* * *
Poems that preach feel filmy. They have a residue. From what seat does a writer sit in judgment on me? “We hate literature that has a palpable design on us,” Keats writes, though neurotics tend to think we deserve some scolding; authoritarians think we do, too. Iconoclasts and adolescents, played in my mind by Dennis Hopper and Crispin Glover, think no one tells anyone what to do. A moralizer takes a lectern to a party. She hoists herself into mom’s recliner and commandeers the remote. The moralist quips or holds forth while the rest of us hastily volunteer to help with the dishes, wondering who invited that guy.
Much of the book of Psalms is this way.
It doesn’t have to be.
From its first words, Psalms is tricky simple. ’Ashrei, the first word of Psalm 1, comes over in English generally as “blessed,” less often as “happy.” The NRSV has “Happy are those/ who do not follow the advice of the wicked,” which transforms the RSV’s “Blessed is the man/ who walks not in the counsel of the wicked.” In English, “blessed” and “happy” imply different origins of the sensible, level-headed person described. Someone blessed has been favored, we think, generally by God. But “blessed” is too pious, or, better, it puts the piety in the wrong place. Besides, there’s already a Hebrew word that means “blessed”: baruch, which also means “knelt to” and “adored.” Someone happy is fortunate, favored by circumstance, by hap. But “happy” is wispy and vulnerable to mood. Neither is quite right. The word ’ashrei is more like the English phrase “all set”—“she’s set for life.” It connotes that the way ahead is clear.
Psalm 1 might be a bit black and white, perhaps, especially at the end. But the psalm’s deep tension between rooting and dispersal lead to that fertile, paradoxical image of the transplanted tree, with roots that have been moved, roots that draw water from a canal, moving water that has been channelized, moved. The dead metaphor, even in Hebrew, of the “way,” flickers a little with life—there are dead ends and there are roads that run more smooth.
*
1:1 all set, she who The Hebrew is almost a tongue-twister: ‘ashrei ha‘ish ‘asher.. ba‘atsah resh’aim. Ish may be masculine, typically rendered as “a man,” but it’s generic enough that the generic “she” can substitute. Keeping the masculine has its problems, and pluralizing things to sidestep gender loses the spotlight.
1:1 maps… cheats “Plan” is more literal than “maps”; the word is`etsah, which means both “counsel” and “council” as Mitchell Dahood points out (1). The Hebrew word resh’a for wrongness connotes illegality and guilt, criminality rather than primarily moral failure, but “criminals” is too formal and clinical, “evil” and “wicked” far too loud, while “crooks” and “bad guys” are semantically right, but tonally comic.
1:1 the drifters’ path The English word “sinner” thunders into the room. It confuses rather than clarifies. Not that the Hebrew word chatt`aim has a positive valence; its root clearly indicates those who make mistakes, who err, who do wrong. But the word generally means failure and disappointment rather than some existential, theological crime against the fabric of the universe, as readers now hear. The visual metaphor, especially in this psalm, is of not being where one belongs.
1:1 in seats… sat The progression of this verse is a textbook example of parallelism, from walking to standing to sitting, from crime to error to attitude. In addition, the verse relies on the repetition of a single root in two different forms, much more common in Hebrew than in English: moshav… yashav.
1:2 pleasure/ and purrs Most English translations select “delight” and “meditate” here, which seem to me typical eviscerations that intellectualize and abstract. The Hebrew is thoroughly embodied, “pleasure” aligning with a verb that has more to do with sound (doves and lions do it) than with cogitation.
1:2 direction/directions The word torah can mean everything from a single scene of instruction; the experience of teaching and learning; the specific teaching of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, traditionally ascribed to Moses; the entire Hebrew Bible; anything God teaches anyone throughout all time. It’s used twice here. It literally means direction, with a root word yarah that’s almost projectile.
1:3 sapling | transplanted by a canal We like what we like, I suppose. “A tree planted by streams of water” is indisputably lovely. The imagery in the text is more precise than this, however.
1:4 the breath The Hebrew ruach has sweeping semantic range, from breath to wind to spirit. In this respect, it’s somewhat like the English words “nature” or “life,” which can mean individual things or “the force that through the green fuse drives.” English forces a choice, however. I think this verse would work well with “the wind,” but prefer the mereness of breath.
1:5 hold up Literally, “rise” or “stand.” But in our courts, even the convicted rise and stand, so something less literal is needed.
1:6 the way The word derek used twice here is one of the most common biblical tropes. Literally it refers to a path or a road. It’s an altogether fitting image for this psalm to end on. It’s a Psalm about directions. Its double use here picks up the double utterance of torah, directions back in verse 2. Two roads diverge.
1:6 dead-ends The Hebrew verb means both to end and to wander away. The just— the tsaddiqim— have roots and a path; the unjust scatter off like chaff and are done.
The Book of Psalms 