This is Psalm 14 again, copied into a different collection and edited on the way. Read the two pages side by side and the edits are easy to list: the heading here is longer and counts as its own verse, so every line lands one number later; the divine name is God throughout where Psalm 14 alternates and uses the four letter name; verse 4 says the whole of it has turned back where Psalm 14 says the whole has turned aside; verse 5 drops the word all before the workers of iniquity; and the two short verses 5 and 6 of Psalm 14 are replaced by one long verse 6 about scattered bones, which shares only its opening three words with what it replaced. For a learner this is the cleanest evidence in the book that these texts were sung, copied and reworked rather than fixed once.
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1
לַמְנַצֵּחַ עַל מָחֲלַת
מַשְׂכִּיל לְדָוִד
לַמְנַצֵּחַ
lam-na-TZE-ach
for the leader
עַל
al
upon
מָחֲלַת
ma-cha-LAT
Mahalath
For the leader, upon Mahalath.
מַשְׂכִּיל
mas-KIL
a maskil
לְדָוִד
le-da-VID
of David
A maskil of David.
Psalm 14 heads its first verse with two words and then starts the poem. Here the heading grows to five words and stands alone, which is why the numbering of the two psalms never lines up again.
Word for word the opening of Psalm 14, with two changes: the second verb here carries the conjunction, and the noun after it is iniquity rather than a deed. The indictment is the same and the vocabulary has drifted.
God looked down from heaven on the children of man,
לִרְאוֹת
lir-OT
to see
הֲיֵשׁ
ha-YESH
whether there is
מַשְׂכִּיל
mas-KIL
one who has sense
דֹּרֵשׁ
do-RESH
one who seeks
אֶת
et
(object marker)
אֱלֹהִים
e-lo-HIM
God
to see whether there is anyone with sense, anyone seeking God.
The one substitution that runs through the whole psalm shows here first: the subject of the looking is God, where the parallel verse in Psalm 14 uses the four letter name. The line is otherwise identical.
Every one of them has turned back, together they have gone rotten;
אֵין
ein
there is none
עֹשֵׂה
o-SE
who does
טוֹב
tov
good
there is none who does good,
אֵין
ein
there is none
גַּם
gam
even
אֶחָד
e-CHAD
one
not even one.
Two small differences from the parallel verse: the subject is the whole of it rather than the whole, and the verb ends in a different consonant, giving turned back instead of turned aside. The sentence does the same work either way.
The victims arrive, as they do in Psalm 14, but the accusation is narrower by one word: there is no all before the workers of iniquity, so the charge falls on a group rather than on everyone.
There they were seized with dread, where there was no dread,
כִּי
ki
for
אֱלֹהִים
e-lo-HIM
God
פִּזַּר
pi-ZAR
has scattered
עַצְמוֹת
atz-MOT
the bones of
חֹנָךְ
cho-NACH
the one encamping against you
for God has scattered the bones of the one encamped against you;
הֱבִשֹׁתָה
he-vi-sho-TA
you have put to shame
כִּי
ki
for
אֱלֹהִים
e-lo-HIM
God
מְאָסָם
me-a-SAM
has rejected them
you have put them to shame, for God has rejected them.
The one verse that is genuinely new. It keeps the first three words of Psalm 14 verse 5 and then goes somewhere else: fear with no cause for fear, an enemy army left unburied, and a direct address in the second person that the earlier version never uses.
Who will give the deliverance of Israel out of Zion!
בְּשׁוּב
be-SHUV
when turns back
אֱלֹהִים
e-lo-HIM
God
שְׁבוּת
shvut
the fortunes of
עַמּוֹ
a-MO
His people
When God turns back the fortunes of His people,
יָגֵל
ya-GEL
let rejoice
יַעֲקֹב
ya-a-KOV
Jacob
יִשְׂמַח
yis-MACH
let be glad
יִשְׂרָאֵל
yis-ra-EL
Israel
let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.
The same closing wish, with deliverance in the plural here and the singular in Psalm 14, and God in place of the four letter name. Both psalms end by asking for something that has not happened.
♦ 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
Take the psalm on its own and it moves in three steps. Verses 2 to 4 state the charge and repeat its refrain, verse 5 gives the charge victims, and verse 6 shows the accused collapsing in fear. Verse 7 then steps outside the argument to ask for a rescue that has not come. The engine of the first half is the negative existential particle, three times in verses 2 and 4: there is no God, there is none doing good, there is none, not even one. Note that the fool of נָבָל (na-val, v.2) never argues his case, he says it inwardly, and the psalm answers him with a God who looks in verse 3 rather than with a proof.
רמז · Remez: allusion
Three words here are genuinely hard. The heading word מָחֲלַת (ma-cha-lat, v.1) occurs only in the headings of this psalm and one other, and there is no agreement on what it means: a tune, an instrument, or a form of the root for sickness. The verb סָג (sag, v.4) is not the verb Psalm 14 uses at the same point, and the change is one letter, which is exactly the kind of variation copying produces. Hardest is חֹנָךְ (cho-nach, v.6), which the Masoretes vocalize as one who encamps with a second person suffix, that is, the one besieging you, addressed to a listener who has not been introduced. Some readers repoint it, and the reading is disputed. The doubled construction in פָּחֲדוּ (pa-cha-du, v.6) and פַחַד (fa-chad, v.6), dreaded a dread, is a cognate accusative, Hebrew's normal way of intensifying a verb.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The pair of psalms is the case study readers return to. Psalms 42 to 83 are the stretch of the book where the divine name is largely replaced by the word God, and this psalm sits inside that stretch while its twin sits outside it, so the substitution visible between them is not a scribe's slip but a property of the collection each one landed in. On the content side, the denial of verse 2 has long been read not as atheism but as a calculation, the fool granting that there is a God and betting that God does not look, which is why verse 3 answers with looking and not with argument. Verse 6, with its unburied bones, reads as a specific military deliverance, and readers have attached it to more than one siege without the text naming any.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
The mystical reading takes the fear of verse 6 seriously as its own event. Nothing is reported to have struck the wicked. They are afraid where there was nothing to be afraid of, and the psalm gives that state a cause outside them, which is what the second half of the verse supplies. Read this way the psalm describes a closed system meeting something it had ruled out, and the terror is the contact itself rather than any punishment. The ending then follows the usual shape: the deliverance comes out of Zion, from a fixed point that was there the whole time, and the two names in יַעֲקֹב (ya-a-kov, v.7) and יִשְׂרָאֵל (yis-ra-el, v.7) mark one people before and after the turning.
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).