* * *

Psalm 116 is less disjointed than might seem on a first or fifteenth reading. It begins with fractures and quotations, but by the end becomes something its own, the way crumbs gather to a short crust. Its main concern is to pay the Lord the liturgical price owed for his rescue. Instead of the typical pairing of “calling” (qra’) with “answering” (`anah), which appear together in more than a dozen psalms (e.g., Pss 3, 4, 17, 86, 102, 118, 120), Psalm 116 links “I call,” ’eqra’ (116:2, 4, 13, 17) with both “please,” ’anna’ (4, 16) and “now,” na’ (14, 18), insistent words that show up again soon in Psalm 118:25 when the Hallel sequence culminates (“Please Lord | rescue her now / please Lord | have her flourish now”). The point of this wordplay seems to be either that the Lord has already answered the petitioner’s call, or that the appropriate place for both call and response is worship, “in the yards | of the house of the Lord / in your center | Jerusalem” (116:19).

The end of the psalm is cohesive enough. Verses 15-17b move from the claim that the death of his loved ones costs the Lord (15) to the speaker’s plea for special pity, “oh I am your servant | I am your servant” (16), to immediate unshackling and gratitude (17a-b). Verses 17c-18 constitute a refrain, repeating verses 13b-14 almost exactly: “So on the name of the Lord | I call / my vows to the Lord | I make good / right now | before all his people.” This refrain reaches back to a shorter version, “on the name of the Lord | I call” in verse 4, which shapes the whole psalm as increasingly immediate, expansive, and performative: I call, I call now, I call now in the temple.

Three preceding sections, verses 1-4, 5-9, and 10-14, seem somewhat similar to 15-19. Verses 10 and 11 witness a kind of crisis of confidence in others, while verses 12-13a turn to gratitude and the refrain of 13b-14 marks a public declaration of loyalty. Somewhat less cohesive, verses 5-6a make claims about the Lord’s traits of pity, fairness, and compassion, before verses 6b-9 turn from pleas to rescue: “I was sunk low | but he rescues me” (6b). Verses 7-9 express detailed thanks. Even less cohesive is the psalm’s opening. Verse 4 certainly ends with the speaker calling the Lord’s name, as the third and fourth sections do. But verses 1-3 appear to invert the sequence of trouble-call-response. Already in verse 1, “the Lord hears / my voice | my pleas,” a hearing that precedes the speaker’s repeated statement, “I call” (2b, 4a). Unlike the psalm’s later calls, which follow gratitude, this section’s two calls surround the speaker’s dire situation: “They have cordoned me | the cords of death” (3), a verbatim quotation of Psalm 18:4. Perhaps the function of this inversion, and of the quotation, is to make the entire psalm enact a transformation of the speaker’s call from complaint to necessary response. The speaker calls. The Lord rescues. The speaker calls in worship.

Other quotations signal that Psalm 116 is attempting something allusive or revisionary. Psalm 111:4b (“feeling and tender | the Lord”) and 112:4b (“feeling and tender | and just”) are blended in 116:5a: “Feeling is the Lord | and just / and our God | is tender.” Psalm 31:22 (“for I said | in my panic / I’m severed | from before your eyes”) is modified in 116:11a (“I said | in my panic / all mortals | are lying”). The paying of vows in 116:14 and 116:18 calls to mind Psalm 22:25 (“my vows I make good | before those who revere the Lord”) and even more clearly Psalm 56:12-13 (“Over me God | are your vows/ I make good| thanks for you / For you have freed | my neck from death / not letting my feet | trip”). Even the very first word of Psalm 116, “I love,” may be an echo. It is a strange word to begin a psalm, ’ahavti, not terribly common, with no clear object— loved what? The ki-clause that follows it may be its object: “I love that the Lord hears my voice, my pleas.” Or the object could be “my pleas”—“I love, for the Lord hears my voice, my pleas”—though the sense is stranger. It’s just as likely that the Psalm quotes either Psalm 26:8 (“Lord I love | the nest of your house”) or Exodus 21:5-6:

“But if the servant indeed says, ‘I love my lord, my wife, and my children, I cannot go free,’ his lord will have him approach the gods and approach the door or doorpost and his lord will pierce his ear with an awl and he will serve him ever.”

Both possible references are relevant. Psalm 116 ends by pointing to the temple in which the psalm takes place. Even more compelling, if Psalm 116 does begin by alluding to the law in which a slave with a family renounces his freedom for the sake of love, the entire psalm is grounded and gains significance, especially verses 16 and 17: “Please, Lord | oh I am your servant / I am your servant | the child of your female servant // You have opened | my cuffs.” The experience of the psalm becomes a testimonial, a freed slave quoting snippets of psalms “right now | before all his people.”