TheBibleNet: Psalm 135

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

Why were the Shirei Ma'alot not regarded as Book Six, and this now the start of Book Seven? Those fifteen were unquestionably a category unto themselves, and should surely be separated from the others in the collection.

Or should they? We ended the last Psalm with the "ascentors" having finally arrived at the start of the day and the start of worship. Now see the second verse of this Psalm.

135:1 HALELU YAH HALELU ET SHEM YHVH HALELU AVDEY YHVH

הַלְלוּ יָהּ הַלְלוּ אֶת שֵׁם יְהוָה הַלְלוּ עַבְדֵי יְהוָה

KJ: Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the name of the LORD; praise him, O ye servants of the LORD.

BN: Hallelu Yah. {N} Praise the name YHVH. Give praise, you servants of YHVH...

I can easily imagine that the original of this read:

HALELU YAH HALELU YHVH HALELU AVDEY ELOHEYNU

enabling the congregation to praise both the "king" and the "queen", and then the remainder of the polytheon. By the time of Ezra, with the male Omnideity now becoming supreme, and even more so in the Hasmonean era, when it had taken over completely, not only does Yah become masculinised, but it is also necessary to state and restate: "YAH is now being used as one of the thousand names, it is no longer the name of a moon goddess", for which reason the additional ET SHEM; as if to say "we are using the name YHVH because an Omnideity can obviously only have one name, but understand that all the polytheon are explied" (explied, not implied; it is absolutely explicit). The same, of course, had applied for millennia to ELOHEYNU, which is retained in the second verse; but Eloheynu explies the polytheon, where YHVH as Omnideity was understood to incorporate all the gods into his single self.

135:2 SHE OMDIM BE VEIT YHVH BE CHATSEROT BEIT ELOHEYNU

שֶׁעֹמְדִים בְּבֵית יְהוָה בְּחַצְרוֹת בֵּית אֱלֹהֵינוּ

KJ: Ye that stand in the house of the LORD, in the courts of the house of our God,

BN: ...who stand in YHVH's house, in the courts of the house of our gods.

CHATSEROT: Or CHATSROT? The familiar problem of the second-letter Sheva (the first letter here being a prefictual preposition: Be = "in"). Really this should be pronounced CHATSROT.

In some contexts the CHATSEROT are the "suburbs", or more probably the small villages that grew up around the city, and which then became suburbs later on when the city grew large enough to metropolise them. But in this context they are the courtyards of the Temple itself, to which pilgrims climbed while reciting the Shirey Ma'alot.

Those CHATSEROT also help to confirm my note in the previous verse, because we know from innumerable Biblical sources that, in the Solomonic Temple, there was the central courtyard shrine, the HEYCHAL with the PAROCHET and DEVIR separating it from the Holy of Holies (Kodesh ha Kadashim), but that there were also innumerable side-chapels, and that all of these, like the side chapels in Christian churches and cathedrals which are modelled on the Temple in Yeru-Shala'im, were all Lady Chapels.

135:3 HALELU YAH KI TOV YHVH ZAMRU LISHMO KI NA'IM

הַלְלוּ יָהּ כִּי טוֹב יְהוָה זַמְּרוּ לִשְׁמוֹ כִּי נָעִים

KJ: Praise the LORD; for the LORD is good: sing praises unto his name; for it is pleasant.

BN: Praise the Lady, and YHVH too, for he is good; sing praises to his name, for it is pleasant.

LISHMO: Or LI SHEMO: second letter Sheva again.

NA'IM: And then a third crucial piece of evidence. The moon goddess, who is also the Earth's fertility (think menstrual cycles as well as tides), was known by many names. In Chevron, where David had his first kingship (technically his second, but Tsiklag doesn't really count in this context), she was Yah, the sister of Ephron (Phoroneus) of the Beney Chet, and he brought her to Yeru-Shala'im under that name. But in Beit Lechem where he grew up, she went by another name; or three names really, like the daughters of al-Lah and King Lear, one for the new moon, one for the full moon, one for the waning moon: Orpah and Rut (Ruth) the offspring-by-marriage, Naomi the mother. Naomi in Yehudit is NA'AMI (נָעֳמִ֜י), and means, as in this verse, "pleasant". (Rut's later husband, Bo'az, by the way, will take forward this particular theme and connection, because his name will be given to one of the two pillars at the entrance to the Heychal, the other being Yachin).

On which basis I shall offer this as a grammatically incorrect (I have rendered it in the feminine, but it does not really require the feminine as she is the object, not the subject) original for this verse:

HALELU YAH KI TOVAH YAH ZAMRU LISHMAH KI NA'IMAH

and my translation, above, falls half-way between the two, recovering the original while also acknowledging the redacted update.

135:4 KI YA'AKOV BACHAR LO YAH YISRA-EL LISGULATO

כִּי יַעֲקֹב בָּחַר לוֹ יָהּ יִשְׂרָאֵל לִסְגֻלָּתוֹ

KJ: For the LORD hath chosen Jacob unto himself, and Israel for his peculiar treasure.

BN: For the Lady has chosen Ya'akov for herself, and Yisra-El is her treasure.

And again my translation is false; but necessarily so, to make clear once again the original of this.

LISGULATO: Or LI SEGULATO? (Or really LISGULATAH or LI SEGULATAH, in the recovered version. BACHAR should then be BACHRAH).

We have wondered, in several recent Psalms, why sometimes Ya'akov, sometimes Yisra-El; now we have both. And we will have a different variation on the variation in the closing verses.

135:5 KI ANI YADA'TI KI GADOL YHVH VA ADONEYNU MI KOL ELOHIM

כִּי אֲנִי יָדַעְתִּי כִּי גָדוֹל יְהוָה וַאֲדֹנֵינוּ מִכָּל אֱלֹהִים

KJ: For I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above all gods.

BN: For I know that YHVH is great, and that he is our Lord above all other deities.

ELOHIM: Whether you accept my hypothesis or not, ELOHIM must at any epoch include the goddess(es) as well as the god(s).

And if it is a masculine revision, then this verse must have been added, rather than edited - and so we can now date the piece even more precisely: that opening verse was indeed at the point of transition, and the Psalm a part of ideological progress, propaganda in a sense, to inculcate the new Omnideity as a fixed belief for all time. But he is not yet fully enthroned, and the old idea, that there are many gods and goddesses, but there is no point following them because ours is better and can do everything they can do, and more, is still in place.

135:6 KOL ASHER CHAPHETS YHVH ASAH BA SHAMAYIM U VA ARETS BA YAMIM VE CHOL TEHOMOT

כֹּל אֲשֶׁר חָפֵץ יְהוָה עָשָׂה בַּשָּׁמַיִם וּבָאָרֶץ בַּיַּמִּים וְכָל תְּהוֹמוֹת

KJ: Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places.

BN: Whatsoever pleased YHVH, so did he do, {N} in the heavens and on Earth, in the seas and wherever there was darkness.

SHAMAYIM: "in the heavens", as in the physical skies, and not "in Heaven", a mystical place somewhere in the human mind.

TEHOMOT: See my notes to Tehom in the singular form.

135:7 MA'ALEH NESI'IM MIKTSEH HA ARETS BE RAKIM LA MATAR ASAH MOTS'E RU'ACH ME OTSROTAV

מַעֲלֶה נְשִׂאִים מִקְצֵה הָאָרֶץ בְּרָקִים לַמָּטָר עָשָׂה מוֹצֵא רוּחַ מֵאוֹצְרוֹתָיו

KJ: He causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings for the rain; he bringeth the wind out of his treasuries.

BN: He makes the vapours ascend from the ends of the Earth; {N}
he makes lightning for the rain; he fetches the wind out of his store-cupboards.

MA'ALEH: Probably just coincidence that MA'ALEH is being used here. Though it is also the case hat we had the TAL rising in the same manner in the previous Psalm.

NESI'IM: Written without pointing, and treated as Aramaic, this could be NASHIM = "women", but that is probably just coincidence. NASI'IM on the other hand means "princes", from a root that means "lifted up" - another way of saying MA'ALEH. How does that get to be "vapours"? Not a clue - save the context of this verse. Though it would be perfectly correct to separate the two parts of the verse, and declare that "he raises up princes from every corner of the Earth" in the first part.

MIKTSEH: Or MI KETSEH. Same issue as above.

The repetition of the Mem in this verse (MA'ALEH... MIKTSEH... MATAR... MOTS'E... ME OTSROTAV) has to be mainly or even mostly for the maintaining of musical motifs. How do you convey that in a translation? Unless by creating an equivalent alliteration, which would be a cliché in English.

The subject-matter, in this verse and the following, continues the "education programme": for a polytheistic people, each of the verses would previously have inferred a different deity, some male, some female, some fertility, some cosmological, some abstract etc. By the end of the Psalm all will be gathered into one, and there is only One deity. Can we now go back to whichever Psalm it was that went through the entire history [119 does too, but it isn't that one that I mean] and ask: was that part of the same process, only rather less successful?

On this occasion the sky god and the storm-god are combined; the winds were not generally conveyed as gods, but as part of the armoury (I have gone for "store-cupboards" because that amused me, but really it should be "armoury") of the storm-god, as in truth they still are here.

135:8 SHE HIKAH BECHOREY MITSRAYIM ME ADAM AD BEHEMAH

שֶׁהִכָּה בְּכוֹרֵי מִצְרָיִם מֵאָדָם עַד בְּהֵמָה

KJ: Who smote the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and beast.

BN: He who smote the first-born of Mitsrayim, from the human to the animal...

SHE: "Which" or "who", which is a word that infers the completion of a previous statement, or is conjoined to what then follows. However, the previous sentence was in the present tense, while this one is in the past, and so will be the next (I have mixed my tenses in stating this to demonstrate the problem).

ADAM: The "human race", not the progenitor of Genesis 3.

135:9 SHALACH OTOT U MOPHTIM BETOCHECHI MITSRAYIM BE PHAR'OH U VE CHOL AVADAV

שָׁלַח אֹתוֹת וּמֹפְתִים בְּתוֹכֵכִי מִצְרָיִם בְּפַרְעֹה וּבְכָל עֲבָדָיו

KJ: Who sent tokens and wonders into the midst of thee, O Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his servants.

BN: ...who sent signs and wonders into your midst, Mitsrayim, on Pharaoh, and on all his servants...

BETOCHECHI: How does that get to be 2nd person? Has the Egyptian Ambassador turned up at the Temple for morning prayers!?

135:10 SHE HIKAH GOYIM RABIM VE HARAG MELACHIM ATSUMIM

שֶׁהִכָּה גּוֹיִם רַבִּים וְהָרַג מְלָכִים עֲצוּמִים

KJ: Who smote great nations, and slew mighty kings;

BN: Who smote many nations, and slew mighty kings...

135:11 LE SIYCHON MELECH HA EMORI U LE OG MELECH HA BASHAN U LE CHOL MAMLECHOT KENA'AN

לְסִיחוֹן מֶלֶךְ הָאֱמֹרִי וּלְעוֹג מֶלֶךְ הַבָּשָׁן וּלְכֹל מַמְלְכוֹת כְּנָעַן

KJ: Sihon king of the Amorites, and Og king of Bashan, and all the kingdoms of Canaan:

BN: ... such as Siychon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan, and all the kingdoms of Kena'an;

LE SIYCHON: Why the preposition? I have translated it as "such as", only because context allows it and I have no better explanation.

SIYCHON...OG: See Numbers 21:21 ff and Deuteronomy 1:4 ff.

EMORIM: See the link.

HA BASHAN: Check the original texts; do they have HA Bashan, or plain Bashan - it seems like an oddity here; if it is different, can we assume a scribal error, or a change in language between the Davidic and Ezraic periods?

KENA'AN: and why does it refer to Og and Bashan as Kena'ani (Canaanite) anyway; Numbers and Joshua definitely place it in Gil'ad. Again, this looks like a variation across time (cf Bachelard and the contextual theorists).

And why is there no mention of any history beyond the Yehoshu'aic conquest: no thanks for the defeat of the Pelishtim at Gilbo'a, nothing of the Davidic expansion... the Psalm stops at around 1100 BCE - exactly when the polytheon was at its height, as evidenced by the Book of Judges, which supposedly belongs to that epoch. All of which seems to me to confirm yet again that a later scribe has taken an ancient hymn, and re-written it to suit the needs of the new Omnideity.

135:12 VE NATAN ARTSAM NACHALAH NACHALAH LE YISRA-EL AMO

וְנָתַן אַרְצָם נַחֲלָה נַחֲלָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל עַמּוֹ

KJ: And gave their land for an heritage, an heritage unto Israel his people.

BN: And gave their land for a heritage, a heritage to Yisra-El his people.

NATAN: "Gave" is what is says, but I doubt whether the history books of the people of Gil'ad would have used that word! Did the Sioux and Iroquois "give" their land to the Europeans?

This Psalm started as a Halelu Yah, but has turned into a Maskil; and there are no precedents for that; again, we may need to question if this isn't a scribal error: two texts that have become one by mistake.

135:13 YHVH SHIMCHA LE OLAM YHVH ZICHRECHA LE DOR VA DOR

יְהוָה שִׁמְךָ לְעוֹלָם יְהוָה זִכְרְךָ לְדֹר וָדֹר

KJ: Thy name, O LORD, endureth for ever; and thy memorial, O LORD, throughout all generations.

BN: Your name, YHVH, endures for ever; your memory, YHVH, lives on from generation to generation.

Not the most subtle line in the Tanach! "And in case you missed it, YHVH is now the name of our deity, YHVH, Ad-o-nai, have you got it yet, good." But done in the form of praise, and especially acknowledgement, just like they teach it at teacher's training college.

135:14 KI YADIN YHVH AMO VE AL AVADAV YITNECHAM

כִּי יָדִין יְהוָה עַמּוֹ וְעַל עֲבָדָיו יִתְנֶחָם

KJ: For the LORD will judge his people, and he will repent himself concerning his servants.

BN: For YHVH will judge his people, and take much personal comfort from his worshipers.

YITNECHAM: How does KJ get this to mean "repent"? The root is NACHAM - "to take comfort", and used for consolation at a time of bereavement. But this is in the Hit'pa'el, so he is "consoling himself", or "comforting himself". From which - and we already know it from the opening of the Psalm - we have to read AVADAV as the people who are in the Temple, worshiping him, and not their ancestors, those slaves that he liberated in Mitsrayim.

Or should we regard it as a scribal error for LENAKEM, picking up my comment in the previous verse as well as the tone of the first part of this one? "And you had better get that new name in your head, fixed, now, or there will be trouble!" LENAKEM meaning "to take revenge" (and then AVADAV would definitely be "slaves", not "worshipers"!)

135:15 ATSABEY HA GOYIM KESEPH VE ZAHAV MA'ASEH YEDEY ADAM

עֲצַבֵּי הַגּוֹיִם כֶּסֶף וְזָהָב מַעֲשֵׂה יְדֵי אָדָם

KJ: The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.

BN: The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.

This verse appears, very slightly differently (ATSABEYHEM instead of ATSABEY HA GOYIM), in Psalm 115:4, and for the next several verses it will be worth having my notes at Psalm 115 open for comparison, as I do not intend to repeat here what is already written there.

135:16 PEH LAHEM VE LO YEDABERU EYNAYIM VE LO YIR'U

פֶּה לָהֶם וְלֹא יְדַבֵּרוּ עֵינַיִם לָהֶם וְלֹא יִרְאוּ

KJ: They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not;

BN: They have mouths, but they utter no words; they have eyes, but they do not see;

This line too is an echo, of 115:5, but this time the quote is exact. But why the quotation? Was there something about 115 that people already identified with? How else are they connected? Or maybe this one came first, and 115 was copying it?

We need to be clear what is meant by "idols". The walls and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are covered with "idols... the works of men's hands", no different from the alabaster saints on the rood screen and the stained-glass saints in the windows. They too "have mouths, but utter no words... have eyes, but do not see." The problem is not that they are idols, but that they are "graven images", which are prohibited under Mosaic law (Exodus 20:3-4).

135:17 AZNAYIM LAHEM VE LO YA'AZIYNU APH EYN YESH RU'ACH BE PHIYHEM

אָזְנַיִם לָהֶם וְלֹא יַאֲזִינוּ אַף אֵין יֶשׁ רוּחַ בְּפִיהֶם

KJ: They have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths.

BN: They have ears, but they do not hear; nor is there any breath in their mouths.

And obviously not, because they are statues. And this, presumably, the secondary reason for these quotes: we are moving from polytheism to Omnideity, so the icons have to be -oclasmed. Muhammad will clear out the idols from the Ka'aba in Mecca in precisely the same way (click here), and for precisely the same reason, after the conquest of the city: an abstract deity who is pure essence cannot be represented, as Maimonides confirms in the opening chapter of his "Guide For The Perplexed" (and as recited on Friday nights in every synagogue, in the fourth verse of the song version of the Maimonides essay, Yigdal).

Continuing the Psalm 115 quotes, but this time the first half not quite exact, the second considerably different.

135:18 KEMOHEM YIHEYU OSEYHEM KOL BOTE'ACH BA HEM

כְּמוֹהֶם יִהְיוּ עֹשֵׂיהֶם כֹּל אֲשֶׁר בֹּטֵחַ בָּהֶם

KJ: They that make them are like unto them: so is every one that trusteth in them.

BN: Those who make them shall become just like them; so will every one who places their trust in them.

Who is being mocked and insulted here, the sculptors themselves, or those who are foolish enough to believe that the statues are gods? It appears to be the former, which renders it an attack on Art in general, and not just an attack on the falisities and falsehoods of faith. Again the prohibition on graven images. Best place to go for more on this is Chaim Potok's novel "My Name Is Asher Lev".

This verse is an exact copy of 115:8.

135:19 BEIT YISRA'EL BARACHU ET YHVH BEIT AHARON BARACHU ET YHVH

בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל בָּרֲכוּ אֶת יְהוָה בֵּית אַהֲרֹן בָּרֲכוּ אֶת יְהוָה

KJ: Bless the LORD, O house of Israel: bless the LORD, O house of Aaron:

BN: Bless YHVH, house of Yisra-El; bless YHVH, house of Aharon.

Interesting to see how different this verse and the next are from the 115 versions.

Where verse 4 had Ya'akov and Yisra-El, here we now have Yisra-El and Aharon, and in the next verse Levi. Surprising to find that triplet in Biblical times? Today it is the standard division of the Jewish people, and specifically becomes significant at times of prayer: Aharon is the Kohanim, Levi the secondary tiers of priesthood, (including the crafts guilds and the Temple administrators, in Biblical times; today it is simply a hereditary status), and everyone else is Yisra-El. Levitical Status, for the information, passes from the father, not the mother, while biological status passes from the mother, not the father.

So, to use myself as an example: my mother's mother's family were Kohanim, and all the uncles still use the name Cohen as their family name, but it does not pass to me; my father's mother's family were all Leviyim, and used the name Levy when they settled in England, but it does not pass to me. My father's father was named Yisru-El, and his status was the same, as is mine.

135:20 BEIT HA LEVI BARACHU ET YHVH YIR'EY YHVH BARACHU ET YHVH

בֵּית הַלֵּוִי בָּרֲכוּ אֶת יְהוָה יִרְאֵי יְהוָה בָּרֲכוּ אֶת יְהוָה

KJ: Bless the LORD, O house of Levi: ye that fear the LORD, bless the LORD.

BN: Bless YHVH, house of Levi; bless YHVH, you who fear YHVH.

Once again the intransitive blessing.

The end of this Psalm feels like cheerleading! (Yay, go God - high chamsas).

135:21 BARUCH YHVH MI TSI'ON SHOCHEN YERUSHALA'IM HALELU YAH

בָּרוּךְ יְהוָה מִצִּיּוֹן שֹׁכֵן יְרוּשָׁלִָם הַלְלוּ יָהּ

KJ: Blessed be the LORD out of Zion, which dwelleth at Jerusalem. Praise ye the LORD.

BN: Blessed be YHVH out of Tsi'on, where he dwells in Yeru-Shala'im. Hallelu Yah. {P}

And by the end the phrase, by the end of the Psalm indeed, Hallelu-Yah is itself fully transformed; we are no longer praising the goddess of the full moon, but the male Omnideity alone. Transition from polytheism to Omindeism duly complete.

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Psalms:

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