Fourteen verses in the Hebrew numbering, the first two of them a heading that names a campaign. This is a communal lament after a military defeat, and it opens by saying out loud that God is the one who broke the line. In the middle an old oracle is quoted in which God parcels out the land like a man dividing a field, and the neighbouring kingdoms are reduced to a washbasin and a place to throw a sandal. Verses 7 to 14 appear again, almost unchanged, as Psalm 108:7 to 14. Watch the verb of verse 3: it comes back in verse 12 as a question.
♫ 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.
The heading dates the psalm to a war in the north and a battle in the south. The count given here differs from the parallel accounts in Samuel and Chronicles.
You have given those who fear You a banner to raise,
מִפְּנֵי
mip-NEI
because of
קֹשֶׁט
KO-shet
truth
סֶלָה
se-LA
selah
because of the truth. Selah.
The one positive line in the first movement, and the hardest to translate. A banner is what a scattered army rallies to, so even here the picture is of troops that have broken.
The three neighbours get household treatment: a basin for washing, a spot to toss a sandal, a place to shout at. The oracle ends by making the enemies furniture.
11
מִי יֹבִלֵנִי עִיר מָצוֹר
מִי נָחַנִי עַד אֱדוֹם
מִי
mi
who
יֹבִלֵנִי
yo-vi-le-NI
will bring me
עִיר
ir
to the city of
מָצוֹר
ma-TZOR
the fortress
Who will bring me to the fortified city?
מִי
mi
who
נָחַנִי
na-cha-NI
has led me
עַד
ad
as far as
אֱדוֹם
e-DOM
Edom
Who has led me as far as Edom?
Back to the present, and back to doubt. The fortified city is unnamed, and the question is who is going to take the speaker there.
The request is narrowed to one word: help. What comes after it is a judgment on every other source of help.
14
בֵּאלֹהִים נַעֲשֶׂה חָיִל
וְהוּא יָבוּס צָרֵינוּ
בֵּאלֹהִים
be-lo-HIM
through God
נַעֲשֶׂה
na-a-SE
we will do
חָיִל
cha-YIL
valiantly
Through God we will do valiantly,
וְהוּא
ve-HU
and He
יָבוּס
ya-VUS
will trample
צָרֵינוּ
tza-rei-NU
our foes
and He is the one who will trample our foes.
The last line does not say the defeat is reversed. It says who does the treading, and it is not the army.
♦ 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
Two verses of heading, then three movements. Verses 3 to 7 are the complaint and the plea, spoken to God. Verses 8 to 10 are a quotation, and the only place in the psalm where anyone but the speaker talks. Verses 11 to 14 return to the present and answer the oracle with a question. The hinge is דִּבֶּר (di-ber, v.8), the word for spoke: everything before it is addressed upward, and the confidence of the middle section belongs to a voice the speaker is repeating rather than one he currently hears. The last two verses accept the situation without claiming it has changed.
רמז · Remez: allusion
Three cruxes in nine verses. קֹשֶׁט (ko-shet, v.6) is the Aramaic word for truth to most readers, which gives a banner raised because of the truth; others connect the consonants to the word for a bow and read a banner raised to flee the archers, and the ancient versions do not agree. מְחֹקְקִי (me-chok-ki, v.9) is built on the root for engraving and decreeing, so it is read as either a ruler's staff or a lawgiver, and both are current. הִתְרוֹעָעִי (hit-ro-a-i, v.10) is a feminine imperative addressed to Philistia, a command to raise a shout, but the parallel line in Psalm 108 has a first person form, so the shout is either Philistia's submission or the speaker's triumph over her. The heading is a fourth crux: it credits Joab with twelve thousand in the valley named at בְּגֵיא (bgei, v.2), while 2 Samuel 8 and 1 Chronicles 18 give eighteen thousand and Chronicles credits Abishai.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The oracle of verses 8 to 10 was read long after there was any land to divide, and read that way it stops being a war report and becomes a title deed: the tribal names are held in the present tense while the territory is gone, and the psalm's argument becomes the gap between the deed and the possession. The reuse of verses 7 to 14 inside Psalm 108, where they follow praise rather than complaint, is an early instance of that rereading. Verse 13 ends on אָדָם (a-dam, v.13), and the whole point of the sentence is that this is the wrong noun to hope in. Verse 1 says the psalm exists to teach, and that is the lesson it teaches.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
Read as a map of the divine attributes, the psalm moves from the side of severity to the side of kindness without pretending the severity was a mistake: God shakes the land in verse 4 and hands out a banner in verse 6, and both are the same hand. יְמִינְךָ (ye-min-cha, v.7) names the right hand, which in kabbalistic idiom is the side of expansion and love, and the plea is that the fighting be done from there. The banner of verse 6 is the standing image for a sign lifted high enough to be seen from a distance, a gathering point for what has been scattered, which is what the whole psalm is asking for.
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).