Nineteen verses of one person's thanksgiving after a near death, and one of the six psalms of Hallel (113 to 118), said on festivals, on Rosh Chodesh, and at the seder, where the second part of Hallel comes after the meal. Two things to watch. The psalm keeps returning to one refrain, calling on the name of the LORD, at verses 4, 13 and 17, and it uses that refrain to turn a rescue into an obligation. And the grammar is unusual in places: second person feminine endings in -chi where standard Hebrew has -ch, and a suffix on תַּגְמוּלוֹהִי (tag-mu-lo-hi, v.12) that looks Aramaic, which is part of why the date of the psalm is argued over.
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The psalm opens with a verb and no object. What is loved is left unsaid until the next clause supplies a reason, which is exactly why translators disagree about whether the object is God or the fact of being heard.
2
כִּי הִטָּה אׇזְנוֹ לִי
וּבְיָמַי אֶקְרָא
כִּי
ki
because
הִטָּה
hi-TA
He inclined
אׇזְנוֹ
oz-NO
His ear
לִי
li
to me
Because He turned His ear down to me,
וּבְיָמַי
uv-ya-MAI
and in my days
אֶקְרָא
ek-RA
I will call
I will call out all my days.
The reason is physical: an ear tilted down toward someone lower. What follows is a commitment covering a whole lifetime, made on the strength of one answered call.
Death is drawn as rope and as narrow ground, two images of being squeezed. The last clause flips the grammar: the straits found him, and then he found trouble.
The hinge of the first half. It is also the first of three places where the psalm says the same thing about calling on the name, and the only one where the call is made from inside the danger.
5
חַנּוּן יְהֹוָה וְצַדִּיק
וֵאלֹהֵינוּ מְרַחֵם
חַנּוּן
cha-NUN
gracious
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
וְצַדִּיק
ve-tza-DIK
and righteous
Gracious is the LORD, and just,
וֵאלֹהֵינוּ
ve-lo-hei-NU
and our God
מְרַחֵם
mra-CHEM
shows mercy
and our God shows mercy.
One rescue is generalised into a statement about character, and the pronoun goes plural: our God, not mine. Nothing in this verse is about the speaker.
A claim about who gets protected: not the strong or the clever but the ones with no defences. The speaker then quietly files himself under that heading.
The speaker turns and addresses his own soul in the feminine, the way one addresses a person, and tells her to go back to a rest she already had before the trouble started.
Three rescues in one verse, running down the scale from the whole life to the eye to the foot, from the fatal to the merely ordinary.
9
אֶתְהַלֵּךְ לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה
בְּאַרְצוֹת הַחַיִּים
אֶתְהַלֵּךְ
et-ha-LECH
I will walk about
לִפְנֵי
lif-NEI
before
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
I will walk before the LORD
בְּאַרְצוֹת
be-ar-TZOT
in the lands of
הַחַיִּים
ha-cha-YIM
the living
in the lands of the living.
The result of the three rescues, and the only future the first half asks for. Not triumph, only going on walking where the living walk.
10
הֶאֱמַנְתִּי כִּי אֲדַבֵּר
אֲנִי עָנִיתִי מְאֹד
הֶאֱמַנְתִּי
he-e-man-TI
I trusted
כִּי
ki
when
אֲדַבֵּר
a-da-BER
I speak
I kept faith even when I said,
אֲנִי
a-NI
I
עָנִיתִי
a-ni-TI
I was afflicted
מְאֹד
me-OD
greatly
I am greatly afflicted.
The second half opens by looking back at the worst moment and insisting that the trust and the complaint were happening at the same time, not one after the other.
11
אֲנִי אָמַרְתִּי בְחׇפְזִי
כׇּל הָאָדָם כֹּזֵב
אֲנִי
a-NI
I
אָמַרְתִּי
a-mar-TI
said
בְחׇפְזִי
ve-chof-ZI
in my panic
I said in my panic,
כׇּל
kol
all of
הָאָדָם
ha-a-DAM
humankind
כֹּזֵב
ko-ZEV
is deceitful
every person is false.
The verdict pronounced in panic is quoted and left standing, not corrected. The psalm is willing to let its speaker be wrong out loud.
12
מָה אָשִׁיב לַיהֹוָה
כׇּל תַּגְמוּלוֹהִי עָלָי
מָה
ma
what
אָשִׁיב
a-SHIV
shall I return
לַיהֹוָה
lai-ho-VA
to the LORD
What can I give back to the LORD
כׇּל
kol
all of
תַּגְמוּלוֹהִי
tag-mu-lo-HI
His benefits
עָלָי
a-LAI
upon me
for all His dealings toward me?
The question that organises everything after it. The three answers that follow are a cup, a vow and a sacrifice, and all three are performed in front of other people.
13
כּוֹס יְשׁוּעוֹת אֶשָּׂא
וּבְשֵׁם יְהֹוָה אֶקְרָא
כּוֹס
kos
a cup of
יְשׁוּעוֹת
ye-shu-OT
acts of salvation
אֶשָּׂא
e-SA
I will lift
I will lift the cup of deliverance
וּבְשֵׁם
uv-SHEM
and on the name of
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
אֶקְרָא
ek-RA
I will call
and call on the name of the LORD.
The first answer, and the strange one: it involves receiving rather than giving. Lifting a cup counts here as repayment, and the plural noun keeps the rescues countable.
The second answer. What was promised in private distress is settled in front of witnesses, and the witnesses are what make it a payment rather than a feeling.
15
יָקָר בְּעֵינֵי יְהֹוָה
הַמָּוְתָה לַחֲסִידָיו
יָקָר
ya-KAR
precious
בְּעֵינֵי
be-ei-NEI
in the eyes of
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
Precious in the eyes of the LORD
הַמָּוְתָה
ha-mav-TA
the death
לַחֲסִידָיו
la-cha-si-DAV
of His faithful ones
is the death of His faithful ones.
The hardest verse in the psalm and the reason it is read at funerals. Whether precious here means valued or means costly, and so not lightly allowed, is disputed.
The speaker states his legal status twice, adds his mother to establish that he was born into the household rather than sold into it, and ends with the vocabulary of freeing a slave.
The third answer, and the only one that costs an animal. The refrain about calling on the name comes back for the last time, now attached to an offering instead of to a cry for help.
The vow line repeats word for word. The repetition is not filler: this time a location follows in the next verse, so the promise finally gets an address.
The psalm ends where the payment happens, in a courtyard in a named city, and the last two words are a plural imperative that hands the praise over to everyone else.
♦ 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
Two halves with a seam at verse 10. Verses 1 to 9 tell what happened: cords, straits, a call, a rescue, and a modest future in which the speaker simply keeps walking. Verses 10 to 19 ask what is owed and pay it. Verse 12 is the pivot question and verses 13, 14 and 17 are its three answers, a lifted cup, a vow settled in public, and a thanksgiving offering. The refrain about calling on the name of the LORD ties the halves together: it is a cry for help at verse 4 and a liturgical act at verses 13 and 17, the same words doing opposite work. Note also that the psalm never says what the danger was. It gives the shape of the trouble (אֲפָפוּנִי (a-fa-fu-ni, v.3) surrounded, חֶבְלֵי (chev-lei, v.3) cords) and never the cause, which is part of why anyone can say it.
רמז · Remez: allusion
This is a psalm of strange forms. לִמְנוּחָיְכִי (lim-nu-chai-chi, v.7) and עָלָיְכִי (a-lai-chi, v.7) carry a second person feminine ending in -chi where standard biblical Hebrew has -ch, and the same ending shows up on בְּתוֹכֵכִי (be-to-che-chi, v.19); תַּגְמוּלוֹהִי (tag-mu-lo-hi, v.12) takes a suffix of the type ordinarily found in Aramaic. These are usually read as marks of a late composition, though the dating is disputed and an archaic-dialect explanation has also been proposed. Verse 10 is the famous crux: the particle כִּי (ki, v.10) can be read as because, or that, or concessively as even when, and the Greek translation took it in the sense of therefore, giving I believed, therefore I spoke, which is a different sentence altogether. One more seam worth knowing: the Greek and Latin traditions split this psalm in two at verse 10, which is why the numbering of the psalms differs between Jewish and some Christian bibles through this stretch of the book.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
Two readings that the text invites without needing a source attached. First, יָקָר (ya-kar, v.15), precious: if the word means valued, the verse consoles, and if it means costly, it says that God does not spend the lives of the faithful cheaply, which is why the same verse can be read as comfort at a funeral and as an argument for staying alive. The two readings are both current and the choice between them is disputed. Second, לְמוֹסֵרָי (le-mo-se-rai, v.16), my bonds, together with the double declaration of servanthood: a slave born in the household could not simply walk away, so the psalm has the speaker claim the status and then thank God for undoing the restraint that came with it. Being God's servant is presented as the freedom, not as the chain. And because verse 13 is said with a cup in hand at the seder, the lifted cup of the psalm and the cup on the table are heard as one act, whatever the derivation.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
In the mystical reading the psalm is addressed inward. שׁוּבִי (shu-vi, v.7) tells the soul to return, using the verb of repentance, and the rest it is sent back to is not a place the soul reaches but a state it originally had. The soul is spoken to in the feminine throughout, as the receiving side of the relation, and the cup of כּוֹס (kos, v.13) is the standard image for that side: a vessel whose whole worth is its capacity to be filled and then lifted. Read this way the answer to the question of verse 12 is deliberately paradoxical. What one gives back to the giver of everything is the act of receiving properly and in public, which is why יְהוֹשִׁיעַ (ye-ho-shi-a, v.6) saves and אֶתְהַלֵּךְ (et-ha-lech, v.9) walk are not two different endings but the same one, an ordinary life continued on borrowed time.
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).