TheBibleNet: Psalm 121

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

This Psalm has a page on my blog "Private Collection" - click here

121:1 SHIR LA MA'ALOT ESA EYNAI EL HE HARIM ME AYIN YAVO EZRI

שִׁיר לַמַּעֲלוֹת אֶשָּׂא עֵינַי אֶל הֶהָרִים מֵאַיִן יָבֹא עֶזְרִי

KJ: (A Song of degrees.) I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

BN: A Song at the Ascent. {N} I will lift up my eyes towards the mountains; from where will my help come?

SHIR LA MA'ALOT: In the previous Psalm it was SHIR HA MA'ALOT: what is the difference? LA means "to", where HA is the definite article, so the former was about the process of "aliyah" (and therefore translated by me as "for the ascent"), where this is "for the purpose of aliyah", at the time of doing so.

ME AYIN: Statement or question? The grammar allows both, but the sense within the verse seems to insist on the former; I have used the latter in my translation, only because it enables me to ask the question, and as a preface to my response to the following verse.

ME AYIN: But notice that it is also yet one more play-on-words, AYIN with an AYIN ("eyes") set against AYIN with an Aleph ("from where") - and actually a triple-play, given that it is precisely the letter Ayin that differentiates Ayin from Ayin!). And of course the help will come - YEVARECHECHA - from the sun, who is always depicted in children's drawings as a bright yellow eye.😎 So a quadruple-play!

HARIM: BUt what mountains? Yeru-Shala'im is a conurbation of seven hillside towns, but definitely hillside, not mountainside. The Temple stands on the highest of those hills, so if we are in process of ascending the steps in the Temple courtyard, we are already at the summit, and there are no other mountains visible from the city, even with a sophiosticated modern telescope. Should we then translate HARIM as "hills", and assume we we are singing this on the ascent to Yeru-Shala'im itself, and not yet the Temple? Possible, in its original form, and this therefore yet one more hymn written long before and borrowed for the Temple liturgy.

121:2 EZRI ME IM YHVH OSEH SHAMAYIM VA ARETS

עֶזְרִי מֵעִם יְהוָה עֹשֵׂה שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץ

KJ: My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.

BN: My help comes from being with YHVH, who made the heavens and the Earth.

EZRI ME: Appears to be an answer to the question "where from?". If it is simply a statement, then it is a repetition, because the statement was already made (in the KJ translation).

ME IM: Not "from YHVH", but "from with YHVH", or at the remote end of possibility "from if YHVH", neither of which make an awful lot of obvious sense. The KJ translation simply pretends the IM is not there, by ignoring it; mine pretends there is yet one more word there, in order to superimpose a possible meaning.

121:3 AL YITEN LAMOT RAGLECHA AL YANUM SHOMRECHA

אַל יִתֵּן לַמּוֹט רַגְלֶךָ אַל יָנוּם שֹׁמְרֶךָ

KJ: He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

BN: He will not permit so much as the moving of your foot; he who looks after you will not sleep on the job.

AL YITEN: The grammatical form is surely a negative command: "do not!" If this was "He will not", even if it left out the pronoun HU, it would still be LO YITEN, not AL YITEN. And yet all translators, including the most orthodox Jewish, insist on "he will not"; and it is hard to make sense of this if it is translated as "do not".

LAMOT: Sound-play; this is LAMOT, not LAMUT ("to die").The verb has come up repeatedly in these Psalms, always translated as "move", and probably it requires Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology to understand it (click here) - the belief that the Earth was fixed, and still, at the centre of the Universe, while the sun, the moon, the other planets, and the constellations, moved around it in their orbits; and as long as humans followed the divine laws, the deity would ensure that the Earth "shall not be moved".

RAGLECHA: Is this the Hillel-parable problem once again - see my note to Psalm 119:105. Or is in fact making a very deliberate pun on that double-meaning: he will not permit the changing of a single letter, let alone an entire clause, in the terms of his covenant.

121:4 HINEH LO YANUM VE LO YIYSHAN SHOMER YISRA-EL

הִנֵּה לֹא יָנוּם וְלֹא יִישָׁן שׁוֹמֵר יִשְׂרָאֵל

KJ: Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

BN: Behold, he who keeps watch over Yisra-El never slumbers, and never sleeps.

Except at night? See verse 6. And on the Sabbath obviously. And when his face is turned aside.

121:5 YHVH SHOMRECHA YHVH TSILCHA AL YAD YEMIYNECHA

יְהוָה שֹׁמְרֶךָ יְהוָה צִלְּךָ עַל יַד יְמִינֶךָ

KJ: The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.

BN: YHVH is your watchman; YHVH is your shadow, on your right hand.

SHOMRECHA: "Man, say to your fellow-countrymen, When I set armies in motion against a land, its people must choose one from among themselves to be a watchman. When he sees the enemy approaching and blows his trumpet to warn the people, then if anyone does not heed the warning and is overtaken by the enemy, he is responsible for his own fate. He is responsible because, when he heard the alarm, he paid no heed to it; had he paid heed, he would have escaped. But if the watchman does not blow his trumpet to warn the people when he sees the enemy approaching, then any man who is killed is caught with all his sins upon him; but I will hold the watchman answerable for his death." Ezekiel 33:1-6

TSILCHA: "Shadow" in the way that a senior teacher might be asked to supervise a newly-qualified teacher, undertaking observations quietly from the back of the classroom in order to provide support and guidance in review after the lesson.

YEMIYNECHA: See the link. And note that: a) in this world of ultimogeniture, Bin-Yamin was the youngest son of Abou Ya'akov; b) the capital city of Yisra-El was Yeru-Shala'im, which is in the tribal territory of Bin-Yamin; c) the first king of Yisra-El was Sha'ul, who came from the tribe of Bin-Yamin; d) cf Acts 2:33.

121:6 YOMAM HA SHEMESH LO YAKEKAH VE YARE'ACH BA LAILAH

יוֹמָם הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ לֹא יַכֶּכָּה וְיָרֵחַ בַּלָּיְלָה

KJ: The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

BN: The sun shall not smite you by day, nor the moon by night.

Which suggests that YHVH has total control of the cosmos, which is why he neither sleeps nor slumbers; ruling as the deity he has taken over the sun and moon, much as Binyamin Netanyahu appointed himself to every ministry in the Cabinet. So we can date this version of the Psalm, not precisely, but very late (even if the original was ancient, which it could well have been).

121:7 YHVH YISHMARCHA MI KOL RA YISHMOR ET NAPHSHECHA

יְהוָה יִשְׁמָרְךָ מִכָּל רָע יִשְׁמֹר אֶת נַפְשֶׁךָ

KJ: The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.

BN: YHVH will keep you from any bad thing; he will guard your soul.

YISHMARCHA: Picking up my comment about YEVARECHECHA at verse 1 - you will need to look at the text (it is known in English as "the Priestly Blessing") to understand this - the last word of the first line. And yes, I should have made this note when the same word came up in verse 5.

KOL RA: I have translated this as "any bad thing", which is a very bad thing poetically, but I can find no better way of rendering something larger than the concept of evil: this includes protection from summer colds and flu viruses, dried-up wells and rain just when you were about to harvest... "YHVH will provide you with an extended warranty..." No, not that way either.

121:8 YHVH YISHMAR TSE'T'CHA U VO'ECHA ME ATAH VE AD OLAM

יְהוָה יִשְׁמָר צֵאתְךָ וּבוֹאֶךָ מֵעַתָּה וְעַד עוֹלָם

KJ: The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

BN: YHVH will watch over your entrances and exits, from now, until the very end of eternity. {P}

YISHMAR: And again that key-word from the YEVARECHECHA.

TSE'T'CHA U VO'ECHA: YHVH the stage manager!

Deuteronomy 28:6 has

28:6 BARUCH ATAH BE VO'ECHA U VARUCH ATAH BE TSET'CHA

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה בְּבֹאֶךָ וּבָרוּךְ אַתָּה בְּצֵאתֶךָ

KJ: Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out.

BN: Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.

for which follow my note there to the Shem'a and Deuteronomy 6:7.

SurfTheSite

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