TheBibleNet: Psalm 131

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

The collection as it stands gives us 15 Shirei Ma'alot, and with a circular stairway comprising 15 steps that led up from the Women's Court to the Gate of Nicanor ... which is the standard explanation for 15 Psalms. But there are not 15 steps up from the Men's Court to the altar; there was a ramp, unstepped. And the "Stations of the Cross", which was Jesus' route to the summit, echoed the Osiric in Egypt, of fourteen, as does the number of claimed burial places.

However, look more closely at the archeology, and at the texts. The Women's Court was surrounded by a gallery on the north, east, and south. This was the way in for women, and places were reserved for them on the north and south sides of the gallery; but the men also frequented this court, and usually crossed it when they went to the Temple, simply because it was reckoned the most convenient. So did the men join the women at this point, and make the seven-verse ascent to the main courtyard together, not needing to go up the ramp but only to enter through the gallery? The text, on this occasion and previously, has a strong male bias in its wording.

131:1 SHIR HA MA'ALOT LE DAVID YHVH LO GAVAH LIBI VE LO RAMU EYNAI VE LO HILACHTI BIGDOLOT U VE NIPHLA'OT MIMENI

שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת לְדָוִד יְהוָה לֹא גָבַהּ לִבִּי וְלֹא רָמוּ עֵינַי וְלֹא הִלַּכְתִּי בִּגְדֹלוֹת וּבְנִפְלָאוֹת מִמֶּנִּי

KJ: (A Song of degrees of David.) LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.

BN: A Song for the Ascent; for David. {N} YHVH, my heart is not haughty, nor are my eyes lofty; {N} nor do I engage myself in matters beyond my capabilities, or in things that to me are simply mysterious.

LO GAVAH LIBI: GAVAH is used to mean "proud", even "arrogant", in the same way that somebody, in English, has reached his peak: it becomes a metaphor, based on the fact that mountains have peaks. So there is Egyptian Geb, the first father of their pantheon. So there are hills that bear the description GIVAT, as we might say the Derbyshire Peaks. So there are hill-towns that probably started as Egyptian garrisons, with shrines, and burial-grounds in the form of tumuli, which brought the name Geb into the Yehudit language. Giv-Yah, Gev'a, Giv-On... click here.

LO RAMU EYNAI: Does this mean "far-seeing" in the sense of "visionary", or "insightful"? If not, what does it mean!

NIPHLA'OT: I have much enjoyed, in my etymological researches, discovering that "mystery" is a Latin word, "misterium", and it simply means any job, skill or craft that requires specialist knowledge, best achieved by serving an apprenticeship to a Guild - whence most of the mediaeval Guilds are known as Mysteries - the Mystery of Plumbers or Basket-Weavers; today I would add the Mystery of Computer Programmers and Skybox Installers. Nothing to do with gods at all!

131:2 IM LO SHIVIYTI VE DOMAMTI NAPHSHI KE GAMUL ALEY IMO KA GAMUL ALAI NAPHSHI

אִם לֹא שִׁוִּיתִי וְדוֹמַמְתִּי נַפְשִׁי כְּגָמֻל עֲלֵי אִמּוֹ כַּגָּמֻל עָלַי נַפְשִׁי

KJ: Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child.

BN: Have I not stilled and quieted my soul? {N} Like a weaned child with his mother, my soul is with me like the weaned child.

IM LO: For some reason Yehudit never developed an effective mode for asking questions. The French created "est-ce que", and IM LO is probably a close equivalent of that. Having said which, HA IM LO, with the definite article doing the "ce" job in the French, is the official mode in modern Ivrit, though nobody actually uses it.

SHIVIYTI: this should really be translated as "brought the conflicts in my soul to a position of harmony", from the root SHAVAH meaning "to agree with".

GAMUL is an interesting word; linked to GAMAL = "a camel", which is the pictogrammic reason why the third letter of the alphabet (Gamma in Greek, but the Greeks didn't take the Phoenician meanings when they took the alphabet) is named GIMEL (ג). I presume that the connection with the "weaned child" is because, among the desert peoples at that time, the camel was just as much a source of daily milk as were the sheep and goat and, probably less commonly, the dairy cow.

But the usage here is metaphorical: I read it as the difference between someone who happens to have reached a certain chronological age, and someone who has actually attained adulthood.

KE GAMUL...KA GAMUL: Yehudit has no indefinite article, but KE GAMUL is its equivalent, where KA GAMUL infers KE HA, which is the definite article.

ALEY...ALAI: why is it different on each occasion? The first is simply the preposition, the subject following (IMO - "his mother"); the second includes the subject (ANI foreshortened and in the accusative: "me")

131:3 YACHEL YISRA-EL EL YHVH ME ATAH VE AD OLAM

יַחֵל יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶל יְהוָה מֵעַתָּה וְעַד עוֹלָם

KJ: Let Israel hope in the LORD from henceforth and for ever.

BN: Let Yisra-El place its hope in YHVH from now until eternity. {P}

Psalm 131 is among those used by Leonard Bernstein for his "Chichester Psalms"; cick here to hear them.

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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