Eight verses built on one verb. The root that means to keep, guard or watch over appears six times: as a participle in verses 3, 4 and 5, then as a future in verse 7 twice and in verse 8. By the end it has been attached to a foot, to Israel, to a soul, and to going out and coming in. The psalm opens in the first person with a question and answers it in verse 2, then switches for the rest to a second person masculine singular addressee, so verses 3 to 8 are spoken to someone rather than by someone. Commonly said before setting out on a journey and at the bedside of the sick. The heading is worth a second look as well: of the fifteen Songs of Ascents this is the only one that reads a song for the ascents instead of a song of the ascents.
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A question, not yet a statement of confidence. The eyes go up to the hills and the help is not there; whether the mountains are where help comes from or where the danger sits is left open.
2
עֶזְרִי מֵעִם יְהֹוָה
עֹשֵׂה שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץ
עֶזְרִי
ez-RI
my help
מֵעִם
me-IM
is from with
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
My help is from the LORD,
עֹשֵׂה
o-SE
maker of
שָׁמַיִם
sha-MA-yim
heaven
וָאָרֶץ
va-A-retz
and earth
maker of heaven and earth.
The answer moves the source off the landscape and onto the one who made it. The last three words are a fixed formula, and the same three close Psalm 124.
3
אַל יִתֵּן לַמּוֹט רַגְלֶךָ
אַל יָנוּם שֹׁמְרֶךָ
אַל
al
let Him not
יִתֵּן
yi-TEN
give
לַמּוֹט
la-MOT
to slipping
רַגְלֶךָ
rag-le-CHA
your foot
May He not let your foot slip;
אַל
al
let Him not
יָנוּם
ya-NUM
slumber
שֹׁמְרֶךָ
shom-re-CHA
the one who keeps you
may your keeper not slumber.
The speaker changes and so does the mood. From here to the end the psalm is addressed to a second person, and the two negatives here are the ones used for a wish rather than for a statement of fact.
The wish of verse 3 is restated as a fact, with the other negative particle, and widened from one person to a nation. Slumber and sleep are two different words, so the line refuses the light one as well as the heavy one.
Day and night named as a pair, which in Hebrew is a way of saying at every hour. The second half has no verb of its own and borrows the one from the first, which is what makes the moon strike.
The verb appears twice in a single verse, once with the addressee folded into it as a suffix and once with his soul as a separate object. The scope has grown from a foot to everything there is.
The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in,
מֵעַתָּה
me-a-TA
from now
וְעַד
ve-AD
and until
עוֹלָם
o-LAM
for ever
from now and for all time.
Going out and coming in is a standing phrase for the whole of ordinary life, work and return rather than any single journey. The last two words push the promise past the lifetime of the person being addressed.
♦ 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 voices, or one voice in two positions. Verses 1 and 2 ask and answer in the first person; from verse 3 to the end someone is being addressed as you, and nothing is asked, only promised. The promises widen in order: a foot, a whole person, a nation, a soul, and finally every departure and return without end. The psalm has often been explained as a dialogue, a traveller asking at a gate and a priest answering, which would fit a song sung on the way up. Nothing in the text labels the speakers, so that remains a proposal about performance rather than a reading of the words.
רמז · Remez: allusion
Two grammatical details carry most of the argument. First, verse 3 negates with the particle used for wishes and prohibitions, אַל (al, v.3) and אַל (al, v.3), while verse 4 negates the same verb with the ordinary particle of statement, לֹא (lo, v.4) and וְלֹא (ve-lo, v.4). So verse 3 says may He not and verse 4 answers He does not, which is exactly the shape of a question being settled. Second, מֵאַיִן (me-a-yin, v.1) can be read as a question, from where, or as a relative, from the place where, and the two readings put the help in different places: either the mountains raise the question and verse 2 answers it, or verse 1 already points at the answer. The dispute is old and the accents do not settle it for everyone. Note also that the heading here, לַמַּעֲלוֹת (la-ma-a-lot, v.1), has the preposition where the other fourteen Songs of Ascents have the definite article.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The insistence in verse 4 that the keeper of Israel does not sleep reads differently once you notice how often sleeping gods appear in the surrounding literature; Elijah taunts the prophets of Baal on Carmel by suggesting their god may be asleep and needs waking. Against that, the doubled denial here is a claim about the kind of God being described rather than a piece of reassurance. The move from your keeper in verse 3 to the keeper of Israel in verse 4 and back to your keeper in verse 5 has been read as the reason the promise holds for an individual at all: the private guard is a share in the national one. The evils named are the ones a traveller actually meets, a loose stone and the sun, which keeps the psalm concrete even while the last verse turns unlimited.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
The word shade in verse 5 invites a reading it does not require. A shade copies whatever the body does, so the verse can be heard as describing a relation that returns what is put into it, which makes the promise conditional on the one receiving it without adding any condition to the words. Verse 6 is read in the same register: sun and moon become two kinds of exposure rather than two lights, the overwhelming and the reflected, and the addressee is guarded against both extremes of a single axis. The soul in verse 7 is nefesh, the lowest of the soul's levels and the one bound to the body, which is why the psalm can promise to keep it in the same breath as a foot.
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).