TheBibleNet: Psalm 58

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

58:1 LA MENATSE'ACH AL TASHCHET LE DAVID MICHTAM

לַמְנַצֵּחַ אַל תַּשְׁחֵת לְדָוִד מִכְתָּם

KJ (King James translation): (To the chief Musician, Altaschith, Michtam of David.) Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men?

BN (BibleNet translation): For the Artistic Director; "Do Not Destroy". A Michtam. for David.

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

AL TASHCHET: See my notes on this at Psalm 57, which is identical (save the additional historical setting in Psalm 57). But add one further thought; that it is highly unlikely that a well-known song would have been used twice to create a Psalm, and especially not two Psalms of such close thematic similarity, both of them Michtams, one after the other.

As so often, KJ incorporates the opening verse into the title, moving the remaining verse-numbers up accordingly. I have shown this in brackets.

AL TASHCHET: Why do the translators yet again avoid translating the title: Do Not Destroy? But, again, see my notes to this in the previous Psalm.

Given the repetitions in the title, might it be that this is in fact a continuation of Psalm 57, and should not be treated as separate? The answer probably lies in form rather than theme. Both have a twelve-verse structure - but that separates rather than joins them; comparable, say, with the Sonnet in European poetry. 57 has a refrain, which would logically be repeated here if it was the same Psalm in continuation; but that refrain does not recur here. I shall note any other comparables if they arise.

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

58:2 HA UMNAM ELEM TSEDEK TEDABERUN MEYSHARIM TISHPETU BENEY ADAM

הַאֻמְנָם אֵלֶם צֶדֶק תְּדַבֵּרוּן מֵישָׁרִים תִּשְׁפְּטוּ בְּנֵי אָדָם

KJ: as above

BN: Are you really spoken of as a house of righteousness? Do you judge Humankind with equity?

HA UMNAM: HA is generally the definite article, but for reasons entirely obscure it is also used to indicate the inerrogative, equivalent to "est-ce que" in French.

ELEM: And if we are wondering about the possible continuation of 57 into 58, what about 56, whose title is likewise thought to be a famous tune borrowed with new words: "YONAT ELEM RECHOKIM - the dove is bound in distant lands"? But is it even that ELEM? Some translations (see Gesenius) reckon ELEM here means "silence", and render the phrase as "do you indeed speak out the silence of justice?", which to me is completely meaningless: I could go for the silence that hangs around injustice, but what is there that makes justice itself silent? But there is a mitigation for the translation - cf Exodus 4:11 or Isaiah 35:6.

And then there is a completely different sort of ULAM, spelled the same but pronunciation and meaning very different (and yes, there is an ULAM, and indeed an OLAM, with an Ayin as well, but this is not they): cf 1 Kings 7:6, Ezekiel 40:7, many others - a portico, a vestibule, but in almost every case it is a very specific portico and vestibule, the one that provides an entrance to the Temple in Yeru-Shala'im.

And does this also impact on our reading of Psalm 56?

TEDABERUN: Is that not a gerundive? In the next verse also: TIPH'ALUN... TEPHALESUN.

TISHPETU: Who does "you" refer to? This depends on who is speaking. The Psalmist, as the "voice" of the deity? Or an angry king about his people? And if the latter, does he include himself in the castigation? With the Bat Shav'a Psalm (51) he absolutely did. But probably, now that we understand ELEM as the Temple itself, "you" is the priesthood, the judges, the congregation, the entire nation of Yisra-El? We shall see as we read on.

58:3 APH BE LEV OLOT TIPH'ALUN BA ARETS CHAMAS YEDEYCHEM TEPHALESUN

אַף בְּלֵב עוֹלֹת תִּפְעָלוּן בָּאָרֶץ חֲמַס יְדֵיכֶם תְּפַלֵּסוּן

KJ (58:2): Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth.

BN: Even in your heart your wickedness is worked; you weigh out in earthenware the war-worthiness of your hands.

APH: The Aph is of course "the nose", and we have witnessed the inflating of its nostrils whenever the deity gets angry, and then its re-deflation, soothed by the smell of the sacrificial roast, on the other side of the ULAM, in the Temple courtyard. But actually it is not that APH here, except as word-play.

LEV: The heart, but human beings are subjectively driven, not objectively driven, despite our self-delusions to the contrary. See my notes at Psalm 33:11.

OLOT: Which are one of the many forms of sacrifice that appease the inflated nostrils (click here); but it isn't that OLOT here either! Are we being played with? Intellectually? Hearing words that we think we recognise, but quickly realising that it isn't them; which makes us engage with much more intensity, more reflectively, and thereby learn from the words even as we sing them.

TIPH'ALUN: There are two different verbs used for "work", of which this is PO'AL (which is also the root of the word for "a verb", but that pun is not being played here); the other word for work is AVODAH, which can mean "slavery", and is used to mean "service", in the sense of a prayer service in a synagogue, or indeed the ceremony of sacrifice in the Temple. (Have you ever witnessed quite such sophisticated word-play in a single poem? Even by the standard of these Psalms, this is almost word-by-word...no I can't justify phrasing it that way, because the word for word is MILAH, and the MILAH is also the covenant between Humankind and the Deity, and that is very much under the silent scrutiny of justice in this Psalm...).

58:4 ZORU RESHA'IM ME RACHEM TA'U MI BETEN DOVREY CHAZAV

זֹרוּ רְשָׁעִים מֵרָחֶם תָּעוּ מִבֶּטֶן דֹּבְרֵי כָזָב

KJ (58:3): The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.

BN: The wicked are estranged from the womb; the speakers of lies go astray as soon as they are born.

How does Yehudit distinguish RECHEM from BETEN - the translation ducks the issue. The first is usually womb, the second stomach - my question is really: how much did they know of the inner anatomy, and was stomach a polite euphemism? To which at least a part of the answer lies (yet again!) in Psalm 56, where the umbilicus and the navel played a significant role.

RECHEM of course is only physically "the womb"; figuratively it is the root of those key words "mercy" (rachum) and "compassion" (rachmonis). Did I mention the silent scrutiny of justice? Do you know the correct way to address al-Lah in the Moslem world (click here if you don't).

And however much they understood of anatomy, they clearly - from this verse anyway - did not understand the concepts of "Nature" and "Nurture"; apparently the wicked are born wicked, and there is nothing that can be done about it. From this verse, anyway!

On which subject, it is well worth looking at the eighth chapter of Maimonides' "Shemoneh Perakim" or "Eight Chapters":

"It is impossible for man to be born endowed by nature from his very beginning with either vice or virtue, just as it is impossible that he should be born endowed by nature with a particular skill. Yet it is possible for him to be born inclined in his nature towards a vice or virtue, so that one sort of activity may be closer than any other."

And elsewhere in the same book:

"... so that you give not credence to the absurdities of the mendacious astrologers, who falsely assert that the circumstances of one's birth determine whether one will be a person of moral distinction or one lacking in it, and that the individual is compelled, by necessity, to do the deeds that he does. On the contrary, I know that what is agreed upon in our Torah and in the Greek philosophers, and demonstrated by truthful arguments, is that a man's actions are in his own hands and that there is nothing that can constrain him that is external to himself."

The difference between Good and Evil as proper nouns, and Yetser ha Tov and Yetser ha Ra as nouns operating as adjectives. The key difference, that is to say, between Christianity and Judaism, and the reason why Jews should never name their deity as "God".

58:5 CHAMAT LAMO KIDMUT CHAMAT NACHASH KEMO PETEN CHERESH YA'TEM AZNO

חֲמַת לָמוֹ כִּדְמוּת חֲמַת נָחָשׁ כְּמוֹ פֶתֶן חֵרֵשׁ יַאְטֵם אָזְנוֹ

KJ (58:4): Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear;

BN: Their venom is like the venom of a snake; they are like the deaf asp that stops her ear.

CHAMAS, then CHAZAV, now CHAMAT... constant games with sounds as well as meanings throughout this Psalm (did you like all my "w"s in verse 3?). CHAMAT NACHASH extends it; then CHERESH.

PETEN: rhymes with BETEN. Mid-lines, rather than ends-of-lines, which insinuates a musical caesura. And probably a triplet on this occasion, the two CHAMATs as starters, then CHERESH to complete the sound pattern.

YA'TEM AZNO: Is that an aural equivalent of HISTIR PANAV? Deliberately block your ears in one, turn a blind eye in the other. "The silence that hangs around injustice", as I suggested at verse 2.

58:6 ASHER LO YISHMA LE KOL MELACHASHIM CHOVER CHAVARIM MECHUKAM

אֲשֶׁר לֹא יִשְׁמַע לְקוֹל מְלַחֲשִׁים חוֹבֵר חֲבָרִים מְחֻכָּם

KJ (58:5): Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.

BN: Which pays no attention to the voice of the necromancer, that most cunning binder of spells.

MELACHASHIM: Aha, now I get it. A NACHASH is a serpent, but it is also a "necromancer", because oracles and other spiritualists of the Biblical epoch used serpents as part of their magic and mystery. So MELACHASHIM here. But was the asp the serpent used in such contexts? Should we go back and retranslate NACHASH as "cobra"?

And if there was any doubt left about these sound-games... I wonder what instrumentation was used for this. It would need to be onomatopoeic.

58:7 ELOHIM HARAS SHINEYMO BE PHIYMO MALTE'OT KEPHIYRIM NETOTS YHVH

אֱלֹהִים הֲרָס שִׁנֵּימוֹ בְּפִימוֹ מַלְתְּעוֹת כְּפִירִים נְתֹץ יְהוָה

KJ (58:6): Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD.

BN: Break their teeth, Elohim, while they are still in their mouth; rip out the molars of the young lions, YHVH.

How rare in this Second Book - a mention of YHVH! I am also starting to keep track of the number of occasions when both Elohim and YHVH are addressed in the same verse (verse; let alone the same Psalm), and it is clearly a different entity that is being addressed on each of the two occasions; the argument against the explanation of the J-E disparity, though also confirmation of the reality of that disparity.

How many parts of the human anatomy have been mentioned in this Psalm, whether directly, like the teeth here, or indirectly, like the APH of verse 3 (and 12)?

SHINEYMO...PHIYMO. Today we would say SHINEYHEM and PIYHEM, but at what date did that change take place?

58:8 YIMA'ASU CHEMO MAYIM YIT'HALCHU LAMO YIDROCH CHITSO KEMO YIT'MOLALU

יִמָּאֲסוּ כְמוֹ מַיִם יִתְהַלְּכוּ לָמוֹ יִדְרֹךְ חִצּוֹ כְּמוֹ יִתְמֹלָלוּ

KJ (58:7): Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces.

BN: Reject them, like water that turns in circles; {N} when he fires his arrows, let him be the one that they cut off.

I need a serious expert in grammar to help me with this. The first Kaf-Mem-Vav is rendered as CHEMO (כְמוֹ), the second as KEMO (כְּמוֹ). Both follow a Vav Menukad, but the first has the dot inside it, and is rendered as a U (YIMA'ASU), the second has the dot on top of it, and is rendered as an O (CHITSO) - this is the only distinction I can identify, and I was unaware that this softened the consonant in the word that follows. What am I missing? And if one is wrong, which one is it?

It is also worth pointing that the full KEMO/CHEMO is used here, rather than the abbreviation KE/CHE, which is more commonplace. I do wonder if this isn't all just an excuse by the writer to get yet one more CH sound into the polyphony.

YIMA'ASU: Why is this "melt" or "flow away" in most translations? I am looking at Leviticus 26, verses 15, 43 and 44, and I am seeing "reject", which I hereby now do to the KJ translation.

YIT'HALCHU: The root is HALACH, "to go". But the form is Hitpa'el, which is reflective. And LAMO, "to him", goes with YIT'HALCHU, not with YIDROCH (actually it goes with both, but it is only written once), which follows. So this is water that goes back to itself, round and round uselessly, failing to flow anywhere at all (no type of path at all: a maze, a cul-de-sac, a no through road, a going-nowhere).

YIDROCH: Two types of path, a HALACHAH and a DERECH, one spiritual and legal, one commercial and military, mirroring each other in the sentence. Ditto YIT'HALCHU and YIT'MOLALU, mirrored grammatically, but also in the religious metaphor concealed within. I played a word-game with MILAH earlier, and did so for a reason - the reason is here. The Brit Milah is the circumcision of the male child at eight days, bringing him into the HALACHAH by this DERECH. The root of YIT'MOLALU is MUL, "to circumcise", which is why you cannot have the KJ's "cut him in pieces". Just one piece, please; the foreskin (one more body-part for your list!).

I also cannot hear the image of a man firing his arrows, and be in the midst of a series of Psalms in which David has fled the anger of Sha'ul and is living in the wilderness, and not be drawn to 1 Samuel 20, verse 20 especially, but you need to read the whole chapter to see the two "ways" etc.

58:9 KEMO SHABLUL TEMES YAHALOCH NEPHEL ESHET BAL CHAZU SHAMESH

כְּמוֹ שַׁבְּלוּל תֶּמֶס יַהֲלֹךְ נֵפֶל אֵשֶׁת בַּל חָזוּ שָׁמֶשׁ

KJ (58:8): As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.

BN: Let them be like a snail which extrudes slime as it passes along the way; like the untimely births of a woman, that never see the sun.

SHABLUL: I am not sure which of two possible word-games is being played here, but probably both.

i) The snail most famous for doing this is the murex, which provided the Hyksos of Yoseph's and Mosheh's time, and the Phoinikim and the Kena'anim of Shelomoh's time, with the principal source of their wealth, and the reason why both the Hyksos and the Phoenicians established trading colonies across the Mediterranean: they used that slime to make dyes for clothing, the natural Argaman being the richest and purest and eventually the "royal" purple. See Exodus 28, especially verse 6 - and once again this Psalm is simultaneously destroying the bad, and using the remnants of the bad to make the good: in this case the garments of the priests and the nobility.

ii) The root of SHABLUL is SHAVAL, and it is presumably the shape of the snail that gets "snail" as a derivative, because really it means something that sticks out, or sticks up. A snail's head does from its shell. The train of a royal or bridal gown does likewise, in Isaiah 47:2. Ears of corn do the same (Genesis 41:5, Job 24:24) poking up from the ground when they are ripe, though whether you pronounce them as SHIBOLET or SIBOLET is a matter to be determined at Judges 12:6.

YAHALOCH: As with LAMO in the previous verse, this seems to be servicing both ends of the sentence simultaneously; simultaneously, but without bothering to repeat it, as I have done, because doing so is cumbersome in poetry. The root again takes us to HALACHAH.

NEPHEL: Probably a miscarriage rather than an abortion or a stillbirth, but the important things here are that a) we are back with the BETEN and the RECHEM of verse 4; b) the verb chosen is once more not the one we might expect, but it derives from PO'AL, for which see TIPH'ALUN at verse 3.

BAL CHAZU SHAMESH: Not even HISTIR PANAV this time, which is a denial of YEVARECHECHA; this is its complete opposite: permanency and eternality in the northern sky, at night, in winter.

58:10 BE TEREM YAVIYNU SIYROTEYCHEM ATAD KEMO CHAI KEMO CHARON YIS'ARENU

בְּטֶרֶם יָבִינוּ סִּירֹתֵיכֶם אָטָד כְּמוֹ חַי כְּמוֹ חָרוֹן יִשְׂעָרֶנּוּ

KJ (58:9): Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath.

BN (literal translation): Before your pots can feel the thorns, he will sweep them away with a whirlwind, the raw and the burning alike.

How do inanimate, non-sensory pots "feel" thorns? By word-play, obviously. We are beginning to learn that words in these Psalms are never chosen by accident, but always (almost always) have a secondary meaning. So we have to learn to look the words up in dictionaries, and see what else they might mean (that's "mean" as in "be interpretable as", and not "mean" as in "ungenerous" or "miserly"). So, given that I don't mean to be mean...

SARAH, not the name of Av-Ram's wife, which is spelled with a Seen rather than a Samech, but SARAH, as in Deuteronomy 19:16, which is exactly what this Psalm is talking most about, and in a "house of righteousness" too, just as verse 2 described it: "lies", "perjuries", "false testimony". But the same word had already appeared in Deuteronomy 13:6, and will again in Jeremiah 28:16, and Isaiah 31:6, and many others, and in each of those its meaning goes beyond the law-court as a house of righteousness, and expects the whole world to deserve that generous sobriquet: any form of turning away from the HALACHAH is counted as a SARAH.

ATAD: Buckthorn, according to Judges 9:14/15. Rhamnus Paliurus - which is doubly ineresting if you are a Christian, because this is the thorn from which Christ's crown was made. And actually that confirms the double-meaning here, because ATAD... but I am going to be mean, and not repeat, I say not repeat myself: go to my note at the Judges link. It's all there. (And for those who can't be bothered, the root means "to make firm", which is what you do when you agree a covenant, you sign your "confirmation", which is the Christian word for Bar Mitzvah, which is the time when you affirm your confirmation...)

CHARON: Explained alongside the ATAD at my Judges link. (Sins have to be burned away, because fire is the only way to get rid of them. In the form of sacrificial offerings, on the altar.)

YIS'ARENU: Straightforwardly a storm or whirlwind. Nostalgically, for me, the root yields the kibbutz where I spent three and a half of the best years of my life, and wrote "The Argaman Quintet"... but possibly more relevant, the same root yields SE'IR, which means "hairy", and is the name of a place of some significance in the Tanach - but best go to the link and read about it there; you will see several overlaps with this Psalm, and one in particular with the ATAD of this verse.

BN (interpretative translation): Before your turnings away from the true path can lead to nothing but thorns, he will sweep both the turnings and the thorns away in the storm of his anger, the ones that are taking place even now, all of them taken up in the sacrificial fire.

58:11 YISMACH TSADIYK KI CHAZAH NAKAM PE'AMAV YIRCHATS BE DAM HA RASH'A

יִשְׂמַח צַדִּיק כִּי חָזָה נָקָם פְּעָמָיו יִרְחַץ בְּדַם הָרָשָׁע

KJ (58:10): The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.

BN: The righteous man will rejoice when he witnesses the taking of revenge; he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.

TSADIK: You knew from my comments in the last verse that we were completing the path (derech as well as halachah this time) that leads back to the "house of righteousness" of verse 2. So here he is, the TSADIK, the righteous man, one of the 36 "Lamedvavnickim" on whom the upstandingness of the world depends.

CHAZAH: And yet again not the word we would expect. "To see" is always LIR'OT. But a CHOZEH is a "seer", a person who has the ability to look inwards, to explain the world with "insight". Exodus 24:11 is probably the intention here, but see also Psalm 63:3, and Numbers 24:4 for the general intent.

And if I have gone for "witness" here, it is partly because English doesn't have an equivalent pun, but "witness" allows me to place it in the court-house and treat "vengeance" as a sentence (that's sentence as in court-verdict, not an extended phrase or clause, though of course it is that as well. And be grateful I'm doing this in English not in French, or we would have to put all these word-games on parole).

PE'AMAV: See my notes at Psalm 57:7.

58:12 VE YOMAR ADAM APH PERI LA TSADIYK ACH YESH ELOHIM SHOPHTIM BA ARETS

וְיֹאמַר אָדָם אַךְ פְּרִי לַצַּדִּיק אַךְ יֵשׁ אֱלֹהִים שֹׁפְטִים בָּאָרֶץ

KJ (58:11): So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth.

BN: And men shall say: "Verily there is a reward for the righteous; verily there is a deity who judges on the Earth." {P}

I like the idea that PERI, which means "fruit", is here understood to mean "reward".

And I presume that this was the verse in my ancestor Rebbe Menachem-Mendl of Kocke's mind, when he insisted the precise opposite, "Ayn diyn ve ayn dayan", "there is no Judge, and there is no Justice".

But we have one more question to ask before we can end, and it applies to Psalm 57 as well, and will apply to Psalm 59, because all three are titled "AL TASHCHET", which means, as we understood it, "DO NOT DESTROY". And yet here is the unrighteous man, totally destroyed, burned like buckthorn in a summer wildfire, swept away in a whirlwind. So how can this mean "DO NOT DESTROY"? Is the Psalmist asking the deity not to carry out verse 10? No, because verse 11 exults, and verse 12 affirms its righteousness. Does AL then mean "ON" and not "DO NOT"? "A Psalm on the destruction of unrighteousness". Unlikely, but plausible.

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