Eleven verses that change speaker three times without announcing it: a congregation gives thanks, God answers in the first person, and a single voice turns to warn the arrogant. Asaph's name is on the heading, as it is on Psalm 50 and on the run from 73 to 83. The word to follow is horn, which appears four times and means the raised head of an animal, so power that can be seen from a distance. Almost everything in the psalm is either being lifted or being brought down. In the thirty-day reading cycle it falls on the fourteenth day.
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1
לַמְנַצֵּחַ אַל תַּשְׁחֵת
מִזְמוֹר לְאָסָף שִׁיר
לַמְנַצֵּחַ
lam-na-TZE-ach
to the choirmaster
אַל
al
do not
תַּשְׁחֵת
tash-CHET
destroy
For the leader, to the tune Do Not Destroy.
מִזְמוֹר
miz-MOR
a psalm
לְאָסָף
le-a-SAF
of Asaph
שִׁיר
shir
a song
A psalm of Asaph, a song.
The heading names a melody, and the two words that name it are a prohibition. The same two words come back inside the psalm, aimed at people rather than at a tune.
We have given thanks to You, God, we have given thanks,
וְקָרוֹב
ve-ka-ROV
and near is
שְׁמֶךָ
shme-CHA
Your name
and Your name is near;
סִפְּרוּ
sip-RU
they recount
נִפְלְאוֹתֶיךָ
nif-le-o-tei-CHA
Your wonders
they recount Your wonders.
Thanks are given twice before any reason is stated. The reason, when it comes, is nearness, and in this psalm a near name means a judge already in the room.
3
כִּי אֶקַּח מוֹעֵד
אֲנִי מֵישָׁרִים אֶשְׁפֹּט
כִּי
ki
when
אֶקַּח
e-KACH
I take
מוֹעֵד
mo-ED
an appointed time
When I take the appointed time,
אֲנִי
a-NI
I
מֵישָׁרִים
mei-sha-RIM
with fairness
אֶשְׁפֹּט
esh-POT
will judge
I Myself will judge with fairness.
God takes over the sentence with no introduction. The claim is about timing rather than power: the judge is not absent, He is holding a date.
Both halves are stated as already true: the ground is giving way and the supports are already fixed. That is why the verse can end in Selah instead of a request.
surely all the wicked of the earth will drain its dregs and drink.
The longest verse and the only image the psalm develops at length: a cup poured out, and the sediment left for whoever drinks last. The reckoning is served rather than announced.
The singer separates himself with the same two-word construction Psalm 71 uses at its own hinge, and commits to the same pair of verbs: declare and sing.
The horns come back, cut off in one clause and raised in the next. Who is speaking here is not marked in the Hebrew, and the verse is read both 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
A courtroom psalm with no trial scene in it, only the announcement that a date has been set. The congregation speaks in verse 2, God speaks in verses 3 and 4, a human voice warns the arrogant from verse 5, and by verse 11 it is no longer marked who is speaking at all. The physical spine is the horn, the raised head of a bull or a ram and the standard image for visible power: it is forbidden at קָרֶן (ka-ren, v.5) and קַרְנְכֶם (kar-ne-chem, v.6), cut off at קַרְנֵי (kar-nei, v.11), and lifted at קַרְנוֹת (kar-not, v.11). Around it the verb for raising keeps returning, in the warning at תָּרִימוּ (ta-ri-mu, v.6), in the verdict at יָרִים (ya-rim, v.8), and in the last line at תְּרוֹמַמְנָה (te-ro-mam-na, v.11). The wicked raise their own horn; the righteous have theirs raised for them.
רמז · Remez: allusion
The heading is a tune name, Do Not Destroy, which also heads Psalms 57, 58 and 59, and its two words אַל (al, v.1) and תַּשְׁחֵת (tash-chet, v.1) are exactly the form the psalm uses later for its own prohibitions at אַל (al, v.5) and אַל (al, v.6). The real crux is הָרִים (ha-rim, v.7). The same consonants can be read as the plural noun mountains, giving the wilderness of mountains as a fourth place that promotion does not come from, or as a form of the verb to lift, which is how the JPS translation takes it when it renders the line as nor yet from the wilderness cometh lifting up. Both readings are current and the Hebrew does not settle it. Note that on the second reading the verse ends on the psalm's key verb, which would make the crux the hinge. סֶּלָה (se-la, v.4) is another unsettled word: Selah is a performance direction whose meaning is not known.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The cup at כוֹס (chos, v.9) is not this psalm's invention. It is the cup of wrath the prophets pass around, poured out in Isaiah 51 and handed to the nations in Jeremiah 25, and its logic is that judgement is a drink rather than a blow: everyone gets a share, and the last share is the sediment. Read together with מוֹעֵד (mo-ed, v.3), the appointed time, the psalm becomes an answer to the oldest complaint in the book, that the wicked prosper. The answer offered is not that they do not prosper but that the matter is scheduled, and that a docket held by a judge who has set the pillars of the earth is not the same thing as a case that has been dropped.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
Verse 4 sets two states of the world against each other in one line: at נְמֹגִים (ne-mo-gim, v.4) the earth and everything on it are melting, and at תִכַּנְתִּי (ti-kan-ti, v.4) the pillars are already fixed. The world is dissolving and standing at the same time, and it holds because of an act described in the first person singular. Read the last word of the psalm back into that image and the pillar acquires a name: צַדִּיק (tza-dik, v.11) is a singular, the righteous one, and Proverbs 10 calls the righteous the foundation of the world. What is lifted at the end is then not a reward handed to a person but the load-bearing member of the structure being put back in place.
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).