TheBibleNet: Psalm 142

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

Descriptor, dedication, location - note that KJ has again merged verse 1 into the title and adjusted the following verse-numbers accordingly.

Some commentators suggest that this Psalm uses rhymes, by means of repetition of the same suffix, at the ends of lines and in caesural pauses. Personally I can see a large number of first person possessives, and sometimes they come at caesuras, and sometimes at the ends of lines, but I am not convinced that there is a pattern or scheme at work. I mention it now, shall not again, and leave it to my reader to judge.

142:1 MASKIL LE DAVID BI HEYOTO VA ME'ARAH TEPHILAH

מַשְׂכִּיל לְדָוִד בִּהְיוֹתוֹ בַמְּעָרָה תְפִלָּה

KJ: (Maschil of David; A Prayer when he was in the cave.) I cried unto the LORD with my voice; with my voice unto the LORD did I make my supplication.

BN: A Maskil for David, {N} when he was in the cave. A moment of inward reflection.

Is this the first time a Psalm has been specifically described as Tephilah = prayer? I think not, but need to check. Either way we need to understand what is meant by Tephilah (or Tefilah, if you prefer): PALAH, the root, is about making judgements, not requests. And the verb for "to pray" in Yehudit, LEHITPALEL, is in the reflexive (or should that on this occasion be the reflective!) form; so to pray is to "reflect upon oneself", a process of inwardness that employs outward processes to achieve its goals. We shall see in the very next verse that this comes in multiple modes, two of which will be expressed there.

If this was written by David, it can't have been written while he was in the cave, unless in his head and memorised. The point is, this is a Maskil, a teaching Psalm, and its purpose is to imagine the moment when he was in the cave, and learn from his response to the experience.

But then: which cave? why? for how long? what happened before and afterwards? The cave most associated with him is Adul-Am, but nothing in the text contextualises this sufficiently to draw a conclusion, and in Yisra-El there is an abundance of caves: caves where he would have taken his sheep for the night, while flocking as a boy in the Shephelah; the cave of Machpelah at Chevron, where he is bound to have participated in formal ceremonies regularly when he was king there; the tomb that Sha'ul made for his father in the caves at Giv-Yah; many others - see the Book of Samuel, or my "City of Peace".

Or is the "cave" purely metaphorical? Given that the epic of David is pseudo-history at most, and more likely purely mythological, should we read the "cave" as a Biblical equivalent of the "psyche", the "sub-conscious", and understand that this is the poem of a man looking for a means to tourniquet the blood-jet (for which allusion, see my notes to Psalm 139)?

142:2 KOLI EL YHVH EZ'AK KOLI EL YHVH ET'CHANAN

קוֹלִי אֶל יְהוָה אֶזְעָק קוֹלִי אֶל יְהוָה אֶתְחַנָּן

KJ (142:1): as above

BN: With my voice I will cry out to YHVH; with my voice I will make supplication to YHVH.

And further to those notes at Psalm 139, my sense of these ancient underworld myths is that they are to mythology what psychology is to our epoch, so that David in the cave is David depressed, in one of his "black moods", dealing with Seasonal Affective Disorder, Sirotonin Deficiency, a lack of Vitamin D. Sylvia Plath sounding the bell-jar, or Keats and D.H. Lawrence unable to arrest the coughing. But also, in his role as Earthly representative of the deity, the Earth-god effectively, he is himself the Winter, the cause of the SAD and the SD and the pneumonic disorder. And when they are not that, they are accounts of the journey of the sun through the night sky, to get back from dying in the west that evening, resurrectable in the east the following dawn. Which in a sense is the same thing.

ET'CHANAN: As in Tachanun, still a central mode in Jewish prayer to this day.

142:3 ESHPOCH LEPHANAV SIYCHI TSARATI LEPHANAV AGID

אֶשְׁפֹּךְ לְפָנָיו שִׂיחִי צָרָתִי לְפָנָיו אַגִּיד

KJ (142:2): I poured out my complaint before him; I shewed before him my trouble.

BN: I will pour out my complaint before him; I will recite my sorrows before him.

ESHPOCH...AGID: As with EZ'AK and ET'CHANAN in the previous verse, all these verbs are in the future tense; so the Maskil is teaching "how to pray". And a merely seven-verse Psalm to do that becomes practically a mnemonic! Learn this Psalm off by heart for homework; there will be an oral test tomorrow - but this being the Jewish world, the test will not be on your rote-learning skills, but rather on your self-reflecting skills, implementing the Psalm, rather than merely, pointlessly, verbatiming it (all of which last statement is me doing precisely that: making my complaint to my native land about its failed education system; pouring out my grief that we seem unable to improve it).

But is this two more modes of prayer, or two slight variations on a single mode? Note the structure of the line, and ditto verse 2, caesuraed and metrical. But then a hige change in the next verse. I wonder if these last two verses were responsa from the students, while the teacher recites the longer prose lines.

142:4 BE HIT'ATEPH ALAI RUCHI VE ATAH YADA'TA NETIYVATI BE ORACH ZU AHALECH TAMNU PHACH LO

בְּהִתְעַטֵּף עָלַי רוּחִי וְאַתָּה יָדַעְתָּ נְתִיבָתִי בְּאֹרַח זוּ אֲהַלֵּךְ טָמְנוּ פַח לִי

KJ (142:3): When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path. In the way wherein I walked have they privily laid a snare for me.

BN: When my spirit turned aside - and you know what my path was - {N} but on the track that I was taking, they had laid a trap for me.

BE HIT'ALEPH ALAI RUCHI: Is that the completion of the two previous verses, and the end of the sentence at RUCHI - certainly KJ placing that full stop after "path"reckons it is? And if not, if it is the start of a new sentence, we need to hyphenate the middle section as an "aside" in both senses (his spiritually, ours syntactically); but we also need to explain why YADA'TA is in the past tense - confusing!

NETIYVATI: Not a word that comes up very often, except in the Psalms and the Book of Job; so we can take it as a word introduced into the Yehudit language late on, probably by the Aramaic-speaking Shomronim (Samaritans). Its only occurrence elsewhere in the Tanach is Judges 5:6, and probably a late redaction there.

TAMNU: is that that same root that gives Timna, the place? And if so, does that make it "Ambush Valley"?

Though this verse too, despite its length, and its being tripleted rather than coupleted, is also caesuraed; and a Nun break, a musical interruption, at the caesura.

142:5 HABEYT YAMIN U RE'EH VE EYN LI MAKIR AVAD MANOS MIMENI EYN DORESH LE NAPHSHI

הַבֵּיט יָמִין וּרְאֵה וְאֵין לִי מַכִּיר אָבַד מָנוֹס מִמֶּנִּי אֵין דּוֹרֵשׁ לְנַפְשִׁי

KJ (142:4): I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.

BN: Look on my right hand, and see, for there is no man who knows me; {N} I have no direction in which to flee; no man cares for my soul.

So you think you have troubles and sorrows in your life? Well, think of David, YHVH's "right-hand", a prince, the chosen one of the Prophet Shemu-El, pursued into the heart of She'ol by Sha'ul. Your sorrows are nothing compared with his. So, learn (Maskil) from what he did. Turn to YHVH. Pray. Admit your sins. Make atonement. Things will be fine as soon as the sun starts shining.

142:6 ZA'AKTI ELEYCHA YHVH AMARTI ATAH MACHSI CHELKI BE ERETS HA CHAYIM

זָעַקְתִּי אֵלֶיךָ יְהוָה אָמַרְתִּי אַתָּה מַחְסִי חֶלְקִי בְּאֶרֶץ הַחַיִּים

KJ (142:5): I cried unto thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living.

BN: I cried out to you, YHVH; {N} I said: "You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living."

And if that doesn't confirm "David in the Underworld", I don't know what will!

142:7 HAKSHIYVAH EL RINATI KI DALOTI ME'OD HATSIYLENI ME RODPHAI KI AMTSU MIMENI

הַקְשִׁיבָה אֶל רִנָּתִי כִּי דַלּוֹתִי מְאֹד הַצִּילֵנִי מֵרֹדְפַי כִּי אָמְצוּ מִמֶּנִּי

KJ (142:6): Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low: deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I.

BN: Listen to my cry, for I have been brought very low; {N} deliver me from my persecutors, for they are too strong for me.

142:8 HOTSIY'AH MI MASGER NAPHSHI LEHODOT ET SHEMECHA BI YACHTIRU TSADIYKIM KI TIGMOL ALAI

הוֹצִיאָה מִמַּסְגֵּר נַפְשִׁי לְהוֹדוֹת אֶת שְׁמֶךָ בִּי יַכְתִּרוּ צַדִּיקִים כִּי תִגְמֹל עָלָי

KJ (142:7): Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me.

BN: Bring my soul out of prison, that I may give thanks to your name; {N} the righteous shall crown themselves because of me; for you will deal bountifully with me. {P}

MASGER: And any further doubts that the cave was metaphorical should now be assuaged; either that or the author needs to proofread his final draft more carefully, because it was a cave at the beginning, but a prison at the end: can't be both, unless metaphorically. SAGUR means "to close", so it may not actually be a prison, but still a place in which he is imprisoned. And in truth, as with "psyche" and "sub-conscious", it doesn't really need a physical context, whether cave or prison, Adul-Am or Machpelah, winter or bereavement, depression or... what matters is having available the means of responding, by reflecting, in order to turn the Zero Positive. Which is the Maskil of this Psalm.

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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