Fifteen verses from the sons of Korah about a city rather than a person, and the psalm said on the second day of the week in the Temple list of daily psalms (Mishnah Tamid 7:4). It moves in three blocks: the city described from outside, kings who come and break apart at the sight of it, and then a congregation standing inside the temple. The last three verses are the part to watch as a learner: a string of plural imperatives, walk, circle, count, set your heart, traverse, tell, all aimed at making the next generation see what this one saw.
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1
שִׁיר מִזְמוֹר לִבְנֵי קֹרַח
שִׁיר
shir
a song
מִזְמוֹר
miz-MOR
a psalm
לִבְנֵי
liv-NEI
of the sons of
קֹרַח
ko-RACH
Korah
A song, a psalm of the sons of Korah.
Two genre words stacked, song and psalm, then the guild credited with eleven psalms in the book. Nothing here about David.
Praise is given a location before it is given a reason. The last two words are a construct chain, mountain-of His-holiness, which is how Hebrew builds an adjective it does not have.
Three appositions piled on one subject, with no verb in the whole verse. The claim is territorial and total: a local hill is called the joy of the entire earth.
4
אֱלֹהִים בְּאַרְמְנוֹתֶיהָ
נוֹדַע לְמִשְׂגָּב
אֱלֹהִים
e-lo-HIM
God
בְּאַרְמְנוֹתֶיהָ
be-ar-me-no-tei-A
in her palaces
God, within her palaces,
נוֹדַע
NO-da
is known
לְמִשְׂגָּב
le-mis-GAV
for a stronghold
has made Himself known as a stronghold.
The city has already been called beautiful; now it is called defensible, and the defence named is not the wall but the one living behind it.
5
כִּי הִנֵּה הַמְּלָכִים נוֹעֲדוּ
עָבְרוּ יַחְדָּו
כִּי
ki
for
הִנֵּה
hi-NE
behold
הַמְּלָכִים
ham-la-CHIM
the kings
נוֹעֲדוּ
no-a-DU
they assembled
For behold, the kings assembled,
עָבְרוּ
av-RU
they passed on
יַחְדָּו
yach-DAV
together
they advanced together.
The narrative block opens. No siege is described and no army is counted; the kings are given only two verbs, gathering and marching, before the psalm cuts away.
6
הֵמָּה רָאוּ כֵּן תָּמָהוּ
נִבְהֲלוּ נֶחְפָּזוּ
הֵמָּה
he-MA
they
רָאוּ
ra-U
they saw
כֵּן
ken
so
תָּמָהוּ
ta-ma-HU
they were astounded
They saw, and at that they were astounded,
נִבְהֲלוּ
niv-ha-LU
they were terrified
נֶחְפָּזוּ
nech-pa-ZU
they fled in panic
they were terrified, they fled in panic.
Four verbs in a row with no object and no connectives, which is the fastest verse in the psalm. Nothing is done to the kings: they look, and the looking undoes them.
7
רְעָדָה אֲחָזָתַם שָׁם
חִיל כַּיּוֹלֵדָה
רְעָדָה
re-a-DA
trembling
אֲחָזָתַם
a-cha-za-TAM
seized them
שָׁם
sham
there
Trembling seized them there,
חִיל
chil
writhing
כַּיּוֹלֵדָה
ka-yo-le-DA
like a woman giving birth
writhing like a woman in labour.
The image is standard prophetic vocabulary for an army breaking, and it is deliberately humiliating: the strongest men in the region are given the body of a woman in labour.
8
בְּרוּחַ קָדִים
תְּשַׁבֵּר אֳנִיּוֹת תַּרְשִׁישׁ
בְּרוּחַ
BRU-ach
with a wind of
קָדִים
ka-DIM
the east
With an east wind
תְּשַׁבֵּר
tsha-BER
You shatter
אֳנִיּוֹת
o-ni-YOT
the ships of
תַּרְשִׁישׁ
tar-SHISH
Tarshish
You shatter the ships of Tarshish.
The first direct address in the psalm, and the tense turns from past to present. Tarshish ships are the large cargo vessels of the period, the biggest thing a listener could picture breaking.
in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God.
אֱלֹהִים
e-lo-HIM
God
יְכוֹנְנֶהָ
ye-chon-ne-A
will establish her
עַד
ad
for
עוֹלָם
o-LAM
ever
סֶלָה
se-LA
Selah
May God establish her for ever. Selah.
The hinge of the psalm, and the place where the speaker becomes a plural we standing inside the city. Received report and present eyesight are matched, which is the whole argument compressed into four words.
10
דִּמִּינוּ אֱלֹהִים חַסְדֶּךָ
בְּקֶרֶב הֵיכָלֶךָ
דִּמִּינוּ
di-mi-NU
we have pictured
אֱלֹהִים
e-lo-HIM
God
חַסְדֶּךָ
chas-de-CHA
Your kindness
We have pictured Your kindness, God,
בְּקֶרֶב
be-KE-rev
within
הֵיכָלֶךָ
hei-cha-le-CHA
Your temple
within Your temple.
The verb is from the root for likening and imagining, so the line is about a congregation forming a picture rather than reciting a fact. The verbs from here on all happen indoors.
Reputation is treated as something with a measurable reach. The last three words invert the English order, so the learner reads righteousness, is-full, Your-right-hand.
A masculine singular verb for the mountain and a feminine plural verb for the towns, which is the clearest agreement lesson in the psalm. The daughters of Judah are the surrounding settlements, not only women.
13
סֹבּוּ צִיּוֹן וְהַקִּיפוּהָ
סִפְרוּ מִגְדָּלֶיהָ
סֹבּוּ
so-BU
walk around
צִיּוֹן
tzi-YON
Zion
וְהַקִּיפוּהָ
ve-ha-ki-fu-A
and encircle her
Walk around Zion and encircle her,
סִפְרוּ
sif-RU
count
מִגְדָּלֶיהָ
mig-da-lei-A
her towers
count her towers.
The psalm stops describing and starts giving orders. What was a claim about the city now becomes something the listener is told to verify with his own feet.
so that you may recount it to a coming generation.
The purpose of the tour is stated outright: the point of counting towers is having something to say later. This is the verse that turns the psalm into a teaching instrument.
The city drops out of view in the last verse and the object of trust turns out to be the one who lives in it. The final two words are the hardest in the psalm and are read in several ways.
♦ 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
Three movements. Verses 2 to 4 describe the city from outside: high, beautiful, praised, and defended by its occupant rather than its stonework. Verses 5 to 8 tell a story with almost no detail, kings gathering, seeing something, and coming apart, with the psalm never saying what they saw. Verses 9 to 15 are spoken by a plural we standing inside, and the pivot is the pairing of שָׁמַעְנוּ (sha-ma-nu, v.9) with רָאִינוּ (ra-i-nu, v.9): what the fathers reported, this congregation has now seen for itself. The ending is practical. Walk the perimeter, count the towers, look at the ramparts, then go and tell a generation that has not seen it. The psalm ends by handing the evidence forward.
רמז · Remez: allusion
Two cruxes and one geographical oddity. The oddity is יַרְכְּתֵי (yar-ktei, v.3) with the word after it, literally the far sides of the north, which is the standard biblical phrase for a remote mountain of the gods and is commonly read as language borrowed from Canaanite descriptions of Mount Zaphon and applied to a hill in Judah; that reading is widely held but it is a reconstruction, not something the psalm states. The first crux is the verb of פַּסְּגוּ (pas-gu, v.14), which occurs only here in the Bible: translations give traverse, pass between, and consider, and no reading is secure. The second is the last two words, מוּת (mut, v.15) and the preposition before it, read variously as beyond death, unto death, and, by taking the two words as one, as eternity; some connect the phrase to the musical heading of Psalm 9. The dispute is old and unresolved, and the theology people take from the verse depends on which way it is read.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
This is the psalm assigned to the second day of the week in the list of Temple psalms in Mishnah Tamid 7:4, and the Talmud in Rosh Hashanah 31a explains the daily psalms as matching the days of creation, the second day being the day of division. Read that way, the opening word of גָּדוֹל (ga-dol, v.2) is about a God who separates and then rules over what He has separated, which is exactly what the kings of verse 5 discover the hard way. The reading tradition also takes the tour of verses 13 and 14 as a rule for teaching rather than tourism: the towers are counted so that the count survives the counter. Later readers of the destroyed city read the same imperatives against ruins, which turns a survey of walls into an act of memory.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
In the kabbalistic reading the city is not primarily a place but a receiving vessel, the lowest of the divine measures, which is why she is spoken of in the feminine throughout and why her palaces, ramparts and towers can be counted at all: what can be measured is what has been given form. The kings who look and flee stand for a force that cannot bear an unmediated encounter with what is inside the walls, so it breaks apart at the boundary rather than crossing it. The last verse is then read as a route rather than a comfort: the same guide who leads within the city is said to lead beyond the place where measure stops, which is the sense the mystical reading gives to leading beyond death.
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).