Seven verses about Jerusalem, and the hardest Hebrew on this site. This page does not smooth that over, because the difficulty is in the text and not in the translators. Verse 1 opens with His foundation before anyone has said whose. Verse 3 puts a feminine plural subject with a masculine singular verb. Verse 4 switches without warning to a first person speaker who can only be God, with nothing in the Hebrew to mark the change. Verse 5 says a man and a man with a singular verb. Verse 7 has no verb at all and two of its five words are argued over. Published translations differ from each other here more than almost anywhere in the book. What holds the fragments together is one image: a register of birthplaces in which foreign nations are entered as native to Zion.
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The heading and the first line run together. The suffix on foundation, His, has no antecedent anywhere before it, so the psalm begins in the middle of a sentence whose subject arrives only in the next verse.
The first complete sentence, and it is comparative rather than exclusive: the other dwellings are not rejected, these gates are preferred. Gates, not the city, which is the part where people are counted in and out.
3
נִכְבָּדוֹת מְדֻבָּר בָּךְ
עִיר הָאֱלֹהִים סֶלָה
נִכְבָּדוֹת
nich-ba-DOT
glorious things
מְדֻבָּר
me-du-BAR
is spoken
בָּךְ
bach
in you
Glorious things are spoken of you,
עִיר
ir
city of
הָאֱלֹהִים
ha-e-lo-HIM
the God
סֶלָה
se-LA
selah
city of God. Selah.
A passive with no agent, so nobody is named as saying the glorious things. The verb is masculine singular while its subject is feminine plural; grammarians account for that in several ways and none of them makes the mismatch go away.
I will name Rahab and Babylon among those who know me;
הִנֵּה
hi-NE
here is
פְלֶשֶׁת
FLE-shet
Philistia
וְצֹר
ve-TZOR
and Tyre
עִם
im
with
כּוּשׁ
kush
Cush
here are Philistia and Tyre, with Cush:
זֶה
ze
this one
יֻלַּד
yu-LAD
was born
שָׁם
sham
there
this one was born there.
The speaker changes to a first person who can list great powers as people who know me, which nobody but God can be saying. No word marks the change. Translations open a quotation mark here on the strength of the sense alone.
The counterweight to verse 4. The nations got one clause each; Zion gets a doubled a man and a man with a singular verb, which is an idiom for each and every one, and then a builder in the last two words.
The LORD will count, in the writing up of peoples:
זֶה
ze
this one
יֻלַּד
yu-LAD
was born
שָׁם
sham
there
סֶלָה
se-LA
selah
this one was born there. Selah.
The register image made explicit: a head count written down, with the same three words of verse 4 as the entry line. Whether there means Zion or each nation's own country is the argument of the whole psalm, and it is disputed.
7
וְשָׁרִים כְּחֹלְלִים
כׇּל מַעְיָנַי בָּךְ
וְשָׁרִים
ve-sha-RIM
and singers
כְּחֹלְלִים
ke-chol-LIM
like dancers
And singers alike with dancers:
כׇּל
kol
all
מַעְיָנַי
ma-ya-NAI
my springs
בָּךְ
bach
in you
all my springs are in you.
Five words, no verb, and two of them uncertain. A speaker who is never identified says all my springs are in you, and the you is feminine singular, so it has to be the city.
♦ 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 plain reading has to be assembled from pieces, because the psalm does not supply the joints. A heading, then a claim that God prefers Zion, then an unattributed report that glorious things are said of her, then a divine voice listing foreign powers, then Zion set against them, then a census, then a fragment about singers. The nations named cover the compass from Israel: Rahab and Cush to the south, Babylon to the east, Tyre to the north, Philistia on the coast. Rahab is used elsewhere in the Bible as a byname for Egypt and also for a sea monster; standing here next to Babylon it is read as Egypt. The refrain זֶה (ze, v.4) יֻלַּד (yu-lad, v.4) שָׁם (sham, v.4), this one was born there, is what carries the argument, and it is the sentence whose meaning is least settled.
רמז · Remez: allusion
The cruxes, in order. יְסוּדָתוֹ (ye-su-da-to, v.1) is a feminine abstract noun carrying a masculine suffix, so his foundation, or on another reading his founded city. בְּהַרְרֵי (be-har-rei, v.1) is a plural construct of the word for mountain with the resh doubled, a poetic form, and it does not say which mountains. נִכְבָּדוֹת (nich-ba-dot, v.3) is feminine plural, מְדֻבָּר (me-du-bar, v.3) is masculine singular, and the two are the subject and verb of the same clause. לְיֹדְעָי (lyod-ai, v.4) is a lamed plus a participle plus a first person suffix, to those knowing me, which is what forces the speaker to be God. יְכוֹנְנֶהָ (ye-chon-ne-a, v.5) carries a feminine object suffix, establishes her, with the subject held back to the following word. כְּחֹלְלִים (ke-chol-lim, v.7) is either from the root chet vav lamed, to whirl or dance, or from chet lamed lamed, to pierce and so to play a pipe, and both readings are current. מַעְיָנַי (ma-ya-nai, v.7) is the word for springs of water, but the 1917 translation printed alongside this page renders it my thoughts, from a different derivation; that single word is a fair sample of how far the versions travel apart.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The reading the psalm invites, without a name attached to it, is a birth register kept by God in which people born in Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre and Cush are entered as born in Zion. On that reading verse 6 is not counting the population of Jerusalem but recording where people belong, and belonging is assigned rather than inherited. The doubled a man and a man of verse 5 has been read as covering two kinds of person and not two births, so that the one who arrives late is written down beside the one born inside the walls. Several psalms carry the same heading, of the sons of Korah, and this one is the shortest and the strangest of them. Note what the psalm never does: it names no king, no temple rite and no enemy, only cities and a list.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
The mystical reading takes Zion as a mother and the census as a record of souls, which is why every verb of birth in the psalm is passive: nobody in it is described as giving birth, only as being born. The springs of verse 7 belong to the same picture, a city read as a source rather than a destination, and the last two words, in you, put everything the speaker has inside her. Verse 5 supplies the counterweight: she is established by the Most High, so the source is itself founded, and the foundation of verse 1 that had no owner turns out at the end to have one. What the reading adds to the plain sense is a direction of flow; what it does not remove is the psalm's silence about who is speaking in verses 4 and 7.
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).