← Back to lessons

Tehilim 134: Bless the LORD in the nights

תְּהִלִּים קל״ד · שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת
Three verses, the last of the fifteen Songs of Ascents that run from 120 to 134, and the shortest of them. It works as a call and an answer. Verses 1 and 2 are plural commands to whoever is on duty in the house of God at night; verse 3 answers in the singular, one blessing sent back to one person. That switch is the whole grammar lesson: three plural imperatives ending in -u, then a verb carrying the -cha suffix that means you, one man. Mishnah Middot 2:5 counts fifteen steps rising from the Women's Court to the Court of Israel, corresponding to the fifteen Songs of Ascents, and says the Levites sang on them.
♫ Guitar suggestion, hover a chord to explore or change
♪ Tuning E A D G B E
| Am Am | Em Em | Am Dm | Em Am |
~70 BPM · 4/4 · gentle thumb-index-middle arpeggio · one bar per stich, two bars per verse · to reset the progression:
Active voicings · printable
The voicing displayed for each chord is the one you selected in its popup. Navigate with the popup arrows to change.
1
שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת
הִנֵּה בָּרְכוּ אֶת יְהֹוָה כׇּל עַבְדֵי יְהֹוָה
הָעֹמְדִים בְּבֵית יְהֹוָה בַּלֵּילוֹת
שִׁיר
shir
a song of
הַמַּעֲלוֹת
ha-ma-a-LOT
the ascents
A song of the ascents.
הִנֵּה
hi-NE
behold
בָּרְכוּ
bar-CHU
bless
אֶת
et
(object marker)
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
כׇּל
kol
all
עַבְדֵי
av-DEI
servants of
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
Behold, bless the LORD, all servants of the LORD,
הָעֹמְדִים
ha-om-DIM
who stand
בְּבֵית
be-VEIT
in the house of
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
בַּלֵּילוֹת
ba-lei-LOT
in the nights
who stand in the house of the LORD in the nights.
The address is to whoever is on duty when nobody is watching. Three of the thirteen words are the divine name, and the last word is what makes the verse specific: this is the shift no one sees.
2
שְׂאוּ יְדֵכֶם קֹדֶשׁ
וּבָרְכוּ אֶת יְהֹוָה
שְׂאוּ
se-U
lift up
יְדֵכֶם
ye-DE-chem
your hands
קֹדֶשׁ
KO-desh
holiness
Lift up your hands toward the holy place,
וּבָרְכוּ
u-var-CHU
and bless
אֶת
et
(object marker)
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
and bless the LORD.
The same command with a gesture attached. Hands first, then the blessing, and the middle word of the line carries no preposition at all, which is where the translations part company.
3
יְבָרֶכְךָ יְהֹוָה מִצִּיּוֹן
עֹשֵׂה שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץ
יְבָרֶכְךָ
ye-va-rech-CHA
may He bless you
יְהֹוָה
a-do-NAY
the LORD
מִצִּיּוֹן
mi-tzi-YON
from Zion
May the LORD bless you from Zion,
עֹשֵׂה
o-SE
the maker of
שָׁמַיִם
sha-MA-yim
heaven
וָאָרֶץ
va-A-retz
and earth
the maker of heaven and earth.
The direction reverses. Everything before this is people blessing God; here one person is blessed back, and the blessing comes out of the place where the people addressed are standing.

♦ 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 speakers, or one speaker and one answer. Verses 1 and 2 give three plural commands, בָּרְכוּ (bar-chu, v.1), שְׂאוּ (se-u, v.2) and וּבָרְכוּ (u-var-chu, v.2), all addressed to the servants standing in the house at night. Verse 3 replies with יְבָרֶכְךָ (ye-va-rech-cha, v.3), a verb whose suffix is singular, so the group is answered one at a time. The night is not decoration. הָעֹמְדִים (ha-om-dim, v.1) is a participle of standing, which is the ordinary word for being on duty in the sanctuary, and בַּלֵּילוֹת (ba-lei-lot, v.1) puts that duty in the plural of nights, meaning night after night rather than one occasion. Read straight, the psalm is a shift handover: the people leaving tell the people staying to keep blessing, and the people staying send a blessing back.

רמז · Remez: allusion

The crux is קֹדֶשׁ (ko-desh, v.2). The word is a bare noun, holiness or the holy place, with no preposition in front of it, so the line can be read as lift your hands toward the sanctuary or as lift your hands in holiness. The reading is genuinely disputed and the Hebrew does not decide it; older English versions take the first, and commentators who read the noun adverbially take the second. Note also that one root, b-r-k, carries the whole psalm: the servants bless in verse 1, bless again in verse 2, and are blessed in verse 3. The same verb runs in both directions, which raises the old question of what it can mean for a person to bless God, since nothing is added to Him by it.

דרש · Drash: midrashic reading

The last three words of the psalm, עֹשֵׂה (o-se, v.3) to וָאָרֶץ (va-a-retz, v.3), are a fixed formula that appears four other times in the book, at 115:15, 121:2, 124:8 and 146:6. Two of those, 121 and 124, are inside this same collection of fifteen, so the group of Songs of Ascents closes on the phrase it has been using all along. The placement is pointed: a sequence of psalms about going up to Jerusalem ends not at a festival crowd but with a handful of people awake at night, and the blessing they receive is credited not to the Temple but to the maker of everything. The servants standing at night are usually identified with the priests and Levites of the watch; the psalm itself names no office, and the reading that extends it to anyone awake in the house of God is available from the plain text.

סוד · Sod: mystical reading

Night in the mystical reading is the condition of service without visible result, which is why this psalm and not a daytime one closes the ascent. The kabbalistic literature hears in the root of blessing the word for a pool, and reads a blessing as a drawing down of what has gathered above, so the two directions of the psalm are one circuit rather than an exchange of compliments: the servants raise their hands, and what comes back down through מִצִּיּוֹן (mi-tzi-yon, v.3), from Zion, is what they raised. The hands of יְדֵכֶם (ye-de-chem, v.2) matter for the same reason. Blessing is described as something done with the body in a specific place at a specific hour, not as a state of mind, and the psalm ends by naming the maker of heaven and earth to keep that local circuit attached to the whole of it.

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).