crowd. The vice being avoided is belonging, not any specific act.
The scene changes from the assembly of the wrong crowd to a rite performed alone. Washing and circling are both things done with the body before anything is said.
The men of blood get one verse of description, and it is about hands. The psalm has already spent verse 6 on what the speaker does with his.
11
וַאֲנִי בְּתֻמִּי אֵלֵךְ
פְּדֵנִי וְחׇנֵּנִי
וַאֲנִי
va-a-NI
but I
בְּתֻמִּי
be-tu-MI
in my integrity
אֵלֵךְ
e-LECH
I will walk
But as for me, I will walk in my integrity;
פְּדֵנִי
pe-de-NI
redeem me
וְחׇנֵּנִי
ve-cho-ne-NI
and be gracious to me
redeem me and treat me with favour.
The opening claim comes back in the future tense, and immediately after it the speaker asks for a favour he has no way of earning. The two halves sit together without being reconciled.
The verdict arrives without being announced: the man who said he would not slip is standing. And the crowd, which was the danger in verses 4 and 5, has become the place where he can speak.
♦ 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 psalm is a ring. Verse 1 has him walking in his integrity and declaring that he will not slip; verse 11 has him walking in his integrity again and verse 12 has his foot standing on level ground. Everything inside that ring alternates between two kinds of company, the assembly of wrongdoers in verses 4, 5, 9 and 10, and the house where the glory rests in verses 6, 7 and 8. Read straight through, it is a man arguing that where you choose to stand is the same thing as who you are, and asking to be judged on that basis rather than on a list of deeds.
רמז · Remez: allusion
The word for integrity, בְּתֻמִּי (be-tu-mi, v.1) and בְּתֻמִּי (be-tu-mi, v.11), is built on a root meaning whole or complete, not a root meaning clean; the claim is about being of one piece rather than about being without fault, which is why the same speaker can ask to be redeemed two words later without contradicting himself. צׇרְפָה (tzor-fa, v.2) is the verb of the smith refining metal, and it also opens Psalm 17, where the same speaker says the refining has already been done. The pairing of כִלְיוֹתַי (chil-o-tai, v.2) with וְלִבִּי (ve-li-bi, v.2), kidneys and heart, is the standard biblical formula for what God examines in a person and it recurs in Jeremiah in exactly that role: the kidneys stand for the part of a decision that never surfaces in words.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The verb in תֶּאֱסֹף (te-e-sof, v.9) is the ordinary verb for gathering things in, and it is also the verb used when someone dies and is gathered to his people. That double sense is why the verse has been read both as a plea about the present, do not let me be swept up in the round-up when these people are caught, and as a plea about what comes after, do not file me with them at the end. The other question readers have always put to this psalm is how a person can say I have hated the assembly of wrongdoers and still stand at an altar; the common answer is to hear the whole speech as said before God rather than in front of witnesses, so that the boasting is testimony under examination rather than a public claim. Where that answer does not satisfy, the psalm is read as liturgy put in the mouth of anyone approaching the sanctuary, not as autobiography.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
Verse 8 names two things and not one: the dwelling of a house and the place where the glory rests. In the mystical reading those are not synonyms; the house is the built structure and the glory is what consents to settle in it, and the whole point is that the second does not follow automatically from the first. The washing of אֶרְחַץ (er-chatz, v.6) and the circling of וַאֲסֹבְבָה (va-a-sov-va, v.6) then describe a person making himself into the kind of vessel a presence would agree to occupy. The level ground of בְמִישׁוֹר (ve-mi-shor, v.12) is the same word used for what is straight and even, and it closes the psalm on the image of a plane with no tilt in it, which is what a thing has to be before something can rest on it without sliding off.
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).