Twelve verses, said on Friday evening as the third of the six psalms that open Kabbalat Shabbat, and verse 11 is the line recited before Kol Nidrei on the eve of Yom Kippur in Ashkenazi practice. It is a theophany: a storm arrives, the world reacts, and only afterwards is anybody told what to do about it. For a learner this is the cleanest page in the book for the third person masculine possessive in both of its shapes. Singular nouns take -o: His throne, His righteousness, His glory, His holiness. Plural nouns take -av: around Him, before Him, His foes, His lightnings, His faithful ones. Same word, his, spelled and pronounced differently depending on what it hangs from.
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Two words carry the whole thesis and everything after them is the world reacting. The coastlands are the far edge of the map, so the claim is not a local one.
The most solid thing available is picked for the comparison, and it behaves like a candle. The second line widens the title from the name to the whole earth.
The psalm turns and speaks to people for the first time. It asks for something from the affections, then states twice what God does for those who manage it.
11
אוֹר זָרֻעַ לַצַּדִּיק
וּלְיִשְׁרֵי לֵב שִׂמְחָה
אוֹר
or
light
זָרֻעַ
za-RU-a
is sown
לַצַּדִּיק
la-tza-DIK
for the righteous one
Light is sown for the righteous,
וּלְיִשְׁרֵי
ul-yish-REI
and for the upright of
לֵב
lev
heart
שִׂמְחָה
sim-CHA
gladness
and gladness for the upright in heart.
An agricultural image and not a gift: something is in the ground and is not visible yet. This is the line said before Kol Nidrei.
It closes with the imperative it opened with, now aimed at a named group instead of at the earth and the islands.
♦ 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
Verse 1 is the claim, verses 2 to 6 the theophany, verse 7 its effect on the idol worshippers, verse 8 its effect on Zion, verse 9 the reason, verses 10 to 12 the instruction. Watch the direction of travel: the psalm starts at the coastlands, the furthest thing it can name, and finishes on the single righteous person of לַצַּדִּיק (la-tza-dik, v.11). Watch also what Zion is given. The peoples in verse 6, וְרָאוּ (ve-ra-u, v.6), saw the glory. Zion, שָׁמְעָה (sham-a, v.8), only heard, and it is Zion that rejoices. Hearing the report is treated as enough, which is the position the reader of the psalm is in as well.
רמז · Remez: allusion
מָלָךְ (ma-lach, v.1) is a perfect verb and its tense is disputed. Read as a standing state it means the LORD reigns, something always true; read as an event it means the LORD has become king, an accession being announced. Liturgical use has taken it both ways, and the difference is the difference between a statement and a coronation. וַעֲרָפֶל (va-a-ra-fel, v.2) is the word for the thick darkness at Sinai, and Deuteronomy 4:11 pairs it with cloud in the same order it appears here, so the weather in this psalm is not generic. In verse 7 the plural אֱלֹהִים (e-lo-him, v.7) is left unresolved: gods, angels, or powers, and translators have chosen all three.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
אוֹר (or, v.11) is sown, not handed over. The word זָרֻעַ (za-ru-a, v.11) is a passive participle, so the light is in the ground now and the harvest is later, which is exactly why the verse can be said by people who cannot see any light at the moment. A long-standing reading connects this light to the light of the first day of creation, stored away for the righteous rather than spent. In Ashkenazi practice the line is recited before Kol Nidrei on the eve of Yom Kippur: the community states that the light exists before it says anything at all about its own failures.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
The six psalms that open Kabbalat Shabbat are commonly counted against the six days of the week, and this is the third of them. Read that way the sequence is not a set of praises but a passage, each weekday handed over in turn until the week is finished and Shabbat can be received. Inside the psalm, the two halves of verse 2 give the standard mystical picture of concealment and structure held together: cloud and thick darkness are what surrounds, righteousness and justice are what the throne stands on. Nobody is asked to see through the cloud. The instruction of שִׂנְאוּ (sin-u, v.10) and the exaltation of נַעֲלֵיתָ (na-a-lei-ta, v.9) both assume the base is sound without requiring it to be visible.
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).