Thirteen verses of a man reporting his own rescue, said every morning at the opening of the psalms of praise and again through Chanukah. The heading calls it a song for the dedication of a house, and then the body never mentions a house: it is illness, a pit, a hidden face and a recovery. Grammatically it is the best place in the psalter to learn two suffixes at once, the -ta ending that means You did something and the -ni ending that means to me, because almost every verb here carries one or both.
♫ Guitar suggestion, hover a chord to explore or change
♪ 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:
Active voicings · printable
The voicing displayed for each chord is the one you selected in its popup. Navigate with the popup arrows to change.
1
מִזְמוֹר שִׁיר
חֲנֻכַּת הַבַּיִת לְדָוִד
מִזְמוֹר
miz-MOR
a psalm
שִׁיר
shir
a song
A psalm, a song.
חֲנֻכַּת
cha-nu-KAT
dedication of
הַבַּיִת
ha-BA-yit
the house
לְדָוִד
le-da-VID
of David
For the dedication of the House. Of David.
The heading names an occasion the poem never returns to. Everything after this line is one man's body and one man's grave, which is why the fit between title and text has been argued over for centuries.
The verb for drawing up is the one used of hauling a bucket out of a well, which sets the shaft and the pit that the next verses live in. The reason for praise is given before any of the story is told.
The rescue is described as vertical: up out of Sheol, back from the edge of the pit. Whether the speaker was already down there or only heading there depends on how one word is read.
The proverb at the centre of the psalm, and the tightest line in it: two nouns against two nouns, then night against morning with no verb in the second half at all. Weeping is given the verb for staying overnight, as a guest who leaves.
LORD, by Your favour You had set my mountain firm;
הִסְתַּרְתָּ
his-tar-TA
You hid
פָנֶיךָ
fa-nei-CHA
Your face
You hid Your face,
הָיִיתִי
ha-yi-TI
I was
נִבְהָל
niv-HAL
terrified
I was terrified.
Three clauses with nothing joining them, which is the whole point: security, withdrawal, panic, with no connective allowed in between. The security itself is credited to God, so the collapse is not a change of owner but a change of view.
9
אֵלֶיךָ יְהֹוָה אֶקְרָא
וְאֶל אֲדֹנָי אֶתְחַנָּן
אֵלֶיךָ
e-lei-CHA
to You
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
אֶקְרָא
ek-RA
I call
To You, LORD, I call,
וְאֶל
VE-el
and to
אֲדֹנָי
a-do-NAI
the Lord
אֶתְחַנָּן
et-cha-NAN
I plead for grace
and to my Lord I plead for grace.
The verse that opens the quotation: from here to the end of verse eleven the speaker is repeating the prayer he made while sick, not praying it now.
The argument is commercial before it is theological: a dead worshipper is a loss on both sides. The two questions expect the answer no, and the prefix that marks them as questions is a single letter.
11
שְׁמַע יְהֹוָה וְחׇנֵּנִי
יְהֹוָה הֱיֵה עֹזֵר לִי
שְׁמַע
shma
hear
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
וְחׇנֵּנִי
ve-cho-ne-NI
and be gracious to me
Hear, LORD, and be gracious to me;
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
הֱיֵה
he-YE
be
עֹזֵר
o-ZER
a helper
לִי
li
to me
LORD, be my helper.
The quoted prayer ends in bare imperatives with no reasons attached. The argument of the previous verse has been made; what is left is the request.
Mourning clothes come off and gladness is put on in their place, worn like a belt. Nothing is undone here; the same material is turned around, which is what the verb means.
so that my glory may sing to You and not be silent.
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
אֱלֹהַי
e-lo-HAI
my God
לְעוֹלָם
le-o-LAM
forever
אוֹדֶךָּ
o-de-KA
I will thank You
LORD my God, I will thank You forever.
The rescue is given a purpose, and the purpose is speech. The forever here answers the forever of verse seven: the same word, moved from a boast about stability to a promise of thanks.
♦ 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 shape is a thanksgiving report. Verses 2 to 6 announce the rescue and call others to join; verses 7 to 11 go back and tell the story, complacency first, then the hidden face, then the prayer quoted word for word; verses 12 and 13 return to the present with the reversal accomplished. The illness is never named and the enemies never act, which keeps the psalm usable by anyone who has been pulled back from something. Watch the two forevers: לְעוֹלָם (le-o-lam, v.7) is the boast that failed, לְעוֹלָם (le-o-lam, v.13) is the promise that stands.
רמז · Remez: allusion
Two hard words. In מִיׇּרְדִי (mi-yor-di, v.4) the consonants can be read as from my going down to the pit or as from among those going down to the pit, and translations still split on it: one has the speaker turned back at the edge, the other has him already down among the dead and hauled out. In לְהַרְרִי (le-har-ri, v.8) the noun for my mountain carries a prefix that will not sit comfortably in the sentence, so some read You established strength for my mountain and others You established my mountain as a stronghold. Neither reading changes the psalm, but the learner should know the line is rough in Hebrew and smooth only in translation.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The gap between the heading and the poem is where the interpretation happens. The house of חֲנֻכַּת (cha-nu-kat, v.1) has been read as the Temple that David prepared but did not build, as David's own palace, and as the site bought after the plague at the end of Second Samuel, where a personal deliverance and a future altar occupy the same ground. All three readings are old and none is decisive. Liturgy took the widest option: the psalm is said on Chanukah, treating dedication as rededication, and its daily recitation before the morning psalms lets an individual waking up borrow the vocabulary of a rebuilt sanctuary.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
The hiding of the face in הִסְתַּרְתָּ (his-tar-ta, v.8) and פָנֶיךָ (fa-nei-cha, v.8) became a technical term in later Jewish thought for a concealment that is itself a mode of relation, not an absence. Read that way, verse 6 is not consolation about bad moods but a measurement: anger occupies a moment, favour occupies the duration, and the two are not symmetrical quantities. The turning verb of הָפַכְתָּ (ha-fach-ta, v.12) is then the key to the whole psalm. Mourning is not deleted and replaced with joy; it is rotated, the same substance seen from the other side, which is why the sackcloth is untied rather than torn 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).