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
This Psalm seems to have been written in little blocks of words, 2s and 3s - does that explain why it's called a Shigayon? See below.
7:1 SHIGAYON LE DAVID ASHER SHAR LA YHVH AL DIVREY CHUSH BEN-YEMINI
שִׁגָּיוֹן לְדָוִד אֲשֶׁר שָׁר לַיהוָה עַל דִּבְרֵי כוּשׁ בֶּן יְמִינִי
KJ (King James translation): (Shiggaion of David, which he sang unto the LORD, concerning the words of Cush the Benjamite.) O LORD my God, in thee do I put my trust: save me from all them that persecute me, and deliver me.
BN (BibleNet translation): A Shigayon to David, which is addressed to YHVH, concerning Chush the Ben Yemini.
The opening line is purely the title. King James has incorporated verse 1 into it, so that verse numbers once again do not concur with the Yehudit.
That spelling of Ben Yemini is new to us - compare it to the others in the Dictionary of Names.
Who is this Chush (or Kush really, but the Kaf is softened for grammatical reasons), given that David is himself the Bin Yamin, "the son of the right hand", that being the status of the sacred-king within the theocracy, as well as the role of the Earth within the cosmology (cf Acts 7:55–56; Romans 8:34; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 3:1 et al)? There are Chushim, for whom go to the link - they are not the answer here, but interesting nonetheless. There is Kush, which is sometimes Ethiopia and sometimes a part of Arabia - again, go to the link - they are not the answer here either, but also interesting nonetheless. There is Kushi, the father of the prophet Tsephan-Yah (Zephaniah), but he lived about four hundred years after David, so no use looking there either. Unfortunately a fourth option does not exist, because there is no tale to support this Psalm, neither in the Books of Samuel nor the Books of Kings, where David's story is told; though it is an odd coincidence that Kush sounds so much like Kish, which was King Sha'ul's father's name (but still only a coincidence, because Kish is spelled with a Kuph, not a Kaph - קִ֣ישׁ).
The opening line is purely the title. King James has incorporated verse 1 into it, so that verse numbers once again do not concur with the Yehudit.
That spelling of Ben Yemini is new to us - compare it to the others in the Dictionary of Names.
Who is this Chush (or Kush really, but the Kaf is softened for grammatical reasons), given that David is himself the Bin Yamin, "the son of the right hand", that being the status of the sacred-king within the theocracy, as well as the role of the Earth within the cosmology (cf Acts 7:55–56; Romans 8:34; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 3:1 et al)? There are Chushim, for whom go to the link - they are not the answer here, but interesting nonetheless. There is Kush, which is sometimes Ethiopia and sometimes a part of Arabia - again, go to the link - they are not the answer here either, but also interesting nonetheless. There is Kushi, the father of the prophet Tsephan-Yah (Zephaniah), but he lived about four hundred years after David, so no use looking there either. Unfortunately a fourth option does not exist, because there is no tale to support this Psalm, neither in the Books of Samuel nor the Books of Kings, where David's story is told; though it is an odd coincidence that Kush sounds so much like Kish, which was King Sha'ul's father's name (but still only a coincidence, because Kish is spelled with a Kuph, not a Kaph - קִ֣ישׁ).
So who was Chush, or Kush, and why does he get special mention in the title of this Psalm, which is an account of the descent of the beloved (David) into the Underworld (Sha'ul's kingdom), the stage between the ritual ending of his time as sacred king, and his ascent into the heavens as "the right hand"? The answer must lie in either the ritual, or the myth itself, and hopefully it will become clear as we exegise the verses.
And maybe it will also become clear as we seek to understand what exactly is a Shigayon - a word much used in modern Ivrit, always with a big voice and an even larger exclamation mark. When something isn't just good, but really fantastic - wow, shiga'on! And why? I haven't a clue, but let's try to find out...
Some commentators argue that there is a concealed subject-matter within the poem, contrition for an act of accidental killing, and they construe this because Shigayon sounds very much like Shegagah. In Numbers 35 Shegagah is "manslaughter", precisely such a form of unintentional "sin". Ditto Joshua 20:3, but most of the references to manslaughter are Rotse'ach (the Joshua has both), not Shegagah, and the consequences of it in the Yisra-Eli world are flight to a refuge-city, not eternity in Hell. And anyway Shegagah stems from a different root than Shigayon - though having said that, no one has a clue about Sheen-Gimmel-Gimmel, which is the root of Shegagah; Gesenius even calls it "spurious". But Sheen-Gimmel-Gimmel is still not Sheen-Gimmel-Hey.
And just to make it nice and simple, there are two completely different roots, both spelled Sheen-Gimmel-Hey (שגה) and both pronounced Shagah (no, that isn't unusual, in any language: have a row, as in an argument, on any one of several rows in the debating theatre, with the man who rows your boat; I could give you dozens of these in English, and cause you to bow your waist rather than your violin to my correctness in the matter).
Root 1 means "to wander" or "to go astray", and no doubt that the first of these does apply to the tale told in this Psalm, David "wandering" in that ultimate Land of Nod which is the Underworld (the physical Land of Nod was East of Eden, right where Arabian Kush is located...might that...?)
Proverbs 19:27 and Psalm 119:10 use it in this meaning, but in the sense of wandering from the spiritual path, the ways of YHVH, rather than getting lost in the physical wilderness. 1 Samuel 26:21 uses it in a form that is definitely worth further exploration in the context of this Psalm, and this despite - actually, precisely because of - its placement there in Sha'ul's mouth, the king of the Underworld responding, so to speak, to the petition of this Psalm. I will leave you to carry out that further investigation yourself; my own delving can be found in the first volume of my novel "City of Peace".
So Root 1 provides a plausible explanation, and if correct we would need to translate Shigayon as "A Psalm of the Wanderings of David..." (which would then re-open the question: does "LE" here mean "of" or "to"?).
Root 2 is the one that yields the modern Ivrit exclamation: SHAGAH means "great", and might, if it were rendered in the Pi'el (intensive) form, yield a verb that would mean "to exalt" - but alas there is no evidence anywhere in Jewish writings of such a construction. And then, to add another layer of complete insanity to this, there are Deuteronomy 28:28 and 2 Kings 9:20, the first of which tells us that YAK'CHA YHVH VE SHIGA'ON, that "YHVH will smite you with madness", which is more or less what you will find in the Kings link as well.
Is this descent into the Underworld then a literary analogy for the descent into temporary madness - or simply the low end of manic depression, which often seems like the same thing? Possible; certainly it is no less plausible than Root 1.
I do have another route towards an answer, however (see the top of the page). The prophet Chavakuk (Habbakuk), a contemporary of Yirme-Yah (Jeremiah) at the time of the destruction of the First Temple and the captivity in Babylon (c586 BCE), opens the third and final chapter of his book thus: "Tefilah la Chavakuk al shigyonot - תְּפִלָּ֖ה לַחֲבַקּ֣וּק הַנָּבִ֑יא עַ֖ל שִׁגְיֹנֽוֹת"; which either translates as: "A prayer of the prophet Chavakuk, about madness" or, as most Jewish translators prefer to evade the problem, "A prayer of the prophet Chavakuk, in the genre known as Shigyonot". But what if the latter was not an evasion, then can we simply understand a Shigayon to have been a poetic mode, in the manner of a Sonnet or a Haiku: simply a set of rules governing the form and language of a piece of verse? This too is plausible.
And if the latter turns out to be correct, can we deduce from the form, tone, language, etc of this Psalm what that form might be?
7:2 YHVH ELOHAI BECHA CHASIYTI HOSHI'ENI MI KOL RODPHAI VE HATSILENI
And just to make it nice and simple, there are two completely different roots, both spelled Sheen-Gimmel-Hey (שגה) and both pronounced Shagah (no, that isn't unusual, in any language: have a row, as in an argument, on any one of several rows in the debating theatre, with the man who rows your boat; I could give you dozens of these in English, and cause you to bow your waist rather than your violin to my correctness in the matter).
Root 1 means "to wander" or "to go astray", and no doubt that the first of these does apply to the tale told in this Psalm, David "wandering" in that ultimate Land of Nod which is the Underworld (the physical Land of Nod was East of Eden, right where Arabian Kush is located...might that...?)
Proverbs 19:27 and Psalm 119:10 use it in this meaning, but in the sense of wandering from the spiritual path, the ways of YHVH, rather than getting lost in the physical wilderness. 1 Samuel 26:21 uses it in a form that is definitely worth further exploration in the context of this Psalm, and this despite - actually, precisely because of - its placement there in Sha'ul's mouth, the king of the Underworld responding, so to speak, to the petition of this Psalm. I will leave you to carry out that further investigation yourself; my own delving can be found in the first volume of my novel "City of Peace".
So Root 1 provides a plausible explanation, and if correct we would need to translate Shigayon as "A Psalm of the Wanderings of David..." (which would then re-open the question: does "LE" here mean "of" or "to"?).
Root 2 is the one that yields the modern Ivrit exclamation: SHAGAH means "great", and might, if it were rendered in the Pi'el (intensive) form, yield a verb that would mean "to exalt" - but alas there is no evidence anywhere in Jewish writings of such a construction. And then, to add another layer of complete insanity to this, there are Deuteronomy 28:28 and 2 Kings 9:20, the first of which tells us that YAK'CHA YHVH VE SHIGA'ON, that "YHVH will smite you with madness", which is more or less what you will find in the Kings link as well.
Is this descent into the Underworld then a literary analogy for the descent into temporary madness - or simply the low end of manic depression, which often seems like the same thing? Possible; certainly it is no less plausible than Root 1.
I do have another route towards an answer, however (see the top of the page). The prophet Chavakuk (Habbakuk), a contemporary of Yirme-Yah (Jeremiah) at the time of the destruction of the First Temple and the captivity in Babylon (c586 BCE), opens the third and final chapter of his book thus: "Tefilah la Chavakuk al shigyonot - תְּפִלָּ֖ה לַחֲבַקּ֣וּק הַנָּבִ֑יא עַ֖ל שִׁגְיֹנֽוֹת"; which either translates as: "A prayer of the prophet Chavakuk, about madness" or, as most Jewish translators prefer to evade the problem, "A prayer of the prophet Chavakuk, in the genre known as Shigyonot". But what if the latter was not an evasion, then can we simply understand a Shigayon to have been a poetic mode, in the manner of a Sonnet or a Haiku: simply a set of rules governing the form and language of a piece of verse? This too is plausible.
And if the latter turns out to be correct, can we deduce from the form, tone, language, etc of this Psalm what that form might be?
7:2 YHVH ELOHAI BECHA CHASIYTI HOSHI'ENI MI KOL RODPHAI VE HATSILENI
יְהוָה אֱלֹהַי בְּךָ חָסִיתִי הוֹשִׁיעֵנִי מִכָּל רֹדְפַי וְהַצִּילֵנִי
KJ (7:1): O LORD my God, in thee do I put my trust: save me from all them that persecute me, and deliver me:
BN: YHVH, my god, in you I have taken refuge; rescue me from all who pursue me, and deliver me.
7:3 PEN YITROPH KE ARYEH NAPHSHI POREK VE EYN MATSIL
פֶּן יִטְרֹף כְּאַרְיֵה נַפְשִׁי פֹּרֵק וְאֵין מַצִּיל
KJ (7:2): Lest he tear my soul like a lion, rending it in pieces, while there is none to deliver.
If, as I believe, these Psalms were originally the libretto for a mythological account of the life, death and "resurrection" of the Earth-God, whose full name is unknown, whose principal sobriquet was Yedid-Yah, "the beloved of the Moon-Goddess", which name abbreviates to Daoud or David or Dodi; if this is correct, then we are witnessing the Yisra-Eli version of the legends of Tammuz, Osher, Arthur, Siegfried, Adonis, Hera-Kles, Jesus, and all the other equivalents across the common source which is human culture. So we should expect to find him performing Twelve Labours, one in every month as he "wanders" across the night sky, which is the Underworld, the Netherworld, the Afterlife, the Heavens, the Winter, the Night itself. So we should be on the look-out for imagery from those other stories. So we should find David claiming to have killed a lion (yes, in 1 Samuel 17:34-36), even "rending it in pieces"... The lion of course is Leo, late July-early August, Av in the Jewish calendar, when the sun is just past its Tammuzian zenith (click here to understand that) - but we have leaped two clicks of the dial since the Davidic era, so we cannot equate the calendars in that way (click here for more on this).
7:4 YHVH ELOHAY IM ASIYTI ZOT IM YESH AVEL BE CHAPHAI
KJ (7:3): O LORD my God, if I have done this; if there be iniquity in my hands.
BN: YHVH, my god, if I have done this; if there is iniquity in my hands...
IM ASIYTI: If I have done... what? "If" is a conditional preposition, dependent on there being a second half to the sentence; but there isn't one, not in the previous verse, nor in the one that follows. Has the Redactor, updating the ancient libretto to a mere book of Psalms attributed to a human king, missed something? Or is the "sin" the one in the next verse?
7:5 IM GAMALTI SHOLMI RA VA ACHALTSAH TSORERI REYKAM
KJ (7:4) If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me; (yea, I have delivered him that without cause is mine enemy:)
BN: If I have rewarded with wickedness one who offered me wholeness, by reducing that cause of distress to nothingness...
SHOLMI: From the root that gives SHALOM, and Yeru-Shala'im (where this Psalm was originally written and sung), and really means "wholeness" or "perfection", of which "peace" is a necessary component. But here it is functioning as a "black-and-white" with REYKAM, and the word-play needs to be carried over into the English.
TSORERI: The root TSARAR feally means "to compress" or "to bind", a sense of things being forced together; how does this come to mean "enemy" or "adversary"? 1 Samuel 25:29 is the best place to find an explanation, while Numbers 25:18 gives us a very different usage, and Psalms 31:10 and 69:18 a very different one again. I think the overall sense is not of human enemies at all, but of those aspects of life which cause a human being distress, which could be sickness or bad weather, a row with the spouse or the death of a friend, rivalries in the office or people just not being nice to you; this seems to be the intention here, and again in Psalms 6:8 and 23:5.
7:4 YHVH ELOHAY IM ASIYTI ZOT IM YESH AVEL BE CHAPHAI
יְהוָה אֱלֹהַי אִם עָשִׂיתִי זֹאת אִם יֶשׁ עָוֶל בְּכַפָּי
KJ (7:3): O LORD my God, if I have done this; if there be iniquity in my hands.
BN: YHVH, my god, if I have done this; if there is iniquity in my hands...
IM ASIYTI: If I have done... what? "If" is a conditional preposition, dependent on there being a second half to the sentence; but there isn't one, not in the previous verse, nor in the one that follows. Has the Redactor, updating the ancient libretto to a mere book of Psalms attributed to a human king, missed something? Or is the "sin" the one in the next verse?
7:5 IM GAMALTI SHOLMI RA VA ACHALTSAH TSORERI REYKAM
אִם גָּמַלְתִּי שׁוֹלְמִי רָע וָאֲחַלְּצָה צוֹרְרִי רֵיקָם
KJ (7:4) If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me; (yea, I have delivered him that without cause is mine enemy:)
BN: If I have rewarded with wickedness one who offered me wholeness, by reducing that cause of distress to nothingness...
SHOLMI: From the root that gives SHALOM, and Yeru-Shala'im (where this Psalm was originally written and sung), and really means "wholeness" or "perfection", of which "peace" is a necessary component. But here it is functioning as a "black-and-white" with REYKAM, and the word-play needs to be carried over into the English.
TSORERI: The root TSARAR feally means "to compress" or "to bind", a sense of things being forced together; how does this come to mean "enemy" or "adversary"? 1 Samuel 25:29 is the best place to find an explanation, while Numbers 25:18 gives us a very different usage, and Psalms 31:10 and 69:18 a very different one again. I think the overall sense is not of human enemies at all, but of those aspects of life which cause a human being distress, which could be sickness or bad weather, a row with the spouse or the death of a friend, rivalries in the office or people just not being nice to you; this seems to be the intention here, and again in Psalms 6:8 and 23:5.
This sense of something "adversarial" has nonetheless been prominent in every verse until now; but is this the Jobian "adversary", or simply King Sha'ul pursuing the boy David; or can we adduce that those two are in fact one: the Lord of the Underworld in his "adversarial" form, the origins of Lucifer by way of ha-Satan?
7:6 YIRADOPH OYEV NAPHSHI VE YASEG VE YIRMOS LA ARETS CHAYAI U CHEVODI LE APHAR YASHKEN (SELAH)
יִרַדֹּף אוֹיֵב נַפְשִׁי וְיַשֵּׂג וְיִרְמֹס לָאָרֶץ חַיָּי וּכְבוֹדִי לֶעָפָר יַשְׁכֵּן סֶלָה
KJ (7:5): Let the enemy persecute my soul, and take it; yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth, and lay mine honour in the dust. Selah.
BN: Let my enemy pursue my soul, and overtake it, and tread my life down into the earth, and lay my honour in the dust. (Selah)
OYEV: No question that this means "enemy", and of the human sort. But are "enemy" and "adversary" the same thing?
7:7 KUMAH YHVH BE APECHA HINAS'E BE AVROT TSORERAI VE URAH ELAI MISHPAT TSIVITA
קוּמָה יְהוָה בְּאַפֶּךָ הִנָּשֵׂא בְּעַבְרוֹת צוֹרְרָי וְעוּרָה אֵלַי מִשְׁפָּט צִוִּיתָ
KJ (7:6): Arise, O LORD, in thine anger, lift up thyself because of the rage of mine enemies: and awake for me to the judgment that thou hast commanded.
BN: Rise up, YHVH, in your fury. Lift yourself in your indignation against my adversaries. Bring into being for me the judgment which you have commanded.
APECHA: I think "fury" rather than "anger"; in human terms they are very similar, but these are not human terms. He is calling on the sun to rise, so that he is no longer inhabiting the darkness.
7:8 VA ADAT LE'UMIM TESOVEVECHA VE ALEYHA LA MAROM SHUVAH
וַעֲדַת לְאֻמִּים תְּסוֹבְבֶךָּ וְעָלֶיהָ לַמָּרוֹם שׁוּבָה
KJ (7:7) So shall the congregation of the people compass thee about: for their sakes therefore return thou on high.
BN: Let the nations gather as a single congregation about you, and climb back up to the heights for their sake.
Like King Arthur's "Round Table", a harmonised Cosmos is a circle.
Is that a nikud error under the Aleph of LE'UMIM? Or simply a variant form (the alternative would be to place a Vav medugash after the Aleph and leave the Aleph unpointed - I believe there are examples of this in the Tanach).
All of which makes this Psalm a variant on the Yevarechecha - again!
7:9 YHVH YADIN AMIM SHAPHTENI YHVH KE TSIDKI U CHE TUMI ALAI
יְהוָה יָדִין עַמִּים שָׁפְטֵנִי יְהוָה כְּצִדְקִי וּכְתֻמִּי עָלָי
KJ (7:8): The LORD shall judge the people: judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness, and according to mine integrity that is in me.
BN: YHVH, bringer of Justice to the nations, judge me, YHVH, according to my righteousness, and according to my integrity.
YADIN...SHAPHTENI: Two different words for judgement and justice. This is very much the prophet Yesha-Yah, but centuries before him: it isn't what we do that matters so much as the intensity and sincerity with which we do it; anyone can perfom a rite or ceremony mechanically, just to be seen to have done it.
7:10 YIGMAR NA RA RESHA'IM U TECHONEN TSADIK U VOCHEN LIBOT U CHELAYOT ELOHIM TSADIK
יִגְמָר נָא רַע רְשָׁעִים וּתְכוֹנֵן צַדִּיק וּבֹחֵן לִבּוֹת וּכְלָיוֹת אֱלֹהִים צַדִּיק
KJ (7:9): Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish the just: for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins.
BN: Please bring the wickedness of the wicked to an end, and put the righteous in charge; {N} and keep a check, and keep tight reins upon their hearts. Elohim is righteous.
This is syntactically awkward - probably because the libretto came after the music and had to be made to fit. YIGMAR goes with SHOLMI in verse 5, both having a sense of "completion". TSADIK means "righteous", but it is also used to mean "wise" - the great men of the epoch of the Talmud were described as "Tsadikim", and it may have been for the sincerity of their religious commitment, or it may have been for the quality of their intellectual endeavour, and it was probably both. The Lamed-Vavnikim are the "Thirty-Six Just Men", in Yehudit "Tsadikim Nistarim" on whom Talmud regards a succesful human world as being dependent.
7:11 MAGINI AL ELOHIM MOSHI'A YISHREY LEV
מָגִנִּי עַל אֱלֹהִים מוֹשִׁיעַ יִשְׁרֵי לֵב
KJ (7:10): My defence is of God, which saveth the upright in heart.
BN: I leave my defence to Elohim, who saves the upright in heart.
MAGEN: David's shield, as well as his star - see my note on this in the Introduction to these Psalms.
MOSHI'A: Not Mashiyach, though David the earthly king would have been the latter. Throughout the Tanach, the deity, and only the deity, is the Moshi'a; or someone specifically appointed (not necessarily anointed, which is Mashiyach again), as with most of the heroes in the Book of Judges.
ELOHIM: Note that polytheism is still in place in the world of the Psalms. Elohim here, rather than YHVH; EL in the next verse.
7:12 ELOHIM SHOPHET TSADIK VE EL ZO'EM BE CHOL YOM
BN: Elohim is a righteous judge, while El lives in a state of daily indignation.
7:12 ELOHIM SHOPHET TSADIK VE EL ZO'EM BE CHOL YOM
אֱלֹהִים שׁוֹפֵט צַדִּיק וְאֵל זֹעֵם בְּכָל יוֹם
KJ (7:11): God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.
BN: Elohim is a righteous judge, while El lives in a state of daily indignation.
ZO'EM: Someone might like to undertake an exploration of the difference between ZA'AM and ZA'APH (Proverbs 19:3 and 2 Chronicles 26:19 for the latter), both having a sense of serious anger, both remarkably close in their letters.
7:13 IM LO YASHUV CHARBO YILTOSH KASHTO DARACH VA YECHONENEHA
אִם לֹא יָשׁוּב חַרְבּוֹ יִלְטוֹשׁ קַשְׁתּוֹ דָרַךְ וַיְכוֹנְנֶהָ
KJ (7:12): If he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready.
BN: If he does not change direction, the outcome will be more sword-whetting; he has already put his arrow into his bow, and is ready to fire it.
I am afraid that I find the KJ completely incomprehensible. The problem lies in determining whether the "he" here is the wicked man or the deity: is that about the continuing bad behaviour of the human, or the punishment that will be meted out by the god? My sense, based on the verses that follow, is that it is the former, where KJ has tried, but failed, to make it the latter.
YILTOSH KASHTO: "Bow", rather than "bow" or "bow", as in my note at verse 1.
7:14 VE LO HECHIN KELEY MAVET CHITSAV LE DOLKIM YIPH'AL
וְלוֹ הֵכִין כְּלֵי מָוֶת חִצָּיו לְדֹלְקִים יִפְעָל
KJ (7:13): He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death; he ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors.
BN: And he is getting ready for himself still more instruments of death. Aye, and dipping his arrows in burning oil.
DOLKIM: The word means "fiery shafts" and has nothing to do with "persecutors". I have gone for "oil", though the historians reckon all sorts of materials, including resins, were used to make the earliest "thermal weapons" - click here.
7:15 HINEH YECHABEL AVEN VE HARAH AMAL VE YALAD SHAKER
הִנֵּה יְחַבֶּל אָוֶן וְהָרָה עָמָל וְיָלַד שָׁקֶר
KJ (7:14): Behold, he travaileth with iniquity, and hath conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood.
BN: You can see him even now, working away in his wickedness, planning still more mischief, telling still more lies.
7:16 BOR KARAH VA YACHPEREHU VA YIPOL BE SHACHAT YIPH'AL
בּוֹר כָּרָה וַיַּחְפְּרֵהוּ וַיִּפֹּל בְּשַׁחַת יִפְעָל
KJ (7:15): He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.
BN: He has dug a pit, and hollowed it out, and now he has fallen into the ditch which he made.
Is this the source of that infamously famous cliché?
7:17 YASHUV AMALO VE RO'SHO VE AL KADKADO CHAMASO YERED
יָשׁוּב עֲמָלוֹ בְרֹאשׁוֹ וְעַל קָדְקֳדוֹ חֲמָסוֹ יֵרֵד
KJ (7:16): His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate.
BN: His bad deeds shall recoil on his own head, and his violence shall come down upon his own crown.
The kadkod is the forehead, the skull? I like "crown" as an English translation, because of its double-meaning: most of the worst of the people being described here like to think they wear a crown of some sort! January 6th 2021, the Feast of the Adoration of the Magi, on Capitol Hill.
CHAMASO: Yes, you are right. HAMAS claim their name is simply an acronym for some political utopianism, but CHAMAS means "violence". (In Arabic the full phrase is حركة المقاومة الاسلامية, Harakat al-Muqāwama al-Islāmiyya, meaning "Islamic Resistance Movement".) [And no, I haven't hyperlinked on this occasion; you can fire your own rocket into cyberspace if you want to find their website.]
7:18 ODEH YHVH KE TSIDKO VA AZAMRAH SHEM YHVH ELYON
אוֹדֶה יְהוָה כְּצִדְקוֹ וַאֲזַמְּרָה שֵׁם יְהוָה עֶלְיוֹן
KJ (7:17): I will praise the LORD according to his righteousness: and will sing praise to the name of the LORD most high.
BN: Myself, I will give thanks to YHVH according to his righteousness, and I will sing in the name of YHVH the most high. {P}
El Elyon having been the god whom Av-Raham encountered, when he came to Shalem after the War of the Kings. David absorbed his worship into that of YHVH when Shalem was captured, along with the other six hill-towns, and then conurbated as Yeru-Shala'im. The high priest of El Elyon became one of the two High Priests of the new cult, and apparently the names of the two gods were also merged, YHVH and El Elyon becoming YHVH Elyon here.
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
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