TheBibleNet: Psalm 57

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

57:1: LA MENATSE'ACH AL TASHCHET LE DAVID MICHTAM BE VARCHO MIPNEY SHA'UL BE MA'ARAH

לַמְנַצֵּחַ אַל תַּשְׁחֵת לְדָוִד מִכְתָּם בְּבָרְחוֹ מִפְּנֵי שָׁאוּל בַּמְּעָרָה

KJ (King James translation): (To the chief Musician, Altaschith, Michtam of David, when he fled from Saul in the cave.) Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.

BN (BibleNet translation): For the Artistic Director. "Do Not Destroy". For David. A Michtam. When he fled from Sha'ul, in the cave.

Once again KJ merges verse 1 into the title, moving the verse-numbers forward accordingly.

LA MENATSE'ACH: see my note at Psalm 51:1.

AL TASHCHET: Scholars generally think this is an indicator that an old tune, known as "AL TASHCHET" is being redeployed with new libretto - the same as with the last Psalm. And AL can mean "on". But AL, when attached to TASHCHET, can only mean "DO NOT", and "destroy" is precisely the intent behind Sha'ul's pursuit of David, to do to him what he did to Nov in Psalm 34, though only after he got wind of David's having been there, from Do'eg in Psalm 52. None of which precludes the possibility that there was a previous Psalm or song which recounted this (not including 1 Samuel 21 and 22 where the story is told in full); but then this Psalm would have to be "AL 'AL TASHCHET'".

But that does not preclude me from following the possibility through its hypothesisers, who are: the Septuagint, Aquila and Symmachus, all of whom Greekify this as "peri aphtharsias"; translated into Latin by Jerome as "ut non disperdas (David humilem et simplicem)", which gets into the Vulgate as "ne disperdas" or "ne corrumpas", depending on which version you follow. All of which, in truth, confirms "Do Not Destroy", but provides no support whatever for the hypothesis that there was an earlier song, whether of that name or any other.

MICHTAM: See my notes in the "Introduction to the Psalms" and at Psalm 56:12.

BE MA'ARAH: As noted with the Psalms above, our "plotology" is somewhat disordered, and there are several others that we have noted, in Gat with Achish, in the Aravah with the Ziyphim, at Ke'ilah; but gradually the tale of David is getting told, and this is unquestionably the Cave of Adul-Am, though he spends time there at two very different points in the chase. As per my notes at the link: "1 Samuel 22:1 has King David hiding in the Cave of Adul-Am from Sha'ul; several Psalms also reflect this period of his life (55 and 57 allude to it, 142 is rather more explicit). 2 Samuel 23:13 refers to it as a stronghold which David used when he was fighting for the Pelishtim as king of Tsiklag." Almost certain that this Psalm is from the first period.

There are also two occasions when David has the opportunity to kill Sha'ul, but declines to take them, on each occasion making sure Sha'ul knew he had been there (on one of them, actually talking to him); but on neither of them does he "flee", if by that is meant a cowardly act of running away. Both of these might (it depends how certain key words are understood) have taken place in some sort of a cave - and then the word "flight" here would need to be re-thought as "made his getaway" rather than "escaped". It is highly unlikely, but a commentary cannot exclude it.

See verse 9 for a hint that this may be another Ayelet ha Shachar Psalm.

57:2 CHANENI ELOHIM CHANENI KI VECHA CHASAYAH NAPHSHI U VE TSEL KENAPHEYCHA ECHSEH AD YA'AVOR HAVOT

חָנֵּנִי אֱלֹהִים חָנֵּנִי כִּי בְךָ חָסָיָה נַפְשִׁי וּבְצֵל כְּנָפֶיךָ אֶחְסֶה עַד יַעֲבֹר הַוּוֹת

KJ: as above

BN: Be gracious to me, Elohim. Be gracious to me, for in you has my soul taken refuge. {N} In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, until my troubles are no more.

Yet another Psalm addressed to the polytheon, rather than the Omnideity - YHVH's only mention in this entire Psalm is mine, in this note! I am going to need to create a list of all the Psalms addressed to Elohim, rather than YHVH, and as well as YHVH, or those that are just YHVH, because it really does begin to seem that the cult of David (italics and underlining required!) may have absolutely nothing to do with the cult of YHVH, whatsoever.

HAVOT: Or is that possibly HAVU'OT and we need to read the first VAV as medugash, and therefore an OO sound.

KENAPHEYCHA: Oh for the wings, the wings of a dove... as in Psalm 55:6... does this now equate the deity with Yonah/Oannes, as explained in my notes to Psalm 56? It certainly adds weight to our combining Psalms 55 through 57 as a single hymn. And now see verse 4.

57:3 EKRA L'ELOHIM ELYON LA EL GOMER ALAI

אֶקְרָא לֵאלֹהִים עֶלְיוֹן לָאֵל גֹּמֵר עָלָי

KJ (57:2): I will cry unto God most high; unto God that performeth all things for me.

BN: I will invoke Elohim Elyon, the highest of all the gods, El himself, to bring this to an end for me.

GOMER: This has nothing to do with the land of Gomer, whose people, the Cimmerians, are probably the origins of the Welsh Cymry and the northern English Cumbrians. This is from the root GAMAR, and it means "to finish".

ELOHIM ELYON: El Elyon we've had many times before; this variation is new I think. It will be used again in Psalm 78:56. There is also YHVH Elyon, at Psalms 7:17, 47:2 and 97:9.

57:4 YISHLACH MI SHAMAYIM VE YOSHIY'ENI CHEREPH SHO'APHI (SELAH) YISHLACH ELOHIM CHASDO VA AMITO

יִשְׁלַח מִשָּׁמַיִם וְיוֹשִׁיעֵנִי חֵרֵף שֹׁאֲפִי סֶלָה יִשְׁלַח אֱלֹהִים חַסְדּוֹ וַאֲמִתּוֹ

KJ (57:3): He shall send from heaven, and save me from the reproach of him that would swallow me up. Selah. God shall send forth his mercy and his truth.

BN: He will send from the heavens, and save me, when he who would swallow me up taunts me. (Selah) {N} Elohim will send me his mercy and his truth.

SHO'APH: See my notes at Psalm 56:3.

"Him that would swallow me up" makes for an interesting translation, if this is indeed another version of the Yonah/Oannes tale!

SELAH and a Nun break in mid-verse tells us that this really should be treated as two verses; but it can't be, because 12 is a symbolic number (assuming there were twelve in the original, and not the number that happened to get counted in the Christian translation - need to check surviving original texts... oh, of course, there aren't any).

57:5 NAPHSHI BETOCH LEVA'IM ESHKEVAH LOHATIM BENEY ADAM SHINEYHEM CHANIT VE CHITSIM U LESHONAM CHEREV CHADAH

נַפְשִׁי בְּתוֹךְ לְבָאִם אֶשְׁכְּבָה לֹהֲטִים בְּנֵי אָדָם שִׁנֵּיהֶם חֲנִית וְחִצִּים וּלְשׁוֹנָם חֶרֶב חַדָּה

KJ (57:4): My soul is among lions: and I lie even among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.

BN: My soul is among lions. I lie down among those that are aflame, {N} humans whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongue is a sharp sword.

LEVA'IM: As opposed to Ari, which is also a lion; what actually is the difference? To which the answer is: I don't know; but I am also intrigued that the other appearance of Oannes as a whale is as Liv-Yatan, Leviathan, and that the ones who will represent the deity on the Earth, when it comes to providing the support the Psalmist is seeking, will be the Leviyim.

But that is just word-play, and these deities are planets and stellar constellations. I wonder if this Psalm isn't also an astronomical map, and the pursuit is that of the star Vega, David's star, across the sky, inside the constellation Lyra... hard to know, because first Ezra, then the Hasmoneans, deleted as much of the astronomical (because they wanted to get rid of the astrological) as they could from the early cult when they wrote down the various parts of the Tanach, and then the Talmudists even more so, so it has been all-but-excised from Jewish culture in the two millennia since (to which I guess we should say "mazal tov"!).

But, if you are being pursued through the Underworld (Sha'ul's She'ol), and the Underworld is the northern sky, the one quarter where the sun never goes, then your "once and future" dream, your "Messianic" hope, rests with the brightest star at the apex of the sky in the midst of summer, the time when Sha'ul is at his weakest - Vega in Lyra.

57:6 RUMAH AL HA SHAMAYIM ELOHIM AL KOL HA ARETS KEVODECHA

רוּמָה עַל הַשָּׁמַיִם אֱלֹהִים עַל כָּל הָאָרֶץ כְּבוֹדֶךָ

KJ (57:5): Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; let thy glory be above all the earth.

BN: May you be exalted, Elohim, above the heavens; may your glory cover all the Earth.

RUMAH: We had MAROM at Psalm 56:3, just when he was being "swallowed up". I probably should have wondered this then, but was too caught up trying to fathom (yes, I definitely do mean "fathom") SHA'APHU and SHOREREY: so let me do it now. What is the difference between RUMAH-MAROM as "exaltation" of the deity, and the wording used in the opening phrases of the Kaddish for the same purpose?

57:7 RESHET HECHIYNU LIPH'AMAI KAPHAPH NAPHSHI KARU LEPHANAI SHIYCHAH NAPHLU VETOCHAH (SELAH)

רֶשֶׁת הֵכִינוּ לִפְעָמַי כָּפַף נַפְשִׁי כָּרוּ לְפָנַי שִׁיחָה נָפְלוּ בְתוֹכָהּ סֶלָה

KJ (57:6): They have prepared a net for my steps; my soul is bowed down: they have digged a pit before me, into the midst whereof they are fallen themselves. Selah.

BN: They have prepared a net for my steps; my soul is bowed down; {N} they have dug a pit in front of me; they have fallen down its hole themselves. (Selah)

LIPH'AMAI: There are several possible word-games going on here, and it is hard to see which is intended, though probably all of them, given our experience of the Psalms thus far! What we can say for starters is that PE'AMAI is not the word we would expect here, if it does mean "steps", and that is usually an indicator of word-games. So:

i) PE'AH with an Aleph rather than an Ayin is a quarter, including those of the heavens, of which the summer solstice is the one we thought we recognised above, and the northern sky the one in which David is being "swallowed" (cf Joshua 18:14); but this is unlikely to be the principal word here, as the Mem is not included.

ii) PA'AM does have the Mem, so it could be the principal word here; unused in the Tanach, so I cannot hyperlink you to an example, you can find an explanation in Gesenius; it means, strange coincidence, "to swallow".

iii) PE'AM, also with a Mem, but more importantly with an Ayin too, as in our word. "Time", which makes up the Einsteinian C, along with "Space", so we are again playing in the astronomic world.

iv) PA'AMON, which means "to drum", and quite probably there is one being played to accompany this verse, but that is a TOPH. "A drum" surprises you - but not if you followed my link to PE'AM, and scrolled down. One beats time with a drum (or rings it with a bell - PA'AMON), or metal on an anvil... which I mention only because the word for an anvil in Yehudit is PA'AM (cf Isaiah 41:7), which would definitely take us into the world of astronomy if this was a Nordic Psalm, and we were encountering Mime with Siegfried at the start of the third book of the Nibelungen - and funnily enough, in Wagner's version, that happens in a cave too.

SHIYCHAH: Not to be confused with SICHAH, which was a key-word in several of the recent Psalms. Not to be confused with BOR either, which is the hole in the ground that Yoseph gets thrown into in Genesis 37. Nor is this the full Underworld, though Sha'ul is obviously hoping to take him there - She'ol. This is from the root SHU'ACH, which, based on Proverbs 2:18, is rather more marshland in which you sink than the open crater after an earthquake, or the dried-out soil of the mud-desert cracking open like a 5th day cricket pitch. But I guess that the journey from Bor to Shiychah to She'ol is not unlike the journey from Hel to Hades to the Inferno: different names, different metaphorical constructs, but ultimately the same ending.

57:8 NACHON LIBI ELOHIM NACHON LIBI ASHIYRAH VA AZAMERAH

נָכוֹן לִבִּי אֱלֹהִים נָכוֹן לִבִּי אָשִׁירָה וַאֲזַמֵּרָה

KJ (57:7): My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise.

BN: My heart is steadfast, Elohim, my heart is steadfast. I will play, and I will sing praises.

ASHIYRAH...AZAMERAH: Do we have finally have a line that resolves our eternally re-asked question about these key words: that one is the singing, and the other the accompaniment? And if so, can we now state with confidence that a SHIR is an unaccompanied poem, or a song to be sung acapela (as all liturgy has been, in orthodox Jewish synagogues, since the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE), whereas a MIZMOR, being connected to the KLEY ZEMER, must be libretto for orchestra, or at the very least, in the proper sense of this word, a lyric.

There are lines in these Psalms which are so obviously meant for singing, like this one, that working out the likely melody is something any of us could do; it simply presents itself, sing me like this. The verse immediately before this reads like verse, or something from a theatrical production, maybe the libretto for modern opera or a piece of narrative or dialogue between songs, but seems unimaginable as song itself: and yet it is part of the song. So there must then, as today, have been Wagnerian grand opera and the X Factor, side by side, on the same Delphic stage.

This verse, and continuing through to verse 12, will recur again, with some minor variants that I will note when we get there, as Psalm 108:2-6.

57:9 URAH CHEVODI URAH HA NEVEL VE CHINOR A'IRAH SHACHAR

עוּרָה כְבוֹדִי עוּרָה הַנֵּבֶל וְכִנּוֹר אָעִירָה שָּׁחַר

KJ (57:8): Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early.

BN: Awake, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp; I will awake the dawn.

CHEVODI: Is the "glory" here in fact a poetic euphemism for the sun? And is this then a Psalm to be sung at Shacharit (as per my Ayelet ha Shachar comment, above)? Accompanied, obviously, by psaltery and harp. Now go back to the sub-title: it reflects (I have chosen that verb deliberately) the emergence of David from the Underworld, the "cave" into which the Lord of the Underworld (Sha'ul/Saul) has tried to draw him, the "pit" into which the net has failed to drag him; and what is that emergence if not, mythologically, cosmologically, the emergence of day from night, spring from winter, Jesus from the cave-tomb of Joseph of Arimathea?

57:10 ODECHA VA AMIM ADONAI AZAMERCHA BAL UMIM

אוֹדְךָ בָעַמִּים אֲדֹנָי אֲזַמֶּרְךָ בַּל אֻמִּים

KJ (57:9): I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people: I will sing unto thee among the nations.

BN: I will give thanks to you, my Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations.

BAL-UMIM: Or BA LE'UMIM, or even BAL'UMIM with the preposition ellided? The translation definitely requires the latter, but the Yehudit text gives the former. And if it is the former, then what does it mean? And actually the Yehudit text doesn't necessarily quite give the former. Sefaria has בַּל־אֻמִּים, which surely has to be an error. Mechon-Mamre has בַּלְאֻמִּים, which is what we would expect. Chabad.org ditto - בַּֽלְאֻמִּֽים - down to the Nekudot. But Bayit Mashiyach, which is as close as anyone can get to an accurate reconstruction of the original, goes with Sefaria - and who can say what Bal Umim might actually mean, unless it is a variant of BLI-AMIM, meaning "the homeless ones"?

57:11 KI GADOL AD SHAMAYIM CHASDECHA VE AD SHECHAKIM AMITECHA

כִּי גָדֹל עַד שָׁמַיִם חַסְדֶּךָ וְעַד שְׁחָקִים אֲמִתֶּךָ

KJ (57:10): For thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds.

BN: For your mercy is so great it is universal, and your truth transcends the clouds.

SHECHAKIM: actually SHECHAK means "dust", and it is quite surprising to discover that the ancients could have passed Physics GCSE with a C-grade - this is on its curriculum, I assure you. As Thomas Dudando explains it, in my novel "A Singular Shade of Grey":

"There are no pure-white clouds. Every cloud is grey to some degree, but the greyness is an illusion too, a factor of our looking at it, a consequence of height and distance - relativity theory, though I don't think Einstein ever investigated this. Clouds get thicker and denser when they gather more water droplets and ice crystals - I paint a lot of clouds so it's useful to know this. The thicker they get, the more light they scatter, and so less light is able to penetrate them and they consequently appear blacker, though there's no pure-black either. Only shades of grey. Strange isn't it, that orange skies and blue skies and red skies and cloudy skies are really all the same grey sky, except that our eyes have the amazing capacity to detect the effect of the photons and the molecules, as though we've put lens-filters on, the way they do with cameras. I'm sorry if I'm not explaining this very scientifically. I'm an artist, not a physicist."

So the dust, to which all life must come eventually, is also the clouds, which have the wicked habit of forming a net and swallowing up the serotonin in the Yevarechecha (see my note to KEVODI at verse 9).

57:12 RUMAH AL SHAMAYIM ELOHIM AL KOL HA ARETS KEVODECHA

רוּמָה עַל שָׁמַיִם אֱלֹהִים עַל כָּל הָאָרֶץ כְּבוֹדֶךָ

KJ (57:11): Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens: let thy glory be above all the earth.

BN: May you be exalted, Elohim, above the heavens; may your glory cover all the Earth. {P}

Reprising verse 6, which of course is a classic technique for the accompanied popular song.

SurfTheSite

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