Psalms:
Bk 1: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41
Bk 2: 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72
Bk 3: 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89
Bk 4: 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106
Bk 5: 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119a 119b 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132
133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150
Additional Psalms: 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 Samuel Chronicles
Essays: Intro - Music - Form & Language
23 verses may just be the random total it happened to come to; if the opening verse were just the title, then it would be 22, which is the number of letters in the alphabet. There are several other Psalms which do conform to this, so... but no, there is no obvious evidence of an accrostic here.
74:1 MASKIL LE ASAPH LAMAH ELOHIM ZANACHTA LA NETSACH YE'SHAN AP'CHA BE TSON MAR'IYTECHA
מַשְׂכִּיל לְאָסָף לָמָה אֱלֹהִים זָנַחְתָּ לָנֶצַח יֶעְשַׁן אַפְּךָ בְּצֹאן מַרְעִיתֶךָ
KJ (King James translation): (Maschil of Asaph.) O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever? why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?
BN (BibleNet translation): A teaching-Psalm. To Asaph. {N} Why, Elohim, have you cast us off for ever? Why does your anger smoke against the flock of your pasture?
Back to my endlessly repeated question about LE - "of" is the usual translation, regarding LE as an abbreviated form of SHEL (של); but LE is an abbreviated form of EL = "to", and the texts repeatedly contradict the possibility of it being "of".
74:2 ZECHOR ADAT'CHA KANIYTA KEDEM GA'ALTA SHEVET NACHALATECHA HAR TSI'ON ZEH SHACHANTA
KJ: Remember thy congregation, which thou hast purchased of old; the rod of thine inheritance, which thou hast redeemed; this mount Zion, wherein thou hast dwelt.
BN: Remember your congregation, which you acquired in ancient times, which you redeemed to be the tribe of your inheritance; {N} and Mount Tsi'on, which has been your dwelling-place.
Exactly the Brit or covenant that I mentioned in my notes to the last verse.
74:3 HARIYMAH PHE'AMEYCHA LE MASHU'OT NETSACH KOL HE RA OYEV BA KODESH
KJ: Lift up thy feet unto the perpetual desolations; even all that the enemy hath done wickedly in the sanctuary.
BN: Beat out time for the perpetual ruins, for all the evil that the enemy has done in the sanctuary.
HARIYMAH: Still more word-games. The root has to do with "raising up" and "exalting", and the English word Harem, the part of the palace inhabited by the women of the royal court, also comes from this root - see Amos 4:3 for example. So the word here insinuates the "palace" or "fortress" of Elohim, which is itself the "sanctuary.
KJ: Thine enemies roar in the midst of thy congregations; they set up their ensigns for signs.
BN: Your adversaries have caused an uproar in the midst of your meeting-place; they have set up their own ikons for worship.
But now we have to reconsider the Nebuchadnezzar assumption. Repeatedly, in the Book of the Kings, and in their own books, we encounter the Prophets railing against kings of Yisra-El who have turned away from Elohim, or from YHVH Tseva'ot, or both, and replaced the symbols in the Temple with golden calves or totem poles. So this could just as well be Yesha-Yah attacking Achaz, or Yirme-Yah venting against Yah-Zevel.
74:5 YIVADA KE MEV'I LEMA'LAH BI SAVACH ETS KARDUMOT
KJ: A man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees.
JPS (Jewish Publication Society translation): It seemed as when men wield upwards axes in a thicket of trees.
Two very different translations, neither of them mine; and how different again the language from any of those earlier David hymns.
BN (my translation): It will be known in the same way as those men who take up axes to cut down entire forests.
Eco-conservation, circa 500 BCE! Though it should not be ignored (no metaphor is ever chosen without intent in this book!) that an entire section of forest was already cut down, to provide the cedar and the acacia for the First Temple, and will be again, when the rebuild happens.
74:6 VE ET PITUCHEYHA YACHAD BE CHASHIL VE CHEYLAPOT YAHALOMUN
KJ: But now they break down the carved work thereof at once with axes and hammers.
BN: And right now they are hacking down all of its vaults and arches with their hatchets and their hammers.
VE ET: This appears to confirm my rethink at verse 4. Appears to... because time is being played with throughout this Psalm, as we have seen at verse 3, so it could be an aspect of that word-play... but the insinuation is that the Temple is being altered, not just the ikons replaced, but the very architecture redesigned. VE ET: right now.
74:7 SHILCHU VA ESH MIKDASHECHA LA ARETS CHILELU MISHKAN SHEMECHA
KJ: They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground.
BN: They have set your sanctuary on fire; they have profaned the dwelling-place of your name, even to the ground.
This is highly unlikely as a historical incident other than 586 BCE; there would surely be a record if the First Temple had been burnt down and rebuilt, or even fire-damaged and restored; but no, nothing. So it can only be: a) about another shrine altogether, somewhere else, and therefore the Psalm doesn't really belong in this collection; or b) this is Prophetic vision, imagining, fantasising... or c) as stated above.
74:8 AMRU VE LIBAM NIYNAM YACHAD SARPHU CHOL MO'ADEY EL BA ARETS
KJ: They said in their hearts, Let us destroy them together: they have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land.
BN: They said in their heart: "Let us make havoc of them altogether"'; they have burned up all the meeting-places of El in the land.
MO'ADEY EL: First of all, KJ, they didn't have synagogues in Yisra-El until... we don't actually know when, but the word is Greek, and the concept was Pharisaic, so not earlier than the Hasmonean period, which is after the Redaction of this Tanach.
But more significantly, this is EL, not YHVH. The Sanctuary in Yeru-Shala'im was YHVH... so the hypothesis is thrown back into doubt once more. If this is EL, then it could be any shrine, anywhere in Kena'an, at any moment of history. But if it is a Psalm about the destruction of a shrine of EL, what is it doing in a book of Yisra-Eli Psalms?
Going through this Psalm in this manner is also useful on another level, because it demonstrates the "error of lenses", to coin a phrase, that all us scholars make. Assumptions and presumptions, driven by our personal agenda. So: this is in the Book of Psalms, which is Yisra-Eli, so we must look for an explanation of it through the Yisra-Eli lens, Jewish if we are Jewish, Christian if we are Christian, secular if we are secular. And why should it not be someone else's Psalm, adopted and adapted? Shakespeare did the same with all of his Italian plays, and Chaucer rewrote the Decameron as the Canterbury Tales.
74:9 OTOTEYNU LO RA'INU EYN OD NAVI VE LO ITANU YODE'A AD MAH
KJ: We see not our signs: there is no more any prophet: neither is there among us any that knoweth how long.
BN: We look for signs, but see none; there are no longer any Prophets; no one among us can answer the question: "until what?".
AD MAH: No, the translation must be in error. "How long?" is Yesha-Yah's (Isaiah's) oft-repeated question (6:11 for the first instance), but Yesha-Yah doesn't say AD MAH, he says AD MATAI... oh wait... the very next verse begins with it...
74:10 AD MATAI ELOHIM YECHAREPH TSAR YENA'ETS OYEV SHIMCHA LA NETSACH
KJ: O God, how long shall the adversary reproach? shall the enemy blaspheme thy name for ever?
BN: How long, Elohim, shall the narrow-minded go on abusing you? Shall the enemy treat your name with contempt for ever?
Note the switch here from EL to ELOHIM.
And actually, now that we have made this Isaiac connection, much of the language in the earlier verses was very strongly reminiscent. But if it is an allusion to Y-Y's famous question, then the Psalm has to be dated later than his book... and we are back in Babylonian exile.
74:11 LAMAH TASHIYV YAD'CHA VIYMIYNECHA MI KEREV CHOKCHA CHALEH
KJ: Why withdrawest thou thy hand, even thy right hand? pluck it out of thy bosom.
BN (provisional translation): Why do you take back your hand, your right hand? Draw it out of your bosom and consume them.
YAD'CHA VIYMIYNECHA: We had this same right hand in the last Psalm, also in Asaph's collection, and also with a different meaning - divine rather than human - from the norm of the Bin-Yamin.
74:12 V'ELOHIM MALKI MI KEDEM PO'EL YESHU'OT BE KEREV HA ARETS
KJ: For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.
BN: But Elohim has been my king since ancient times, working salvation in the midst of the Earth.
MALKI: In the last Psalm we had El Elyon, with its implicit allusion to Malki-Tsedek, and thence Yeru-Shala'im. This likewise appears, albeit somewhat indirectly, to add weight to the Nebuchadnezzar hypothesis for this Psalm, by alluding in a similar way to Yeru-Shala'im.
PO'EL YESHU'OT: See my notes on both of these words, throughout the previous Psalms. But here, placing them side by side, the concept of Messiah, as understood by Judaism, is expressed at its most precise and concise - and it is utterly different from the Christian.
74:13 ATAH PHORARTA VE AZCHA YAM SHIBARTA RA'SHEY TANIYNIM AL HA MAYIM
KJ: Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.
BN: You broke the sea in pieces with your strength; you shattered the heads of the sea-monsters in the waters.
TANIYNIM: This is really Marduk of Babylon versus Apsu, or Abzu, though much of that Creation myth finds its way into the first version of Creation in the Book of Genesis. See my notes to Tohu, Tehom, Tiamat et al. And if the Psalm is from the Babylonian exile, then what better figure of speech to choose than that of Nebuchadnezzar's own deity!
74:14 ATAH RITSATSTA RA'SHEY LIV-YATAN TITNENU MA'ACHAL LE AM LE TSIYI
KJ: Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.
BN: You crushed the heads of Liv-Yatan. You gave him as food to the folk inhabiting the wilderness.
LIV-YATAN (the link here is to the text of Job 41): And still more, if this was written in Babylon, after the destruction, no surprise to find it referencing that great Babylonian epic which the Beney Yisra-El would bring home with them at the end of exile, fifty years later, the Book of Iyov (Job).
I presume "leviathan" with a lower case "l" is just a typing error in the on-line KJ.
Nothing in the Book of Iyov suggested that Liv-Yatan (this link is to my background page) had more than one head, but this is definitely plural. This link suggests seven, but alas does not state its source(s). The only other Biblical reference to Liv-Yatan is (why are we not surprised!) Isaiah 27:1, but Y-Y doesn't say anything about the number of his heads either. But then there is the Christian Book of Revelation... this link is to a very detailed essay on the seven-headed beasts, and includes a text from Ras Shamra (Ugarit) which does give Liv-Yatan seven heads. And why seven? Click here.
74:15 ATAH VAKA'TA MA'YAN VA NACHAL ATAH HOVASHTA NAHAROT EYTAN
KJ: Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood: thou driedst up mighty rivers.
BN: You cleaved both fountain and brook; you dried up the ever-flowing rivers.
74:16 LECHA YOM APH LECHA LAILAH ATAH HACHIYNOTA MA'OR VA SHAMESH
KJ: The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun.
BN: Yours is the day, yours the night; you established both the light and the sun.
Further confirmation of late date (though I am still inclined to view this as an ancient Kena'ani hymn, adopted and adapted, rather than being "written" in that later period); where the Davidic Psalms recognise both a male and female deity, indeed an entire pantheon of deities gathered under the generic Elohim and the specifics Yah, YHVH and Elohim, this is en route to becoming monotheistic. In the previous age, the female moon ruled the night, her sacred number reflecting her fullness, the Yud-Heh which spells and counts 15 = YAH; the sun ruled the day, his sacred number also being his instrument of fertility, the Zayin which is the penis and the Shabbat number seven; which is also, of course, the reason why the monster of Creation likewise had seven heads (originally there were seven deities, one per planet, and each had their own day: Sun, Moon, Tiu, Woden, Thor, Freya and Saturn in our week).
MA'OR VA SHEMESH: At what stage of human development were we first able to separate the light that comes from the sun from the source itself? Or was it perhaps the other way around: that at some point we began to register that the light was produced in some way by the sun, rather than being an entity per se? Energy is Light multiplied by Matter, squared. Apparently, according to this Psalm, so was Elohim (and see my notes on this throughout Genesis 1).
74:17 ATAH HITSAVTA KOL GEVULOT ARETS KAYITS VA CHOREPH ATAH YETSARTAM
KJ: Thou hast set all the borders of the earth: thou hast made summer and winter.
BN: You set all the boundaries of the Earth; you made summer and winter.
So too here, the monotheism is restated: in the previous epoch, the sun god went down into the netherworld through the winter months, was reborn in that realm on Sol Invictus, his former self sacrificed at the beginning of Spring so that he could immediately be reborn in his new incarnation, the reborn Sun, Tammuz, Shimshon, David, Jesus. But now all aspects of Nature are combined: one god, one cosmology.
And perhaps this is also why, the Davidic Psalms having "ended" with number 72, this Psalm is placed precisely here, at the start of a new epoch: the progress from the Mythological to the Metaphysical age.
GEVULOT: There is a significant difference between "borders" and "boundaries". Borders separate nations, and are defined by treaties, then moved by wars of conquest, redefined by new treaties. Boundaries are coastlines that define islands and continents, and are moved by soil erosion, silt, melting glaciers, shifting tectonic plates.
74:18 ZECHAR ZOT OYEV CHEREPH YHVH VE AM NAVAL NI'ATSU SHEMECHA
KJ: Remember this, that the enemy hath reproached, O LORD, and that the foolish people have blasphemed thy name.
BN: Remember this, how the enemy hath reproached the LORD, and how a base people have blasphemed Thy name.
CHEREPH: For which see verse 10.
74:19 AL TITEN LE CHAYAT NEPHESH TORECHA CHAYAT ANIYEYCHA AL TISHKACH LA NETSACH
KJ: O deliver not the soul of thy turtledove unto the multitude of the wicked: forget not the congregation of thy poor for ever.
BN: Do not render up the soul of your turtle-dove to the wild beast; do not forget the lives of your poor, ever.
TORECHA: Not No'ach's dove - that was a Yonah (Genesis 8:8). Leviticus 12:8 has two of them, sacrificed in place of a lamb. Mary and Joseph apparently sacrificed two turtle doves in Yeru-Shala'im at Jesus's birth (Luke 2:24), which is why there is a partridge in a pear tree on the first day of Christmas. In Cockney rhyming slang, "turtle-dove" for "love - a residue specifically of the goddess Demeter - click here.
74:20 HABET LA BERIT KI MAL'U MACHASHAKEY ERETS NE'OT CHAMAS
KJ: Have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.
BN: Look to the covenant; for the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence.
HABET: Endorsing my revised translation of verse 11.
NE'OT CHAMAS: is this intended in the sense of "dens of criminal gangs" and "hideaways of terrorists", or a more general recognition that husbands beat wives and mothers smack children?
74:21 AL YASHOV DACH NICHLAM ANI VE EVYON YEHALELU SHEMECHA
KJ: O let not the oppressed return ashamed: let the poor and needy praise thy name.
BN: Do not let the oppressed turn back in confusion; let the poor and needy praise your name.
My note to verse 17 commented on the placement of this Psalm after the Davidic had ended; and you noticed that I had appeared to ignore Psalm 73. That Psalm also made this transition, but it only becomes clear now, at verse 21 of this Psalm - in my comments on Psalm 73 I used the language of the proletarian revolutionary of the 20th century, seeking to overthrow the yolk of aristocratic oppression and religious superstition, to build a world on the idealisms of Truth, Justice, Mercy, Compassion. Abstract constructs, to replace a world in which Labour previously predominated: slavery, servitude, serfdom, vassaldom, almost entirely in the fields or in the factories that took the produce of the fields to their next stage. And precisely this is the transition of the Prophetic era that we are witnessing here. For David it was entirely about Fertility and "my sins", "my needs", "my repentance", "my enemies"; for the Major Prophets it is about "the people", "the poor and needy", "the oppressed", and a call to the deity to fulfill this part of the Covenant, not at the expense of the Fertility clauses, but as well.
Back to my endlessly repeated question about LE - "of" is the usual translation, regarding LE as an abbreviated form of SHEL (של); but LE is an abbreviated form of EL = "to", and the texts repeatedly contradict the possibility of it being "of".
MASKIL: See my Introduction to the Psalms.
LAMAH ELOHIM...YE'SHAN: The concept behind this is bizarrely heretical. How dare you suggest, you man of little faith, that I, Elohim, who cut the covenant in the first place, who created the world, who placed you, Humankind, in stewardship, that I... no wonder he's fuming at his flock. Or is that dormant volcano that exploded and left behind the Dead Sea showing signs of flaring up its bull-like nostrils yet again, and this about to be an attempt to propitiate it?
LAMAH ELOHIM...YE'SHAN: The concept behind this is bizarrely heretical. How dare you suggest, you man of little faith, that I, Elohim, who cut the covenant in the first place, who created the world, who placed you, Humankind, in stewardship, that I... no wonder he's fuming at his flock. Or is that dormant volcano that exploded and left behind the Dead Sea showing signs of flaring up its bull-like nostrils yet again, and this about to be an attempt to propitiate it?
ZANACHTA: I often find myself wondering if these Psalms are continuations of each other, or just happen to be in this order, or any one of several other reasons why they may have been combined (a festival, a daily liturgy or a particular ceremony...). I am also conscious of the endless word-games, especially the homophones and half-homonyms, which the Yehudit language encourages for its own sake, like a case of cake seen to be received in an English scene (s, c and k all having occasions to be pronounced as though they were one of the others, and z for s as well it being a soft c). So, in verse 27 of the last Psalm, the poet complained about people "whoring" after other gods, which is ZONEH, and the gods rightly reject them for doing so; here are the gods again rejecting them, and the verb used simply changes the Hey (ה) to a Chet (ח), which in voice is like changing a breath into a cough, and in letters like fixing the broken slat of wood in the top left-hand corner of the goalpost.
ZANACHTA...NETSACH...TSON: And the other reason for my s/c/k parallel, these three less homophones than anagrams! Should I have included YE'SHAN as well?
74:2 ZECHOR ADAT'CHA KANIYTA KEDEM GA'ALTA SHEVET NACHALATECHA HAR TSI'ON ZEH SHACHANTA
זְכֹר עֲדָתְךָ קָנִיתָ קֶּדֶם גָּאַלְתָּ שֵׁבֶט נַחֲלָתֶךָ הַר צִיּוֹן זֶה שָׁכַנְתָּ
KJ: Remember thy congregation, which thou hast purchased of old; the rod of thine inheritance, which thou hast redeemed; this mount Zion, wherein thou hast dwelt.
BN: Remember your congregation, which you acquired in ancient times, which you redeemed to be the tribe of your inheritance; {N} and Mount Tsi'on, which has been your dwelling-place.
Exactly the Brit or covenant that I mentioned in my notes to the last verse.
If this is "by" Asaph, who is historically associated with King David, as the man who led the Davidic choir and orchestra, the reference to Tsi'on is anachronistic, because the one significant "failure" of David's life was the denial of his aspiration to provide the deity with a dwelling-place on Tsi'on. As Mosheh was denied entry into the Promised Land for his past sins, so David this for his, and the deity continued to dwell in Kiryat Ye'arim, and later in a temporary home (2 Samuel 6 and the start of 7), until Shelomoh built the dwelling-place after David's death - by which date, as we understand from the Book of Samuel, Asaph was long dead.
NACHALATECHA: The word that is used in both Judges and Joshua for the lands allocated to the tribes after the conquest. They are the people's inheritance, the people are Elohim's.
NACHALATECHA: The word that is used in both Judges and Joshua for the lands allocated to the tribes after the conquest. They are the people's inheritance, the people are Elohim's.
74:3 HARIYMAH PHE'AMEYCHA LE MASHU'OT NETSACH KOL HE RA OYEV BA KODESH
הָרִימָה פְעָמֶיךָ לְמַשֻּׁאוֹת נֶצַח כָּל הֵרַע אוֹיֵב בַּקֹּדֶשׁ
KJ: Lift up thy feet unto the perpetual desolations; even all that the enemy hath done wickedly in the sanctuary.
BN: Beat out time for the perpetual ruins, for all the evil that the enemy has done in the sanctuary.
HARIYMAH: Still more word-games. The root has to do with "raising up" and "exalting", and the English word Harem, the part of the palace inhabited by the women of the royal court, also comes from this root - see Amos 4:3 for example. So the word here insinuates the "palace" or "fortress" of Elohim, which is itself the "sanctuary.
PHE'AMEYCHA: And this too, which is only "feet" musically. The root is PA'AM, which beats time, and probably uses a PA'AMON in Asaph's orchestra to do so - see my essay on Musical Instruments in the Tanach. I have translated it as "beat out time" because that seems to me the only available phrase to overthrow "perpetual" in the next part of the verse; the unstated call here being to get the sanctuary rebuilt.
BA KODESH: And if the last verse made the earliest possible date for this Solomonic, this verse moves it even further forward in time, four hundred years indeed, because the only significant "evil that the enemy has done in the sanctuary" belongs, as far as the First Temple is concerned, to Nebuchadnezzar, in 586 BCE - which makes this a Psalm written during the exile in Babylon (the equivalent in the Second Temple would be the Chanukah incident, but that would require this Psalm to have been added after the Septuagint was translated, and that is not the case). And now that we have had that thought, it makes rather more sense of verse 2 as well. But does it continue to confirm the hypothesis? We shall see. There might be "internal enemies", as well as external ones.
74:4 SHA'AGU TSOREREYCHA BE KEREV MO'ADECHA SAMU OTOTAM OTOT
BA KODESH: And if the last verse made the earliest possible date for this Solomonic, this verse moves it even further forward in time, four hundred years indeed, because the only significant "evil that the enemy has done in the sanctuary" belongs, as far as the First Temple is concerned, to Nebuchadnezzar, in 586 BCE - which makes this a Psalm written during the exile in Babylon (the equivalent in the Second Temple would be the Chanukah incident, but that would require this Psalm to have been added after the Septuagint was translated, and that is not the case). And now that we have had that thought, it makes rather more sense of verse 2 as well. But does it continue to confirm the hypothesis? We shall see. There might be "internal enemies", as well as external ones.
74:4 SHA'AGU TSOREREYCHA BE KEREV MO'ADECHA SAMU OTOTAM OTOT
שָׁאֲגוּ צֹרְרֶיךָ בְּקֶרֶב מוֹעֲדֶךָ שָׂמוּ אוֹתֹתָם אֹתוֹת
KJ: Thine enemies roar in the midst of thy congregations; they set up their ensigns for signs.
BN: Your adversaries have caused an uproar in the midst of your meeting-place; they have set up their own ikons for worship.
But now we have to reconsider the Nebuchadnezzar assumption. Repeatedly, in the Book of the Kings, and in their own books, we encounter the Prophets railing against kings of Yisra-El who have turned away from Elohim, or from YHVH Tseva'ot, or both, and replaced the symbols in the Temple with golden calves or totem poles. So this could just as well be Yesha-Yah attacking Achaz, or Yirme-Yah venting against Yah-Zevel.
MO'ADECHA: Translating it as "meeting-place" leads to an apparent anachronism, because it seems to infer the synagogue, which in Yehudit is a Beit Kenesset, which translates as "meeting-place". But that is not the intention here. In the Mosaic wilderness, there was the OHEL MO'ED, the Tent of Meeting, and it is that which is being inferred here.
74:5 YIVADA KE MEV'I LEMA'LAH BI SAVACH ETS KARDUMOT
יִוָּדַע כְּמֵבִיא לְמָעְלָה בִּסֲבָךְ עֵץ קַרְדֻּמּוֹת
KJ: A man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees.
JPS (Jewish Publication Society translation): It seemed as when men wield upwards axes in a thicket of trees.
Two very different translations, neither of them mine; and how different again the language from any of those earlier David hymns.
BN (my translation): It will be known in the same way as those men who take up axes to cut down entire forests.
Eco-conservation, circa 500 BCE! Though it should not be ignored (no metaphor is ever chosen without intent in this book!) that an entire section of forest was already cut down, to provide the cedar and the acacia for the First Temple, and will be again, when the rebuild happens.
74:6 VE ET PITUCHEYHA YACHAD BE CHASHIL VE CHEYLAPOT YAHALOMUN
וְעֵת פִּתּוּחֶיהָ יָּחַד בְּכַשִּׁיל וְכֵילַפֹּת יַהֲלֹמוּן
KJ: But now they break down the carved work thereof at once with axes and hammers.
BN: And right now they are hacking down all of its vaults and arches with their hatchets and their hammers.
VE ET: This appears to confirm my rethink at verse 4. Appears to... because time is being played with throughout this Psalm, as we have seen at verse 3, so it could be an aspect of that word-play... but the insinuation is that the Temple is being altered, not just the ikons replaced, but the very architecture redesigned. VE ET: right now.
If, on the other hand, the exile hypothesis is correct, then look at my page on Bo'az and Yachin for the description of all the splendid carved work that Nevu-what's-his-name, Nebuchadnezzar's army chief, had melted down and transported back to Babylon.
YACHAD: Why is the Yud medugash?
One of the most dissonant lines of poetry I have ever read. I would not like to be the soloist who has to sing this. All those gutturals, you will be spitting on the folk in pew six. Thank YHVH the last word softens to a Hey and allows you a long, slow final breath!
One of the most dissonant lines of poetry I have ever read. I would not like to be the soloist who has to sing this. All those gutturals, you will be spitting on the folk in pew six. Thank YHVH the last word softens to a Hey and allows you a long, slow final breath!
74:7 SHILCHU VA ESH MIKDASHECHA LA ARETS CHILELU MISHKAN SHEMECHA
שִׁלְחוּ בָאֵשׁ מִקְדָּשֶׁךָ לָאָרֶץ חִלְּלוּ מִשְׁכַּן שְׁמֶךָ
KJ: They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground.
BN: They have set your sanctuary on fire; they have profaned the dwelling-place of your name, even to the ground.
This is highly unlikely as a historical incident other than 586 BCE; there would surely be a record if the First Temple had been burnt down and rebuilt, or even fire-damaged and restored; but no, nothing. So it can only be: a) about another shrine altogether, somewhere else, and therefore the Psalm doesn't really belong in this collection; or b) this is Prophetic vision, imagining, fantasising... or c) as stated above.
74:8 AMRU VE LIBAM NIYNAM YACHAD SARPHU CHOL MO'ADEY EL BA ARETS
אָמְרוּ בְלִבָּם נִינָם יָחַד שָׂרְפוּ כָל מוֹעֲדֵי אֵל בָּאָרֶץ
KJ: They said in their hearts, Let us destroy them together: they have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land.
BN: They said in their heart: "Let us make havoc of them altogether"'; they have burned up all the meeting-places of El in the land.
MO'ADEY EL: First of all, KJ, they didn't have synagogues in Yisra-El until... we don't actually know when, but the word is Greek, and the concept was Pharisaic, so not earlier than the Hasmonean period, which is after the Redaction of this Tanach.
But more significantly, this is EL, not YHVH. The Sanctuary in Yeru-Shala'im was YHVH... so the hypothesis is thrown back into doubt once more. If this is EL, then it could be any shrine, anywhere in Kena'an, at any moment of history. But if it is a Psalm about the destruction of a shrine of EL, what is it doing in a book of Yisra-Eli Psalms?
Going through this Psalm in this manner is also useful on another level, because it demonstrates the "error of lenses", to coin a phrase, that all us scholars make. Assumptions and presumptions, driven by our personal agenda. So: this is in the Book of Psalms, which is Yisra-Eli, so we must look for an explanation of it through the Yisra-Eli lens, Jewish if we are Jewish, Christian if we are Christian, secular if we are secular. And why should it not be someone else's Psalm, adopted and adapted? Shakespeare did the same with all of his Italian plays, and Chaucer rewrote the Decameron as the Canterbury Tales.
74:9 OTOTEYNU LO RA'INU EYN OD NAVI VE LO ITANU YODE'A AD MAH
אוֹתֹתֵינוּ לֹא רָאִינוּ אֵין עוֹד נָבִיא וְלֹא אִתָּנוּ יֹדֵעַ עַד מָה
KJ: We see not our signs: there is no more any prophet: neither is there among us any that knoweth how long.
BN: We look for signs, but see none; there are no longer any Prophets; no one among us can answer the question: "until what?".
AD MAH: No, the translation must be in error. "How long?" is Yesha-Yah's (Isaiah's) oft-repeated question (6:11 for the first instance), but Yesha-Yah doesn't say AD MAH, he says AD MATAI... oh wait... the very next verse begins with it...
74:10 AD MATAI ELOHIM YECHAREPH TSAR YENA'ETS OYEV SHIMCHA LA NETSACH
עַד מָתַי אֱלֹהִים יְחָרֶף צָר יְנָאֵץ אוֹיֵב שִׁמְךָ לָנֶצַח
KJ: O God, how long shall the adversary reproach? shall the enemy blaspheme thy name for ever?
BN: How long, Elohim, shall the narrow-minded go on abusing you? Shall the enemy treat your name with contempt for ever?
Note the switch here from EL to ELOHIM.
TSAR: Means "narrow", so it is by no means obvious how the translators get it to mean "adversary"; and yes, they are trying to make a parallel with "enemy", as the verse does in the original, but TSAR still does not mean "adversary". And anyway it misses the point of their narrowness.
And actually, now that we have made this Isaiac connection, much of the language in the earlier verses was very strongly reminiscent. But if it is an allusion to Y-Y's famous question, then the Psalm has to be dated later than his book... and we are back in Babylonian exile.
74:11 LAMAH TASHIYV YAD'CHA VIYMIYNECHA MI KEREV CHOKCHA CHALEH
לָמָּה תָשִׁיב יָדְךָ וִימִינֶךָ מִקֶּרֶב חוֹקְךָ כַלֵּה
KJ: Why withdrawest thou thy hand, even thy right hand? pluck it out of thy bosom.
BN (provisional translation): Why do you take back your hand, your right hand? Draw it out of your bosom and consume them.
YAD'CHA VIYMIYNECHA: We had this same right hand in the last Psalm, also in Asaph's collection, and also with a different meaning - divine rather than human - from the norm of the Bin-Yamin.
But this too helps with the dating. Once the Metaphysical Age is fully reached, which is to say by the end of the 6th but really the 5th century BCE, a fundamental change takes place in Yisra-Eli theology, the beginning of the shift from "sacrifice" to "obedience", which is to say: asking Elohim to get off his sunset and do something about the state of the human world belongs to the Mythological Age, when gods were propitiated with sacrifices, and humans expected divine interference: by the time of Second Yesha-Yah, there is already the beginning of a recognition that responsibility rests with humans, and is achieved through their obedience to the moral code, and therefore tales like the one of Rabbi Eliezer which Leon Wieseltier recounts on page 107 of his splendid "Kaddish":
"A dispute in the first century between
Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua about the ritual status of an
oven was settled in Rabbi Joshua's favour, even though Rabbi Eliezer's position
was supported by miracles. For a miracle is not a proof. "If the law is as I
say it is," Rabbi Eliezer said, "let it be proved by heaven!" At that moment a
Divine Voice declared: "Why are you arguing with R. Eliezer? The law is always
as he says it is." Whereupon R. Joshua rose and said: "It is not in heaven!"
And R. Jeremiah explained: "Since the Torah has already been given at Mount
Sinai, we pay no heed to a Divine Voice.'"
This should be enough on its own, but Wieseltier adds that
"The ending of the story is extraordinary. God smiled and said: 'My sons have defeated me, my sons have defeated me.' But R. Eliezer did not smile. He was excommunicated for his presumption and died a bitter man."
So we can say that this tale belongs to the Mythological Age, which came towards its end with First Yesha-Yah, but had still not yet reached its next phase, the Metaphysical, let alone the summation and consummation, the Epistemological (and when will it fully get there? AD MAH? AD MATAI? we are still asking that question).
This should be enough on its own, but Wieseltier adds that
"The ending of the story is extraordinary. God smiled and said: 'My sons have defeated me, my sons have defeated me.' But R. Eliezer did not smile. He was excommunicated for his presumption and died a bitter man."
So we can say that this tale belongs to the Mythological Age, which came towards its end with First Yesha-Yah, but had still not yet reached its next phase, the Metaphysical, let alone the summation and consummation, the Epistemological (and when will it fully get there? AD MAH? AD MATAI? we are still asking that question).
CHOKCHA: And if you are still questioning my interpretation, look at this word, which is yet another of the deliberately ambivalent. If it does indeed mean "bosom" - and the Bin-Yamin is the beloved son, and love comes from the heart, which is located in the bosom - then the root is CHEK, or sometimes CHEYK (cf 1 Kings 1:2, Deuteronomy 13:7; Ezekiel 43:13 is particularly interesting in our context, making the altar in the Temple "bosom-wide")... if it does indeed mean "bosom", then the Masoretes have mispointed it, and it should read CHEKCHA or CHEYKCHA. But it reads CHOKCHA, and a CHOK is a law; but not just any law; quite specifically a law that has been deduced by the wise men from the study of the Torah: click here if you still don't believe me.
VIYMIYNECHA: why the conjunction? KJ renders it as "even", making it a form of emphasis; but is that what the Yehudit means?
BN (revised translation): Why do you stay out of this and leave it to your surrogate-on-Earth to deal with the matter? You know what is in the Torah. Consume them.
74:12 V'ELOHIM MALKI MI KEDEM PO'EL YESHU'OT BE KEREV HA ARETS
וֵאלֹהִים מַלְכִּי מִקֶּדֶם פֹּעֵל יְשׁוּעוֹת בְּקֶרֶב הָאָרֶץ
KJ: For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.
BN: But Elohim has been my king since ancient times, working salvation in the midst of the Earth.
MALKI: In the last Psalm we had El Elyon, with its implicit allusion to Malki-Tsedek, and thence Yeru-Shala'im. This likewise appears, albeit somewhat indirectly, to add weight to the Nebuchadnezzar hypothesis for this Psalm, by alluding in a similar way to Yeru-Shala'im.
PO'EL YESHU'OT: See my notes on both of these words, throughout the previous Psalms. But here, placing them side by side, the concept of Messiah, as understood by Judaism, is expressed at its most precise and concise - and it is utterly different from the Christian.
74:13 ATAH PHORARTA VE AZCHA YAM SHIBARTA RA'SHEY TANIYNIM AL HA MAYIM
אַתָּה פוֹרַרְתָּ בְעָזְּךָ יָם שִׁבַּרְתָּ רָאשֵׁי תַנִּינִים עַל הַמָּיִם
KJ: Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.
BN: You broke the sea in pieces with your strength; you shattered the heads of the sea-monsters in the waters.
TANIYNIM: This is really Marduk of Babylon versus Apsu, or Abzu, though much of that Creation myth finds its way into the first version of Creation in the Book of Genesis. See my notes to Tohu, Tehom, Tiamat et al. And if the Psalm is from the Babylonian exile, then what better figure of speech to choose than that of Nebuchadnezzar's own deity!
74:14 ATAH RITSATSTA RA'SHEY LIV-YATAN TITNENU MA'ACHAL LE AM LE TSIYI
אַתָּה רִצַּצְתָּ רָאשֵׁי לִוְיָתָן תִּתְּנֶנּוּ מַאֲכָל לְעָם לְצִיִּ ים
KJ: Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.
BN: You crushed the heads of Liv-Yatan. You gave him as food to the folk inhabiting the wilderness.
LIV-YATAN (the link here is to the text of Job 41): And still more, if this was written in Babylon, after the destruction, no surprise to find it referencing that great Babylonian epic which the Beney Yisra-El would bring home with them at the end of exile, fifty years later, the Book of Iyov (Job).
I presume "leviathan" with a lower case "l" is just a typing error in the on-line KJ.
Nothing in the Book of Iyov suggested that Liv-Yatan (this link is to my background page) had more than one head, but this is definitely plural. This link suggests seven, but alas does not state its source(s). The only other Biblical reference to Liv-Yatan is (why are we not surprised!) Isaiah 27:1, but Y-Y doesn't say anything about the number of his heads either. But then there is the Christian Book of Revelation... this link is to a very detailed essay on the seven-headed beasts, and includes a text from Ras Shamra (Ugarit) which does give Liv-Yatan seven heads. And why seven? Click here.
74:15 ATAH VAKA'TA MA'YAN VA NACHAL ATAH HOVASHTA NAHAROT EYTAN
אַתָּה בָקַעְתָּ מַעְיָן וָנָחַל אַתָּה הוֹבַשְׁתָּ נַהֲרוֹת אֵיתָן
KJ: Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood: thou driedst up mighty rivers.
BN: You cleaved both fountain and brook; you dried up the ever-flowing rivers.
74:16 LECHA YOM APH LECHA LAILAH ATAH HACHIYNOTA MA'OR VA SHAMESH
לְךָ יוֹם אַף לְךָ לָיְלָה אַתָּה הֲכִינוֹתָ מָאוֹר וָשָׁמֶשׁ
KJ: The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun.
BN: Yours is the day, yours the night; you established both the light and the sun.
Further confirmation of late date (though I am still inclined to view this as an ancient Kena'ani hymn, adopted and adapted, rather than being "written" in that later period); where the Davidic Psalms recognise both a male and female deity, indeed an entire pantheon of deities gathered under the generic Elohim and the specifics Yah, YHVH and Elohim, this is en route to becoming monotheistic. In the previous age, the female moon ruled the night, her sacred number reflecting her fullness, the Yud-Heh which spells and counts 15 = YAH; the sun ruled the day, his sacred number also being his instrument of fertility, the Zayin which is the penis and the Shabbat number seven; which is also, of course, the reason why the monster of Creation likewise had seven heads (originally there were seven deities, one per planet, and each had their own day: Sun, Moon, Tiu, Woden, Thor, Freya and Saturn in our week).
MA'OR VA SHEMESH: At what stage of human development were we first able to separate the light that comes from the sun from the source itself? Or was it perhaps the other way around: that at some point we began to register that the light was produced in some way by the sun, rather than being an entity per se? Energy is Light multiplied by Matter, squared. Apparently, according to this Psalm, so was Elohim (and see my notes on this throughout Genesis 1).
74:17 ATAH HITSAVTA KOL GEVULOT ARETS KAYITS VA CHOREPH ATAH YETSARTAM
אַתָּה הִצַּבְתָּ כָּל גְּבוּלוֹת אָרֶץ קַיִץ וָחֹרֶף אַתָּה יְצַרְתָּם
KJ: Thou hast set all the borders of the earth: thou hast made summer and winter.
BN: You set all the boundaries of the Earth; you made summer and winter.
So too here, the monotheism is restated: in the previous epoch, the sun god went down into the netherworld through the winter months, was reborn in that realm on Sol Invictus, his former self sacrificed at the beginning of Spring so that he could immediately be reborn in his new incarnation, the reborn Sun, Tammuz, Shimshon, David, Jesus. But now all aspects of Nature are combined: one god, one cosmology.
And perhaps this is also why, the Davidic Psalms having "ended" with number 72, this Psalm is placed precisely here, at the start of a new epoch: the progress from the Mythological to the Metaphysical age.
GEVULOT: There is a significant difference between "borders" and "boundaries". Borders separate nations, and are defined by treaties, then moved by wars of conquest, redefined by new treaties. Boundaries are coastlines that define islands and continents, and are moved by soil erosion, silt, melting glaciers, shifting tectonic plates.
74:18 ZECHAR ZOT OYEV CHEREPH YHVH VE AM NAVAL NI'ATSU SHEMECHA
זְכָר זֹאת אוֹיֵב חֵרֵף יְהוָה וְעַם נָבָל נִאֲצוּ שְׁמֶךָ
KJ: Remember this, that the enemy hath reproached, O LORD, and that the foolish people have blasphemed thy name.
BN: Remember this, how the enemy hath reproached the LORD, and how a base people have blasphemed Thy name.
CHEREPH: For which see verse 10.
YHVH: Note the shifts through this Psalm, starting with head of the pantheon, El, then the polytheon as a whole, Elohim, now, as the monotheism is fully defined, YHVH.
74:19 AL TITEN LE CHAYAT NEPHESH TORECHA CHAYAT ANIYEYCHA AL TISHKACH LA NETSACH
אַל תִּתֵּן לְחַיַּת נֶפֶשׁ תּוֹרֶךָ חַיַּת עֲנִיֶּיךָ אַל תִּשְׁכַּח לָנֶצַח
KJ: O deliver not the soul of thy turtledove unto the multitude of the wicked: forget not the congregation of thy poor for ever.
BN: Do not render up the soul of your turtle-dove to the wild beast; do not forget the lives of your poor, ever.
TORECHA: Not No'ach's dove - that was a Yonah (Genesis 8:8). Leviticus 12:8 has two of them, sacrificed in place of a lamb. Mary and Joseph apparently sacrificed two turtle doves in Yeru-Shala'im at Jesus's birth (Luke 2:24), which is why there is a partridge in a pear tree on the first day of Christmas. In Cockney rhyming slang, "turtle-dove" for "love - a residue specifically of the goddess Demeter - click here.
74:20 HABET LA BERIT KI MAL'U MACHASHAKEY ERETS NE'OT CHAMAS
הַבֵּט לַבְּרִית כִּי מָלְאוּ מַחֲשַׁכֵּי אֶרֶץ נְאוֹת חָמָס
KJ: Have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.
BN: Look to the covenant; for the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence.
HABET: Endorsing my revised translation of verse 11.
NE'OT CHAMAS: is this intended in the sense of "dens of criminal gangs" and "hideaways of terrorists", or a more general recognition that husbands beat wives and mothers smack children?
74:21 AL YASHOV DACH NICHLAM ANI VE EVYON YEHALELU SHEMECHA
אַל יָשֹׁב דַּךְ נִכְלָם עָנִי וְאֶבְיוֹן יְהַלְלוּ שְׁמֶךָ
KJ: O let not the oppressed return ashamed: let the poor and needy praise thy name.
BN: Do not let the oppressed turn back in confusion; let the poor and needy praise your name.
But still calling on the diety to do so, so the full transition has not yet been made. Rabbi Eliezer still makes the judgements, supported by heavenly voices; Rabbi Joshua's turn will come in about another five hundred years, when the Second Temple too has been destroyed.
74:22 KUMAH ELOHIM RIYVAH RIYVECHA ZECHOR CHERPAT'CHA MINI NAVAL KOL HA YOM
KJ: Arise, O God, plead thine own cause: remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee daily.
BN: Arise, Elohim, plead your own cause; remember the abuse you have received, day after day, at the hand of the foolish man.
ELOHIM: Yes, still Elohim. YHVH got his mention; we are moving towards the Omnideity; but still Elohim.
74:22 KUMAH ELOHIM RIYVAH RIYVECHA ZECHOR CHERPAT'CHA MINI NAVAL KOL HA YOM
קוּמָה אֱלֹהִים רִיבָה רִיבֶךָ זְכֹר חֶרְפָּתְךָ מִנִּי נָבָל כָּל הַיּוֹם
KJ: Arise, O God, plead thine own cause: remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee daily.
BN: Arise, Elohim, plead your own cause; remember the abuse you have received, day after day, at the hand of the foolish man.
ELOHIM: Yes, still Elohim. YHVH got his mention; we are moving towards the Omnideity; but still Elohim.
MINI: Just means "from", but I have added "the hand" - word-gaming with the Bin-Yamin of verse 11.
NAVAL: See my notes on it, and him, actually in numerous of the Book Two Psalms - here for example.
Time to go back to my comment on the opening verse. While this may be a Psalm for singing at a prayer-service or other ceremonial occasion, it is also a highly sophisticated essay, working through several stages of development, using the evidence of history on both the positive and negative sides, and evolving its own languge at each stage to ensure that said language is apt and precise in its own context - which is the whole point of its title "Maskil". No one before the age of the Prophets could have written something as sophisticated as this, and its intention is likewise of the Prophetic era.
74:23 AL TISHKACH KOL TSOREREYCHA SHE'ON KAMEYCHA OLEH TAMID
KJ: Forget not the voice of thine enemies: the tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually.
BN: Do not forget the sounds made by all the troubles in the world, the tumult of those who rise up against you who rises eternally. {P}
AL TISHKACH: Go back to verse 2, which begins the essay by calling on the deity to ZECHOR - "remember"; and now, to start the final verse, "do not forget". Bookends!
TSOREREYCHA: And again, no, these are not "adversaries", which infers either a human or a demonic enemy - fine for a Christian translation, which believes in all that Gnostic and Zoroastrian silliness, but it has no place in a Jewish rendition. The "sounds made by all the troubles in the world" are humans moaning about poverty, screaming from the pain in their broken bodies, howling their protests against the despots; as is confirmed by the clever word-play on KAMEYCHA: the people "rising up", just as the sun does every morning.
74:23 AL TISHKACH KOL TSOREREYCHA SHE'ON KAMEYCHA OLEH TAMID
אַל תִּשְׁכַּח קוֹל צֹרְרֶיךָ שְׁאוֹן קָמֶיךָ עֹלֶה תָמִיד
KJ: Forget not the voice of thine enemies: the tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually.
BN: Do not forget the sounds made by all the troubles in the world, the tumult of those who rise up against you who rises eternally. {P}
AL TISHKACH: Go back to verse 2, which begins the essay by calling on the deity to ZECHOR - "remember"; and now, to start the final verse, "do not forget". Bookends!
TSOREREYCHA: And again, no, these are not "adversaries", which infers either a human or a demonic enemy - fine for a Christian translation, which believes in all that Gnostic and Zoroastrian silliness, but it has no place in a Jewish rendition. The "sounds made by all the troubles in the world" are humans moaning about poverty, screaming from the pain in their broken bodies, howling their protests against the despots; as is confirmed by the clever word-play on KAMEYCHA: the people "rising up", just as the sun does every morning.
SHE'ON: Or SHE ON, depending whether that's an abbreviated ASHER.
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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