(a song of steps)

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The last of the “songs of steps,” Psalm 134 picks up where Psalm 133 left off, with the “blessing | living ever and on,” which comes from “the mountains of Zion” (133:3). It also picks up where Psalm 133 began, with hinneh, the word of exclamation that is also a gesture, a demonstrative, a kind of et voilà, rendered here somewhat expansively as “Oh yes” (133:1; cf. 128:4) and “Oh yes now” (134:1). The prior psalm pointed to seated brothers; Psalm 134 points to “all subjects | of the Lord / who stand in the house | of the Lord by night” (134:1) and to its own, triple blessings.  And Psalm 134 ends where Psalm 133 ended, a blessing that comes specifically “from Zion” (134:3), which is the emphatic point of the entire grouping of Psalms 120-134.

The whole sequence of songs is rich with blessings, a ringing the changes that only arrives at its fullest statement in Psalm 134. As early as Psalm 121, the Songs of Steps invoke the Lord’s protective response for those who call (120:1) or look (121:1) for help. Psalm 121 names the Lord “maker of sky | and land” (121:2) and elaborates three times on the wish that “the Lord guard”: “the Lord guard you… may he guard your throat… the Lord guard | your coming and going (121:7-8). Psalm 122 associates the “there” of Jerusalem (122:5) with the wish for peace, relying on its own elaborations: “Ask peace | for Jerusalem… may there be peace | in your bastions… I want to say | peace, peace be with you” (122:6-8). Just as Psalm 121 answers Psalm 120, Psalm 124 answers Psalm 123, celebrating past rescue (“Blessed | be the Lord” 124:6) and echoing Psalm 121 “Our help | in the name of the Lord / maker of sky | and land” 124:8, cf. 121:2). The Zion-focused psalms 125 and 126 are linked by a benediction of peace (125:5), and the son-focused psalms 127 and 128 turn from the descriptor “all set” (127:5, 128:1, 2) to the insistent (“oh yes how blessed | a man who reveres the Lord” 128:4) and liturgical blessing, which is associated with Zion for the first time: “The Lord bless you | from Zion” (128:5). Psalm 128 ends with another call for “Peace in Israel” (128:6). Psalm 129 ends with the unsaid double benediction, “the Lord’s blessing on you / we bless you | in the name of the Lord” (129:8). While Psalms 130 and 131 return to the lamenting mode of Psalm 120 and Psalm 123, the longer Psalm 132 responds with the election of Zion (with another emphatic “there” 132:17, cf. 122:5, 133:3) and another double blessing: “her food | I bless and I bless” (132:15). Psalm 133, as indicated above, ends with a blessing that links both Zion and life. 

What Psalm 134 does is to bring all of this together. The “subjects | of the Lord / who stand in the house | of the Lord by night” (134:1), whether celebrants or congregants, whatever devotion is meant by the specification of “night,” are invited twice to “bless | the Lord” (1a, 2b). The Lord is invited to bless as well, with all the pieces united: “May the Lord bless you | from Zion / maker of sky | and land” (3). As Norman Habel and others noted long ago, the point is to show that the Lord, YHWH, who is the universal creator God, the “maker of sky | and land,” bestows blessings not from Hermon, but only from Zion.   

It is worth pointing out that the word “kneel” would work remarkably well as a concrete alternative to the more abstract word “bless” in translating Psalm 135. It captures the gesturing, locative, and embodied aspects of a benedictory liturgy, which also include legs that stand and hands that seem to have been lifted all night. The main drawback to “kneel to | the Lord” and “May the Lord kneel to you | from Zion” is that, at least for Psalms 120-134, every other use of the verbal root brk would also need to be rendered as “kneeling” in order for the reader to experience the cumulative effect. The very idea that God could be depicted as kneeling may strike some as unthinkable. Yet there it is.