Fourteen verses, and only the first of them is new. Verses 2 to 6 are the closing half of Psalm 57, verses 7 to 14 are the closing half of Psalm 60, and the three word heading at verse 1 replaces the two long headings those psalms carry. Nothing here needs to be learned twice: if you have worked through 57 and 60 you already have the vocabulary, and the exercise is different. Read this page for the seam. The two halves came from a song of confidence sung in hiding and a lament after a defeat, and putting them end to end produces a psalm that praises first and asks second, which is the reverse of both parents. The wording is not quite identical either, and the small differences are listed verse by verse below.
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1
שִׁיר מִזְמוֹר לְדָוִד
שִׁיר
shir
a song
מִזְמוֹר
miz-MOR
a psalm
לְדָוִד
le-da-VID
of David
A song. A psalm of David.
The only line in the psalm without a parallel elsewhere. Three words, where Psalm 57 heads its text with a tune name and a cave and Psalm 60 with a tune name and a campaign.
Psalm 57:8 says my heart is steady twice; here it is said once. In exchange this verse ends with two words, אַף (af, v.2) and כְּבוֹדִי (ke-vo-di, v.2), that in Psalm 57 open the following verse as awake, my glory.
3
עוּרָה הַנֵּבֶל וְכִנּוֹר
אָעִירָה שָּׁחַר
עוּרָה
u-RA
awake
הַנֵּבֶל
ha-NE-vel
the harp
וְכִנּוֹר
ve-chi-NOR
and lyre
Awake, harp and lyre;
אָעִירָה
a-i-RA
let me wake
שָּׁחַר
sha-CHAR
the dawn
let me wake the dawn.
Five words against seven in Psalm 57:9, which wakes the glory first and then repeats the imperative for the instruments. Here there is one waking of instruments and then the dawn.
Two changes from Psalm 57:10. The divine name at יְהֹוָה (a-do-nay, v.4) is the four letter name where Psalm 57 has my Lord, and the second verb here carries a joining vav that Psalm 57 does not have.
For Your kindness is great, higher than the heavens,
וְעַד
ve-AD
and up to
שְׁחָקִים
shcha-KIM
the clouds
אֲמִתֶּךָ
a-mi-te-CHA
is Your truth
and Your truth reaches the clouds.
The one difference here changes the sense. מֵעַל (me-al, v.5) means above or beyond; Psalm 57:11 has the shorter preposition meaning as far as. Kindness that reaches the sky becomes kindness that clears it.
The refrain that closes Psalm 57, reused here as a joint rather than an ending. The only difference is the vav at וְעַל (ve-al, v.6), which turns two separate clauses into one sentence.
The second source begins, word for word as Psalm 60:7. In Psalm 60 this plea follows five verses of accusation; here it follows praise, and the same sentence reads as trust rather than desperation.
One letter apart from Psalm 60:9: the second mine at לִי (li, v.9) has no joining vav here, where Psalm 60 has one. The list of holdings is otherwise the same, north then south.
The largest difference in the psalm. אֶתְרוֹעָע (et-ro-a, v.10) is a first person verb, I raise a shout, where Psalm 60:10 has a feminine imperative telling Philistia to shout, and the preposition before it here means over rather than over me.
11
מִי יֹבִלֵנִי עִיר מִבְצָר
מִי נָחַנִי עַד אֱדוֹם
מִי
mi
who
יֹבִלֵנִי
yo-vi-le-NI
will bring me
עִיר
ir
to the city of
מִבְצָר
miv-TZAR
fortification
Who will bring me to the fortified city?
מִי
mi
who
נָחַנִי
na-cha-NI
has led me
עַד
ad
as far as
אֱדוֹם
e-DOM
Edom
Who has led me as far as Edom?
The confidence stops and the questions start, exactly as in Psalm 60:11. The noun at מִבְצָר (miv-tzar, v.11) is a different word for a fortified place than the one Psalm 60 uses, with the same sense.
Seven words where Psalm 60:12 has eight: the pronoun You that stands after הֲלֹא (ha-lo, v.12) there is absent here, so the accusation is a touch less pointed.
Identical to Psalm 60:13. The whole request is one imperative, and the second line rules out every alternative source of help.
14
בֵּאלֹהִים נַעֲשֶׂה חָיִל
וְהוּא יָבוּס צָרֵינוּ
בֵּאלֹהִים
be-lo-HIM
through God
נַעֲשֶׂה
na-a-SE
we will do
חָיִל
cha-YIL
valiantly
Through God we will do valiantly,
וְהוּא
ve-HU
and He
יָבוּס
ya-VUS
will trample
צָרֵינוּ
tza-rei-NU
our foes
and He is the one who will trample our foes.
Identical to Psalm 60:14. The psalm ends on a first person plural after opening on a first person singular, so the private harp of verse 3 finishes as an army.
♦ 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 fact about this psalm is its construction. Verse 1 is its own heading; verses 2 to 6 reproduce Psalm 57:8 to 12; verses 7 to 14 reproduce Psalm 60:7 to 14. Read as a single piece it has a shape neither parent has. Psalm 57 goes from danger to song, so its praise is an arrival. Psalm 60 goes from defeat to a request for help, so its plea is an ending. Psalm 108 puts the arrival first and then asks, which makes the questions of verses 11 and 12 land after the singer has already announced that God is exalted above the heavens. The seam is between verses 6 and 7, and it is audible: verse 6 is the last line of a refrain, verse 7 opens with a purpose word, so that the exaltation of verse 6 is retrospectively given a reason, that Your beloved may be rescued. Nothing was invented to join them. The join is the word at the start of verse 7 doing work it did not do in Psalm 60.
רמז · Remez: allusion
The differences from the parent psalms are small and worth counting, because they are the only places where this text is not simply quotation. Against Psalm 57: my heart is steady is said once instead of twice in verse 2, and the word my glory moves back from the next verse into this one, so that verse 3 loses one of its two imperatives to awake; the four letter name stands in verse 4 where Psalm 57 has my Lord, and the second verb of that verse gains a joining vav; verse 5 says the kindness is great above the heavens where Psalm 57 says as far as the heavens; verse 6 gains a vav on and over all the earth. Against Psalm 60: verse 9 loses the vav on the second mine; verse 11 uses one noun for a fortified city where Psalm 60 uses another; verse 12 lacks the pronoun You. There are also spelling differences that do not change a word, such as a vowel letter present in one text and absent in the other. The one difference that changes meaning is in verse 10: this psalm has a first person verb, over Philistia I raise a shout, while Psalm 60 has a feminine imperative addressed to Philistia herself. The direction of borrowing is disputed. The common view is that this psalm is the later compilation; it has also been argued that all three draw on older liturgical material, and the manuscripts settle neither.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
A psalm made of two other psalms is a statement about how scripture was used, not only about how it was written. Two songs from named crises, a cave and a lost battle, are stripped of their headings and rejoined under three neutral words, and what was autobiography becomes something a congregation can say on any morning. The reuse also performs an argument. Placing the confidence of Psalm 57 before the complaint of Psalm 60 means the complaint is spoken by someone who has already sung, so the questions in verse 11 are not the questions of a man who has lost faith but of a man who has kept it and still has no army. Read that way, הֲלֹא (ha-lo, v.12), is it not, is the pivot of the whole compilation: praise does not exempt anyone from asking why the help has not come. The absence of the pronoun You in that verse, compared with the parent text, has been read as softening the charge, though a single missing word is thin ground for a doctrine.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
The two halves can be read as two moments of the same movement rather than as two documents. The first half is upward: heart steady, instruments woken, the dawn woken after them, kindness measured above the heavens, glory over all the earth. The second half is downward and outward: the land parcelled out by name, the neighbouring kingdoms reduced to household objects, the armies, the foe. Between them stands the right hand of verse 7, which in kabbalistic idiom is the side of kindness and expansion, and it is asked to do the saving. On this reading the psalm is a description of how a thing sung in the small hours reaches the ground: it is woken privately at אָעִירָה (a-i-ra, v.3), published among the nations in verse 4, raised above the heavens in verse 6, and only then applied to a specific map with specific enemies. Praise is not a mood here. It is the first stage of a descent into the world where the help is actually needed.
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).