Fourteen verses against one kind of danger, and it is not an army. It is a person with a mouth: a tongue sharpened in verse 4, venom under lips, lips again in verse 10, a man of tongue in verse 12. Against that the psalm sets hands, a head, steps, ears, and in the last word a face. The first half is the best drill in the book for one piece of grammar, the object suffix -ni fixed to an imperative: rescue me, keep me, guard me, guard me again, four times before verse 6. Three words in this psalm occur nowhere else in the Bible, all of them in the lines about venom, pits and thrusts, which is why English versions of verses 4, 11 and 12 differ from each other more than anywhere else here.
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1
לַמְנַצֵּחַ מִזְמוֹר לְדָוִד
לַמְנַצֵּחַ
lam-na-TZE-ach
for the leader
מִזְמוֹר
miz-MOR
a psalm
לְדָוִד
le-da-VID
of David
For the leader. A psalm of David.
A bare heading: performer, genre, author, and none of the biographical framing that some psalms of David carry. Nothing tells you which enemy this is.
The weapon is speech and the picture is anatomical: an edge on the tongue, poison held where a snake holds it. The creature named in the second line appears nowhere else in the Bible.
The arrogant have hidden a trap for me, and cords;
פָּרְשׂוּ
par-SU
they have spread
רֶשֶׁת
RE-shet
a net
לְיַד
lyad
beside
מַעְגָּל
ma-GAL
the track
they have spread a net beside the path;
מֹקְשִׁים
mok-SHIM
snares
שָׁתוּ
sha-TU
they have set
לִי
li
for me
סֶלָה
se-LA
selah
they have set snares for me. Selah.
Four pieces of hunting equipment in one verse: trap, cords, net, snares. Every one of them is concealed, and every one of them is placed on a route someone is expected to take.
The first words addressed to God rather than about the enemy. You are my God is the sentence the rest of the psalm leans on, and it is quoted as something already said.
do not let his scheme succeed, lest they rise high. Selah.
The turn to imprecation, and it opens with a request to withhold rather than to strike. Nothing is asked against the man yet, only against his plan working.
10
רֹאשׁ מְסִבָּי
עֲמַל שְׂפָתֵימוֹ יְכַסֵּימוֹ
רֹאשׁ
rosh
the head of
מְסִבָּי
me-si-BAI
those who surround me
As for the head of those who surround me,
עֲמַל
a-MAL
the trouble of
שְׂפָתֵימוֹ
sfa-tei-MO
their lips
יְכַסֵּימוֹ
ye-cha-sei-MO
let it cover them
let the trouble of their own lips cover them.
The principle behind the whole imprecation. What the lips produced is what comes down on the head, so nothing new is introduced, only returned.
The one verse of direct violence, and its Hebrew is the least certain in the psalm: the first verb form is irregular and the word for pits occurs nowhere else.
A man of tongue shall not be established in the land;
אִישׁ
ish
a man of
חָמָס
cha-MAS
violence
רָע
ra
evil
יְצוּדֶנּוּ
ye-tzu-de-NU
shall hunt him
לְמַדְחֵפֹת
le-mad-che-FOT
to thrust upon thrust
the man of violence, evil shall hunt him down with thrust upon thrust.
The hunter of verse 6 becomes the game. Who is hunting whom is grammatically disputed here, which suits a verse about a man whose weapon was ambiguity.
The temperature drops. After the imprecation comes a flat statement about how justice works in general, and it is the first sentence in the psalm that is not about the speaker.
Surely the righteous shall give thanks to Your name;
יֵשְׁבוּ
yesh-VU
shall dwell
יְשָׁרִים
ye-sha-RIM
the upright
אֶת
et
with
פָּנֶיךָ
pa-nei-CHA
Your face
the upright shall dwell in Your presence.
The last word is a face. A psalm that began with things buried in the ground ends with people seated in the open in front of someone who can be seen.
♦ 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
Four movements. Verses 2 to 6 ask for rescue and describe the danger, which is a mouth plus a set of traps. Verses 7 and 8 stop describing and speak to God directly, and they are the only calm lines in the psalm. Verses 9 to 12 ask for the harm to be sent back, escalating from do not let his plan work through coals, fire and pits. Verses 13 and 14 drop the speaker's own case entirely and state what God does for the poor and the needy as a class. The vocabulary tracks that shape exactly: the first half is full of things hidden, planned in the heart, held under lips, buried in the path, and the last verse is a face in the open.
רמז · Remez: allusion
Three words here occur nowhere else in the Bible: the venomous creature of עַכְשׁוּב (ach-shuv, v.4), the pits of בְּמַהֲמֹרוֹת (be-ma-ha-mo-rot, v.11), and the thrusts of לְמַדְחֵפֹת (le-mad-che-fot, v.12). What each one names is disputed, which is why English versions swing between viper and spider, between watery pits and miry depths, and between thrust upon thrust and a headlong fall. A second signal of old poetry is the archaic third person plural ending on שְׂפָתֵימוֹ (sfa-tei-mo, v.4), שְׂפָתֵימוֹ (sfa-tei-mo, v.10) and יְכַסֵּימוֹ (ye-cha-sei-mo, v.10), a form that belongs to verse rather than to standard prose Hebrew. There is also a division crux at the end of verse 9: the two short words before Selah can close verse 9 or open the sentence that runs into verse 10, and translators split both ways.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The phrase man of tongue in verse 12 is the plainest statement in the book that speech belongs in the category of violence, and the psalm argues the case step by step: the tongue is given an edge in verse 4, it carries poison, and in verse 10 it is what finally comes down on the heads of the people who used it. Read that way the imprecation of verses 9 to 12 is measure rather than revenge, because nothing is asked for that the enemies did not first manufacture. The first request against them, in verse 9, is only that a scheme fail. The reversal completes in verse 12, where the men who hid the traps in verse 6 are the ones being run down.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
The psalm moves from concealment to appearance, and that movement is the reading. Everything in the first half is hidden: plans inside a heart, venom under lips, a trap covered over, a net laid beside a path where it will not be noticed. The hinge is verse 7, where the speaker says one sentence out loud, that You are my God, and after it the hiding stops working. The last verse names two things the upright receive, a name to thank and a face to sit before, which in this reading are the same presence met in two ways, one heard and one seen. That the psalm ends seated rather than rescued is deliberate: the danger is never reported as over.
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).