Nine verses, and the opening of Hallel, the run of Psalms 113 to 118 said on festivals, on Rosh Chodesh and at the seder, where this psalm and 114 come before the meal. It turns on one move: God is higher than everything there is, and what He does with that height is look downward. Two things for a learner. The imperative praise appears three times in verse 1 alone, and the psalm is closed at both ends by Hallelujah, so the first two words and the last two are the same. And five words here end in an extra yod that carries no meaning: the one who sits high, the one who bends low, the one who raises, the one who seats, the one who settles. It is an old poetic ending that Hebrew later dropped, so it looks like an error and is not.
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Three imperatives in nine words, all the same form of the same verb. The ones told to praise are named as servants, which is the psalm's first hint that its subject is people at the bottom of an order.
2
יְהִי שֵׁם יְהֹוָה מְבֹרָךְ
מֵעַתָּה וְעַד עוֹלָם
יְהִי
ye-HI
let it be
שֵׁם
shem
the name of
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
מְבֹרָךְ
me-vo-RACH
blessed
Let the name of the LORD be blessed
מֵעַתָּה
me-a-TA
from now
וְעַד
ve-AD
and until
עוֹלָם
o-LAM
for ever
from now and for ever.
The imperatives give way to a wish, and the psalm stretches out in time. Blessed is a passive participle, so the line never says who does the blessing, only that the name should stand blessed from this moment on.
Having stretched the praise across all time, the psalm stretches it across all space, and does it with the plainest available measure, the distance the sun travels in a day.
The height is stated twice and raised the second time, from over the nations to over the sky. Neither clause has a verb; the whole verse is position.
5
מִי כַּיהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ
הַמַּגְבִּיהִי לָשָׁבֶת
מִי
mi
who
כַּיהֹוָה
kai-ho-VA
is like the LORD
אֱלֹהֵינוּ
e-lo-hei-NU
our God
Who is like the LORD our God,
הַמַּגְבִּיהִי
ha-mag-bi-HI
the One set high
לָשָׁבֶת
la-SHA-vet
to sit
who sits so high,
A question that expects no answer, and then a participle that begins a sentence running through the next verse. The name here has a prefix meaning like, so the divine name is inside a comparison rather than standing alone.
6
הַמַּשְׁפִּילִי לִרְאוֹת
בַּשָּׁמַיִם וּבָאָרֶץ
הַמַּשְׁפִּילִי
ha-mash-pi-LI
the One who stoops low
לִרְאוֹת
lir-OT
to look
who bends down low to look,
בַּשָּׁמַיִם
ba-sha-MA-yim
on the heavens
וּבָאָרֶץ
u-va-A-retz
and on the earth
on the heavens and on the earth?
The turn of the whole psalm, in four words. The verb is the exact opposite of the one in verse 5, and the second half puts the heavens themselves among the things that have to be looked down at.
7
מְקִימִי מֵעָפָר דָּל
מֵאַשְׁפֹּת יָרִים אֶבְיוֹן
מְקִימִי
me-ki-MI
who raises up
מֵעָפָר
me-a-FAR
from the dust
דָּל
dal
the poor
He raises the poor from the dust,
מֵאַשְׁפֹּת
me-ash-POT
from the ash heap
יָרִים
ya-RIM
He lifts
אֶבְיוֹן
evi-ON
the needy
he lifts the needy from the ash heap,
The looking of verse 6 arrives somewhere. Two parallel clauses with the same shape, and the place named in the second is the rubbish tip outside a town, which is where the destitute actually lived.
8
לְהוֹשִׁיבִי עִם נְדִיבִים
עִם נְדִיבֵי עַמּוֹ
לְהוֹשִׁיבִי
le-ho-shi-VI
to seat him
עִם
im
with
נְדִיבִים
ne-di-VIM
nobles
to seat him with nobles,
עִם
im
with
נְדִיבֵי
ne-di-VEI
the nobles of
עַמּוֹ
a-MO
His people
with the nobles of His people.
The verb for sitting comes back from verse 5, where it belonged to God on the height. What was done to the man is that he was given the same posture.
The third reversal and the most concrete, and the verb for seating appears a third time. The psalm ends on the same two words it opened with, so the frame closes exactly.
♦ 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
Three movements of three verses. Verses 1 to 3 are about the name, praised by servants, blessed through all time, praised across the whole width of the day. Verses 4 to 6 are about height, and they turn in the middle: הַמַּגְבִּיהִי (ha-mag-bi-hi, v.5) and הַמַּשְׁפִּילִי (ha-mash-pi-li, v.6) are two participles in the same unusual form, one going up and one going down, and that pair is the psalm's whole argument. Verses 7 to 9 are what the downward look reaches, three people at the bottom, the poor, the needy and the barren woman, each of them moved. Note that the verb for sitting runs through all three movements, from the one seated on high in verse 5 to the man seated with nobles in verse 8 to the woman settled in a house in verse 9.
רמז · Remez: allusion
Five words in this psalm carry a yod on the end that adds no meaning and changes no grammar: הַמַּגְבִּיהִי (ha-mag-bi-hi, v.5), הַמַּשְׁפִּילִי (ha-mash-pi-li, v.6), מְקִימִי (me-ki-mi, v.7), לְהוֹשִׁיבִי (le-ho-shi-vi, v.8) and מוֹשִׁיבִי (mo-shi-vi, v.9). It is an old ending, found mostly in poetry, and its density here is unusual even for the Psalms. The second thing to notice is that verses 7 and 8 are close to a line in Hannah's song at 1 Samuel 2:8, which also raises the poor from the dust and the needy from the ash heap and seats them with nobles, and verse 9 is close to 1 Samuel 2:5 on the barren woman. Whether the psalm quotes the song, the song quotes the psalm, or both draw on a formula older than either is disputed and the evidence does not settle it. One last thing: עֲקֶרֶת (a-ke-ret, v.9) literally means the barren one of the house, and modern Hebrew took the same two words and made them mean the woman who runs the household, which reverses the sense the psalm gives them.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The last line of this psalm is the subject of a recorded dispute. Mishnah Pesachim 10:6 asks how far Hallel is recited before the meal at the seder: the school of Shammai says as far as אֵם (em, v.9) to שְׂמֵחָה (sme-cha, v.9), a glad mother of children, which is the end of Psalm 113, and the school of Hillel says as far as the end of Psalm 114. The practice follows Hillel, so the psalm is not read alone there. The reason the question is live is that the barren woman made a mother is the standard image of a reversal that nobody could have arranged, which makes it either a fitting place to stop before the meal or an incomplete thought that needs the exodus of Psalm 114 to finish it.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
The two participles at הַמַּגְבִּיהִי (ha-mag-bi-hi, v.5) and הַמַּשְׁפִּילִי (ha-mash-pi-li, v.6) are the verse the mystical reading works on. A God defined by being high who is then defined by bending down is a contradiction only if height means distance, and the kabbalistic answer is contraction: the infinite makes room by withdrawing, and what looks like descent is the condition for anything small existing at all. On that reading verses 7 to 9 are not three examples of charity but three demonstrations of the same mechanism, since dust, ash heap and barrenness are all names for a place with nothing in it. The barren woman at עֲקֶרֶת (a-ke-ret, v.9) is read in this tradition as the exiled community, on the strength of Isaiah 54:1, where Zion is addressed as the barren one and told to sing.
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).