Six verses that most people know as a tune, since this is the psalm sung before the grace after meals on Shabbat, festivals, and any day the penitential prayers are dropped. It is also the strangest of the Songs of Ascents, because it reports the return in the past tense in verse 1 and then asks for it in verse 4. Two pieces of grammar carry the second half. Verse 6 doubles the infinitive onto the verb twice, going he goes, coming he comes, which is how Hebrew intensifies without adverbs, and verses 5 and 6 build the whole ending out of one exchange, tears for glad song, repeated three times with different words.
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An infinitive with a preposition on the front, which is how Hebrew says when, and the same root twice inside four words: in the returning, the return. The reaction is not joy yet, only disbelief.
Two thens, one for what happened in the mouth and one for what was said outside. The nations say these rather than you, and the psalm records their sentence exactly so it can repeat it in the next verse with one word changed.
The outsiders' sentence taken over word for word, with these turned into us. Nothing new is claimed; the verse consists of agreeing, which is the only place in the psalm where the speakers say something in their own voice about themselves.
The verse asks for what verse 1 said had already happened, which is the crux of the psalm. The image is precise rather than poetic: desert channels lie dry for most of the year and fill in an hour.
5
הַזֹּרְעִים בְּדִמְעָה
בְּרִנָּה יִקְצֹרוּ
הַזֹּרְעִים
ha-zor-IM
those who sow
בְּדִמְעָה
bdim-A
in tears
Those who sow in tears
בְּרִנָּה
bri-NA
with glad song
יִקְצֹרוּ
yik-tzo-RU
shall reap
shall reap with glad song.
Four words, and in Hebrew the two nouns stand next to each other in the middle so the tears and the song touch. The word for glad song is the one from verse 2, which ties the promise to the memory.
He goes out, goes and weeps, carrying the pouch of seed;
בֹּא
bo
coming
יָבֹא
ya-VO
he shall come
בְרִנָּה
vri-NA
with glad song
נֹשֵׂא
no-SE
carrying
אֲלֻמֹּתָיו
a-lu-mo-TAV
his sheaves
he comes back, comes with glad song, carrying his sheaves.
The proverb of verse 5 slowed down and given a single figure to walk it. Both halves start with the doubled verb and end with the same participle, carrying, so the only thing that changes across the verse is what is in his arms.
♦ 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 verses of memory, one of petition, two of principle. The memory is told from outside in: first what it felt like, then what it looked like to the nations, then the speakers agreeing with what the nations said. The petition in verse 4 asks for the same thing the memory reports, which means either the return happened and stopped short, or the first restoration is being used as the warrant for asking again. The psalm does not decide it. Verses 5 and 6 answer neither question and instead state the rule the whole thing runs on, that what is carried out weeping comes back as harvest.
רמז · Remez: allusion
The two phrases at the centre of the crux are related but not identical. שִׁיבַת (shi-vat, v.1), the return of Zion, is built plainly on the root for turning back. שְׁבִיתֵנוּ (shvi-te-nu, v.4) is the noun of the standing idiom that the older translations render turn the captivity and modern ones render restore the fortunes, and which root it belongs to, turning or capturing, is disputed and has been for a long time. כְּחֹלְמִים (ke-chol-mim, v.1) is usually those who dream, and the verse depends on it: the return was so unlikely it felt unreal. A minority reading attaches the word instead to a second root meaning to be restored to health, and translates like those made well. מֶשֶׁךְ (me-shech, v.6) is the same spelling as the place name in Psalm 120 verse 5, and here it is disputed too, read as the trail of seed, the seed pouch, or a measure of it. The doubled verbs in הָלוֹךְ (ha-loch, v.6) with יֵלֵךְ (ye-lech, v.6) and בֹּא (bo, v.6) with יָבֹא (ya-vo, v.6) are infinitives laid on finite verbs, the ordinary Hebrew intensifier.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The tension between verse 1 and verse 4 is the reason the psalm gets read as being about an unfinished return, and the streambeds of verse 4 sharpen it: a wadi in the Negev is not a river that has dried up, it is a channel that is dry by nature and fills all at once, so what is asked for is a reversal that arrives suddenly and not a gradual repair. Verse 2 has drawn attention for putting the confession of God's action in the mouth of the nations first and only then in Israel's, which reverses the usual order of who testifies. The sowing of verse 5 has been read as an argument about cost: the seed that goes into the ground is really lost, the weeping is not a mood but the loss itself, and the promise concerns what that loss becomes rather than denying it.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
Read mystically the psalm is about the gap between an event and the capacity to receive it. Verse 1 gives the state of a vessel too small for what it has just been handed, which is what being like a dreamer means: present at your own good and unable to hold it. Laughter and glad song in verse 2 are then the widening, and they begin in the mouth, the narrowest opening. The seed of verse 6 is the standard image for something that must go down and be hidden before it can return in a form worth carrying, and the psalm makes the weeping part of the mechanism rather than an obstacle to it. The last word, his sheaves, is the only possessive in the two closing verses: what comes back belongs to the one who went out.
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).