TheBibleNet: Psalm 122

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

122:1 SHIR HA MA'ALOT LE DAVID SAMACHTI BE OMRIM LI BEIT YHVH NELECH

שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת לְדָוִד שָׂמַחְתִּי בְּאֹמְרִים לִי בֵּית יְהוָה נֵלֵךְ

KJ: (A Song of degrees of David.) I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD.

BN: A Song for the Ascent; for David. {N} I rejoiced when they said to me: "Let us go up to the house of YHVH."

LE DAVID: The previous two were neither dedicated to, nor "authored by" King David; as noted previously; LE intends "to" or "for", not "by". This is endorsed by the statement of a visit to BEIT YHVH; there was no BEIT YHVH in King David's time, neither shrine nor Temple; the Ark was kept at Ba'aley Yehudah, then briefly at Kiryat Ye'arim (2 Samuel 6), and in a tent in Yeru-Shala'im until Shelomoh built the Temple.

LI BEIT YHVH: Given that this is a SHIR HA MA'ALOT, "LI" surely has to be translated as "up to" and not "in to"!

122:2 OMDOT HAYU RAGLEYNU BI SHE'ARAYICH YERU-SHALA'IM

עֹמְדוֹת הָיוּ רַגְלֵינוּ בִּשְׁעָרַיִךְ יְרוּשָׁלִָם

KJ: Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem.

BN: Our feet were standing within your gates, Yeru-Shala'im;

OMDOT: Present tense. HAYU, past tense. So OMDOT must be the participle and LEHIYOT the verb. So this is neither the "shall stand" of KJ, nor the "are standing" of several Jewish translations, but "were standing", the imperfect tense, which doesn't exist as such in Yehudit, unless you find a way such as this to make it (this is almost exactly how it would be done in modern Ivrit: almost: the difference being the order of the two words: HAYU OMDOT today, and probably RAGLEYNU before either of them).

YERU-SHALA'IM: Further confirmation that the BEIT YHVH of verse 1 meant the Temple, and therefore that this cannot be "by" David, but only dedicated or addressed "to" him.

I point this out because almost all commentators, and especially the Christian commentators, insist that these Psalms are the Psalms of the pilgrims (and that part they may very well be), sung on the road to Yeru-Shala'im for each of the three Pilgrim Festivals.

122:3 YERU-SHALA'IM HA BENUYAH KE IR SHE CHUBRAH LAH YACHDAV

יְרוּשָׁלַםִ הַבְּנוּיָה כְּעִיר שֶׁחֻבְּרָה לָּהּ יַחְדָּו

KJ: Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together:

BN: Yeru-Shala'im, built as a city in which everything is conjoined...

A play on ideas rather more than words, which takes the joining-together of the seven hilltop villages to make the conurbation Yeru-Shala'im, and adds the construct of the name, the idea of universal peace and harmony which is SHALOM.

122:4 SHE SHAM ALU SHEVATIM SHIVTEY YAH EDUT LE YISRA-EL LEHODOT LE SHEM YHVH

שֶׁשָּׁם עָלוּ שְׁבָטִים שִׁבְטֵי יָהּ עֵדוּת לְיִשְׂרָאֵל לְהֹדוֹת לְשֵׁם יְהוָה

KJ: Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the LORD.

BN: ... to which the tribes went up, the tribes of Yah, the congregation of Yisra-El, to give thanks to the name YHVH.

ALU: From the same root that gives MA'ALOT.

YAH: And don't forget that most Yehudit names honour the mother, not the father. Thus Ya'akov (Yah Ekev), Yoseph (Yah-Suph), Yesha-Yah, Eli-Yah, Chizki-Yah... all those latter will be masculinised in the Hasmonean era (Yesha-Yahu etc), and the Yah will be dropped from the first two, as per my brackets, but the honouring of the mother remains in place in Judaism to this day, a child's Jewish identity requiring the mother to be Jewish, regardless of the father's ethnicity.

EDUT: Testimony, or congregation?

SHEVATIM: Whereas this plays on the words rather more than the ideas, allowing the tribes - "SHEVATIM" - to sound like the same number as the villages that provided the conurbation, which happens to be seven, the sacred number of YHVH - though in fact it is his consort YAH, whose number is 15, who gets the specific mention, and the tribes were 12.

122:5 KI SHAMAH YASHVU CHIS'OT LE MISHPAT KIS'OT LE VEIT DAVIYD

כִּי שָׁמָּה יָשְׁבוּ כִסְאוֹת לְמִשְׁפָּט כִּסְאוֹת לְבֵית דָּוִיד

KJ: For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of David.

BN: For there thrones for judgment had been set up, the thrones of the house of Daviyd.

CHIS'OT...KIS'OT: Why are they not identical, given that their grammatical and syntactical positions in the sentence are identical?

DAVIYD: with an additional Yud in the Masoretic text, whence my transliteration. But surely the hardening of the Vav in the first place was already an error, and the name was originally Daoud, an abbreviation of Yedid-Yah - which was never masculinised into Yedid-Yahu, as far as I am aware.

122:6 SHA'ALU SHELOM YERU-SHALA'IM YISHLAYU OHAVAYICH

שַׁאֲלוּ שְׁלוֹם יְרוּשָׁלִָם יִשְׁלָיוּ אֹהֲבָיִךְ

KJ: Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.

BN: Pray for the peace of Yeru-Shala'im; may those who love you prosper.

SHELOM: Once again I feel the need to point out that SHALOM means more than "peace"; wholeness and harmony.

Quadruple alliteration! Eat your rolling stone out, Bobby Zimmerman!! Shame the poet couldn't find a fifth for the final phrase.

122:7 YEHI SHALOM BE CHEYLECH SHALVAH BE ARMENOTAYICH

יְהִי שָׁלוֹם בְּחֵילֵךְ שַׁלְוָה בְּאַרְמְנוֹתָיִךְ

KJ: Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.

BN: May there be peace within your walls, and prosperity within your palaces.

Providing a splendid parallel to the blessing at the end of Psalm 121.

122:8 LEMA'AN ACHAI VE RE'AI ADABRAH NA SHALOM BACH

לְמַעַן אַחַי וְרֵעָי אֲדַבְּרָה נָּא שָׁלוֹם בָּךְ

KJ: For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee.

KJ: For the sake of my kinsmen and my companions, I will now say, Peace be within you.

122:9 LEMA'AN BEIT YHVH ELOHEYNU AVAKSHAH TOV LACH

לְמַעַן בֵּית יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ אֲבַקְשָׁה טוֹב לָךְ

KJ: Because of the house of the LORD our God I will seek thy good

BN: For the sake of the house of YHVH our god I will pray for good things for you. {P}

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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