Nine verses, and one of the five psalms that both open and close with Halleluyah at the end of the book. Those five are said every morning in Pesukei deZimra, so this is a psalm a beginner hears constantly without noticing it. The thing to watch is the collision in verse 6: the high praises of God in the throat and a double-edged sword in the hand, one clause each, with nothing between them to mark a contrast. Everything after that verse is an infinitive, which matters more than it sounds, because an infinitive states a purpose without saying who carries it out or when.
♫ Guitar suggestion, hover a chord to explore or change
♪ TuningE A D G B E
| AmAm | EmEm | AmDm | EmAm |
~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.
The opening word is a plural imperative, so the psalm is an instruction to a group from its first syllable. A new song implies that the old ones are still standing and something has happened that they do not cover.
Two names for the same community, singular then plural, and two titles for God, one from creation and one from politics. The pairing sets up the second half of the psalm, where kingship becomes the operative idea.
The reason clause, and the only verse in the psalm where God is the one acting. The verb in the second half means to make beautiful, so rescue is described as an ornament worn rather than a rope thrown.
The most private verse in a public psalm. Everything so far has been assembly, dance and instruments, and now the singing happens lying down, alone, with no audience.
The hinge, and there is no verb in it at all. Two nouns held in two body parts, side by side, and the psalm never explains how they are meant to relate.
The first of three infinitives that hang off verse 6. Grammatically nobody is doing this yet: the line states what the sword is for, not that it has been drawn.
The targets are the top of the hierarchy, not populations. Kings and nobles are bound rather than killed, which keeps the scene judicial rather than military.
to carry out on them the judgment that is written.
הָדָר
ha-DAR
splendour
הוּא
hu
it is
לְכׇל
le-CHOL
for all
חֲסִידָיו
cha-si-DAV
His faithful
That is the splendour of all His faithful.
הַלְלוּ
hal-LU
praise
יָהּ
yah
Yah
Praise Yah.
The last infinitive ties the whole sword sequence to a text already on the record, so nothing new is being decided here. Then the psalm drops the subject completely and ends on the word it started 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 movements of unequal weight. Verses 1 to 5 are praise: a new song, an assembly, a Maker and a King, dancing, a drum, a lyre, and finally singing in bed. Verses 6 to 9 are a sword, vengeance, rebukes, chains, iron and a written judgment. Verse 6 belongs to both and joins them with nothing stronger than the letter that means and. What holds the second half back from being a call to arms is grammar: לַעֲשׂוֹת (la-a-sot, v.7), לֶאְסֹר (le-sor, v.8) and לַעֲשׂוֹת (la-a-sot, v.9) are all infinitives, purpose clauses attached to a sword that is described as held, not used. The psalm ends by calling the whole thing splendour and returning to the word it opened with, so the frame around the violence is praise on both sides.
רמז · Remez: allusion
The sword of verse 6 is literally a sword of two mouths, פִּיפִיּוֹת (pi-fi-yot, v.6), since a blade edge in Hebrew is a mouth. That puts two mouths in the hand of someone whose throat, בִּגְרוֹנָם (big-ro-nam, v.6), is already full of praise, and the pun is almost certainly deliberate: the verse is built out of speech organs. The second crux is כָּתוּב (ka-tuv, v.9), the judgment written. Written where is not stated. Read as the Torah's own sentences it makes the second half a matter of enforcement rather than initiative; read as a decree recorded elsewhere it makes it prophecy. Third, הָדָר (ha-dar, v.9) can be construed as an abstract noun, splendour, so the line means this is splendour for all His faithful, or as a predicate for God, so it means He is the splendour of all His faithful. Translations split on it and the Hebrew does not decide.
דרש · Drash: midrashic reading
A long tradition of reading takes the sword of verse 6 as words rather than metal, on the grounds that the verse gives the faithful a throat before it gives them a hand and that the weapon is named after mouths. On that reading the vengeance of verse 7 is carried out in study and testimony, and the psalm is describing what praise does when it is precise. A second reading works on כָּתוּב (ka-tuv, v.9) and treats the word written as a limit rather than a licence: the faithful execute only a judgment already recorded, which forbids them from inventing one. Both readings are attempts to solve the same discomfort, that a liturgical psalm said every morning puts a blade in the hand of the congregation and does not apologise for it.
סוד · Sod: mystical reading
The psalm keeps moving between the public and the hidden. It begins in an assembly, חֲסִידִים (cha-si-dim, v.1), and reaches its quietest point in מִשְׁכְּבוֹתָם (mish-ke-vo-tam, v.5), praise sung on the bed, in the dark, where nobody hears it. That verse is often read as the real location of the work: what a person sings alone at night is what the daylight praise is made of. The two words for radiance, בְּכָבוֹד (be-cha-vod, v.5) and הָדָר (ha-dar, v.9), bracket the sword section, so the entire middle passage sits inside a description of light. In that frame the double-edged sword is not an instrument added to praise but what praise becomes when it is directed, and the reason the psalm can end on Halleluyah without any transition is that it never left.
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).