(in stone, of David)

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          In recent decades, Hebrew Bible scholars have identified Psalms 15-24 as a relatively cohesive unit, arranged concentrically, with Psalms 15 and 24 as matched endpoints and Psalm 19 as the center. Given the strength of those three psalms, not to mention the verbal and thematic parallels, the conjecture makes sense. It pays off, too, looking from the centered Psalm 19 out, since Psalm 18 shares with Psalms 20 and 21 militaristic themes and royal imagery, and Psalms 17 and 22 are both supplications that end in consolation. This structure pairs Psalm 16 with Psalm 23, a comparison that does Psalm 16 no favors. We can call both psalms “songs of trust” if the goal is to classify them, for both do feature a first-person speaker confident in the protection of the Lord. But beyond those parallels and a few verbal similarities shared by many biblical poems, Psalm 16 pairs with Psalm 23 the way a sophomore’s draft pairs with a virtuoso’s magnum opus.

          It’s not at all that this psalm is bad. It has memorable moments and compelling textual knots, such as the obliqueness of the first-person “I said” in verse 2: “you, throat, said.” It’s just that, as a declaration of commitment, it’s like an early American conversion narrative, dominated by its rhetorical aims. It may actually be a conversion narrative, in which the speaker claims asylum (1), a share in the land (5-6), and other rights of membership, including protection (1, 8, 9, 10) and above all, joy (2, 3, 6, 7, 11). These claims are supported, each in turn, with verbal assertions and evidence from the speaker’s body. Protect me because I have sheltered in you, the speaker starts, then pledges allegiance to the Lord (2) and pleasure in the Lord’s people (3). The claim to a portion in Israel’s inheritance (“my share… and my cup… the lines… an estate,” 5-6) is supported first by the cursing of outsiders (4), then by performative kneeling (7). This demonstration of fidelity continues with bodily evidence of commitment and pleasure that the audience cannot see: “my insides have nagged” (7b); “Thus my heart has joyed | and so my heft whirls / even my skin rests secure” (9). Statements of joy function circularly, tautologically, as both claim and evidence.

          It’s those last lines that are the psalm’s most remarkable. Their delayed direct object arrives as the fifth of a series of seven nouns predicated of the verb “you show me”: “track of life / surfeit of joys | your face / the beauties at your right | to the last” (11). Only “your face” is explicitly marked as a grammatical object, retroactively making “track of life” and “surfeit of joys” both anticipations of the real object, appositive metaphors for the Lord’s face, figures for the glad life lived on the right side of God’s face. “The beauties at your right | to the last” conveys with the plural adjective a whole range of pleasures. These pleasures, the psalm claims, began before this verbal commitment and last long after.

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16:1 in stone  The likeliest meaning of miktam is a stone inscription. The other psalms with this word in their superscriptions are Pss 56-60, in the second major collection of Psalms.

16:2 you, throat, said of the Lord  The verb ‘mrt is pointed in the Masoretic text as a second-person feminine perfect verb, literally, “you (f) said.” There is no feminine antecedent in the text, but the King James Version takes the implied referent to be nefesh, the word too abstractly translated as “soul,” a common synecdoche for the self. The other main option is to follow Dahood and take ‘mrt as Phoenician spelling for “I said.”

16:3 of the hallowed of the land  To whom does the word liqdoshim “to/of the hallowed/holy” refer? There are three broad choices: the holy ones of Israel, i.e., the powers-that-be, either divine or human (the choice of most translations); foreign gods, or Canaanite powers (see Dahood and Alter); or both, in an intentional ambiguity that marks the transition to a new allegiance from an old one. Either way, the broad purpose is clear—the speaker has cut ties with others and declares commitment to the Lord and the lord’s.

16:4 May their injuries grow | who rush for some other  This is a relatively literal reading of a puzzling moment in the text. It’s clearly a wish for harm.

16:4 I do not toast | their toasts of blood  Strictly speaking a libation is not a toast—one’s poured, the other’s drunk. But “I will not pour out their pourings-out” clunks like a square wheel and makes distant an image that’s clear and not archaic. What’s needed is immediacy, not entfremdung.

16:5-6 The Lord my share… the lots for me  If indeed the speaker was a convert, he/they would not already have a tribal allotment, and would need a portion—a place to live, a share in the feasts. The language here is consistent with this image, from “share of land” (menat-chelqi, lit. “the portion of my portion” to “the lots” (5), from “the lines fell”—i.e., both the casting of lots and the boundary lines—to “an estate” (6), property that might have been either metaphorical or literal.

16:9 and so my nimbus whirls  I follow the Masoretic text for kevodi, my weight/honor/glory, which I see as a bulk. Other manuscripts point the word as keveidi, which works, too, though “my liver dances” struggles. The speaker is overjoyed and their body moves.

16:10 my throat to the grave… your caring one  Any text can be made prophetic, perhaps, but the interpretation of this psalm’s conclusion either as messianic or as evidence of belief in personal immortality is forced. As Rozenberg and Zlotowitz say, “this verse is often interpreted by traditionalists to allude to immortality. There is, however, no hard evidence that immortality as understood later on was a living concept in biblical times.” Dahood egregiously inserts and appends the word “eternal” to “life” in 11a, while the King James mistranslates chasideika “your caring one” in 10b as “thine Holy One,” which is plain wrong. The speaker in the psalm is glad to be part of a new community and grateful not to be dead.

16:11 track of life / surfeit of joys | your face  The object marker ‘et- clearly renders ‘et-paneikha the object of the clause’s only verb, “you show me.”  Alter parses 11b as “Joys overflow in your presence,” while Dahood has “filling me with happiness before you,” readings that obviously get the gist, but lose the syntactical energy, not to mention the literal, intimate, bodily image of the face, which is picked up by the beginning and end of the psalm that follows.