TheBibleNet: Psalm 23

Psalms:

Bk 1: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Bk 2: 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

Bk 3: 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

Bk 4: 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

Bk 5: 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119a 119b 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132
133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150

Additional Psalms: 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 Samuel Chronicles

Essays: Intro - Music - Form & Language

23:1 MIZMOR LE DAVID YHVH RO'I LO ECHSAR

מִזְמוֹר לְדָוִד יְהוָה רֹעִי לֹא אֶחְסָר

KJ (King James translation): (A Psalm of David.) The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

BN: A Psalm for David. YHVH is my shepherd; I shall lack for nothing.

On this occasion it is the Yehudit which merges the title with the first verse; KJ follows suit, but it can vindicate itself in that statement. It is unclear why the Yehudit does it here, for the second half of this verse is obviously not a title.

23:2 BIN'OT DESH'E YARBIYTSENI AL MEY MENUCHOT YENAHALENI

בִּנְאוֹת דֶּשֶׁא יַרְבִּיצֵנִי עַל מֵי מְנֻחוֹת יְנַהֲלֵנִי

KJ: He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

BN: He stretches me out like a field full of vegetation; he rivers me to where the waters become still.

BIN'OT: This really is BI'NE'OT but the sheva is sufficiently silent to ignore it...

YARBIYTSENI...YENAHELENI: internal rhyme. But note that both are causative verbs, not nouns: he "stretches me out" in the way that fields are stretched out, he "rivers" me, as though there were a verb "to river".

So, for a human reading, this is a picnic in the countryside, or at the riverside; but we always need to keep in mind the mythological status of David, the Earth-and-vegetation god; so this is also a description of the ripe corn and maize and wheat and barley, and of the bulrushes too. Sheep grazing are ROVTSIM in Genesis 29:2; a mother bird sitting on her eggs to hatch them is ROVETSET in Deuteronomy 22:6; and in later Yehudit it even develops as an idiom for the safety and comfort of a human home - RIVTSO in Proverbs 24:15. It makes me wonder why those uterine cars the SUVs are not also called RIVTSOT is modern Ivrit: the mother-goddess would expect to drive one, where the male god's cars are entirely phallic.

23:3 NAPHSHI YESHOVEV YANCHENI VE MA'GLEY TSEDEK LEMA'AN SHEMO

נַפְשִׁי יְשׁוֹבֵב יַנְחֵנִי בְמַעְגְּלֵי צֶדֶק לְמַעַן שְׁמוֹ

KJ: He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

BN: He restores my soul; he guides me along straight paths for his name's sake.

YESHOVEV: The root is probably SHUV, with a single Bet; but doubled to enable the causative.

YANCHENI: Maintains the rhyme with YARBIYTSENI...YENAHELENI in the previous verse, and also the pattern, but on this occasion the word-play is not up to standard. NAHAL and NACHAH, the Hey (ה) of the first word hardened into a Chet (ח) in the second.

MA'GLEY: Lots of word for "path" in Yehudit, of which HALACHAH gets used Jesuitically to mean "I am the Way", and becomes the anthology of Jewish laws and practices. A DERECH is a major highway, as in the DERECH HA YAM and the DERECH HA MELECH, which were the two principal trading routes between north Africa and the Levant, both passing through Kena'an. A RECHOV was originally the main square by the city gate, but is now any street in any town. A NATIV is a track or alley, though today people use it for "route" when they are planning a journey. A MASLUL today would be the track for a sports event, such as horse-racing or motor-cars, though Isaiah 35:8 uses it for a highway, rendering the two DERECHs, so to speak, as fully-fledged motorways to its mere A-road. And then there is a SHEVIL, which is a footpath, and ORACH, which really just means "going" and is rarely used except metaphorically; and MISH'OL, which appears in Numbers 22:24, and is little more than a piece of cut land to denote the division between two vineyards, the space to wheel a barrow at harvest-time.

And then there is MA'GLEY, which has become מַעגִילָה in movern Ivrit, and means... a rolling-pin, a cyllinder, even an ear-ring. Surely not? 1 Samuel 17:20, and 26:5 and 7 montage every available wagon to make a rampart or barricade, somewhat reminiscently of the cowboys-and-indians movies of the 1950s. What links those two seemingly disparate meanings? The circle. The GAL or GUL or GIL that we keep on encountering in these texts, from the stone-circle (Gil-Gal) that was the earliest form of temple, the literal and physical Round Table of the ancients that mirrored the horoscopal heavens, all the way to Psalm 65:12, where it is the word for the "rejoicing" that takes place in that temple, accompanied no doubt by the dancing of the Hora, the circle-dance, or in a modern synagogue by the Hakafot, the circling of the Torah seven times around the room. The waves on the river in verse 2 also GIL, "flowing" until they reach the still-point described there. Until eventually MA'GAL, like HALACHAH and DERECH, becomes a metaphor as well, the "flowing course" of life, "ramparted" and "barricaded" by Torah, as in Proverbs 4:26 - or not, as per Proverbs 2:18.

And the GIL will flow directly into the GEY in the very next verse (and in doing so, though entirely unintentionally, provide a narrow bridge between the two quotes from Proverbs).

23:4 GAM KI ELECH BE GEY TSALMAVET LO IYRA' RA KI ATAH IMADI SHIVTECHA U MISH'ANTECHA HEMAH YENACHAMUNI

גַּם כִּי אֵלֵךְ בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת לֹא אִירָא רָע כִּי אַתָּה עִמָּדִי שִׁבְטְךָ וּמִשְׁעַנְתֶּךָ הֵמָּה יְנַחֲמֻנִי

KJ: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

BN: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; {N} your sceptre and your staff, they comfort me.

And if that isn't a hymn to the Lord Protector of Souls in the Underworld, I don't know what is! David as Tammuz as Osiris as Jesus! GEY TSALMAVET as a variant of GEY HINNOM - which tells us that this Psalm precedes the conquest of Yeru-Sala'im

The immediately previous Psalm turned out to be David taking precisely that walk, and emerging in the light of dawn; so is this the thanksgiving hymn at that point of Ayelet ha Shachar, and we are right to see the order of these Psalms as epic, ordered, plotological? Go back and draw up the storyboard to see.

YENACHAMUNI. The root is NACHAM, "to comfort"- no problem there. The form must be PI'EL, which is intensive, though we would expect the Hiph'il, because that has been the pattern of the Psalm thus far. But that would be YANCHIMUNI, but this is... wait... the PI'EL should be YENACHMUNI - where does that PATACH come from, underneath the Chet? This is a Masoretic error, and I think it should indeed be YANCHIMUNI.

23:5 TA'AROCH LEPHANAI SHULCHAN NEGED TSORERAI DISHANTA VA SHEMEN ROSHI KOSI REVAYAH

תַּעֲרֹךְ לְפָנַי שֻׁלְחָן נֶגֶד צֹרְרָי דִּשַּׁנְתָּ בַשֶּׁמֶן רֹאשִׁי כּוֹסִי רְוָיָה

KJ: Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

BN: You set out a table in front of me, where others would restrict me {N} you have made my life both full and meaningful; my cup is filled to the brim.

TSORERAI: Not OYEVAI, which does mean "enemies". TSEROROT are "bundles" (cf Genesis 42:35), and the root has to do with tying things up so that nothing can get out. See my note at Psalm 7:5.

TA'AROCH...SHULCHAN: Several options for where he sourced the title, of which this is just one, but the text in question is the SHULCHAN ARUCH (note the word ORECH, and see my note to ORACH, above), created by Rabbi Joseph Caro in Zefat in the 16th century. Full background to him and it here; the full text can be found here.

The SHULCHAN here is metaphorical: a table of values, rather than that picnic from verse 2.

DISHANTA: The same DESHEN that we saw at Psalm 22:30, where it would be SHEMEN if this was the anointing oil of the sacred king. So we should avoid the word "anoint" in translating this, because this is about making a human life fertile through morally driven high achievement, and not a coronation ritual.

ROSHI: The same applies here. The Psalm is all about Creation and fertility, and the ROSH is the one "in the beginning", the "source" of that flowing water, the seed of the grape whose wine is now brimful in the cup.

REVAYAH: Just the right amount, or possibly "saturated"; but not necessarily "overflowing". Cf Isaiah 34:7, which has both RIVTAH and YEDUSHAN; also Jeremiah 31:12, where it is a "watered garden", Proverbs 5:19 where it is a sexually satisfied relationship, and Deuteronomy 29:18, where it is self-explanatory.

23:6 ACH TOV VA CHESED YIRDEPHUNI KOL YEMEY CHAYAI VE SHAVTI BE VEIT YHVH LE ORECH YAMIM

אַךְ טוֹב וָחֶסֶד יִרְדְּפוּנִי כָּל יְמֵי חַיָּי וְשַׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית יְהוָה לְאֹרֶךְ יָמִים

KJ: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

BN: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; {N} and I shall dwell in the house of YHVH for ever. {P}

YIRDEPHUNI: Echoing YANCHIMUNI at verse 4.

See my note to Psalm 3:7 and pick up the Adon Olam connections from the link there.

VEIT YHVH: If, as we are supposed to believe, these were written by David, rather than addressed to him and about him, the VEIT YHVH becomes problematic, because there wasn't one. Any shrine would count, of course, but VEIT YHVH is understood as the Temple in Yeru-Shala'im.

ORECH: Used metaphorically, as explained above.

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Psalms:

Bk 1: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41