The psalm that opens Book Two of the Psalter, and the first of the collection attributed to the sons of Korah. A speaker cut off from the Temple remembers walking there in a festival crowd, and now hears the same question every day from people around him: where is your God. Twice he stops and talks to his own soul in the second person, and that refrain returns a third time at the end of Psalm 43, which is why the two are often treated as one poem. For a learner it is a dense drill in one noun, nafshi, my soul, and in verbs that carry their object inside the word: forgotten-me, taunted-me, I-remember-You.
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1
לַמְנַצֵּחַ מַשְׂכִּיל לִבְנֵי קֹרַח
לַמְנַצֵּחַ
lam-na-TZE-ach
for the leader
מַשְׂכִּיל
mas-KIL
a maskil
לִבְנֵי
liv-NEI
of the sons of
קֹרַח
ko-RACH
Korah
For the leader. A maskil of the sons of Korah.
A performance heading, not part of the poem. The second word names a genre whose exact sense is no longer recoverable, and the last two attach the psalm to a guild of Temple singers.
The comparison is built to be symmetrical: the same verb twice, once for the animal and once for the speaker. The channels are wadi beds, which in this country are dry most of the year, so the deer is standing over a place where water should be.
When shall I come and be seen before the face of God?
Longing becomes thirst, and thirst becomes a date on a calendar. The question is about pilgrimage, a physical journey to a building, not about a state of mind.
My tears have been bread to me by day and by night,
בֶּאֱמֹר
be-e-MOR
when they say
אֵלַי
e-LAI
to me
כׇּל
kol
all
הַיּוֹם
ha-YOM
the day
אַיֵּה
a-YE
where is
אֱלֹהֶיךָ
e-lo-hei-CHA
your God
while they say to me all the day: Where is your God?
The first of the two taunts. Tears replace food, so grief is being described as a diet rather than an episode, something the body does around the clock.
These things I remember, and I pour out my soul upon me:
כִּי
ki
how
אֶעֱבֹר
e-e-VOR
I would cross over
בַּסָּךְ
ba-SACH
in the throng
אֶדַּדֵּם
e-da-DEM
I moved them slowly
עַד
ad
as far as
בֵּית
beit
the house of
אֱלֹהִים
e-lo-HIM
God
how I would cross over in the throng, moving with them slowly as far as the house of God,
בְּקוֹל
be-KOL
with the sound of
רִנָּה
ri-NA
glad song
וְתוֹדָה
ve-to-DA
and thanksgiving
הָמוֹן
ha-MON
a crowd
חוֹגֵג
cho-GEG
keeping festival
with the sound of glad song and thanksgiving, a festival crowd.
The longest verse in the psalm, and the only one set in the past. Memory is what hurts: the speaker is not describing the Temple, he is describing himself walking towards it in a noisy crowd.
Why are you bowed down, my soul, and moaning upon me?
הוֹחִלִי
ho-chi-LI
wait
לֵאלֹהִים
le-lo-HIM
for God
Wait for God,
כִּי
ki
for
עוֹד
od
still
אוֹדֶנּוּ
o-de-NU
I will praise Him
יְשׁוּעוֹת
ye-shu-OT
the deliverances of
פָּנָיו
pa-NAV
His face
for I shall yet praise Him, the deliverances of His face.
The refrain. The speaker splits in two and addresses his own soul with feminine singular verbs, the form used for speaking to a woman, because nefesh is a feminine noun. It is an argument with himself, not a prayer.
therefore I remember You from the land of Jordan and the Hermons, from Mount Mizar.
The refrain has not worked. The same verb comes back immediately, now as a statement rather than a question, and the speaker gives his coordinates: the far north, the sources of the Jordan, as far from Jerusalem as the land goes.
all Your breakers and Your waves have passed over me.
The water of verse 2 returns inverted. What was missing and longed for is now too much of it, and the possessive suffixes make every wave God's own: Your torrents, Your breakers, Your waves.
Day and night were the measure of weeping in verse 4; here they are the measure of kindness and song. The one line in the psalm that uses the four letter name.
Why must I walk in mourning under the pressure of an enemy?
Having just called God a rock, he asks whether the rock has forgotten him. The two questions are addressed upward, unlike the refrain, which is addressed inward.
With a shattering in my bones my adversaries have taunted me,
בְּאׇמְרָם
be-om-RAM
when they say
אֵלַי
e-LAI
to me
כׇּל
kol
all
הַיּוֹם
ha-YOM
the day
אַיֵּה
a-YE
where is
אֱלֹהֶיךָ
e-lo-hei-CHA
your God
when they say to me all the day: Where is your God?
The taunt from verse 4 returns word for word, so the psalm has come round without resolving anything. What has changed is that the mockery is now felt in the skeleton.
Why are you bowed down, my soul, and why do you moan upon me?
הוֹחִילִי
ho-chi-LI
wait
לֵאלֹהִים
le-lo-HIM
for God
Wait for God,
כִּי
ki
for
עוֹד
od
still
אוֹדֶנּוּ
o-de-NU
I will praise Him
יְשׁוּעֹת
ye-shu-OT
the deliverances of
פָּנַי
pa-NAI
my face
וֵאלֹהָי
ve-lo-HAI
and my God
for I shall yet praise Him, the deliverance of my face and my God.
The refrain again, with two small changes: a conjunction added at the start and, at the end, His face becomes my face, with my God attached. The psalm ends unresolved, which is one reason Psalm 43 reads as its continuation.
♦ 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 man far from Jerusalem, in the north near the sources of the Jordan, remembers going up to the Temple with a crowd and cannot go now. Around him people ask where his God has gone, and he has no answer. Twice he interrupts his own complaint to tell his soul to wait. Read the psalm as three moves repeated: a memory, a taunt, a refrain. Nothing in the situation changes between the first refrain at verse 6 and the second at verse 12; what changes is only that the second one ends by saying my God.
רמז · Remez: allusion
Three details reward slowing down. In verse 2 the noun כְּאַיָּל (ke-a-yal, v.2) is masculine but the verb תַּעֲרֹג (ta-a-rog, v.2) is feminine, and commentators split between treating it as a form of the word for a doe and treating the mismatch as the poet already looking ahead to nafshi, the feminine soul of the second half. The verb itself appears only here and in Joel, so its exact sense is uncertain. In verse 3 the Masoretic vocalization makes וְאֵרָאֶה (ve-e-ra-e, v.3) passive, and be seen before the face of God, where the unpointed consonants would equally allow the active and see the face of God; the choice is deliberate and it is discussed. In verse 5 the word אֶדַּדֵּם (e-da-dem, v.5) occurs nowhere else in the Bible, and translations run from I led them in procession to I walked slowly, with no way to decide.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
Numbers 26:11 says flatly that the sons of Korah did not die when the earth swallowed their father, and the Korahite psalms have long been read against that verse: the voices are those of survivors of a family disaster, which suits a poem that ends without rescue. Mount Mizar in verse 7 has never been identified with any known place, and the traditional reading takes advantage of that by hearing the ordinary meaning of the word, small, so that the speaker is remembering God from a little hill instead of from the mountain he wants. Whether the poet intended the pun is disputed, but the geography of the verse is real: Jordan and Hermon are the northern edge of the land.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
The mystical reading takes תְּהוֹם (te-hom, v.8) literally as two depths, the upper waters and the lower, calling across the space between them, and hears the whole psalm as that call: something below thirsting for something above, and the answer arriving as flood rather than as drink. In this reading the refrain is not consolation but instruction. The speaker addresses his nefesh, the lowest of the soul's levels, the one bound to the body and to appetite, and tells it to wait, because what it wants is real and what it can reach on its own is not. The last word of the psalm, my God, is then the point of the exercise: the same face that was His in verse 6 is turned toward the speaker by verse 12.
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).