Fourteen verses, one of the five Halleluyah psalms that close the book and are said every morning in Pesukei deZimra, so a beginner hears this one daily. Its shape is a single instruction stretched over the whole text: praise Him, followed by a list of everything that exists, in order. Verses 1 to 6 summon the heavens, verses 7 to 14 summon the earth, and each half stops at the same refrain, let them praise the name of the LORD, in verse 5 and verse 13. For a learner the value is one verb in three forms: the plain plural imperative hal'lu four times, the same imperative with the object suffix him, hal'luhu, six times, and the jussive yehal'lu, let them praise, opening both refrains. Nothing in the psalm explains how a sea creature or a mountain is supposed to comply.
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The call is issued twice before anything is named, and the location comes before the audience: from the heavens, in the heights. The psalm is organised by address rather than by argument.
2
הַלְלוּהוּ כׇל מַלְאָכָיו
הַלְלוּהוּ כׇּל צְבָאָו
הַלְלוּהוּ
hal-lu-HU
praise Him
כׇל
chol
all
מַלְאָכָיו
mal-a-CHAV
His messengers
Praise Him, all His messengers;
הַלְלוּהוּ
hal-lu-HU
praise Him
כׇּל
kol
all
צְבָאָו
tze-va-AV
His hosts
praise Him, all His hosts.
The first two groups called are the ones that already do this. Angels and hosts are the easy case, and putting them first makes everything that follows look like the same instruction.
Sun, moon and stars are addressed as subjects who can be told to do something. In the surrounding cultures they were gods; here they are entries on a roll call, filed between angels and water.
The highest and strangest items on the list: a noun doubled in construct to mean the sky beyond the sky, and the water that the creation account places over it. The descent begins after this verse.
The first refrain, and the only reason the psalm offers for the command: they exist because of an order. A thing that came into being by a word is being asked to answer in the same currency.
Permanence and a boundary in one breath. What the last clause says is disputed: either the limit itself never lapses, or nothing that was made ever crosses it.
The second half opens by mirroring verse 1 exactly, with earth in place of heavens, and the first things named are the lowest and the least domesticated.
Weather in one line, then the clause that governs it: doing His word. The storm is not praising in spite of being destructive, it praises by doing what it was told.
From weather to terrain to what grows on it. Fruit trees and cedars divide the plant world into what feeds people and what does not, and both are summoned on the same terms.
10
הַחַיָּה וְכׇל בְּהֵמָה
רֶמֶשׂ וְצִפּוֹר כָּנָף
הַחַיָּה
ha-cha-YA
the wild animals
וְכׇל
ve-CHOL
and all
בְּהֵמָה
be-he-MA
cattle
the wild animals and all cattle,
רֶמֶשׂ
RE-mes
creeping things
וְצִפּוֹר
ve-tzi-POR
and bird of
כָּנָף
ka-NAF
wing
creeping things and winged birds;
Animals in six words, sorted the way the creation account sorts them: wild, domestic, creeping, winged. Nothing on this list is chosen for being impressive.
The second refrain, and this time the reason given is not creation but height. The last clause puts both halves of the psalm, earth and heaven, under one word.
The last verse narrows from everything that exists to one people. A horn is raised, a praise is assigned, and the psalm closes on the two words it opened with.
♦ 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 that mirror each other down to the wording. Verse 1 says from the heavens, הַשָּׁמַיִם (ha-sha-ma-yim, v.1); verse 7 says from the earth, הָאָרֶץ (ha-a-retz, v.7), with the same verb and the same preposition in front of it. Each half is a roll call and each stops at the same refrain, verse 5 and verse 13. The order inside them is spatial: down from the heavens of heavens and the waters above, through angels and lights, then across to the deeps and their creatures, up through weather, mountains, trees, animals, and finally people, who are themselves ranked from kings down to children until the ranking stops mattering. The list ends at one people standing near. Nothing in the psalm asks whether a cedar can obey.
רמז · Remez: allusion
Verse 4 shows the language making a superlative out of nothing but repetition: שְׁמֵי (shmei, v.4) and הַשָּׁמָיִם (ha-sha-ma-yim, v.4) are the same noun twice, in construct, and the phrase means the highest sky there is. Hebrew builds several superlatives this way and this is the cleanest example in the psalter. Verse 6 carries a real dispute. The clause וְלֹא (ve-lo, v.6) with יַעֲבוֹר (ya-a-vor, v.6) has no expressed subject, so it says either that the limit He gave never lapses, or that nothing crosses it; JPS 1917 chose the second and rendered it as a decree that shall not be transgressed. Verse 8 has a rare word, וְקִיטוֹר (ve-ki-tor, v.8), translated as vapour by JPS 1917 and as smoke elsewhere; the sense is something rising and visible, and the choice between the two is not settled. Finally וְצִפּוֹר (ve-tzi-por, v.10) with כָּנָף (ka-naf, v.10) says bird of wing, which is redundant on its face, and is best read as a category label rather than a description.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
The problem the psalm hands a reader is that it gives orders to things that cannot hear them. Two readings answer it. One takes the summons as descriptive: a thing praises by doing what it was made to do, so the sea creature praises by being a sea creature, and verse 8 states this outright when it calls the storm wind a doer of His word. The other takes the psalm as a commission of the people who can speak, so that the list is not addressed to mountains but read aloud on their behalf, which fits its place in the morning service, where the created order is enlisted before the worshipper says anything about himself. The horn of verse 14 is read as strength restored rather than a musical instrument, and the phrase that follows it, a people near to Him, is what the whole list has been narrowing toward.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
Read mystically the two halves are two worlds and the refrains are the seam between them. What is called in the first half has no body, what is called in the second half has nothing else, and the same name is praised by both, which is the claim the psalm exists to make. The descent from the waters above the heavens to the deeps below the earth traces a full column, and the ascent back through weather, growth and speech is the same column read upward, with human beings placed at the point where the column becomes articulate. The last verse gives that position a name: a people near, קְרֹבוֹ (kro-vo, v.14). Nearness rather than height is the final term, and it arrives only after everything that is higher has already been called.
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).