TheBibleNet: Psalm 75

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 absorbs verse 1 into the title, adapting its ensuing verse-numbers accordingly; I have noted the differences in brackets.

75:1 LA MENATSE'ACH AL TASHCHET MIZMOR LE ASAPH SHIR

לַמְנַצֵּ֥חַ אַל תַּשְׁחֵ֑ת מִזְמ֖וֹר לְאָסָ֣ף שִֽׁיר

KJ (King James translation): (To the chief Musician, Altaschith, A Psalm or Song of Asaph.) Unto thee, O God, do we give thanks, unto thee do we give thanks: for that thy name is near thy wondrous works declare.

BN (BibleNet translation): For the Artistic Director. "Do Not Destroy". A song with accompaniment. For Asaph.

The MENATSE'ACH is generally understood to be the "artistic director" of the entire shabang: choir and orchestra. However, this was also understood to be Asaph's role during the latter part of the reign of King David, so it is unlikely that Asaph would have dedicated a Psalm to himself. Is Asaph simply a historical misreading, and it isn't the name of a man at all, but of the collection (asaph means "collection") of Psalms that he or someone else assembled. If the latter, then this simply means "a song for the collection". (And of course he could just have been the administrator of the library at this point in his career, but rose to become the Artistic Director later on)

AL TASHCHET: we have come across this several times, in the David Psalms of Book Two: "do not destroy" is its literal translation, and it probably represents a genre of poem, in the same way that there are elegies (funeral poems) and epithalamions (wedding poems). See Psalm 57 for my notes on its probable meaning.

75:2 HODIYNU LECHA ELOHIM HODIYNU VE KAROV SHEMECHA SIPRU NIPHLE'OTEYCHA

הוֹדִינוּ לְּךָ אֱלֹהִים הוֹדִינוּ וְקָרוֹב שְׁמֶךָ סִפְּרוּ נִפְלְאוֹתֶיךָ

KJ (75:1): as above

BN: We give thanks to you, Elohim; we give thanks, and your name is near; men tell of your wondrous works.

HODIYNU: Different Psalms offer their music up to a reader more or less obviously. Some seem so utterly symphonic, it is hard to detect what the music might have been at all. Others read like nursery rhymes, like happy-clappy dance songs, like love-ballads for a candlelit stage. Generally the form and structure give it away, and then the rhyme, if there is any. So here, the three-word opening, the same word for the next three-word phrase, and then a slower completion of the line. A song, rather more than, say, a lyric, a lied, a poem or a libretto. Very upbeat.

NIPHLE'OTEYCHA : An opportunity to explain a quirk of Yehudit. Yehudit words generally operate as compounds of double-consonants. The vertical double-dot below a consonant, known as a sheva, is pronounced when it is below the first, silent when it is below the second consonant. So, here. Nun-Peh (נִפְ), the sheva beneath the Pey is silent. Lamed-aleph (לְא), the sheva beneath the Lamed is pronounced. And therefore, despite appearances, NIPHLE'OTEYCHA. This rule only applies to the sheva.

75:3 KI EKACH MO'ED ANI MEYSHARIM ESHPOT

כִּי אֶקַּח מוֹעֵד אֲנִי מֵישָׁרִים אֶשְׁפֹּט

KJ (75:2): When I shall receive the congregation I will judge uprightly.

Mechon-Mamre translation: When I take the appointed time, I Myself will judge with equity.

Sar Shalom translation: When I shall find the set time, I will judge uprightly.

KJ often has differences, but rarely quite so different as this one. I have gone to an orthodox Jewish and a modern evangelical for their versions, and the only conclusion I can reach is that none of us have a clue what this means.

EKACH: The root means "to take", and that is the case for every other occurrence in the Tanach (click here), so it should be for this one as well.

MO'ED: The Ohel Mo'ed was the Tent of Meeting in the Mosaic desert (Exodus 27:21 et al), and was alluded to in the last Psalm. But a MO'ED can also be an "appointment", as in a diarised event rather than a new job: cf Exodus 9:5. And the meetings in the Ohel were appointed times, and Mosheh and Aharon were appointed to the jobs that required those meetings, so the three usages overlap, and this is why we are confused here.

How then does KJ get this to translate as congregation? Unclear, but on virtually every occasion that the Ohel Mo'ed is mentioned, KJ translates it as "the tabernacle of the congregation" rather than "the tent of meeting"; probably because it hears EDUT in MO'ED (it is wrong to do so), and EDUT can mean "the congregation).

BN: At the appropriate time, I will apply appropriate justice.

Which rendition leaves open one more question: how does the Psalm get from the first person narrator speaking of the Elohim in the third person, in verse 1, to Elohim apparently speaking for himself, in verse 2? Or is this the narrator still speaking, and he who will apply justice?

75:4 NEMOGIM ERETS VE CHOL YOSHVEYHA ANOCHI TIKANTI AMUDEYHA (SELAH)

נְמֹגִים אֶרֶץ וְכָל יֹשְׁבֶיהָ אָנֹכִי תִכַּנְתִּי עַמּוּדֶיהָ סֶּלָה

KJ (75:3): The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved: I bear up the pillars of it. Selah.

BN: When the Earth and all of its inhabitants were washed away, I myself repaired its pillars. (Selah)

NEMOGIM: The root is MUG (pronounced with a Liverpool accent!), which can mean "melt" or "dissolve", and here probably refers to the No'achic flood. It is in the Niphal (passive) form here, with TIKANTI in the past tense.

ANOCHI: Rather stronger than the usual ANI, which is why I have added "myself".

To return to my question at the end of verse 3: it didn't seem likely then that the narrator was claiming this role or status, and this verse confirms that: verse 3 definitely put those words into the mouth of Elohim.

75:5 AMARTI LA HOLELIM AL TAHOLU VE LA RESHA'IM AL TARIYMU KAREN

אָמַרְתִּי לַהוֹלְלִים אַל תָּהֹלּוּ וְלָרְשָׁעִים אַל תָּרִימוּ קָרֶן

KJ (75:4): I said unto the fools, Deal not foolishly: and to the wicked, Lift not up the horn:

BN: I said to the arrogant, "Do not behave arrogantly", and to the wicked, "Do not raise the horn".

LA RESHA'IM: Picking up my note on the sheva ,above, this is LA RESHA'IM and not LAR'SHA'IM. VE is the conjunction "and", prefixed, so the rule does not apply; LA is the preposition "to", prefixed to the prefix, which is normal in Yehudit; and again the rule does not apply. The noun here is RESHA'IM, so the sheva is on the first syllable, and therefore pronounced (I have separated the transliteration into three parts, to clarify this; the Yehudit is a single word).

KEREN: Is the intention here a drinking-horn, i.e. alcohol, or at least communion wine? See the next verse, where it seems to be more of a metaphor for pride and arrogance and conceit. But then see verse 9, where the wine is clearly connected to the horn, while the horn itself (and think of Mosheh and his horns) have become central to the conceit of the poem. Maybe alcohol makes a person proud etc. Or maybe this was an idiom of the time. And in the middle ages, and to some extent still alive today, the image of the horns was used as a sign of cuckoldry - either both thumbs twirled on the sides of the forehead, or by lazy mockers just one thumb, on the top of the nose. Whence the horn yields the modern word "horny".

75:6 AL TARIYMU LA MAROM KARNECHEM TEDABRU VE TSAVA'R ATAK

אַל תָּרִימוּ לַמָּרוֹם קַרְנְכֶם תְּדַבְּרוּ בְצַוָּאר עָתָק

KJ (75:5): Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck.

BN: "Do not raise your horn on high; do not speak insolence with a haughty neck.

But this verse verse confirms that the idiom of the middle ages cannot be the one intended here. In Egypt, many of the principal deities were depicted with horns (click here for several examples), and it appears to have been a status-symbol, so someone "lifting his horns" probably inferred that he thought himself superior to his fellow-humans.

TSAVA'R ATAK: Clearly another idiom, and very difficult to decipher, because ATAK has multiple usages. "To reach old age" in Job 21:7 - which is how we saw it used in Psalm 6:8. "To be taken away" in Isaiah 28:9, and a possible link to our verse 4 in the way it is used in Job 9:5. "Taken away" in the sense of transferring something from one document to another, in Proverbs 25:1; and a different kind of moving from one place to another in Genesis 12:8 and 26:22. And then there is the problem of two adjectives, ATEK and ATAK, the former meaning "shining" or "handsome", as in Proverbs 8:18, the latter used repeatedly in the Psalms (31:19, here, 94:4), and in 1 Samuel 2:3 for "speaking insolently".

75:7 KI LO MI MOTSA U MI MA'ARAV VE LO MI MIDBAR HARIM

כִּי לֹא מִמּוֹצָא וּמִמַּעֲרָב וְלֹא מִמִּדְבַּר הָרִים

KJ (75:6): For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south.

BN: For neither from the point of egress, nor from the point of decline, nor from the desert into which you have climbed throughout your life, does this raising up arise.

Even by the normal standards of word-play in the Psalms, this is gold medal winning form in the lexical olympics! How do we know? Usually by translating the words literally, as KJ has attempted to do, and finding that you can't, that you have to invent possible translations, to fill in the vacuum left by literality not meaning anything.

So let us do commentary-box analysis of the replay of the gold medal winner's world-record breaking performance.

MOTSA: Not the common word for "east", and no obvious root comes to mind that might allow it. YATSA means "to go out", and the obvious "going out" that comes to any mind in the Jewish world is the Exodus from Egypt - cf any one of a hundred available references, but Deuteronomy 26:8 came to mind first (pure coincidence, nothing else in the text that might link to this verse!!!), so it gets the baton. However... it went towards the east, not from the east, and this definitely says MI, which means "from"; so we can read the word as an egress, but not as a compass-point.

MA'ARAV: Definitely the word for "west", but only because it already includes the word "MI" - MIN HA EREV would be the full phrase, but the word evolved, and it covers both the "sunset" and the ceremonies for cleaning up the Temple altar which are now remembered through the evening prayers, MA'ARIV. So this one could be "west", but again "from" the west; or it could be the "sunset", the "going down" which balances the "going out", which balances the "rising up" that is about to follow; and that both of the sun as deity and the stiff-neck as arrogant insolence.

MIDBAR: Yes, the word for "desert", but never used as a denoter of compass-direction; previously we have seen NEGEV, YAM and other equivalents, but even they are problematic, because sometimes YAM is the Mediterranean to the north of Sinai, and sometimes it is the Red Sea to the south of Kena'an, and sometimes... always problematic using locations as compass-points, because they are relative to the point from which you are map-reading - which is why north, south, east and west got invented.

But then, just as MA'ARAV derived from MIN HA EREV, so it is entirely possible that MIDBAR derived from MIN HA DEVAR, that latter being the "Word" of the deity, which was given to Mankind in the metaphorical MIDBAR SINAI, and indeed high up in the HARIM there.

HARIM: and speaking of HARIM, the KJ translation given here is simply an error. This is HARIM as the noun "mountains", not the verb "to climb", though obviously they are root-connected. However it too undermines the geographical explanation: a MIDBAR with HARIM cannot be Sinai, or even the Aravah; the former is almost entirely sand and dune, the latter has hills, and flat hills at that, but no mountains. Some parts of the Negev perhaps, as seen, due south, from Yeru-Shala'im: the great "park" at Timna comes most obviously to mind (whoever decided to call it a "park" had a wonderful sense of humour!), and the general region immediately north-west of Eilat. Much more likely, though, when hills are referred to in the Bible, the Mo-Avi hills along the West Bank of the Yarden, which become the Golan Heights and then Mount Chermon. Or way up north in the Upper Galil, before you get to Chermon, around Zefat. But all this does is make the geography less likely - and so, as I said when I began this, we need to assume that the words are metaphorical rather than geographical, and translate them accordingly.

BN [exegetic translation): For neither from the point of egress [emergence from the womb], nor from the point of decline [burial in the coffin], nor from the desert into which you have climbed throughout your life [but with the inference of a different translation: "but only from the source of the Word itself"], does this raising up [of your sense of your own importance and worth] arise [whereas the sun rises, meriting its horn, there for you to follow instead of the above].

Note that, if the KJ version is correct, there is no reference northwards - which is a mythological not a geographical point of interest, for which see my pages on the Book of the Am-Tuat and the Book of the Gates, both of which Egyptian documents deal with the nightly journey of the sun through the darkness of the Netherworld in order to be able to rise again in the east each morning.

75:8 KI ELOHIM SHOPHET ZEH YASHPIL VE ZEH YARIM

כִּי אֱלֹהִים שֹׁפֵט זֶה יַשְׁפִּיל וְזֶה יָרִים

KJ (75:7): But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.

BN: But Elohim does the judging; he puts one down, and lifts another one up.

SHOPHET ... YASHPIL: If this were English, I would suggest that there is a play between making legal judgements, and being judgmental, with Elohim having the former authority, but the arrogant and self-important humans claiming the right to the latter; I am not certain that this is intended in the Yehudit, though the root, SHAPHEL, definitely has the sense of derogating or debasing (far too many examples of the variant usages to list - go to Gesenius who has all of them).

YARIM rhymes with HARIM; have I overlooked something and need to go back and check the rest of Psalm for rhymes?

75:9 KI CHOS BE YAD YHVH VE YAYIN CHAMAR MAL'E MESECH VA YAGER MI ZEH ACH SHEMAREYHA YIMTSU YISHTU KOL RISH'EY ARETS

כִּי כוֹס בְּיַד יְהוָה וְיַיִן חָמַר מָלֵא מֶסֶךְ וַיַּגֵּר מִזֶּה אַךְ שְׁמָרֶיהָ יִמְצוּ יִשְׁתּוּ כֹּל רִשְׁעֵי אָרֶץ

KJ (75:8): For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he pours from this: but its dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.

BN: For in the hand of YHVH there is a cup, filled brimful with rich, fermented wine, mixed with all manner of spices, and he pours out of the same; {N} but the dregs it leaves behind, all the wicked of the Earth shall drain them, and drink them.

This verse needs an essay (and re-read my note to KEREN at verse 5 first).

First CHOS: Look at the use of the word Bin-Yamin in previous Psalms - the son of the right hand, which is the Earth-God's role, and the reason why Yeru-Shala'im, which is in Bin-Yamin's tribal territory, was chosen for the Yisra-Eli capital, and Sha'ul the Bin-Yamin for its first king. Then look at the Bin-Yamin and Yoseph stories in Genesis, the former with the eucharistic "butler" and "baker" in the Underworld, before he plants the kiddush becher in his brother's luggage, and then, as E.M. Forster would rightly insist: "Just connect".

CHAMAR: Things that are boiled or fermented are CHAMAR, but that doesn't just mean soup or wine, it also means intellectual ideas, and texts, the never-ending search for the meanings in the "cup" of the deity's liturgy and law and blessings; and that is known, in Jewish schools, by the Ivrit word for "curriculum", which is CHOMER. Click here for just one such usage.

NAGAR: Yes, "pours". But a "carpenter" in Yehudit is a NAGAR, spelled exactly the same, though I cannot see any obvious connection, other than the "dregs" that a carpenter also leaves behind, which in his case is sawdust.

YHVH: And yet again YHVH makes his phantom appearance at the very addendum of the piece. My sense of this is that these were all well-known hymns, sung for centuries - literally, centuries. So you can't rewrite them, and expect people to not notice (Oranges and apples say the bells of St Chapels - doesn't have a chance, does it? Moo moo black cow have you any milk - come off it!) But you can add on an additional verse, and people will learn to sing it, eventually. And this is a particularly clever verse, a verse to make blessings with (I wonder why we never do use this for blessings with wine).

75:10 VA ANI AGID LE OLAM AZAMRAH L'ELOHEY YA'AKOV

וַאֲנִי אַגִּיד לְעֹלָם אֲזַמְּרָה לֵאלֹהֵי יַעֲקֹב

KJ (75:9): But I will declare for ever; I will sing praises to the God of Jacob.

BN: But as for me, I will declare for ever, I will sing praises to the gods of Ya'akov.

ELOHEY YA'AKOV: Which could as well be EL or YHVH or Elohim, so the fusion is legitimised.

75:11 VE CHOL KARNEY RESHA'IM AGADE'A TEROMAMNAH KARNOT TSADIK

וְכָל קַרְנֵי רְשָׁעִים אֲגַדֵּעַ תְּרוֹמַמְנָה קַרְנוֹת צַדִּיק

KJ (75:10): All the horns of the wicked also will I cut off; but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted.

BN: And all the horns of the wicked I will cut off; but the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up. {P}

KARNEY: And of course, in that ancient world, a horn was also a drinking-vessel, the source of the beer-tankard, as demonstrated at this Viking site. But here, the pubs are closed, and the drinkers sent back to the Beit Midrash to study the real CHOMER, which is the laws of that man with the other type of horns, the KARNAYIM of Mosheh at Exodus 34:29 (no, Mosheh, they may look like the horns of a giant hare, but those are the tablets of the Ten Commandments, I was meaning the Michelangelo horns - see my notes at the Exodus link).

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Psalms:

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