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
No title, no dedication, no descriptor, though the Septuagint assigns 91, 93-97, 101 and 104 to David; the remainder in Book Four are anonymous.
However, we might - my notes will make clear why - announce this as "The First Psalm of the Omnideity"; and we have seen that Book Four has been working towards this moment.
97:1 YHVH MALACH TAGEL HA ARETS YISMECHU IYIM RABIM
KJ (King James translation): The LORD reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof.
BN (BibleNet translation): YHVH reigns. Let the Earth rejoice. Let the many continents be glad.
IYIM: Did the ancients know that there were continents? Probably not, but the anachronism seems to me valid nonetheless, because the intention of the verse was the same.
Actually, the question is interesting on another level too: how did the ancients, of Kena'an at least, know that there were islands? Only by sailing off into the Mediterranean (other than Yonah, which is not a Yehudit tale anyway, there is not a single reference to a boat or a sea-journey by any Beney Yisra-El, ever, in the entire Tanach!), and circumnavigating either Cyprus or Malta or one of the Greek islands - because there are no islands at all, anywhere inside Kena'an; not so much as an isolated bank of land in the middle of the Sea of Galilee or the Dead Sea; not even an eyot in the middle of the river Kidron. None, anywhere. Most countries have inland islands, on the lakes and even the rivers (I am writing this in Richmond Reference Library, looking out the window at the Thames, and there is one eyot right here, and several more within a mile or two, at Twickenham, at Hampton... click here)
KJ: Clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne.
BN: Clouds and darkness are all around him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
This sounds like just a classic piece of nature description: "It was a sunny day when I set out for the city... It rained the evening of Romeo and Juliet's first date..." But this is the world of Yevarechecha and its "adversary" (see verse 3) Histir Panav, and in polytheistic proto-Judaism it has to be one or the other: Shimshon cannot reign when Delilah is, and vice versa; good is what happens when the deity turns his face to shine on us (Yevarechecha), and evil when the sun is blocked by clouds (Histir Panav), or moving through the night-darkness of the northern sky to get back to the eastern horizon in time to rise again next morning.
So, even without the metaphysical concepts - "righteousness", "justice" - we can date this Psalm to a very late date in the evolution of the deity.
97:3 ESH LEPHANAV TELECH U TELAHET SAVIV TSARAV
KJ: A fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies round about.
BN: A fire goes before him, and burns up his adversaries all around.
TSARAV: Put the word into the surf-bar in the top left hand corner of the page, and see my many previous notes on this.
Whereas this brings together the ancient with the later: YHVH originally was the volcano deity of the Mosheh tales, spewing burning lava that landed on your skin and turned it into what looked like plague, providing the cloud in a pillar by day and the fire in a pillar through the darkness. But now he has become that much vaster fire, the sun itself. And strains of early Zoroastrianism too, the dualism of the fires of Hell competing with the perfections of Heaven; converged here into a monotheistic Unity.
So theology develops and evolves; so new liturgy is required to reinforce it.
97:4 HE'IYRU VERAKAV TEVEL RA'ATAH VA TACHEL HA ARETS
KJ: His lightnings enlightened the world: the earth saw, and trembled.
BN: His lightning lit up the world; the Earth saw, and trembled.
The sky-god, once separate in the pantheon from the storm-god, as he was from his rival the sun-god, now assimilated as One.
97:5 HARIM KA DONAG NAMASU MI LIPHNEY YHVH MI LIPHNEY ADON KOL HA ARETS
KJ: The hills melted like wax at the presence of the LORD, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.
BN: The mountains melted like wax at the presence of YHVH, at the presence of the Lord of the whole Earth.
Where previously the mother-goddess was the womb of Earth, and the "beloved son" its vegetation, now YHVH alone is "the whole Earth". Though this does feel rather like the volcano again, in the first part, it extends to the whole Earth in the second part, and that can only be the sun.
97:6 HIGIYDU HA SHAMAYIM TSIDKO VE RA'U CHOL HA AMIM KEVODO
KJ: The heavens declare his righteousness, and all the people see his glory.
BN: The heavens have declared his righteousness, and all the peoples have seen his glory.
Definitely past tense in the text, but Yehudit does not make the distinction between straight verbs and participles in the way that English does; this reads to me like two past participles.
Where previously he shared a local mountain-top with the other deities in the polytheon, now he rules the entire planet, the entire Cosmos indeed, from a palace in the skies.
97:7 YEVOSHU KOL OVDEY PESEL HA MIT'HALELIM BA ELIYLIM HISHTACHAVU LO KOL ELOHIM
KJ: Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast themselves of idols: worship him, all ye gods.
BN: All who worship graven images, who boast to themselves about worthless idols, are now ashamed. {N} Prostrate yourselves before him, all you gods.
MIT'HALELIM... ELIYLIM... ELOHIM: Wonderfully assonant alliteration. But how to render that in English?
And of course there are still other gods in the world, and always will be. But useless gods, false gods, feeble gods, merely the finger- and toe-nails of the true deity, his spit, the hairs that fall naturally from his head. So these lesser deities too are prevailed upon to worship him. So we can state that this, this is the moment when the coup took place, the self-appointment of Prime Minister YHVH as President For Life.
97:8 SHAM'AH VA TISMACH TSI'ON VA TAGELNAH BENOT YEHUDAH LEMA'AN MISHPATEYCHA YHVH
KJ: Zion heard, and was glad; and the daughters of Judah rejoiced because of thy judgments, O LORD.
BN: Tsi'on heard, and was glad, and the daughters of Yehudah rejoiced; {N} because of your judgments, YHVH.
TSI'ON: See the link.
97:9 KI ATAH YHVH ELYON AL KOL HA ARETS ME'OD NA'ALEYTA AL KOL ELOHIM
KJ: For thou, LORD, art high above all the earth: thou art exalted far above all gods.
KJ: Ye that love the LORD, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked.
BN: You who love YHVH, hate evil. {N} He preserves the souls of his pious followers. He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked.
OHAVEY...RA: And see also, for the first time in these Psalms, for the first time in the entirer Tanach indeed, the Zoroastrian separation of "Good" (noun; upper case "G") from "Evil" (ditto), which will become central to Christian theology, but rejected by Jewish theology when the Pharisaic era replaces the Sadducaic, after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE; then, the earlier separation, internal to each individual human being rather than external as an abstract force, will be resumed: the Yetser ha Tov, the inclination towards good (adjective; lower case "g") in perpetual inner conflict, like Ya'akov wrestling with the "Man of Penu-El" with the Yetser ha Ra, the inclination towards bad deeds (likewise adjective; likewise lower case; and definitely not "Evil").
97:11 OR ZARU'A LA TSADIK U LE YISHREY LEV SIMCHAH
KJ: Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.
BN: Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.
OR ZARU'A: Later the title of a book, and the honorary name of the man who wrote the book, Isaac ben Moses, who was born around 1180 in Bohemia, and died in 1250 in Vienna. His book is essentially the mediaeval equivalent of a blog, an endless writing down of everything he knew and thought about everything he lived and studied, so that it provides the most comprehensive account of life in mittl Europe, but also enough insight on Halachah, Jewish law, to keep his successor scholars busy for the next several centuries, just trying to complete his thought processes with further validations. So many were these writings, and such the demand for them, that copyists had to break the work down into sections, and spend their lives on just the one they had been given - which is also why no two versions of the text are ever identical, because Isaac went on learning, and copyists make errors.
97:12 SIMCHU TSADIYKIM BA'YHVH VE HODU LE ZECHER KADSHO
KJ: Rejoice in the LORD, ye righteous; and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.
BN: Rejoice in YHVH, you who are righteous; and give thanks to his holy name. {P}
97:1 YHVH MALACH TAGEL HA ARETS YISMECHU IYIM RABIM
יְהוָה מָלָךְ תָּגֵל הָאָרֶץ יִשְׂמְחוּ אִיִּים רַבִּים
KJ (King James translation): The LORD reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof.
BN (BibleNet translation): YHVH reigns. Let the Earth rejoice. Let the many continents be glad.
IYIM: Did the ancients know that there were continents? Probably not, but the anachronism seems to me valid nonetheless, because the intention of the verse was the same.
Actually, the question is interesting on another level too: how did the ancients, of Kena'an at least, know that there were islands? Only by sailing off into the Mediterranean (other than Yonah, which is not a Yehudit tale anyway, there is not a single reference to a boat or a sea-journey by any Beney Yisra-El, ever, in the entire Tanach!), and circumnavigating either Cyprus or Malta or one of the Greek islands - because there are no islands at all, anywhere inside Kena'an; not so much as an isolated bank of land in the middle of the Sea of Galilee or the Dead Sea; not even an eyot in the middle of the river Kidron. None, anywhere. Most countries have inland islands, on the lakes and even the rivers (I am writing this in Richmond Reference Library, looking out the window at the Thames, and there is one eyot right here, and several more within a mile or two, at Twickenham, at Hampton... click here)
97:2 ANAN VA ARAPHEL SEVIYVAV TSEDEK U MISHPAT MECHON KIS'O
עָנָן וַעֲרָפֶל סְבִיבָיו צֶדֶק וּמִשְׁפָּט מְכוֹן כִּסְאוֹ
KJ: Clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne.
BN: Clouds and darkness are all around him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
This sounds like just a classic piece of nature description: "It was a sunny day when I set out for the city... It rained the evening of Romeo and Juliet's first date..." But this is the world of Yevarechecha and its "adversary" (see verse 3) Histir Panav, and in polytheistic proto-Judaism it has to be one or the other: Shimshon cannot reign when Delilah is, and vice versa; good is what happens when the deity turns his face to shine on us (Yevarechecha), and evil when the sun is blocked by clouds (Histir Panav), or moving through the night-darkness of the northern sky to get back to the eastern horizon in time to rise again next morning.
So, even without the metaphysical concepts - "righteousness", "justice" - we can date this Psalm to a very late date in the evolution of the deity.
97:3 ESH LEPHANAV TELECH U TELAHET SAVIV TSARAV
אֵשׁ לְפָנָיו תֵּלֵךְ וּתְלַהֵט סָבִיב צָרָיו
KJ: A fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies round about.
BN: A fire goes before him, and burns up his adversaries all around.
TSARAV: Put the word into the surf-bar in the top left hand corner of the page, and see my many previous notes on this.
Whereas this brings together the ancient with the later: YHVH originally was the volcano deity of the Mosheh tales, spewing burning lava that landed on your skin and turned it into what looked like plague, providing the cloud in a pillar by day and the fire in a pillar through the darkness. But now he has become that much vaster fire, the sun itself. And strains of early Zoroastrianism too, the dualism of the fires of Hell competing with the perfections of Heaven; converged here into a monotheistic Unity.
So theology develops and evolves; so new liturgy is required to reinforce it.
97:4 HE'IYRU VERAKAV TEVEL RA'ATAH VA TACHEL HA ARETS
הֵאִירוּ בְרָקָיו תֵּבֵל רָאֲתָה וַתָּחֵל הָאָרֶץ
KJ: His lightnings enlightened the world: the earth saw, and trembled.
BN: His lightning lit up the world; the Earth saw, and trembled.
The sky-god, once separate in the pantheon from the storm-god, as he was from his rival the sun-god, now assimilated as One.
97:5 HARIM KA DONAG NAMASU MI LIPHNEY YHVH MI LIPHNEY ADON KOL HA ARETS
הָרִים כַּדּוֹנַג נָמַסּוּ מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָה מִלִּפְנֵי אֲדוֹן כָּל הָאָרֶץ
KJ: The hills melted like wax at the presence of the LORD, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.
BN: The mountains melted like wax at the presence of YHVH, at the presence of the Lord of the whole Earth.
Where previously the mother-goddess was the womb of Earth, and the "beloved son" its vegetation, now YHVH alone is "the whole Earth". Though this does feel rather like the volcano again, in the first part, it extends to the whole Earth in the second part, and that can only be the sun.
97:6 HIGIYDU HA SHAMAYIM TSIDKO VE RA'U CHOL HA AMIM KEVODO
הִגִּידוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם צִדְקוֹ וְרָאוּ כָל הָעַמִּים כְּבוֹדוֹ
KJ: The heavens declare his righteousness, and all the people see his glory.
BN: The heavens have declared his righteousness, and all the peoples have seen his glory.
Definitely past tense in the text, but Yehudit does not make the distinction between straight verbs and participles in the way that English does; this reads to me like two past participles.
Where previously he shared a local mountain-top with the other deities in the polytheon, now he rules the entire planet, the entire Cosmos indeed, from a palace in the skies.
97:7 YEVOSHU KOL OVDEY PESEL HA MIT'HALELIM BA ELIYLIM HISHTACHAVU LO KOL ELOHIM
יֵבֹשׁוּ כָּל עֹבְדֵי פֶסֶל הַמִּתְהַלְלִים בָּאֱלִילִים הִשְׁתַּחֲווּ לוֹ כָּל אֱלֹהִים
KJ: Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast themselves of idols: worship him, all ye gods.
BN: All who worship graven images, who boast to themselves about worthless idols, are now ashamed. {N} Prostrate yourselves before him, all you gods.
MIT'HALELIM... ELIYLIM... ELOHIM: Wonderfully assonant alliteration. But how to render that in English?
And of course there are still other gods in the world, and always will be. But useless gods, false gods, feeble gods, merely the finger- and toe-nails of the true deity, his spit, the hairs that fall naturally from his head. So these lesser deities too are prevailed upon to worship him. So we can state that this, this is the moment when the coup took place, the self-appointment of Prime Minister YHVH as President For Life.
97:8 SHAM'AH VA TISMACH TSI'ON VA TAGELNAH BENOT YEHUDAH LEMA'AN MISHPATEYCHA YHVH
שָׁמְעָה וַתִּשְׂמַח צִיּוֹן וַתָּגֵלְנָה בְּנוֹת יְהוּדָה לְמַעַן מִשְׁפָּטֶיךָ יְהוָה
KJ: Zion heard, and was glad; and the daughters of Judah rejoiced because of thy judgments, O LORD.
BN: Tsi'on heard, and was glad, and the daughters of Yehudah rejoiced; {N} because of your judgments, YHVH.
TSI'ON: See the link.
97:9 KI ATAH YHVH ELYON AL KOL HA ARETS ME'OD NA'ALEYTA AL KOL ELOHIM
כִּי אַתָּה יְהוָה עֶלְיוֹן עַל כָּל הָאָרֶץ מְאֹד נַעֲלֵיתָ עַל כָּל אֱלֹהִים
KJ: For thou, LORD, art high above all the earth: thou art exalted far above all gods.
BN: For you, YHVH, exist high above the entire Earth; {N} you are exalted far above all gods.
I don't think I need to comment any further! The Omnideity is enthroned. And in Yeru-Shala'im as well as in the Heavens. How do I know? From the word-play on ELYON, who he has also now absorbed and supplanted - see the link.
97:10 OHAVEY YHVH SIN'U RA SHOMER NAPHSHOT CHASIDAV MI YAD RESHA'IM YATSIYLEM
I don't think I need to comment any further! The Omnideity is enthroned. And in Yeru-Shala'im as well as in the Heavens. How do I know? From the word-play on ELYON, who he has also now absorbed and supplanted - see the link.
97:10 OHAVEY YHVH SIN'U RA SHOMER NAPHSHOT CHASIDAV MI YAD RESHA'IM YATSIYLEM
אֹהֲבֵי יְהוָה שִׂנְאוּ רָע שֹׁמֵר נַפְשׁוֹת חֲסִידָיו מִיַּד רְשָׁעִים יַצִּילֵם
KJ: Ye that love the LORD, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked.
BN: You who love YHVH, hate evil. {N} He preserves the souls of his pious followers. He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked.
OHAVEY...RA: And see also, for the first time in these Psalms, for the first time in the entirer Tanach indeed, the Zoroastrian separation of "Good" (noun; upper case "G") from "Evil" (ditto), which will become central to Christian theology, but rejected by Jewish theology when the Pharisaic era replaces the Sadducaic, after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE; then, the earlier separation, internal to each individual human being rather than external as an abstract force, will be resumed: the Yetser ha Tov, the inclination towards good (adjective; lower case "g") in perpetual inner conflict, like Ya'akov wrestling with the "Man of Penu-El" with the Yetser ha Ra, the inclination towards bad deeds (likewise adjective; likewise lower case; and definitely not "Evil").
97:11 OR ZARU'A LA TSADIK U LE YISHREY LEV SIMCHAH
אוֹר זָרֻעַ לַצַּדִּיק וּלְיִשְׁרֵי לֵב שִׂמְחָה
KJ: Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.
BN: Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.
OR ZARU'A: Later the title of a book, and the honorary name of the man who wrote the book, Isaac ben Moses, who was born around 1180 in Bohemia, and died in 1250 in Vienna. His book is essentially the mediaeval equivalent of a blog, an endless writing down of everything he knew and thought about everything he lived and studied, so that it provides the most comprehensive account of life in mittl Europe, but also enough insight on Halachah, Jewish law, to keep his successor scholars busy for the next several centuries, just trying to complete his thought processes with further validations. So many were these writings, and such the demand for them, that copyists had to break the work down into sections, and spend their lives on just the one they had been given - which is also why no two versions of the text are ever identical, because Isaac went on learning, and copyists make errors.
97:12 SIMCHU TSADIYKIM BA'YHVH VE HODU LE ZECHER KADSHO
שִׂמְחוּ צַדִּיקִים בַּיהוָה וְהוֹדוּ לְזֵכֶר קָדְשׁוֹ
KJ: Rejoice in the LORD, ye righteous; and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.
BN: Rejoice in YHVH, you who are righteous; and give thanks to his holy name. {P}
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
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