(director: in eighths, lyric, of David)

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This powerful lyric centers on the divine response to corrosive human speech, which oppresses as it deceives. The Lord’s speech-in-action is literally centered, with “right now I rise | says the Lord” in the exact middle of the psalm’s chiastic structure (5b). Divine speaking is framed, first, by the not-quite-speech of the weak, the “groans of the poor” (5a) and “the rescue | he breathes for” (5c). In turn, these lines are framed by the repeated verb “say,” which pairs the reported speech of the boastful (4) with a celebratory description of the Lord’s sayings (6). Their talking is not God’s talking. This whole unit is framed once again by verses 3 and 7, which match the imaginary punishment of “slippery lips” by the Lord in the third person, with the Lord in the second person, who instead of punishing, protects. The psalm begins and ends with the problem of corrosion, which not only persists, but spreads. The bookending phrase “the human race” repeats (1b, 8b), while “worthless they speak | to each other” becomes, at the end, “all around, cheats | traipse / as cheapness rises” (2a, 8).

As a coherent whole, the psalm wisely diagnoses the problem of cheap and careless speech: “slippery lips” (2b, 3a) arise from the deeper problem of “a split heart” (2b). The phrase rendered here as “split heart” is so profound in Hebrew it’s a shame it doesn’t work literally in English: belev valev, “with a heart and a heart.” Both the King James Version’s phrase “a double heart” and Robert Alter’s “two hearts” imply a heart that is beside itself. They far surpass the NIV’s ruinous “deception in their hearts.” And while those images of lips that slip around and a heart as halved as it is doubled do indict duplicitousness, they also critique “flattery,” as the KJV and NIV say.

And yet the psalm’s dual moral is half a consolation. On the one hand, the Lord rises and speaks truly to guard the weak, rising not just for, but out of, the groans of the poor (5-7). On the other hand, while the rescue called for from the psalm’s first word indeed arrives mid-poem, the lyric ends as it began, with the unsolved, unsolvable problem of unreliable human speech, the unreliable heart. It evokes the Tower of Babel, and 1 Samuel 16:7 in its Shakespearean iteration, King Duncan’s observation that “there’s no art/ To find the mind’s construction in the face.”

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12:2 slippery lips with | a split heart they speak  The word chelqah means smoothness and is often translated as “flattering.” A smooth talker may be a flatterer—or a liar, or someone who evades care or truth. As ever, the translator’s job is to present the image, not to take the reader’s responsibility. The introduction above discusses belev valev, “with a heart and a heart,” here presented as “a split heart” only because a more literal translation misleadingly sounds additive rather than divided.

12:3 Let the Lord snip  Lit. “cut off.” A fitting punishment for duplicitous speech and a divided heart.

12:4 who is our boss?  Perhaps too colloquial, especially since adon elsewhere in this translation is “lord.” But in reported speech, “who is lord to us” is too stilted, not just in the phrasing, but in the comparatively medieval world of lords and ladies. “Master” is far too fraught in an American context, given the legacies of slavery.

12:5 from the wreck of the weak | from the groans of the poor  The prepositional prefix mem- before missod “from the wreck” and mei’anqat “from the groans” can be causal— “because of”— rather than partitive— “out of.” But there are other causal particles that might have been chosen, whereas the doubled mem invites the image of the Lord arising and speaking out of the injustice itself.

12:7 you guard them / you protect him The focusing move from plural to singular is common enough in biblical Hebrew poetry: it happens repeatedly in this very psalm (in verses 3,5,6,7). Moreover there are multiple possible antecedents for both “them” and “him,” which makes the efforts of several translations unwarranted: “thou shalt keep them… thou shalt preserve them” (KJV) and “will guard him, will keep him” (Alter) are understandable, but the NIV overreaches and misreads (the energic nun) with “will keep the needy safe and will protect us forever from the wicked.”

12:9 as cheapness rises | in the human race  The line does not look “tacked on,” as Alter has it. “Cheapness” picks up “worthless” from verse 2, and “the human race” here forms an inclusio with “the human race” in verse 1.