TheBibleNet: Psalm 93

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

Untitled and without a dedication, though the Septuagint assigns 91, 93-97, 101 and 104 to David; the remainder in Book Four are anonymous. This is the Psalm for the morning prayers on the eve of Shabat; the full list of daily Psalms is:

Day One (Sunday)           Psalm 24
Day Two (Monday)           Psalm 14 (or 48 - see my notes at Psalm 82)
Day Three (Tuesday)      Psalm 82
Day Four (Wednesday)     Psalm 94:1-95:3
Day Five (Thursday) Psalm 81
Day Six (Friday)           Psalm 93
Day Seven (Saturday)   Psalm 92

This one, like the last, is YHVH, not ELOHIM; the usurpation by the Omnideity is happening, but slowly.

93:1 YHVH MALACH GE'UT LAVESH LAVESH YHVH OZ HIT'AZAR APH TIKON TEVEL BAL TIMOT

יְהוָה מָלָךְ גֵּאוּת לָבֵשׁ לָבֵשׁ יְהוָה עֹז הִתְאַזָּר אַף תִּכּוֹן תֵּבֵל בַּל תִּמּוֹט

KJ: The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the LORD is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved.

BN: YHVH reigns. He is clothed in majesty. {N} YHVH is clothed. He has girded himself with strength. Yea, the world is established, so that it cannot be moved.

Echo-lines and parallelisms. A decidedly song-like rhythm and cadence and sonority.

TEVEL: See my note on this at Psalm 90:2. The intention, I believe, is Creation - clothing the essence which is "YHVH" by manifesting it in Nature; this makes it late theology: in the earlier epochs that manifestation was Chavah's role.

TIMOT: Need to go back and see the number of times this phrase has come up in the Psalms. And then note again that this is TIMOT with a Tet, not a Tav: the latter being "death". So this is not about eternality, but about Earth as the centre of the Universe, and statically so, which is Aristotelian or even Ptolemaic science being expressed Judaically, and therefore, again, very late theology.

And of course we should expect that, in a Psalm dedicated to YHVH, because YHVH as Omnideity, absorbing all previous gods and goddesses into his Monotheism, is itself late theology.

93:2 NACHON KIS'ACHA ME'AZ ME OLAM ATAH

נָכוֹן כִּסְאֲךָ מֵאָז מֵעוֹלָם אָתָּה

KJ: Thy throne is established of old: thou art from everlasting.

BN: Your throne was established of old; you have been here since who can say when.

NACHON: Is that the same word that means "correct"? Because it isn't correct. YHVH's original "throne" was a volcano, and then became a sedan chair carried through the desert. But when a deity stages a coup and places himself in the Life Presidency, this is the kind of sycophancy he expects.

ME'AZ: Decidedly slangy in this expression of the infinite, but deliberate, based on my comment about NACHON. I commented in a recent Psalm that the ancients misunderstood infinity very differently from the way we misunderstand it, and this confirms that there are indeed two very different errors. We take the creation of the Cosmos back to the "Big Bang", defining thereby a starting-point, after which we describe an infinite cosmos. But if the cosmos is infinite, then it must be infinite in all directions, both of time and space, and so there cannot have been a beginning, any more than there will ever be an end.

93:3 NAS'U NEHAROT YHVH NAS'U NEHAROT KOLAM YIS'U NEHAROT DACH'YAM

נָשְׂאוּ נְהָרוֹת יְהוָה נָשְׂאוּ נְהָרוֹת קוֹלָם יִשְׂאוּ נְהָרוֹת דָּכְיָם

KJ: The floods have lifted up, O LORD, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves.

BN: The floods have lifted up, YHVH, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their roaring.

NEHAROT: Rivers, or the elemental waters of original Creation? Most Flood stories are Creation myths (the breaking of the waters, as any mum can confirm, is the starting point of the birth of the universe), so it is logical to suppose that this is too.

With all this word-play, I cannot help but wonder if DACH'YAM isn't deliberate too - in the word it is simply the third person plural possessive ("their"), but in the sound, and especially in that very brief, falling, final syllable, the word YAM appears to be pulled out: and YAM means "sea", the source of all that flooding, and very much their "voice".

93:4 MI KOLOT MAYIM RABIM ADIYRIM MISHBEREY YAM ADIR BA MAROM YHVH

מִקֹּלוֹת מַיִם רַבִּים אַדִּירִים מִשְׁבְּרֵי יָם אַדִּיר בַּמָּרוֹם יְהוָה

KJ: The LORD on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.

BN: Above the voices of many waters, the mighty breakers of the sea, YHVH on high is mighty.

MISHBEREY: Confirming my note a couple of Psalms back: must go back and make a link to here. See also 2 Samuel 22:5, which is one of the "additional" Psalms.

YAM: And there indeed is the YAM, mentioned explicitly this time. The central figure of speech throughout this Psalm is the voice, and so we should expect echoes, resonances, sound-games, word-play, and obviously singing.

93:5 EDOTEYCHA NE'EMNU ME'OD LE VEIT'CHA NA'AVAH KODESH YHVH LE ORECH YAMIM

עֵדֹתֶיךָ נֶאֶמְנוּ מְאֹד לְבֵיתְךָ נַאֲוָה קֹדֶשׁ יְהוָה לְאֹרֶךְ יָמִים

KJ: Thy testimonies are very sure: holiness becometh thine house, O LORD, for ever.

BN: Your witnesses remain entirely steadfast; holiness becomes your house, YHVH, throughout the length of time. {P}

EDOTEYCHA NE'EMNU ME'OD: Two possible traslations of this, depending on how we understand EDOT in the context. It could be the congregation itself, gathered by YHVH's "throne" in the Temple, bearing witness to their faith by reciting this Psalm - which is the translation I have offered above. But EDUT are also the details of the Torah (Deuteronomy 4:45, 6:17); in which case a literal translation of this should read "the witness statements about you are highly plausible", but that really doesn't work as song or poem, and definitely not as theology.

NE'EMNU...NA'AVAH: Echoes, parallels, word-play...

LE ORECH YAMIM: The other end of infinity, so that "no beginning" starts the piece and "no end" finishes it, though really this is about the continuity of time itself between those points.

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Psalms:

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