TheBibleNet: Psalm 68

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

KJ merges verse 1 into the title - I have adjusted the verse numbers accordingly.

68:1 LA MENATSE'ACH LE DAVID MIZMOR SHIR

לַמְנַצֵּחַ לְדָוִד מִזְמוֹר שִׁיר

KJ (King James translation): (To the chief Musician, A Psalm or Song of David.) Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him.

BN (BibleNet translation): For the Artistic Director. An accompanied song. For David.

MIZMOR SHIR: See my notes in the "Introduction to the Psalms". And for LA MENATSE'ACH, see my notes at Psalm 51:1.

68:2 YAKUM ELOHIM YAPHUTSU OYEVAV VE YANUSU MESANAV MIPANAV

יָקוּם אֱלֹהִים יָפוּצוּ אוֹיְבָיו וְיָנוּסוּ מְשַׂנְאָיו מִפָּנָיו

KJ (68:1): as above

BN: Let Elohim arise. Let his enemies be scattered. And let those who hate him flee before him.

In Numbers 10:35 we have an almost identical verse, Elohim there too:

10:35 VA YEHI BINSO'A HA ARON VA YOMER MOSHEH KUMAH YHVH VA YAPHUTSU OYEVEYCHA VA YENUSU MESANEYCHA MI PANEYCHA

וַיְהִי בִּנְסֹעַ הָאָרֹן וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה קוּמָה יְהוָה וְיָפֻצוּ אֹיְבֶיךָ וְיָנֻסוּ מְשַׂנְאֶיךָ מִפָּנֶיךָ

KJ: And it came to pass, when the ark set forward, that Moses said, Rise up, LORD, and let thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee before thee.

BN: And it came to pass, when the Ark set forward, that Mosheh said: "Rise up, YHVH, and let your enemies be scattered; and let those who hate you flee before you."

Almost identical, but for one key difference (the Numbers verse, by the way, is sung when the scrolls are taken out in synagogue). I included the bracket to create a pause, to give you time to cross-check what the difference was. Numbers is in the 2nd person, speaking directly to the deity; here it is in the 3rd person, speaking about him. We witnessed exactly the same with BARUCH at Psalm 66:20 (and several times before that as well) - baruch atah in the later prayers, especially the Talmudic, barchu in the older ones.

What we cannot know is: was Mosheh quoting the Psalm, or the Psalm quoting Mosheh? (Which sounds, I know, like a very odd question: but some of these Psalms are very ancient, and the Mosheh epic wasn't written down until about 450 BCE.)

OYEVAV...MESANAV...MIPANAV: a triple internal rhyme, compelled by grammar, but wonderfully musical anyway, especially if you allow the rhyme-words to define the rhythm of the recital, as the meaning of the verse likewise compells you to do, four words (or possibly 2+2) for the first phrase, then three for the second phrase, and a single word to complete it.

68:3 KE HINDOPH ASHAN TINDOPH KE HIMES DONAG MIPNEY ESH YO'VDU RESHA'IM MIPNEY ELOHIM

כְּהִנְדֹּף עָשָׁן תִּנְדֹּף כְּהִמֵּס דּוֹנַג מִפְּנֵי אֵשׁ יֹאבְדוּ רְשָׁעִים מִפְּנֵי אֱלֹהִים

KJ (68:2): As smoke is driven away, so drive them away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.

BN: As smoke is driven away, so drive them away; {N} as wax melts before the fire, so let the wicked perish before Elohim.

Again in three parts: four words, five words, four words. Unless something specifically merits commentary, I will leave my reader to follow this through the remaining verses and identify for yourself if, and how, it continues.

68:4 VE TSADIYKIM YISMECHU YA'ALTSU LIPHNEY ELOHIM VE YASIYSU VE SIMCHAH

וְצַדִּיקִים יִשְׂמְחוּ יַעַלְצוּ לִפְנֵי אֱלֹהִים וְיָשִׂישׂוּ בְשִׂמְחָה

KJ (68:3): But let the righteous be glad; let them rejoice before God: yea, let them exceedingly rejoice.

BN: And let the righteous be glad; let them exult before Elohim; let them rejoice and be happy.

68:5 SHIRU L'ELOHIM ZAMRU SHEMO SOLU LA ROCHEV BA ARAVOT BE YAH SHEMO VE ILZU LEPHANAV

שִׁירוּ לֵאלֹהִים זַמְּרוּ שְׁמוֹ סֹלּוּ לָרֹכֵב בָּעֲרָבוֹת בְּיָהּ שְׁמוֹ וְעִלְזוּ לְפָנָיו

KJ (68:4): Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH, and rejoice before him.

BN: Sing to Elohim, make music in praise of his name. {N} Extol she who rides across the skies, whose name is Yah; and exult yourself before her.

I need to check, but I believe this is the first overt reference to Yah in the Psalms (not counting Hallelu-Yah).

This, I believe, is how the original would have been, though obviously the verbs would have been in the feminine too. It is unclear precisely when the theology required the removal of the female deity(ies), and indeed the other male deities, but the evidence of the books of Ezra and Nechem-Yah is that YHVH was still YHVH Tseva'ot, the head of the polytheon, in their time, so it will have taken place just before or during the Hasmonean age. From that time on, YHVH rules alone, and all previous deities are absorbed into him, with the consequent necessity of adding the insistence to the theology that it was ever thus from the beginning.

An alternative explanation of this is that this Psalm was written much later than the rest of Book Two, included precisely for the theological reason explained above. Further evidence for this may lie in the fact that the Book Two Psalms (thus far) are all extremely short, where this has thirty-six verses; and also the rhythmic construction noted above, which is rather more sophisticated than most of the Book Two Psalms (thus far).

Either way it is immensely ironic and paradoxical to find YAH even mentioned, whether as herself or transmogrified into pseudo-YHVH, in a Psalm that states and restates the Elohim, the polytheon, constantly - or perhaps this is where the idea is rooted that Elohim, like Yah, was always just another of YHVH's names, and there never was a polytheon. Such would be the response to this commentary of most modern Jews and Christians.

68:6 AVI YETOMIM VE DAYAN ALMANOT ELOHIM BI ME'ON KADSHO

אֲבִי יְתוֹמִים וְדַיַּן אַלְמָנוֹת אֱלֹהִים בִּמְעוֹן קָדְשׁוֹ

KJ (68:5): A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.

BN: A father of the fatherless, and a provider of justice for the widows, thus is Elohim in his holy habitation.

There are several quotes from the Qu'ran that would be worth referencing here. I have linked to a site that offers the text in Arabic and English, and recommend you to undertake the search for those references yourself. It will illuminate both the Tanach and the Christian Bible enormously.

MA'ON: means "habitation", which in the case of the deity could be one of several places, depending, yet again, on when this Psalm is set. If it was the Mosaic desert, then a tent, or the summit of Mount Chorev. If it is about the Elohim, then the skies. If it is a Hasmonean Psalm, then the Second Temple.

68:7 ELOHIM MOSHIV YECHIYDIM BAYETAH MOTS'I ASIYRIM BA KOSHAROT ACH SORARIM SHACHNU TSECHICHAH

אֱלֹהִים מוֹשִׁיב יְחִידִים בַּיְתָה מוֹצִיא אֲסִירִים בַּכּוֹשָׁרוֹת אַךְ סוֹרֲרִים שָׁכְנוּ צְחִיחָה

KJ (68:6): God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land.

BN: Elohim provides the homeless with housing; he gives those in jail the chance to earn an honest living; {N} while those who reject him inhabit a sterile land.

68:8 ELOHIM BE TSET'CHA LIPHNEY AMECHA BE TSA'DCHA VIYSHIYMON (SELAH)

אֱלֹהִים בְּצֵאתְךָ לִפְנֵי עַמֶּךָ בְּצַעְדְּךָ בִישִׁימוֹן סֶלָה

KJ (68:7): O God, when thou wentest forth before thy people, when thou didst march through the wilderness; Selah:

BN: Elohim, when you set out at the head of your people, when you marched through the wilderness... (Selah)

Normally I would want to insert an apostrophe before the Aleph (א) in TSET'CHA, to indicate the Beckettian pause which that half-vowel requires (TSE'T'CHA); I have left it out because two apostrophes in the same word could be confusing. I have used it for TSA'DCHA, where the pause is the same length, and note the musicality of those two hiatused-words.

VIYSHIYMON: This has me wondering. Yeshiymon as the original form of Shim'on, in the way that Bristol was once Brigstowe, and Bun Hill Fields (where Bunyan, Swift and Blake are buried) previously Bone Hill Fields? Given the physical location of Shim'on's tribal area, which is in the heart of the dryness of the Negev desert... but Shim'on is spelled with an Ayin (ע), and YESHIYMON is not (but see my notes on ASHER and OSHER at various points of the Tanach; ESTER and ISHTAR and ASHTORET ditto).

But again no (it is the job of the scholar to investigate possibilities, because they may prove correct, or, even if proving incorrect, they may lead to other discoveries). Cf Numbers 21:20, where Yeshiymon is in Mo-Av, a long way from Shim'on's tribal lands (a full list of references to Yeshiymon can be found here, and all confirm the Mo-Avi location)

The word only occurs as Yeshiymon, rathe than Yeshimon without the second Yud, on three occasions in the Tanach, all of them in the Psalms, here, Psalm 78:40 and 106:14; though there is also Shiymon (שִׁימ֔וֹן) in 1 Chronicles 4:20, and YISHMA (יִשְׁמָ֖א - with an Aramaic Aleph ending), in 1 Chronicles 4:3. The root appears to be YASHAM (ישם), for which see Genesis 47:19; but there are also three occasions in Ezekiel - 6:6, 12:19 and 19:7 - where a word is used that has the same meaning, and surely, therefore, must stem from the same root; except that the root on those occasions is reckoned by the scholars to be SHAMAM (שמם). I have no explanation for these anomalies.

68:9 ERETS RA'ASHAH APH SHAMAYIM NATPHU MIPNEY ELOHIM ZEH SINAI MIPNEY ELOHIM ELOHEY YISRA-EL

אֶרֶץ רָעָשָׁה אַף שָׁמַיִם נָטְפוּ מִפְּנֵי אֱלֹהִים זֶה סִינַי מִפְּנֵי אֱלֹהִים אֱלֹהֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל

KJ (68:8): The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God: even Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, the God of Israel.

BN: The Earth trembled, the heavens dripped rain at the presence of Elohim; {N} even this Sinai trembled at the presence of Elohim, the gods of Yisra-El.

RA'ASHAH: RA'ASH is "noise", so, from the rest of the sentence, this must be the Earth echoing and reverberating the claps of thunder.

NATPHU: And yet, at least in Judges 5:4, NATPHU it is understand as mere drops of rain. Which goes with the dripping of honey in Song of Songs 4:11, or myrrh in Songs 5:5. But thunder usually infers much heavier rain, and the fertility of the following verse requires it. When Mosheh's doctrine, from which Portia borrows her lines in "The Merchant of Venice" (Act 4 Scene 1), "drops from the heavens", the verb there is YA'AROPH - Deuteronomy 32:2.

ZEH SINAI: Which seems to insist that this is a Psalm from the epoch of Mosheh. The rest of the description in the verse likewise. But the account is in the past tense, so it is a case of remembering, not experiencing.

68:10 GESHEM NEDAVOT TANIPH ELOHIM NACHALAT'CHA VE NIL'AH ATAH CHONANTAH

גֶּשֶׁם נְדָבוֹת תָּנִיף אֱלֹהִים נַחֲלָתְךָ וְנִלְאָה אַתָּה כוֹנַנְתָּהּ

KJ (68:9): Thou, O God, didst send a plentiful rain, whereby thou didst confirm thine inheritance, when it was weary.

BN: You sent a most generous rainfall, Elohim; when your inheritance was losing faith from weariness, you did what was needed to revive it.

NACHALAT'CHA: The concept cannot be translated into English without explanation, and even then there is no English equivalent. Through Numbers, and the latter books of the Torah, the Beney Yisra-El are told to look forward to their "inheritance", which is the land of Kena'an as a whole (see Numbers 16:14 as a randomly chosen example), and the tribal territories in more specific (see Numbers 26:53). And at the same time, as part of their covenant, the Beney Yisra-El are presented at being the deity's "inheritance" - the gods get the people, the people get the land, the tribes get their portions (Deuteronomy 32:8/9).

And what an interesting coincidence, that the key verse about inheritance should come from the very same song, the very same chapter, as the lines about the rain, just six verses further along, and precisely the same keyword: NACHALATO.

68:11 CHAYAT'CHA YASHVU VAH TACHIN BE TOVAT'CHA LE ANI ELOHIM

חַיָּתְךָ יָשְׁבוּ בָהּ תָּכִין בְּטוֹבָתְךָ לֶעָנִי אֱלֹהִים

KJ (68:10): Thy congregation hath dwelt therein: thou, O God, hast prepared of thy goodness for the poor.

BN: Your people have settled in that land; make preparation, Elohim, in your goodness, for the poor.

CHAYAT'CHA: You will need to look at my pages on Yah and YHVH, and then CHAVAH (Eve), to understand the theology of this. In brief, the first two come from the verb LEHIYOT, meaning "to be", but only in the sense of essence, the primordial gases and molecules etc from which Creation became possible. That is then achieved by CHAVAH, "the mother of all living things" (Genesis 3:20), from the verb LECHIYOT, meaning "to exist", in the sense of being manifest in some physical form, whether a tree or a fish or in the case of living human creatures the Beney Yisrae-Eli nation. Really CHAYAT'CHA should be translated as "your living creatures", but that would infer the birds and reptiles and animals and the other indigenous tribes who also inhabit the land, and the text of this verse does not intend that inference.

TACHIN: Future tense: "you will"; or vocative tense: "do it"? Either way it raises a complaint against the almightytudinousness of the perfect and infallible deity.

"You gave us this land as an inheritance. Thank you. You promised us cows and bees. Thank you for that too. Well, we are here now. Half the land is uncultivatable desert. A quarter of the land is marsh and swamp. In what is usable, the drought is in its second year and the famine its third. You gave us a break with a most generous rainfall (see the last few verses), but unfortunately it washed away whatever was left of our dried-out crops. We who are starving still have faith in you, but we do need a little bit more of your generosity."

68:12 ADONAI YITEN OMER HA MEVASROT TSAV'A RAV

אֲדֹנָי יִתֶּן אֹמֶר הַמְבַשְּׂרוֹת צָבָא רָב

KJ (68:11): The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it.

BN (option a): My Lord gives the word; many are the women who proclaim its tidings.

BN (option b): My Lord hands out the barley seeds; many are the women who broadcast it.

OMER: Two options for this, and "the barley" seems to me the more likely in the context than "the word", even though the spelling here insists on "the word" (the sheaf of barley is spelt with an Ayin not an Aleph; and don't you just love my word-game with their word-game - click here if you didn't get it); but probably both options are intended. See Leviticus 23:9 ff, but especially the wording of verse 10, which is this Psalm to the last homophone.

68:13 MALCHEY TSEVA'OT YIDODUN YIDODUN U NEVAT BAYIT TECHALEK SHALAL

מַלְכֵי צְבָאוֹת יִדֹּדוּן יִדֹּדוּן וּנְוַת בַּיִת תְּחַלֵּק שָׁלָל

KJ (68:12): Kings of armies did flee apace: and she that tarried at home divided the spoil.

BN: Leaders of armies are put to flight, and how they flee; so she who sits quietly at home divides the spoil.

MALCHEY: No need to translate this as "kings", though the Commander-in-Chief may well be the monarch. The root is HALACH, meaning "to go", but in the Hiph'il, "causative" form, so a MELECH is simply any person who leads any group of people.

YIDODUN: I see the word YEDID in there, the "beloved" first part of David's full name; but the translations take us to a completely different root, NADAD, which does indeed mean "flee", though it could just as well be a tactical retreat.

But we also need to notice the grammar. I think it may just be that they were still working out gerunds and gerundives in King James' time - there is a splendid article on the subject at

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41116298_Gerunds_in_Shakespearean_English

but I think you might have to subscribe to read the whole of it. Shakespeare experiments with it, in "The Tempest" especially, but also Hamlet - both late plays, you'll find nothing like it in the early ones: so he has Hamlet say "to be or not to be", but Sartre speaks of "Being and Nothingness"; the same intellectual debate, but one in verb form, the other in gerunds (though actually Sartre's original, "L'Être et le Néant", could be argued to have one of each). The Yehudit in our verse uses the gerund, and passively.

NEVAT: See under "definition" at the link; the reason for the link is in the next verse.

68:14 IM TISHKEVUN BEYN SHEPHATAYIM KANPHEY YONAH NECHPAH VA KESEPH VE EVROTEYHA BIYRAKRAK CHARUTS

אִם תִּשְׁכְּבוּן בֵּין שְׁפַתָּיִם כַּנְפֵי יוֹנָה נֶחְפָּה בַכֶּסֶף וְאֶבְרוֹתֶיהָ בִּירַקְרַק חָרוּץ

KJ (68:13): Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.

BN: When you lie among the sheepfolds, {N} the wings of the dove are covered with silver, and her feathers with the shimmer of greenish spikes.

Can't mention sheepfolds without thinking of David and Sha'ul - but check, because the precise language may not confirm the link (1 Samuel 24:3). See also my note on NEVAT in the previous verse. And Psalm 23 of course.

SHEPHATAYIM: And why KJ thinks they are "pots"... the question is raised by the pointing, because the word without nikud could as easily be SEPHATAYIM, which are the "lips" of a pot (the bit you pour the liquid through, unless there's a drought), though "lips" could just as easily be the ones you pour words through (unless you have lost faith in the generosity and goodness of the deity).

KANPHEY YONAH: They keep coming up, these wings! But this is no dove of the air, but rather a symbolic dove, Marian eventually, but for now... Asherah possibly, (or does that YEDID that I noticed infer YAH, David's full name being YEDID-YAH?). See my notes in several of the previous Psalms in Book Two.

EVROTEYHA: A "wing" or a "feather" in Isaiah 40:31 or Ezekiel 17:3, but those are plain EVER, masculine singular, where this is EVRAH, but rendered in the feminine plural; cf Deuteronomy 32:11 (yes, we seem to be taking lots of this Psalm from that chapter), Psalm 91:4, Job 39:13. So this dove is feminine - and you can read out the theology of that without needing my assistance; but if you are struggling, click here for the feminist explanation, here for the patriarchalist.

YARAKRAK: And yet again I have to challenge KJ. YAROK is green, not yellow. Yellow is TSAHOV (צהוב), which makes a splendid homophone with the word for gold, which is ZAHAV (זהב). But, alas, neither of those are in use here. How does YARAK become YARAKRAK? See my notes at Leviticus 13:49.

CHARUTS: Nothing to do with gold. A sharply pointed object is CHARATS. We are planting barley here. The stem of the barley is known in English as its "spike". Quod erat demonstrandum.

And having undertaken all that breakdown of the words used in this verse, can we now deduce what it might possibly mean? Obviously it's poetry, and therefore metaphorical. I think - but I am only speculating - that we are in the Kena'ani world, before the Beney Yisra-El adopted and adapted this hymn, and we are making an ikon of the fertility goddess, using that precious commodity silver, but painting her, and shaping her wings, to look like the ripe barley whose sheaves we have been "counting" for the last... who can say exactly, but by the end there will have been forty-nine of them since we broadcast the seeds at Pesach, with a pause for special dancing and festivities on the thirty-third day (three is her sacred number), and finally Shavu'ot itself, the barley harvest.

68:15 BE PHARESH SHADAI MELACHIM BAH TASHLEG BE TSALMON

בְּפָרֵשׂ שַׁדַּי מְלָכִים בָּהּ תַּשְׁלֵג בְּצַלְמוֹן

KJ (68:14): When the Almighty scattered kings in it, it was white as snow in Salmon.

BN: When Shadai routed kings there, it was snowing in Zalmon.

PHARESH: Whih takes us back to the correct translation of YIDODUN at verse 13.

SHADAI: Av-Raham's name for the deity. Are the names different because the addressee is different? And if so, do they originate with different tribes, cults, shrines, reasons for worship, times of year or week or even day, but somehow they all got collected together in a single unifying anthology? Hymns to Shadai written for the fertility rites, in this case the harvest festivals, at Chevron, or Mamre, but later absorbed into the cult in Yeru-Shala'im, as these Jewish Psalms have been absorbed into the Christian liturgy.

And then, see the next verse, and tell me why, if this was originally a Yehudan Psalm, the mountain of the deity is suddenly in Bashan, and not Tsi'on.

TASHLEG: A rare form of the verb, but one that has proven extremely useful for modern Ivrit, which likes to keep the ancient language as often as it can. So, for example, you wish to refuel a plain in mid-air (they needed to do this for the Entebbe Raid in 1976). Fuel is "DELEK". LETADLEK was the verb invented for the occasion, and still in use. Here, we need to understand its significance figuratively: if it was snowing, it must have been winter; the time before the broadcasting of the barley seed.

TSALMON: Is there any connection with Tsalmun'a, the king of Midyan? Probably not, unless he was himself a mythological character, a variant of Sha'ul. And the next verse confirms not, despite the homphone: the mountain of Elohim in Midyan was Chorev, not Bashan.

The key to this, including the homophone, is the root TSELEM, which means "a shadow", and TSAL-MAVET (Psalm 23 again) is the "shadow of death". So it wasn't just snowing in winter, but snowing in the Underworld, which of course the winter is: one in space, the other in time.

68:16 HAR ELOHIM HAR BASHAN HAR GAVNUNIM HAR BASHAN

הַר אֱלֹהִים הַר בָּשָׁן הַר גַּבְנֻנִּים הַר בָּשָׁן

KJ (68:15): The hill of God is as the hill of Bashan; an high hill as the hill of Bashan.

BN: The mountain of Elohim is the mountain of Bashan; a mountain with many peaks is the mountain of Bashan.

From the structure we have to allow for the fact that some things are written for singing, and the music has already been written, so never mind the grammar or the syntax.

KJ gets round the issues here by making it "as" Bashan, but the Yehudit does not say that. The Sar Shalom translation (click here) gets round it with "a mountain", but this too is not what the Yehudit says. "The mountain of Elohim is Mount Bashan; Mount Bashan is full of high peaks" is what it says, literally. Bashan is known today as the Golan Heights. So we can say for certain that this was a much earlier, pre Yisra-Eli Psalm.

BASHAN: The area that became the tribal "inheritance" of East Menasheh, the northern Golan Heights, and further north into what is now Syria (click here for a fuller account of the place). Mount Chermon provides the northernmost point of Bashan, and is very much a snow-covered mountain for much of the year - is the intention here that "the mountain of Bashan" is in fact Chermon? If not, and the Golan is intended, should we not translate this as "hill" rather than "mountain"?

But meaning what? Olympus-Valhalla, or simply "awesome". Check back on references to Bashan earlier - Og for example, and Siychon, and all that nonsense with Bil'am.

68:17 LAMAH TERATSDUN HARIM GAVNUNIM HA HAR CHAMAD ELOHIM LE SHIVTO APH YHVH YISHKON LA NETSACH

לָמָּה תְּרַצְּדוּן הָרִים גַּבְנֻנִּים הָהָר חָמַד אֱלֹהִים לְשִׁבְתּוֹ אַף יְהוָה יִשְׁכֹּן לָנֶצַח

KJ (68:16): Why leap ye, ye high hills? this is the hill which God desireth to dwell in; yea, the LORD will dwell in it for ever.

BN: Why do you look askance, you mountain-peaks, {N} at the mountain which Elohim has desired for his abode? Yea, YHVH will dwell there for ever.

TERATSDUN: "Why do you fume with envy?" in the New King James - click here for a list of variants, which includes "hatred" rather than "envy"; the more interesting ones are lower down the linked page: amongst them "gaze askance", "what do you seek?" and even "scorn".

The deciphering of this must lie with the root, which is RATSAD, and, alas, this is the only occasion in the entire Tanach when the root gets used, so we don't have any other text to compare it with and hopefully explain it. Type the word into a modern Hebrew on-line dictionary (click here) and it suggests "flicker", which adds one more possibility, but still not an explanation. Try it on Googletranslate and you get a choice between "leap", "jump" and "caper", with "lurk" and "skip" as optional extras - all of them taking us back to the original KJ, which is the only one I have found that translates it that way.

The text describes BASHAN as "the mountain of Elohim", and then, in this verse, suggests that YHVH will be happy to live there - but YHVH already has his own mountain-top home on Chorev, from which he will at some point (or has already, depending on when this is dated) move to Tsi'on, so a clear distinction is being made between the Valhalla-Olympus of the polytheon and the monothesitic shrine of YHVH, albeit (perhaps) with a touch of irony.

I am assuming that this sudden and unexpected mention of YHVH is a very late redaction; the Psalm is self-evidently not Yisra-Eli. But in Ezraic times, when the Omnideity was being established, there was a point to which statements about other gods could acceptably go, and understand that this really meant YHVH (even though it didn't); and then the point beyond which YHVH had to be named in person.

And it strikes me that - why Bashan? Which is to say, that long stretch of hills that is just about visible on a very clear day and a high lookout point, from the eastern hilltops of Yeru-Shala'im, and which will become the hills of south Mo-Av the full length of the West Bank of the Yarden, and then the real Golan Heights, and finally the snowy peak of Mount Chermon itself, which surely is the Everest of all this and therefore the real Olympus-Valhalla: an entire horizon of mountain summits, not quite on the scale of the Alps or the Himalayas (more like the Mendips and the Quantocks actually!), but still, the deitic heights. So perhaps it is all just poetry.

68:18 RECHEV ELOHIM RIBOTAYIM ALPHEY SHIN'AN ADONAI VAM SINAI BA KODESH

רֶכֶב אֱלֹהִים רִבֹּתַיִם אַלְפֵי שִׁנְאָן אֲדֹנָי בָם סִינַי בַּקֹּדֶשׁ

KJ (68:17): The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place.

BN: The chariots of Elohim are myriads, even thousands upon thousands; my Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in Kadesh.

Nor should we be surprised at this second mention of Sinai, and not just the mention, but the very language; Mosheh's "Ha'azinu" at least twice previously, but that was the end of the wilderness journey; this takes us back to Mosheh's Song at the Red Sea (Exodus 15), at the start of that journey, verses 4 and 19 to be absolutely specific.

And how can Sinai be "the holy place" if Tsi'on is "the holy place", and Bashan "the mountain of the gods"? Universalism, alongside monotheism - the cult of the Ezraic epoch; a means of absorbing all the disparate peoples into a single, multi-cultural but singularly-religional society? It has to be that.

ADONAI: And saying "My Lord" allows all the variant deities to be included. In Bashan he would have been (still is today) Adonis, which is the source of the name ADONAI; but for the Samaritans of middle Kena'an (West Menasheh on the map, above) he would have been Oannes... et cetera.

KODESH: I think the Masoretes have the pointing wrong, and the name of the place, Kadesh. BE KADESH, not BA KODESH, which really isn't very meaningful in the context.

68:19 ALIYTA LA MAROM SHAVIYTA SHEVI LAKACHTA MATANOT BA ADAM VE APH SORERIM LISHKON YAH ELOHIM

עָלִיתָ לַמָּרוֹם שָׁבִיתָ שֶּׁבִי לָקַחְתָּ מַתָּנוֹת בָּאָדָם וְאַף סוֹרְרִים לִשְׁכֹּן יָהּ אֱלֹהִים

KJ (68:18): Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell among them.

BN: You ascended to the heights. You took the captives into captivity. You took gifts from men, {N} and even from those who stubbornly resisted giving them, so that Yah and Elohim might dwell there.

ALIYTA: Always a double-meaning (at least!) with this word; here it could mean the ascent to the home in the mountains, or the sun-god rising into the sky: hopefully my translation enables both.

YAH: It is phrased here in exactly the same way that YHVH and Elohim are occasionally combined, as though they were synonyms, or even two parts of the same name. But is this YAH the female moon-goddess, or the patriarchalised YAH of the later period?

68:20 BARUCH ADONAI YOM YOM YA'AMAS LANU HA EL YESHU'ATENU (SELAH)

בָּרוּךְ אֲדֹנָי יוֹם יוֹם יַעֲמָס לָנוּ הָאֵל יְשׁוּעָתֵנוּ סֶלָה

KJ (68:19): Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.

BN: Blessed be the Lord. Day by day he bears our burden, even the god who is our salvation. Selah

BARUCH ADONAI YOM YOM: Because the text comes unpunctuated, we have to decide for ourselves where the breaks come, and sometimes the meanings are ambiguous. Because I know this opening phrase from liturgy, I want to make the break after Yom Yom, and have the blessing daily; but most translators make the break after Adonai, and have the benefits daily.

ADONAI: "My Lord", not YHVH.

HA EL: yet another variant on the name - by the end of this Psalm, every known name will have been included!

68:21 HA EL LANU EL LE MOSHA'OT VE LE'YHVH ADONAI LA MAVET TOTSA'OT

הָאֵל לָנוּ אֵל לְמוֹשָׁעוֹת וְלֵיהוִה אֲדֹנָי לַמָּוֶת תּוֹצָאוֹת

KJ (68:20): He that is our God is the God of salvation; and unto GOD the Lord belong the issues from death.

BN: He is our god, the god of salvation, and to my Lord YHVH belong the issues of death.

MOSHA'OT...TOTSA'OT: Internal rhyme. MOSHA'OT once again confirms that the only Messiah is the deity, not some half-human Prophet sent in his name. TOTSA'OT yet again takes us back to the Mosaic, where "salvation" was precisely in the form of TOTSA'AH - any number of references that I could link to, but Deuteronomy 26:8 seems about as apt as we could find (why, it even explains the "captives" of verse 19).

68:22 ACH ELOHIM YIMCHATS ROSH OYEVAV KADKOD SE'AR MIT'HALECH BA ASHAMAV

אַךְ אֱלֹהִים יִמְחַץ רֹאשׁ אֹיְבָיו קָדְקֹד שֵׂעָר מִתְהַלֵּךְ בַּאֲשָׁמָיו

KJ (68:21): But God shall wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of such an one as goeth on still in his trespasses.

BN: Without doubt Elohim will wound the head of his enemies, will scalp the crown of the head of he who is to be sent to parade his guilt in public.

So we return to Bashan, and must begin to wonder, with all these Mosaic references, if we shouldn't go back to the Book of Numbers, to 21:33 and what follows from there, and then to Deuteronomy 3, which is probably just a re-telling of the Numbers story, and ask if this Psalm is not intended as a memorial to that particular war.

KADKOD...ASHAMAV: The Skimmerton or Skimmington in mediaeval England; tarring and feathering in more recent northern Ireland, though actually it is just as ancient in its origins. Methods of public shaming, of which this is one of the most commonplace, and the most basic - click here.

MIT'HALACH: Key to my translation, this use of the Nitpa'el, which actually doesn't exist as a verb form, except as a theoretical: the passive form of the reflexive.

68:23 AMAR ADONAI MI BASHAN ASHIV ASHIV MI METSULOT YAM

אָמַר אֲדֹנָי מִבָּשָׁן אָשִׁיב אָשִׁיב מִמְּצֻלוֹת יָם

KJ (68:22): The Lord said, I will bring again from Bashan, I will bring my people again from the depths of the sea:

BN: The Lord said: 'I will bring back from Bashan, I will bring them back from the depths of the sea;

Bashan is nowhere near the sea. And bring back what, or who? Again I find myself compelled to ask: does this all mark a specific historic incident? If so - which one? Because there is no captivity in Bashan in the two Mosheh stories.

Or are we now referencing back to the earlier verses, and justifying the transfer of the holy place from Bashan to Yeru-Shala'im? Oannes, the principal deity of that region, was depicted as a sea-monster - whence the Yonah tale - so this would make sense, poetically. And if so, does this now confirm the hypothesis (see my notes throughout Exodus) that Chorev was in Midyan, not Sinai, and therefore the holy mountain that is being spoken of throughout this Psalm is really Chorev?

MI METSULOT: Or MIM'TSULOT?

68:24 LEMA'AN TIMCHATS RAGLECHA BE DAM LESHON KELAVEYCHA ME OYEVIM MINEHU

לְמַעַן תִּמְחַץ רַגְלְךָ בְּדָם לְשׁוֹן כְּלָבֶיךָ מֵאֹיְבִים מִנֵּהוּ

KJ (68:23): That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the same.

BN: That your foot may wade through blood, that your dog's tongue may receive its portion from your enemies.

KELAVEYCHA: And it may just mean the pet pitbull or the parental poodle, but we cannot hear "dog" in a Psalm of David, and not hear KALEV the man, KALEV ben Yephuneh, who was the other of the spies, alongside Yehoshu'a, who spoke positively of invading Kena'an and conquering it, and was rewarded by being given Chevron as his inheritance - the very city where David, not one of Kalev's descendants, was made king. How is it relevant here? I have no idea, but if you are writing a musical about the second world war, and you set your family saga in a town named Churchill, people are going to assume you did so for a reason.

And now see my note at Psalm 59:7.

68:25 RA'U HALIYCHOTEYCHA ELOHIM HALIYCHOT ELI MALKI VA KODESH

רָאוּ הֲלִיכוֹתֶיךָ אֱלֹהִים הֲלִיכוֹת אֵלִי מַלְכִּי בַקֹּדֶשׁ

KJ (68:24): They have seen thy goings, O God; even the goings of my God, my King, in the sanctuary.

BN: They see your paths, Elohim, the coming and goings of my god, my king, in holiness.

HALIYCHOTEYCHA: Playing with MIT'HALECH in verse 22. That was a person guilty because of sin. But how do you know what is sin? You need a HALACHAH, same root, which comes from the deity.

KODESH: And following up the note to the previous verse, does this also want us to pick up the statement in verse 18? See my note there. KJ clearly thinks it does this time, though it went for "holy" on the previous occasion. I happen to think it is intended to mean "holiness" on this occasion, but has been playing with that word too.

68:26 KIDMU SHARIM ACHAR NOGNIM BETOCH ALAMOT TOPHEPHOT

קִדְּמוּ שָׁרִים אַחַר נֹגְנִים בְּתוֹךְ עֲלָמוֹת תּוֹפֵפוֹת

KJ (68:25): The singers went before, the players on instruments followed after; among them were the damsels playing with timbrels.

BN: At this point the singers should move forward, with the musicians following behind them, and the young women playing tamourines between them.

Is that not a stage direction, rather than a part of the libretto? It makes no sense at all as libretto. And if so, should there not also be a Nun or a Selah, before or after?

68:27 BE MAKHELOT BARECHU ELOHIM YHVH MIMKOR YISRA-EL

בְּמַקְהֵלוֹת בָּרְכוּ אֱלֹהִים יְהוָה מִמְּקוֹר יִשְׂרָאֵל

KJ (68:26): Bless ye God in the congregations, even the Lord, from the fountain of Israel.

BN: "May every congregation bless you, Elohim, YHVH, the source of Yisra-El."

MI MEKOR: Or MIMKOR?

Followed by a priestly benediction - logical enough, if the previous verse was indeed a stage direction. But again YHVH has to be a later addition.

68:28 SHAM BIN-YAMIN TSA'IR RODEM SAREY YEHUDAH RIGMATAM SAREY ZEVULUN SAREY NAPHTALI

שָׁם בִּנְיָמִן צָעִיר רֹדֵם שָׂרֵי יְהוּדָה רִגְמָתָם שָׂרֵי זְבֻלוּן שָׂרֵי נַפְתָּלִ

KJ (68:27): There is little Benjamin with their ruler, the princes of Judah and their council, the princes of Zebulun, and the princes of Naphtali.

BN: There is Bin-Yamin, the youngest, ruling them, the princes of Yehudah their council, the princes of Zevulun, the princes of Naphtali.

Why these? And why are they being mentioned? Yeru-Shala'im, of course, is in the tribal territory of Bin-Yamin, which is why he "rules" them; Is this meant to be a listing of all the tribes - and as such the explanation of MAKHELOT in the previous verse?

But if so - where are the other tribes? Are there verses that have gone missing? If it was after 720 CE, when Sennacherib took the majority of the tribes that still remained into captivity, we would expect just Bin-Yamin and Yehudah, and possibly a mention of Shim'on, who had been absorbed into Yehudah centuries before. But this mentions Zevulun and Naphtali, both located around the Sea of Galilee - and yet no Ephrayim or west Menasheh, which link B-Y and Y with E and W-M.

68:29 TSIVAH ELOHEYCHA UZECHA UZAH ELOHIM ZU PA'ALTA LANU

צִוָּה אֱלֹהֶיךָ עֻזֶּךָ עוּזָּה אֱלֹהִים זוּ פָּעַלְתָּ לָּנוּ

KJ (68:28): Thy God hath commanded thy strength: strengthen, O God, that which thou hast wrought for us.

BN: Your gods have imbued you with strength; strengthen, O gods, that which you have made for us.

TSIVAH...UZAH: Masculine or feminine? And, based on the answer to that, which may be different for each of the two verbs - which deity? (TSIVAH is probably masculine, but the root ends with a Hey, so it could be either. UZAH is definitely feminine).

ZU: Is really there to make a word-play with UZECHA and UZAH, but needs to be translated anyway.

PA'ALTA: Much commentary on this in previous Psalms, so I shall not repeat myself. Very briefly, the Jewish god is a verb, not a noun, the eternal process of making and re-making the Cosmos. Verbs are... click here.

68:30 ME HEYCHALECHA AL YERU-SHALA'IM LECHA YOVIYLU MELACHIM SHAI

מֵהֵיכָלֶךָ עַל יְרוּשָׁלִָם לְךָ יוֹבִילוּ מְלָכִים שָׁי

KJ (68:29) Because of thy temple at Jerusalem shall kings bring presents unto thee.

BN: Out of your Temple in Yeru-Shala'im, from where kings shall bring presents to you.

I have questioned from the outset whether LE DAVID in the titles of these Psalms means "of David", as always translated, or "to David", as the word "LE" suggests. This verse assists my argument, because David cannot have written a Psalm which speaks about a Temple in Yeru-Shala'im; and if he had done so, as a futuristic fantasy, well, look at the trouble he got into just for suggesting there should even be one... this is addressed to him; and not even to him, the sacred-king representing the deity on Earth, but to the actual Yedid-Yah, Adonis himelf, the Risen Lord, the one who will be revived as Jesus a thousand years later - which also explains the multiple naming of the deity as Adonai, my Lord.

AL YERU-SHALA'IM is interesting too. AL really meaning "on", or possibly "above".

68:31 GE'AR CHAYAT KANEH ADAT ABIYRIM BE EGLEY AMIM MITRAPES BE RATSEY CHASEPH BIZAR AMIM KERAVOT YECHPATSU

גְּעַר חַיַּת קָנֶה עֲדַת אַבִּירִים בְּעֶגְלֵי עַמִּים מִתְרַפֵּס בְּרַצֵּי כָסֶף בִּזַּר עַמִּים קְרָבוֹת יֶחְפָּצוּ

KJ (68:30): Rebuke the company of spearmen, the multitude of the bulls, with the calves of the people, till every one submit himself with pieces of silver: scatter thou the people that delight in war.

BN (initial translation): Rebuke the wild beast of the reeds, the herd of ferocious bulls, and the calf so beloved of the people, every one bowing himself down before them with pieces of silver; {N} they will take great delight in scattering those who approach you.

This time we do have a Nun break, and it does seem that this section has been a completely different Psalm from the first. But what does it even mean? It sounds more like Prophetic oracle than Kohanic blessing. There are dozens of commentaries that you can read on-line, but all of them simply state the obvious, and do so by paraphrasing the words. But that isn't the issue. Most of these words insinuate metaphors and allegories and mythological aetiologies, and that is what the commentators need to try to unravel. So, here goes:

GE'AR: Straightforward and literal. "Rebuke" - and presumably it relates back to the kings of the last verse.

CHAYAT: Not necessarily "beasts", though that does carry a conveniently negative tone. The word means any living creatures, but they are being rebuked, so why not "beast".

KANEH: Yes, "stalks" and "reeds", as in the corn of Genesis 41:5, or the calamus in Isaiah 42:3. But KANAH is also "to buy", which would be a requirement to acquire those gifts in the previous verse. And then, just to make this more interesting, and still using KANEH for "acquisition" and "ownership", there is Genesis 14:19, a blessing just like the one at verse 27; and you can do the commentary yourself simply in your inevitable reaction to reading it. Read my note there as well, to save me making the Kayin connection here, but then go to Deuteronomy 32:6 (what, Deuteronomy 32 yet again in this Psalm?), and again you won't need my commentary.

And as to "the beasts of the reeds", can that be anything but Liv-Yatan himself, or Tahamat herself, the salt-water crocodile rather than the fresh-water alligator, the great serpent. Well, yes, actually it can. Because, based on the Genesis and Deuteronomy, "the beasts of the reeds" are "the creations of the gods", in all their forms.

ADAT: The root is ADAH, which can be used as a name to adorn a woman - see the link, because once again I am not going to repeat myself here. Hugely rich and complex word. Multiple meanings. And yes, a herd of bulls here, but the real EDUT is the congregation of Yisra-El... no, I am already repeating the link... So the bulls go with the crocodiles, into the realm of metaphor.

ABIYRIM: Yes, "mighty", but what name can you see, barely concealed in there. Ibrahim, Abi-Ram, Brahma, Av-Ram, Abu-Raham, Av-Raham... so many variants across the ancient Levant and further east: take your pick. The reason, originally, why the adjective "almighty" was applied to the god of Creation.

BE EGLEY: The only EGEL that ever gets serious mention is the golden one in Exodus 32, a false idol now, a gift to what by the time of this Psalm is the wrong deity, and made with all the jewelery that had been "acquired" from the Egyptians when the Habiru set out on their pilgrimage, the one described at the beginning of the Psalm, the one that ended, not at Bashan but at Chorev.

AMIM: Peoples, nations.

MITRAPES: The root, RAPAS, is the treading with the feet that turns grapes into wine, or makes mills work in factories (gyms have them too), or metaphorically crushes people who are already down. But this is in the Hitpa'el, which means you are doing it to yourself, a feat that would require remarkable gymnastic agility, but isn't achievable on a treadmill. Now look at Proverbs 6:3. Is that grovelling, if it is done before a deity? Or is simply an alternative to MISHTACHAVEH - a form of prostration?

BE RATSEY: If you know the Yehudit, or even the modern Ivrit, you are probably bewildered by this, because you are seeing the root RATS, "to run", and wondering if they are indeed on a gym treadmill and that is why I keep making the sad, bad jest. But I have already said that they are not. Look again, with a magnifying glass if necessary. The Tsade is medugash; there are two Tsades there. The root is RATSATS, which is all about tramping people down in order to break them into metaphorical pieces, at least in Deuteronomy 28:33; in 1 Samuel 12:3 it is about defrauding people and taking bribes, very much the intention of our verse. And funny that I mentioned Liv-Yatan a moment ago, because the other occurrence of RATSATS in this sense of crushing and breaking is at Psalm 74:14. And quite frankly weird (I would say "bizarre" but I will be accused of playing word-games again: see two words below) beyond coincidence to go to Amos 4:1 and see the other words besides this one in the verse there.

CHASEPH: How nice to have a simple word again, that means what it means, and nothing else (except that context changes that, of course!)

BIZAR: Ditto.

KERAVOT YECHPATSU: The translators need to go back to the lexicons of Yehudit grammar and recognise the difference between a verb and a noun, so that they can identify which is which in a sentence. See my translation. This has nothing to do with war.

BN (revised translation): Rebuke those reptiles of human beings, those beastly Cain-like creatures with their golden calves, prostrating themselves before false icons with their hands full of broken shards of silver that they are hoping to use as bribe-coins; {N} they will take great delight in scattering those who approach you.

68:32 YE'ETAYU CHASHMANIM MINI MITSRAYIM KUSH TARITS YADAV L'ELOHIM

יֶאֱתָיוּ חַשְׁמַנִּים מִנִּי מִצְרָיִם כּוּשׁ תָּרִיץ יָדָיו לֵאלֹהִים

KJ (68:31) Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.

BN: Men of great wealth shall come out of Egypt; Kush will rush to stretch out her hands to Elohim.

CHASHMANIM: The more usual word for "princes" in the Tanach is SARIM - שרים; this is not simply unusual, it is also very precisely specific: the CHASHMONIM, spelled exactly in this way in Josephus and elsewhere, were the descendants of Shim'on ben Mattit-Yahu, the youngest son of the man whose family led the revolt against the Greeks, resanctified the Temple at Chanukah, and ruled Yisra-El until the Roman conquest: the Hasmoneans.

This does not necessarily date the text, however. The Hasmonean revolt was in the middle of the 2nd century BCE, where the first redaction of the Tanach was in the middle of the 5th. Though it is possible that the text we have today was a 2nd century emendation.

But there is also CHESHMON, in Joshua 15:27, and CHESHMONAH, in Numbers 33:29, both of which are places. The root suggests "rich land", and the word came to be used as a generalisation for wealth, so a man with lots of servants would be described as CHASHUM. There is also the name CHASHUM, in Ezra 2:19 and Nehemiah 7:22.

KUSH: See the link.

68:33 MAMLECHOT HA ARETS SHIYRU L'ELOHIM ZAMRU ADONAI (SELAH)

מַמְלְכוֹת הָאָרֶץ שִׁירוּ לֵאלֹהִים זַמְּרוּ אֲדֹנָי סֶלָה

KJ (68:32): Sing unto God, ye kingdoms of the earth; O sing praises unto the Lord; Selah:

BN: Sing to Elohim, you kingdoms of the Earth. Make music for my Lord. (Selah)

Clearly we are now entering yet another section of this Psalm (this symphonic poem?) - worth going back and figuring out how many "movements" it has.

68:34 LA ROCHEV BISHMEY SHEMEY KEDEM HEN YITEN BE KOLO KOL OZ

לָרֹכֵב בִּשְׁמֵי שְׁמֵי קֶדֶם הֵן יִתֵּן בְּקוֹלוֹ קוֹל עֹז

KJ (68:33): To him that rideth upon the heavens of heavens, which were of old; lo, he doth send out his voice, and that a mighty voice.

BN: To he who rides on the heaven of heavens, which are ancient; lo, he utters his voice, a mighty voice.

LA ROCHEV...KEDEM: This is a description of Helios, Phaeton, and also No'ach, Icarus... anthropomorphic answers to the question: "if the Earth is fixed, and still, in the middle of the universe, how does the sun get from east to west and round again each day?"

KEDEM: If KUSH, above, was the Arabian rather than the African, then this is its other name.

KOL: "He utters his voice" and what comes out is the DAVAR, the "Word" of the deity, which is the abracadabra by which Creation happens: "let there be light". See my note to OMER at verse 12.

68:35 TENU OZ L'ELOHIM AL YISRA-EL GA'AVATO VE UZO BA SHECHAKIM

תְּנוּ עֹז לֵאלֹהִים עַל יִשְׂרָאֵל גַּאֲוָתוֹ וְעֻזּוֹ בַּשְּׁחָקִים

KJ (68:34): Ascribe ye strength unto God: his excellency is over Israel, and his strength is in the clouds.

BN: Attribute strength to Elohim. His majesty is over Yisra-El, and his strength is in the clouds.

TENU: One of the irregular Yehudit verbs, a rare break from the rigid patterns of the Binyanim. The root is LATET, and sometimes the second Tet is maintained (NATATI = "I gave", perfect tense, first person singular), but sometimes it is dropped (NOTEN = "I give" present tense, first person singular).

And then, to make things richer, or more difficult, depending on how negative or positive you are by temperament, the meaning of the word constantly shifts, and logically enough, because one can give bribe-gifts, or one can give advice, one can give away secrets or one can give succour and support. Here it is somewhere between ascribing and attributing, depending on whether you are saying it or giving it as coinage - but not as a bribe, as a donation to the maintenance funds of the Temple, a pledge for the upkeep of the religious school. One pays tribute, does one not? See Mark 12:17 for the Christian version.

SHECHAKIM: I am sure I have already commented on this in a previous Psalm, but worth repeating. The word really means "dust", but is used for "clouds" - and I am simply staggered that the ancients knew that much about how clouds formed, and why some clouds (which are made entirely of transparent vapour and therefore have no colour at all) appear to be white, while others appear to be dark. The answer, as mosern Physics will tell you (click here), is dust particles.

68:36 NOR'A ELOHIM MI MIKDASHEYCHA EL YISRA-EL HU NOTEN OZ VE TA'ATSUMOT LA AM BARUCH ELOHIM

נוֹרָא אֱלֹהִים מִמִּקְדָּשֶׁיךָ אֵל יִשְׂרָאֵל הוּא נֹתֵן עֹז וְתַעֲצֻמוֹת לָעָם בָּרוּךְ אֱלֹהִים

KJ (68:35): O God, thou art terrible out of thy holy places: the God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people. Blessed be God.

BN: Elohim is simply awesome, in all his holy places; {N} the god of Yisra-El, he gives strength and power to the people; {N} blessed be Elohim. {P}

Once again that 3rd person blessing.

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