Seven verses of body under a one line heading, and a shape you can see once someone points at it: the same refrain at verses 4 and 6, a blessing at 2 and 8, and the longest verse of the psalm sitting alone in the middle at verse 5. Count the words of verses 2 to 8 and there are forty nine, seven times seven, which is why this psalm is printed on shiviti plaques in the shape of a menorah and why many communities say it through the seven weeks of the Omer. Grammatically it is a drill in one form: almost every verb here is a wish rather than a report, and a learner meets that form twelve times in eight verses.
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| 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:
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1
לַמְנַצֵּחַ בִּנְגִינֹת
מִזְמוֹר שִׁיר
לַמְנַצֵּחַ
lam-na-TZE-ach
for the leader
בִּנְגִינֹת
bin-gi-NOT
with stringed music
For the leader; with stringed music.
מִזְמוֹר
miz-MOR
a psalm
שִׁיר
shir
a song
A psalm, a song.
The heading assigns the piece to whoever runs the music and to strings, then labels it twice over, psalm and song. None of this is part of the prayer; the psalm proper starts at verse 2.
Three wishes in a row, all of them lifted from the priestly blessing in Numbers 6, with two changes: the blessing there is spoken over you, here a community asks it for us, and the face shines with us rather than toward us.
The purpose clause, and the whole argument of the psalm turns on it. The blessing of verse 2 is not wanted for itself but so that something becomes visible from outside, and one infinitive with a lamed carries that.
The middle verse and the longest one, and the only verse in the psalm that says what God does rather than what the peoples should do. Judging and leading are set side by side as a single act.
The tense breaks. Everything so far has been a wish; here is one completed action, a harvest already in, and it is offered as the ground for asking again in the same breath.
The blessing is asked a third time and then turned outward: the last words are not about us but about the far edge of the world. The psalm ends where verse 3 said it was going.
♦ 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 ring. Verse 2 asks for blessing, verse 3 gives the reason, verses 4 and 6 are the same refrain, verse 7 reports a harvest, verse 8 asks for blessing again and lets it run to the ends of the earth. Verse 5 sits in the middle with nothing matching it, and it is the only verse whose verbs have God as subject in the present. Read the psalm outward from there and the logic is plain: we ask to be blessed, so that the way is known, so that the peoples give thanks. The harvest of אֶרֶץ (e-retz, v.7) and נָתְנָה (nat-na, v.7) is the one piece of evidence the psalm produces, and it is in the past tense while everything around it is a wish.
רמז · Remez: allusion
The name used throughout is Elohim, six times, and the four letter name does not appear once. Psalms 42 to 83 do this consistently and the section is usually called the Elohistic psalter for that reason; 67 sits inside it. Two words repay attention. מִישֹׁר (mi-shor, v.5) is a noun meaning level ground, used here for fairness, so judging straight and walking on the flat are the same picture. תַּנְחֵם (tan-chem, v.5) is a causative of the root nun chet he, to lead, and the translations here read it that way; it looks close enough to nun chet mem, to comfort, that first readers regularly take it for comfort them, and the two roots are not related. Note also אִתָּנוּ (i-ta-nu, v.2), with us, where the priestly blessing has toward us: a preposition of company rather than of direction.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The psalm is the priestly blessing turned outward. In Numbers the blessing is said by priests over Israel and stops there; here the community asks for it in the first person plural and then gives a reason that has nothing to do with itself, that the nations should know. On that reading being blessed is a job rather than a reward, and the refrain, repeated so that the peoples do the thanking, is the point of the whole thing rather than decoration. The harvest of verse 7 is why the psalm attaches easily to the season between Passover and Shavuot, and the widespread custom of saying it on each of the forty nine days of the Omer takes the word count as an invitation. The last phrase, the ends of the earth, is the widest possible object and the psalm saves it for the final two words.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
Printed as a menorah, this psalm has seven branches for its seven verses of body, with verse 5 as the central shaft, and the count of forty nine words as seven weeks of seven days. That layout is old enough to be standard on shiviti plaques and in many siddurim, and it is a reading rather than a claim about how the psalm was composed. What the layout notices is real, though: the psalm is symmetrical, it turns on its middle verse, and its numbers are sevens. The mystical reading takes the shining face of יָאֵר (ya-er, v.2) and פָּנָיו (pa-nav, v.2) as light that has to pass through something to be seen, and the nations of the refrain as what it passes through, so blessing that stops at the one blessed has not arrived yet.
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).