Thirteen verses built on one small word. Six of them open with ach, which can restrict or dismiss: only God, but also nothing but a breath. The psalm uses both senses, and a learner who follows that single particle through the poem has followed the argument. Two other things to watch. The refrain of verses 3 and 7 is repeated almost exactly, with one word dropped the second time, and the psalm ends stronger than it began without anything in the situation having changed. And the word for stillness appears twice, in verse 2 as a noun and in verse 6 as a command, which is the difference between having quiet and having to choose it. The heading names Jeduthun, one of the temple musicians listed in Chronicles.
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1
לַמְנַצֵּחַ עַל יְדוּתוּן
מִזְמוֹר לְדָוִד
לַמְנַצֵּחַ
lam-na-TZE-ach
for the choirmaster
עַל
al
upon
יְדוּתוּן
ye-du-TUN
Jeduthun
For the choirmaster, on Jeduthun.
מִזְמוֹר
miz-MOR
a psalm
לְדָוִד
le-da-VID
of David
A psalm of David.
The heading assigns the psalm to the director of the music and to Jeduthun, a name that also appears on two other psalms and in the Chronicles lists of temple musicians.
The first word restricts everything after it. The soul is not described as waiting; it is described as being stillness, a noun where English keeps reaching for a verb.
He alone is my rock and my salvation, my high tower;
לֹא
lo
not
אֶמּוֹט
e-MOT
shall I be shaken
רַבָּה
ra-BA
greatly
I shall not be greatly shaken.
Three nouns for one thing, rock and salvation and high tower, and then the claim they hold up. The qualifier at the end is the single word the psalm will later drop.
The one address to the attackers, and the only place the psalm raises its voice. The leaning wall and the pushed fence describe him as they see him: already going over, worth one more shove.
The opening returns as an order. What was a description of his soul in verse 2 he now has to command it to be, and the object of waiting has moved from salvation to hope.
The psalm turns from himself to everyone listening, and the instruction has two halves that look opposed: trust, then empty yourself out. Stillness is not silence about what is inside.
on the scales they go up, together lighter than a breath.
The other sense of the opening word. Weighed against anything real, people of both ranks rise in the pan, lighter than the vapour they are being compared to.
if wealth bears fruit, do not set your heart on it.
Three prohibitions on where trust may not go, moving from theft to money that arrives honestly. The last is the hard one: growth is not condemned, only the heart set on it.
The second of the two things heard. Kindness is named in the same breath as payment by deed, which stops the word from meaning indulgence.
♦ 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 psalm alternates between audiences without announcing it. Verses 2, 3, 6 and 7 face inward, the speaker talking about God or talking to his own soul. Verse 4 faces the attackers, once, and never again. Verses 9 to 11 face a crowd and issue instructions. Verses 12 and 13 face God. The structural fact worth noticing is that the refrain is not identical the second time: רַבָּה (ra-ba, v.3), the word for greatly, is there in verse 3 and gone in verse 7, so the claim ends stronger than it started. Nothing in the situation has changed between the two. The change is in him.
רמז · Remez: allusion
אַךְ (ach, v.2) is the hinge of the whole psalm and it is one syllable. Ach opens verses 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 10, and it means only in the sense of nothing but. Aimed at God it concentrates; aimed at people it deflates; the poem gets its shape from letting one word do both. דּוּמִיָּה (du-mi-ya, v.2) and דּוֹמִּי (do-mi, v.6) are the same root, first a noun for stillness and then an imperative, be still. תְּהוֹתְתוּ (te-hot-tu, v.4) is a hapax whose root is not agreed on, which is why English versions offer set upon, rush at, and shout at for the same word: the assault is clear from context, the verb is not. בְּפִיו (be-fiv, v.5) keeps a singular suffix, with his mouth, between plural verbs on both sides, and most translations quietly regularize it to their mouths. הֶבֶל (he-vel, v.10) is hevel, the vapour of Ecclesiastes, and תֶּהְבָּלוּ (teh-ba-lu, v.11) is a verb from that same root, so the warning is literally not to turn into vapour.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The counting line of verse 12, one spoken and two heard, invites the question of what the second thing was, and the text answers it on the page: strength belongs to God in verse 12, kindness belongs to the Lord in verse 13, two attributes carried out of one utterance. A traditional reading hears Sinai behind the formula, one voice speaking and the hearers receiving more than one commandment directly from it. That reading is old and it is not the only one. Either way the argument comes out the same: what sounds like two competing claims about God, that he is strong and that he is kind, came from a single mouth and are not in tension.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
Stillness here is not the absence of speech. Verse 9 tells the same people to pour their heart out in front of him, and שִׁפְכוּ (shif-chu, v.9) is a violent verb, the one used for spilling liquid. The psalm asks for both, an interior that is quiet and an interior that is emptied, and in the mystical idiom that pair is the standard description of a vessel: it holds by being still and it receives by being empty. The scales of verse 10 are the same image seen from the other side. What has no weight of its own cannot hold anything down, and the only thing in the psalm given real weight is חָסֶד (cha-sed, v.13), the kindness that belongs to the Lord and is paid out by measure.
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).