TheBibleNet: Psalm 84

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 has merged verse 1 into the title, renumbering the verses that follow accordingly.

84:1 LA MENATSE'ACH AL HA GITIYT LIVNEY KORACH MIZMOR

לַמְנַצֵּחַ עַל הַגִּתִּית לִבְנֵי קֹרַח מִזְמוֹר

KJ (King James translation): (To the chief Musician upon Gittith, A Psalm for the sons of Korah.) How amiable are thy tabernacles, O LORD of hosts!

BN (BibleNet translation): For the Artistic Director. To be sung at the time of the olive-harvest. For the Beney Korach. Score for music with libretto.

GITIYT: See my notes on this at Psalms 8 and especially 81.

BENEY KORACH: See the link. Psalms 84, 85, 87 and 88 are all for the Beney Korach.

MIZMOR: My translation is horribly vague, I know. But I want to emphasise that, with a Mizmor, the music is the primary part, and the lyric or libretto comes second, composed to fit. Today we would be able to distinguish a sonata, say, from a symphonic poem, a cello quintet from a lied-for-piano, but we have no idea what the musical forms were called - unless Gitit was the form, and not the instrument or the occasion, which is unlikely but possible.

84:2 MAH YEDIYDOT MISHKENOTEYCHA YHVH TSEVA'OT

מַה יְּדִידוֹת מִשְׁכְּנוֹתֶיךָ יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת

KJ (84:1) as above

BN: How lovely are your tabernacles, YHVH, the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens!

Reflecting Mah Tovu and Bil'am, and self-evident from its tongue-in-cheekness that this must have come second, and the Bil'am blessings first.

YHVH TSEVA'OT: The first occasion in this third Book of the Psalms on which the principal deity is neither El nor Elohim; not that it is fully YHVH either; this is the first stage of YHVH's take-over of the Jewish heaven, first a minor player, merely the volcano god of Midyan, then the blending of his name with El Elyon of Yeru-Shala'im that we witnessed at the end of the last Psalm, and now this elevation to the Prime Ministerial role, so to speak, in the Cabinet of the deities. This will continue to be his role until the captivity in Babylon (586 BCE). At some point after the return, probably in the Hasmonean era though we have insufficient textual data to confirm it, the final putsch takes place in which YHVH becomes the Omnideity, monarch of the Cosmos, with all other deities assimilated, absorbed, masculinised, expurgated into his autocratic rule.

84:3 NICHSEPHAH VE GAM KALTAH NAPHSHI LE CHATSROT YHVH LIBI U VESARI YERANENU EL EL CHAI

נִכְסְפָה וְגַם כָּלְתָה נַפְשִׁי לְחַצְרוֹת יְהוָה לִבִּי וּבְשָׂרִי יְרַנְּנוּ אֶל אֵל חָי

KJ (84:2): My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.

BN: My soul yearns, indeed it pines, for the courts of YHVH; {N} my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living deity.

CHATSROT: There are two types of court, one of which has courtiers, the other judges, juries and lawyers. The intention here is the former, not the latter. See also verse 11.

84:4 GAM TSIPOR MATS'AH VAYIT U DEROR KEN LAH ASHER SHATAH EPHROCHEYHA ET MIZBECHOTEYCHA YHVH TSEVA'OT MALKI VE ELOHAI

גַּם צִפּוֹר מָצְאָה בַיִת וּדְרוֹר קֵן לָהּ אֲשֶׁר שָׁתָה אֶפְרֹחֶיהָ אֶת מִזְבְּחוֹתֶיךָ יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת מַלְכִּי וֵאלֹהָי

KJ (84:3): Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O LORD of hosts, my King, and my God.

BN: The sparrow too has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young; {N} your altars, YHVH, the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens, my King, and my gods.

ELOHAI: Confirming that YHVH is still one of the many, despite being named singly in verse 3. And now look at verse 9, where the entire polytheon is invoked.

MIZBECHOTEYCHA: But what exactly are the "courts of the living deity"? Nature, not the Temple. His altars are trees, growing naturally. Though of course it is the Temple too (if the Temple even existed at the time of writing this - shrines anyway).

84:5 ASHREY YOSHVEY VEITECHA OD YEHALELUCHA (SELAH)

אַשְׁרֵי יוֹשְׁבֵי בֵיתֶךָ עוֹד יְהַלְלוּךָ סֶּלָה

KJ (84:4): Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee. Selah.

BN: Happy are they who dwell in your house, they sing your praises constantly. (Selah)

First a reference to the opening line of Mah Tovu, which is the commencement of daily liturgy. Now a quoting of the opening line of the Ashrey prayer, the first prayer of major importance in the daily liturgy. Should we anticipate more liturgical allusions in the following verses? And if they come, will that too help us date this? Formal prayer was not just Second Temple, but Late Second Temple.

ASHREY: Does not mean "blessed", though we may regard someone who is happy as being so because they are "blessed"; but there is Baruch and there is Ashrey, and these are conceptually entirely different - see verse 7 where Baruch is used.

84:6 ASHREY ADAM OZ LO VACH MESILOT BI LEVAVAM

אַשְׁרֵי אָדָם עוֹז לוֹ בָךְ מְסִלּוֹת בִּלְבָבָם

KJ (84:5): Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them.

BN: Happy is the man who finds his strength in you, who makes this pilgrimage in his heart.

BI LEVAVAM: Or BIL'VAVAM?

MESILOT BI LEVAVAM: A Mesilah is really a "highway", larger even than a DERECH - the I95 or the M6 to use contemporary equivalents - much larger than a mere HALACHAH, which could be an A-road, or simply the village high street. Elsewhere, each of these is used metpahorically to mean "the Way" - as in Zoroaster's famous "I am the Light, I am the Way", which Jesus later borrowed; BUT...

The BUT is LEVAVAM, which is plural: a singular Adam, even when used for Humankind, requires a singular noun. The only reason for using the plural is to universalise ADAM, and then make the statement personal to every one of them. So who are the "them"? If my reading of GITIYT is correct, we are singing this en route to the olive-harvest (quoting well-known lines from famous tunes, but not knowing any more than that, is standard for singing at times like this!), or perhaps more formally upon arrival. The olive-harvest is a part of Sukot, which is one of the SHELOSHAT HA REGALIM, the "Pilgrim Festivals" - Pesach and Shavu'ot being the other two. How do you take part in a "pilgrim festival"? You can fill in the rest of this paragraph for yourself.

84:7 OVREY BE EMEK HA BACHA MA'YAN YESHIYTUHU GAM BERACHOT YA'TEH MOREH

עֹבְרֵי בְּעֵמֶק הַבָּכָא מַעְיָן יְשִׁיתוּהוּ גַּם בְּרָכוֹת יַעְטֶה מוֹרֶה

KJ (84:6): Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools.

BN: Passing through the valley of Bacha they make it a place of springs; {N} yea, the early rain clothes it with blessings.

EMEK HA BACHA: I have commented previously that many, indeed most of these Psalms, have their origins in the hymns of the Kena'ani (Canaanite) and Phoiniki (Phonenician) cults that preceded the Solomonic Temple in Yeru-Shala'im, and in which - over a thousand gods and goddesses were worshipped there - they continued to hold prominence until at least the time of King Yoshi-Yah (Josiah). The Ashrey verses clearly belong to Asherah-worship, and it is perhaps not surprising that there should be a direct mention of the EMEK HA BACHA, "the valley of weeping", which might lead us to think of Rachel weeping for her lost children (Jeremiah 31:15, Matthew 2:18), Mary for Jesus, the women at the north gate of the Temple for Tammuz (Ezekiel 8:14), the burial of Devorah under the weeping-oak of Alon Bachot, or any of the other multiple occasions when the mourning of the Mother-Goddess for her "Beloved Son" becomes central to the myths and liturgy.

But here it is more than that: the cedar forests that were cut down by King Eshmun-Azar "Hu-Ram" of Tsur, and transported to Yeru-Shala'im for the construction of the Solomonic Temple, came from the hills above precisely that valley, and no doubt the hymns accompanied them - especially the Bacchanalian, because this was then, and still is today, the Lebanon's wine-and-olive region. It is located in south-eastern Lebanon, today spelled Beqaa (עמק בקה) rather than Bacha, and was made famous in the 1982 War of Peace for Galilee, before it was transformed into a maze of underground trenches housing vast quantities of military equipment, provided by Iran for Hezbollah; and even more sadly, at the time of writing, the tent-homes of almost half a million refugees from the genocide in Syria.

Just one last thought on this: if these are the pilgrims coming to the olive-harvest, and singing as they travel the hghways in large numbers, does the reference to the Bacha/Beqaa valley also tell us that they were transporting cartloads of olives with them for the festival?

84:8 YELCHU ME CHAYIL EL CHAYIL YERA'EH EL ELOHIM BE TSI'ON

יֵלְכוּ מֵחַיִל אֶל חָיִל יֵרָאֶה אֶל אֱלֹהִים בְּצִיּוֹן

KJ (84:7): They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.

BN: They go from strength to strength, every one of them appears before Elohim in Tsi'on.

Meaning that their numbers increase with each habitation that they pass through, gathering still more pilgrims as they travel? Compare the modern Hajj to Mecca, or the Christian routes to Lourdes and Santiago de Compostela (indeed, having just read that last link again, I am tempted to retranslate MESILOT in verse 3 as "Camino".

84:9 YHVH ELOHIM TSEVA'OT SHIM'AH TEPHILATI HA'AZIYNAH ELOHEY YA'AKOV (SELAH)

יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים צְבָאוֹת שִׁמְעָה תְפִלָּתִי הַאֲזִינָה אֱלֹהֵי יַעֲקֹב סֶלָה

KJ (84:8): O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer: give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah.

BN: YHVH, Elohim, and you the Hosts of the Heavens, hear my prayer; {N} give ear, you gods of Ya'akov. (Selah)

YHVH ELOHIM TSEVA'OT: see my note to this doubling, a couple of Psalms ago. We need to take each of these names/titles individually, but recognise that they are also a multiple plural (SHIM'AH here, though interestingly it is in the feminine singular, not the masculine!..

[SHIM'AH: And after Mah Tovu and Ashrey, what other songs do the pilgrims know, who don't attend these ceremonies on a daily basis, who may be making the Chag for the first time in their lives, and know only what they know. Today it would be Hava Nagilah and a couple of tunes from "Fiddler On The Roof", and maybe Adon Olam or Yigdal. But always the Shem'a. Everybody knows the Shem'a...]

... where was I, yes, SHEM'A YISRA-EL, the most famous of all phrases in the Jewish liturgy, is 3rd person masculine singular (Deuteronomy 6:4 if you want to check), and does not have that final Kamets-Hey which denotes the feminine. Re-using my Prime Minister and Cabinet parallel, a news item reporting on the Cabinet today would likewise use the third person singular, not plural: "the Cabinet has agreed..." - "compound noun" is the English grammatical term for this. But masculine singular, not feminine singular. This is addressed to a goddess, not a male deity. And HA'AZIYNAH confirms it. No wonder they sang ASHREY!

84:10 MAGINENU RE'EH ELOHIM VE HABET PENEY MESHIYCHECHA

מָגִנֵּנוּ רְאֵה אֱלֹהִים וְהַבֵּט פְּנֵי מְשִׁיחֶךָ

KJ (84:9): Behold, O God our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed.

BN: Behold, Elohim, our shield, and look upon the face of your anointed.

MESHIYCHECHA: Anointed to a secular role, that of king, albeit priest-king, the representative of the deity on Earth; this is not the same as Moshi'a, which is the Messiah, the spiritual redeemer, which is the role of the deity. In Biblical times kings were anointed, a phial of oil being poured over their head, where in other parts of the world, in later times, a crown was placed on the new monarch's head: but the role is identical.

84:11 KI TOV YOM BA CHATSEREYCHA ME ALEPH BACHARTI HISTOPHEPH BE VEIT ELOHAI MI DUR BE AHALEI RESHA

כִּי טוֹב יוֹם בַּחֲצֵרֶיךָ מֵאָלֶף בָּחַרְתִּי הִסְתּוֹפֵף בְּבֵית אֱלֹהַי מִדּוּר בְּאָהֳלֵי רֶשַׁע

KJ (84:10): For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

BN (compromise translation): For a day in your courts is as good as a thousand [in anybody else's]; {N} I had rather stand at the threshold of the house of my gods, than actually inhabit any of the places where wickedness is in charge.

ALEPH: I am not convinced that any of the translators, all of whom appear to agree on "a thousand", have this correct. ELEPH is "a thousand", but the pointing here insists on ALEPH, which is the way that the number "one" gets written down; and anyway: better than "a thousand" what?
I think this is an idiom, and that its intention is "even just a single day as a courtier in your court would be better than none at all."

BN (preferred rendition): Even just a single day out here in Nature... I would rather just stand at the gate, looking out at Nature, than have to go on living in that ghastly toilet humans turn their habitations into.

84:12 KI SHEMESH U MAGEN YHVH ELOHIM CHEN VE CHAVOD YITEN YHVH LO YIMNA TOV LA HOLCHIM BE TAMIM

כִּי שֶׁמֶשׁ וּמָגֵן יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים חֵן וְכָבוֹד יִתֵּן יְהוָה לֹא יִמְנַע טוֹב לַהֹלְכִים בְּתָמִים

KJ (84:11): For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.

BN: For YHVH Elohim is both a sun and a shield; {N} YHVH gives grace and glory; {N} no good thing will he withheld from those who live uprightly.

HOLCHIM: Yes, it means "to go", but the sense is "to live"; this is why the Jewish "way of life" comes from this root: HALACHAH (see my note at verse 6).

84:13 YHVH TSEVA'OT ASHREY ADAM BOTE'ACH BACH

יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת אַשְׁרֵי אָדָם בֹּטֵחַ בָּךְ

KJ (84:12): O LORD of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.

BN: Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens, happy is the man who places his trust in you. {P}

ASHREY: The third occasion, and again I find myself wondering if this was not originally a hymn exclusively to Asherah - the olives, like the dates and the pomegranates, constitute a vast basket of what could be miniature eggs, ova in the womb of Nature, and here being harvested, so it is the Madonna, the Chavah of all this, Em Kol Chai, who is being thanked: the male seed was needed, but at the outset, not the parturition.

And note the symbolic number: title plus 12 verses.

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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