TheBibleNet: Psalm 149

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

149:1 HALELU YAH SHIYRU LA YHVH SHIR CHADASH TEHILATO BI KEHAL CHASIYDIM

הַלְלוּ יָהּ שִׁירוּ לַיהוָה שִׁיר חָדָשׁ תְּהִלָּתוֹ בִּקְהַל חֲסִידִים

KJ: Praise ye the LORD. Sing unto the LORD a new song, and his praise in the congregation of saints.

BN: Hallelu Yah. {N} Sing a new song to YHVH, and praise him in the congregation of the faithul followers.

Why a new song, given that its content is as old as the Psalms, as its methodology, its musical accompaniment, its purpose, its everything? Ah yes, but there has been one signiicant change - for which see my notes throughout the previous Psalm.

CHASIYDIM: And who is it that is making, and singing, this new Psalm? Specifically the CHASIYDIM, the name used by the "faithful followers" of Matit-Yahu ha Chashmoni, the leader of those who overthrew Antiochus Epiphanes, "rededicated" the treyphed Temple, and established the Hasmonean dynasty. So we can date this "new" Psalm very precisely: 166 BCE for the revolt, 146 BCE for the first Chanukah.

Except for one major problem: that this Psalm, with the same wording, can be found in the Septuagint, fully two hundred years before the Hasmonean uprising. So the word CHASIYDIM must have been in use already, and though it cannot be translated as "saints" (there is no such thing in the Jewish world), it can still be translated as "faithful followers"; but these must be the "faithful followers" of Ezra and Nechem-Yah and their immediate successors, and the celebration is of the restoration of Yehudah from the Babylonians in the 400s and not from the Greeks in the 100s.

149:2 YISMACH YISRA-EL BE OSAV BENEY TSI'ON YAGIYLU VE MALKAM

יִשְׂמַח יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּעֹשָׂיו בְּנֵי צִיּוֹן יָגִילוּ בְמַלְכָּם

KJ: Let Israel rejoice in him that made him: let the children of Zion be joyful in their King.

BN: Let Yisra-El rejoice in its maker; let the Beney Tsi'on be joyful in their king.

OSAV: How is it possible that I have never noticed this before? Or perhaps it took the very specific phrasing of this verse to make it obvious. YISMACH YISRA-EL BE OSAV, which might be YISMACH YA'AKOV BE ESAV if there were no pointing, or the pointing were only very slightly different, and the alternate name for Yisra-El used instead of this one. And as to Esav (Esau); yes, his name does indeed match this root, though it is understood to mean something quite different (click the link under his name).

149:3 YEHALELU SHEMO VE MACHOL BE TOPH VE CHINOR YEZAMRU LO

יְהַלְלוּ שְׁמוֹ בְמָחוֹל בְּתֹף וְכִנּוֹר יְזַמְּרוּ לוֹ

KJ: Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp.

BN: Let them praise his name by dancing; let them play praises to him with the timbrel and harp.

But don't forget that the dancing in particular was always female, and always in honour of the mother-goddess; while the instruments in the orchestra were shared between men and women, but the timbrel was exclusively female (click here for more on this). So, again, we can witness the patriarchalisation of the cult, and we can endorse our dating of the original of this Psalm.

149:4 KI ROTSEH YHVH BE AMO YEPHA'ER ANAVIM BIYSHU'AH

כִּי רוֹצֶה יְהוָה בְּעַמּוֹ יְפָאֵר עֲנָוִים בִּישׁוּעָה

KJ: For the LORD taketh pleasure in his people: he will beautify the meek with salvation.

BN: For YHVH takes pleasure in his people; he rewards the humble with salvation.

YEPHA'ER: Complex root this. See the link, or its multiple usages, and note the huge gulf between, say, Exodus 8:9 and Judges 7:2. I guess though who those "receive an honour" are in danger of becoming "boastful".

149:5 YA'LEZU CHASIYDIM BE CHAVOD YERANENU AL MISHKEVOTAM

יַעְלְזוּ חֲסִידִים בְּכָבוֹד יְרַנְּנוּ עַל מִשְׁכְּבוֹתָם

KJ: Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their beds.

BN: Let the pious exult in glory; let them sing for joy upon their beds.

MISHKEVOTAM: Who sings in bed? A polite euphemism for the orgasm perhaps. But they are being rewarded with salvation, which is presumably a concept of some kind of afterlife; so perhaps it is the sick and dying who are "singing for joy upon their beds", because they have "faith" that their current suffering will be "rewarded". Not a terribly mainstream Jewish concept this, though there is a suggestion of the afterlife in the orthodox Amidah - mechayey meytim in the second blessing (click here for more on this subject).

or is it intended metaphorically: we lie down on our beds at the end of the day; perhaps this is a way of saying "may their days be full and happy, and let them sleep well".

149:6 ROMEMOT EL BIGRONAM VE CHEREV PIYPIYOT BE YADAM

רוֹמְמוֹת אֵל בִּגְרוֹנָם וְחֶרֶב פִּיפִיּוֹת בְּיָדָם

KJ: Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a twoedged sword in their hand;

BN: Let the highest praise of El be in their mouth, and a toothed sword in their hand;

EL: Not YHVH! A further recognitiuon that this was not "a new song" at all, but simply the updating of a very ancient song.

PIPIYOT: Does this infer that a human army for the purpose of national defense might be needed in addition, and that total trust in the deity is not actually being bestowed? (Didn't Shakespeare's Henry V imply something very similar in the last line of his rallying-cry before Agincourt?)

But that depends on our translating PIPIYOT as "two-edged", which is the description of a piece of military equipment, made by men, used in battles for the sake of YHVH.

But "two-edged" could be a metaphor, and the intention "double-edged" - we would need to find a good explanation of why that might be the intention here, and we would probably be hard-pressed to find one, but a translator has to consider all possibilities.

And the translator does that by going back to the root, which in this case is PEH, "mouth", used as a double-word: probably a figure of speech, with the two cutting edges as the "lips". The same word is used for a threshing instrument in Isaiah 41:15, and there the "mouth" not only has lips, but very sharp teeth as well.

149:7 LA'ASOT NEKAMAH BA GOYIM TOCHECHOT BAL UMIM

לַעֲשׂוֹת נְקָמָה בַּגּוֹיִם תּוֹכֵחֹת בַּל אֻמִּים

KJ: To execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people;

BN: To execute vengeance upon the nations, and chastisements upon the peoples;

LA'ASOT NEKAMA: My suggestion in the previous note would have been bad enough - but this? YHVH YHVH El rachum ve chanun ("the compassionate and merciful"), who "bestows his loving-kindness upon all the world, the strangers as well as his chosen people"... we did read that in these Psalms, didn't we? And in the Torah before that (Exodus 34:6/7).

149:8 LE'SOR MALCHEYHEM BE ZIKIM VE NICHBEDEYHEM BE CHAVLEY VARZEL

לֶאְסֹר מַלְכֵיהֶם בְּזִקִּים וְנִכְבְּדֵיהֶם בְּכַבְלֵי בַרְזֶל

KJ: To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron;

BN: To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron.

And the saddest part of all about my comment in the previous verse, is that the evidence of history entirely favours the words in these two verses, and not the ones I have quoted from elsewhere, though they are the epithets and sobriquets we are most encouraged to recall first.

149:9 LA'ASOT BA HEM MISHPAT KATUV HADAR HU LE CHOL CHASIYDAV HALELU YAH

לַעֲשׂוֹת בָּהֶם מִשְׁפָּט כָּתוּב הָדָר הוּא לְכָל חֲסִידָיו הַלְלוּ יָהּ

KJ: To execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all his saints. Praise ye the LORD.

BN: To execute upon them the judgment written; he is the glory of all his saints. {N} Hallelu Yah.

You can see now why I referenced Henry V earlier, though perhaps Richard the Lion-Hearted would have been even better: crusaders, going off to commit genocide in the name of the deity. And it isn't just the International Zionist Conspiracy and the mediaeval Crusaders. Surah 9 has something terrorisingly similar, as does the bonfire on which the Catholic church threw most of the would-be scientists and philosophers in the 16th century. This is definitely the fully masculinised deity, pointing his phallic finger like President Trump, the Tweet, not the Dove - that latter was sacrificed, alongside compassion and mercy, when the womb (RECHEM) of the mother-goddess was sealed up.

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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