(a song of steps, of David)

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Psalm 133 is as solid as it is liquid. Its hardness comes from simple structural strength— it is one argument (1) plus two analogies (2, 3)— as well as the firm rhetoric of sitting together in a specific place, “there [where] God ordered / the blessing | living ever and on” (3b-c). Its fluidity comes, not by contrast but by continuity, from the “sweet” goodness of gathered brothers (1), which becomes the “sweet oil” that spills down Aaron’s spilling beard, becoming the dew, becoming the blessing, becoming life. Powerful features of the psalm’s sounds, rhymes, repetitions, plays on words, are both wet and dry, keeping the psalm moving while holding it in place.  

Poems are not often about what they say they’re about; they’re about what they do. (Eliot famously describes meaning as the meat a burglar throws a watchdog.) The ostensible argument of Psalm 133 concerns the aesthetic and moral beauty (“how stunning | how sweet”) of the reunion of brothers. This thesis sends us down to the psalm’s two comparisons in search of similarities: in what ways is the sweetness of the communion of brothers like the anointing of a beard, particularly, and strangely, the oil on the beard of a priest? In what ways, then, are fraternal unity and beard oil like the dew on some mountain far from Zion “running down over / the mountains of Zion” (3b)? Are the brothers of Psalm 133 united by sensuous viscosity, like Melville’s Ishmael squeezing whale sperm “till I myself almost melted in it… till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it” (“A Squeeze of the Hand,” Moby-Dick)? The comparisons of the psalm are a logical stretch, we must conclude: sibling harmony is really not all that similar to dripping oil or falling dew.  

The logical stretch of the analogies raises the possibility, I think a likelihood, that the psalm’s similes are not there to clarify or develop anything about the unity of brothers. Rather, the unity of brothers is given in verse 1 as good. Sweet oil and dew are not figures that elucidate brotherhood. Rather, brotherhood is the figure that elucidates anointing, which is the real substance of verses 2 and 3: the anointing of the Aaronic priesthood and the anointing of Zion. The discourse of brotherhood grounds the valuation of Aaronic priests as equal to, and yet greater than, their Mosaic and Levite siblings. Brotherhood likewise supports the passing of the blessing from Israel’s other sacred sites, Mount Hermon, to Zion alone. If the point of Psalm 133 is to encourage sibling unity, its moral is pat and its methods messy. If, on the other hand, Psalm 133 presumes the beauty of sibling unity, its real work is to transfer the register of brotherly love to the temple priests of Zion, sanctioning their work as perpetually anointed and permanently giving of life. The psalm is easily misread as a priestly blessing of brothers. It’s the other way around.