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, though the Septuagint attributes this, and the two Psalms immediately before it, to the Prophets Chagai and Zechar-Yah - see my ote on this at 146:10. Nothing to suggest whether it is a SHIR or a MIZMOR or a MASKIL, whether for choir or orchestra or solo instrument. Nor the occasion. Simply the words. And like Psalms 13, 29, 62 and 150, this one has the same word or words repeated many times; a technique which
has no formal name in English, but is used to enable the writer to explore a concept from multiple perspectives, through mutliple contexts.
148:1 HALELU YAH HALELU ET YHVH MIN HA SHAMAYIM HALELUHU BA MAROMIM
הַלְלוּ יָהּ הַלְלוּ אֶת יְהוָה מִן הַשָּׁמַיִם הַלְלוּהוּ בַּמְּרוֹמִים
KJ: KJ: Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the LORD from the heavens: praise him in the heights.
BN: Halelu Yah. {N} Praise YHVH from the heavens; praise him in the heights.
And having completed the transition from Davidic polytheism to the male-dominated Omnideity of the Hasmonean epoch, as described in my notes to the last several Psalms, these final Psalms now endorse and embed the new ideology, establishing what will not formally become Pharisaic Judaism until after the fall of the Temple in 70 CE, and which I have therefore labelled proto-Judaism. So this begins with the gender-debateable Halelu Yah, but then makes unequivocally clear what that gender now is, and each subsequent verse will re-state and re-state it, until there is no longer any argument. Almost as if this Psalm was written for that specific purpose. "Yah is male. Keep saying it. Yah is male. Yah is male. One more time, until it has sunk in so deep the possibility of Yah ever having been female is erased for ever. Yah is male..."
MIN HA SHAMAYIM: And at the same time as the masculinisation, so also there is the change of abode: from the summit of a Midyanite volcano in pre-Mosaic times, to a tent in the desert, then a temporary home in Shlioh, a briefer one in Kiryat Ye'arim, a First Temple in Yeru-Shala'im, and now, concealed behind the Devir in the Second Temple, the invisible deity who no longer inhabits Jewish Valhalla or Olympus, but has ascended into the heavens like a resurrected Messiah. Today Yeru-Shala'im, tomorrow the entire Cosmos! Journey complete.
But the verse calls for praise "from the heavens", not upwards to them. So are the Tseva'ot being called upon to sing their praises too: the stars, the planets, the comets, even the black holes? The confirmation of that is in the next verses. And there are indeed verses in Jewish liturgy which are either left unrecited, or only whispered, because they are included precisely for this purpose. And the point of this: once, those stars and planets were themselves deities, and sat around the Round Table as equals, each with their own Cabinet office; but now, YHVH has staged a coup and made himself President For Life, so they are subordinated, and they too need to make their oath of allegiance in the form of praise.
And having completed the transition from Davidic polytheism to the male-dominated Omnideity of the Hasmonean epoch, as described in my notes to the last several Psalms, these final Psalms now endorse and embed the new ideology, establishing what will not formally become Pharisaic Judaism until after the fall of the Temple in 70 CE, and which I have therefore labelled proto-Judaism. So this begins with the gender-debateable Halelu Yah, but then makes unequivocally clear what that gender now is, and each subsequent verse will re-state and re-state it, until there is no longer any argument. Almost as if this Psalm was written for that specific purpose. "Yah is male. Keep saying it. Yah is male. Yah is male. One more time, until it has sunk in so deep the possibility of Yah ever having been female is erased for ever. Yah is male..."
MIN HA SHAMAYIM: And at the same time as the masculinisation, so also there is the change of abode: from the summit of a Midyanite volcano in pre-Mosaic times, to a tent in the desert, then a temporary home in Shlioh, a briefer one in Kiryat Ye'arim, a First Temple in Yeru-Shala'im, and now, concealed behind the Devir in the Second Temple, the invisible deity who no longer inhabits Jewish Valhalla or Olympus, but has ascended into the heavens like a resurrected Messiah. Today Yeru-Shala'im, tomorrow the entire Cosmos! Journey complete.
But the verse calls for praise "from the heavens", not upwards to them. So are the Tseva'ot being called upon to sing their praises too: the stars, the planets, the comets, even the black holes? The confirmation of that is in the next verses. And there are indeed verses in Jewish liturgy which are either left unrecited, or only whispered, because they are included precisely for this purpose. And the point of this: once, those stars and planets were themselves deities, and sat around the Round Table as equals, each with their own Cabinet office; but now, YHVH has staged a coup and made himself President For Life, so they are subordinated, and they too need to make their oath of allegiance in the form of praise.
148:2 HALELUHU CHOL MAL'ACHAV HALELUHU KOL TSEVA'O
הַלְלוּהוּ כָל מַלְאָכָיו הַלְלוּהוּ כָּל צְבָאוֹ
KJ: Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts.
BN: Praise him, all his messengers; praise him, all his ministers.
MAL'ACHAV: Like the Melech, who may be the king or the principal ruler by any other name (CEO, Board Chair, Head Teacher, President... or simply MOLOCH, in pre-Yehudit Yeru-Shala'im) the root is HALACH, which means "to go", but in the Hiph'il (causative) form, "the one who makes other people go", or here in the Pi'el (intensive) form, "the ones who do the going". Messengers, generally human beings, or the light from the stars when this is astrological, but never angels, not in the Jewish world.
TSEVA'O: I have translated them as "hosts" until now, because that is what they were, lords of the manors of constellation Pisces or planet Mars. But ages have been added (cryptic crossword clue!), and the hosts are now held to ransom by YHVH... though they also still serve in important areas of responsibility, because this is only the first stage of the coup, and he has not yet absorbed them one by one into his own being.
148:3 HALELUHU SHEMESH VE YAR'E'ACH HALELUHU KOL KOCHVEY OR
הַלְלוּהוּ שֶׁמֶשׁ וְיָרֵחַ הַלְלוּהוּ כָּל כּוֹכְבֵי אוֹר
KJ: Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light.
BN: Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you stars of light.
The subordination of the moon, stars, planets likewise unequivocal - but this verse is also important because it transitions us from the trinitarian world of sun-god, moon-goddess, earth-son into a purely abstract realm. The democratic Cosmos is now ruled by an emperor, and he is now entirely post-anthropomorphic, entirely abstract. So we can now date this Psalm - much later than the return from Babylonian exile, or even the Ezraic period, to the start indeed of the Hasmonean era; it will be during that latter that YHVH will do what Prime Minister Netanyahu liked to do, and take over the running of all the ministries himself.
148:4 HALELUHU SHEMEY HA SHAMAYIM VE HA MAYIM ASHER ME'AL HA SHAMAYIM
הַלְלוּהוּ שְׁמֵי הַשָּׁמָיִם וְהַמַּיִם אֲשֶׁר מֵעַל הַשָּׁמָיִם
KJ: Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.
BN: Praise him, you heavens of heavens, and you waters that are above the heavens.
And all the other participants in Creation, Tehom, Choshech, Tohu and Bohu, the gods and goddess of the other six days (why was Light created on the first day, but its source, the sun, only on the fourth?), all of them, soon to be erased from history and ideology, because the Omnideity did the whole thing, single-handed. See verse 7 if you don't believe me.
148:5 YEHALELU ET SHEM YHVH KI HU TSIVAH VE NIVRA'U
יְהַלְלוּ אֶת שֵׁם יְהוָה כִּי הוּא צִוָּה וְנִבְרָאוּ
KJ: Let them praise the name of the LORD: for he commanded, and they were created.
BN: Let them praise the name of YHVH; for he gave the instruction, and they were created.
"Let there be..."as in Genesis 1 and 2.
148:6 VA YA'AMIYDEM LA AD LE OLAM CHAK NATAN VE LO YA'AVOR
וַיַּעֲמִידֵם לָעַד לְעוֹלָם חָק נָתַן וְלֹא יַעֲבוֹר
KJ: He hath also stablished them for ever and ever: he hath made a decree which shall not pass.
BN: He established them until eternity should come to an end; he issued a decree which is not open to annullment.
148:7 HALELU ET YHVH MIN HA ARETS TANIYNIM VE CHOL TEHOMOT
הַלְלוּ אֶת יְהוָה מִן־הָאָרֶץ תַּנִּינִים וְכָל תְּהֹמוֹת
KJ: Praise the LORD from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps:
And for those who were sceptical, long ago in Genesis 1, when I equated Tehom with the Persian Tahamat or Tiamat, here he is, given precisely that name.
148:8 ESH U VARAD SHELEG VE KIYTOR RU'ACH SE'ARAH OSAH DEVARO
אֵשׁ וּבָרָד שֶׁלֶג וְקִיטוֹר רוּחַ סְעָרָה עֹשָׂה דְבָרוֹ
KJ: Fire, and hail; snow, and vapour; stormy wind fulfilling his word:
BN: Fire and hail, snow and fog, stormy wind, all making manifest his word.
KIYTOR: Clouds, fog, dew, mist - any one of these would be acceptable as a translation. More important the point behind them. YHVH, originally, was only this: the vapours in which the primordial elements occupied the pre Big Bang Cosmos: essence. And it required the female part, whether Yah or Chavah, to take the seed and fertilise the egg, from which the physical Cosmos would be hatched. See my links to YHVH and CHAVAH where this is explained in full. The point here is that YHVH as Omnideity is now both essence and existence, and as such has veen absorbed, and therefore rendered unnecessary, the female component - which does leave me wondering if my description of him creating the cosmos "single-handed" at verse 4 doesn't transpire to have been an unfortunate vulgarity; though it was also the reason why Zeus and Chronos eventually castrated Ouranos.)
But of course all this wasn't just for the Yehudim who had already returned, or who were now returning from exile, that these crucial pieces of propaganda were being written, the songs that will form the daily hymnal from now on and therefore, in a predominantly illiterate world where graven images (Art and Sculpture) are prohibited, are the means by which the people will learn what to believe; it is also for the Shomronim (Samaritans) who were brought in from northern Mesopotamia when the Yehudim were transferred to Babylon, and whose tribal histories and legends have already been absorbed into the Av-Ram and Eli-Ezer and Ya'akov legends, whose literature (Job, Jonah et al) has been taken over; and all the other aboriginal Kena'ani tribes - for all of these had gone on worshipping fire gods and storm gods and sea gods, and these too needed to be absorbed into the Omnideity.
148:9 HE HARIM VE CHOL GEVA'OT ETS PERI VE CHOL ARAZIM
הֶהָרִים וְכָל גְּבָעוֹת עֵץ פְּרִי וְכָל אֲרָזִים
KJ: Mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars:
BN: The mountains and all high places, fruit trees as well as furniture trees...
Mountain gods, gods and goddesses of the the pomegranate, the date, the vine, of every type of tree - all had to be named because all now had to be understood: E is no longer Elohim, the multiple plural. All gods are the same god; the same forces and powers operate in everything. Not yet ready to state that E = MC², the idea of that Cosmic singularity-in-plurality is nevertheless now established. There is only one deity, however many forms he may appear in, however different those forms may themselves appear to be. YHVH is One.
GEVA'OT: The highest of all the deities, in the Egyptian world, was Geb, the father of Ra and grandfather of Hor, Eshet, Set and Osher; and it is probably from his name that the word for "heights" came into Yehudit - the polytheon in every cult across the world in ancient times lived on the highest mountain, whether at Olympus or Machu Pichu, Tsi'on or Valhalla. The name appears in several important shrines in Yisra-El, notably Giv'ah, where Sha'ul established his capital, and Giv-On.
ARAZIM: This is indeed the word for the cedar, but it seems to me that the intention of the verse is to distinguish the two types of tree that benefit humans, and the choice of cedar over any other perfectly good timber is because it was cedar that was used as the primary building material for the Temple.
148:10 HA CHAYAH VE CHOL BEHEMAH REMES VE TSIPOR KANAPH
הַחַיָּה וְכָל בְּהֵמָה רֶמֶשׂ וְצִפּוֹר כָּנָף
KJ: Beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl:
BN: All living creatures, and all mammals, creeping things and winged fowl...
Everything, no matter how it manifests itself, all creation belongs to the Omnideity. There is no other. Not only YAH but CHAVAH too has been supplented; LEHIYOT and LECHIYOT are also One (which is actually very bad science, unlike the previous formulation; very bad science, but very good patriarchalisation!)
And no wonder (see my note to Psalm 145) Maimonides thought that these last six were the daily Hallel Psalms, and not 113-118 which we now sing, and then only at the new moon.
148:11 MALCHEY ERETS VE CHOL LE'UMIM SARIM VE CHOL SHOPHTEY ARETS
148:11 MALCHEY ERETS VE CHOL LE'UMIM SARIM VE CHOL SHOPHTEY ARETS
מַלְכֵי אֶרֶץ וְכָל לְאֻמִּים שָׂרִים וְכָל שֹׁפְטֵי אָרֶץ
KJ: Kings of the earth, and all people; princes, and all judges of the earth:
BN: Kings of the Earth and all nations, princes and all judges on the Earth...
And of course, for it to become truly universal, all the other religions, nations, creeds, ideologies... all have to accept it.
148:12 BACHURIM VE GAM BETULOT ZEKENIM IM NE'ARIM
בַּחוּרִים וְגַם בְּתוּלוֹת זְקֵנִים עִם נְעָרִים
KJ: Both young men, and maidens; old men, and children:
BN: Pre-pubescent boys and also virgin girls, the old men with the young;
BACHURIM: There is a very precise list of nomenclatures for the female of the species, denoting every stage of existence, every point of the life-cycle, from foetus to corpse (an essay on the subject "The Stages of Femaledom", will be posted soon). For the male of the species the list is shorter, because the anatomical and biological transformations are far fewer. ZACHAR for males in general, BEN for a son, TINUK for a baby, YELED for a toddler, BACHUR until puberty, NA'AR for a youth, ISH afterwards, ZAKEN for the seniors. Some would add MESHARET, but really that is a male servant of any age, not a definition of a life-point.
BETULOT: Unquestionably "virgin", "parthenos" in the Greek; no other word in Yehudit conveys this, including ALMA in Isaiah 7:14.
148:13 YEHALELU ET SHEM YHVH KI NISGAV SHEMO LEVADO HODO AL ERETS VE SHAMAYIM
יְהַלְלוּ אֶת שֵׁם יְהוָה כִּי נִשְׂגָּב שְׁמוֹ לְבַדּוֹ הוֹדוֹ עַל אֶרֶץ וְשָׁמָיִם
KJ: Let them praise the name of the LORD: for his
name alone is excellent; his glory is above the earth and heaven.
BN: Let them praise the name of YHVH, for his name alone is exalted; {N} his glory is above the Earth and the heavens.
SHEMO LEVADO: The Omnideity established, asserted, rejoiced, rehoused. His name, alone. In a place where only dead souls (and not even rocket-men) will ever travel. "You shall have no other gods before me" has now added an inference, "and you shall no longer have any other gods after me, either."
This verse, with the next, is also sung independently within the liturgy, though I can't help pointing that we (myself included, as I have never noticed it before) sing HODU instead of HODO. And isn't it slightly odd, when this verse is the culmination of all the previous ones, and therefore depends for much of its meaning on what is contained in the previous, that it is sung completely without that context in the modern liturgy. Or perhaps it isn't necessary to add the context, two thousand years after the bloodless coup that established the Presidency-for-Life.
The modern context is not without ideological significance though: when the reading of the Law is complete, when "Yehi Ratson" has been recited and "Gelilah", the re-dressing of the scrolls, completed, the Oleh of Hagbahah (he who had the honour of taking the scroll out of the Ark and parading it around the synagogue for all to kiss the Emperor's hem by surrogation) gives the scroll back to the chazan, who recites these two verses, supported by the congregation, while the Ark is being re-opened for the return of the scrolls (click here for a full account). The highest high-point moment of praise available in a post-Temple world.
148:14 VA YAREM KEREN LE AMO TEHILAH LE CHOL CHASIYDAV LIVNEY YISRA-EL AM KEROVO HALELU YAH
וַיָּרֶם קֶרֶן לְעַמּוֹ תְּהִלָּה לְכָל חֲסִידָיו לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל עַם קְרֹבוֹ הַלְלוּ יָהּ
KJ: He also exalteth the horn of his people, the praise of all his saints; even of the children of Israel, a people near unto him. Praise ye the LORD.
BN: And he has raised a horn for his people, a praise for all his pious followers, {N} even for the children of Yisra-El, the people closest to him. {N} Hallelu Yah.
VA YAREM KEREN: Horns in the mediaeval world were still used as drinking vessels, so we can read this as the Biblical equivalent of "raising a glass" - and why not lift a kiddush becher in synagogue at this moment, to make that point more pleasingly?
CHASIYDAV: "Saints" in the KJ is simply naughty.
HALELU YAH: And no question that YAH, the white moon-goddess, sister of Ephron of Chevron, is now fully, completely, trans-sexually, male.
HALELU YAH: And no question that YAH, the white moon-goddess, sister of Ephron of Chevron, is now fully, completely, trans-sexually, male.
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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