(a psalm, of David)

* * *

The only psalm that calls itself a psalm (in verse 21 as well as the superscription), Psalm 145 is essential for both Judaism and Christianity, foundational for Jewish worship and daily prayer as well as for the key theme of Jesus’ teaching in the Synoptic Gospels: the realm of God. The most abstract of all psalms, its power is conceptual and auditory rather than concrete or visual. Or rather, the visual strength of Psalm 145 is in its textuality, its words and letters arranged in an alphabetic acrostic whose center spells out its two most important words. Verses 10-14 start with the letters yod, kaf, lamed, and mem. In reverse order, these letters spell the word mlky, “my king,” which underscores the kingship theme that’s explicit in the psalm’s first and middle verses (1, 11, 12, 13). In alphabetical order, kaf and lamed spell kol, the word “all,” used seventeen times in the psalm, fourteen times from verse 10 until the end. Thus, very literally, the poem shapes the claim that God’s realm both leads to and encompasses all.

Like every other acrostic linked to David by superscription (Pss 9-10, 25, 34, 37), Psalm 145 is imperfect. A verse is absent for the letter nun. While numerous ancient manuscripts supplied a nun verse, the assumption that the psalm’s imperfection is a weakness is not necessarily warranted. After all, the verse that does appear, among other places, in the Septuagint and the 11Q5 Psalter from Qumran, is forgettable and flat: “Faithful, the Lord | in all his words / caring | in all his works.” (Among other drawbacks, the second half of this verse is identical to the second half of verse 17.) The absence of a nun verse in the Masoretic Text has been explained variously as an accident, as an editor’s decision or author’s intention, and even, by midrash in the Talmud’s Tractate Berakhot 4b, as a purposeful omission because of what would have been written instead: “Rabbi Yochanan said: Why is there no nun…? Because it contains [Israel’s falling]. As it is written: ‘The virgin of Israel has fallen and she will rise no more’ (Amos 5:2).” (See James Kugel’s important essay, “Two Introductions to Midrash.”)

Regardless of the explanation, reductive or expansive, one effect of the skipped letter is to reduce the number of verses in Psalm 145 from 22 to 21, putting into question the center of the psalm. Valuable scholarly articles by Lindars, Declaissé-Walford, Kimelman, and others have posited competing models of the psalm’s architecture, its stanza patterns, outer edges and inner core. The word “name,” shem, appears three times, twice at the beginning, once at the end (1, 2, 21). The verb barak, “bless,” for instance, which is rendered here as “adore,” occurs twice at the beginning, once near the middle, and once again at the end (1, 2, 10, 21). Similarly the word `olam, translated here as “ever” shows up twice at the beginning, once at the end, and once near the middle in a superlative plural “evers” (1, 2, 13, 21).

Clearly the psalm is framed by verses 1 and 2 and verse 21. This leaves eighteen verses, which appear to be arranged in a satisfying pattern of (4+3) + 4 + (3+4). A stanza on divine magnitude and power, evidenced in the past (verses 3-6), leads to a stanza on “the memory | of your great sweetness,” less about moral goodness than the Lord’s attentiveness (7-9). The third main stanza (14-16), the most concrete of the poem, energizes the Lord’s attention to all beings through a series of active participles, while the fourth stanza abstracts again, turning from the Lord’s devotion to the devotion of those who call, revere, and love him (17-20).

None of these main stanzas, it is worth pointing out, says a word about kingship, at least not explicitly. That theme is embedded in the psalm’s central four verses, which are arranged around the turn from verse 11 to verse 12. Verse 11 ends with “their” speech, where “they” seems to refer to “all your works / and your caring” from verse 10, while verse 12 begins with the knowing of the benei-ha’adam, literally the sons of the Adam, those born of the soil, the vassals. Thus, grammatically, while “they speak” fits what precedes it in verse 11 (“your show of strength | they speak”) and “to make the lowborn know” fits what follows it in verse 12 (“to make the lowborn know | his shows of strength”), the two words fit together as well as action-and-purpose: “they speak / to make the soilborn know.” This center is framed by “your show of strength” and “his shows of strength” which in turn are flanked by “the glory of your realm” and “the glory of the grandeur of his realm” (11-12). That this is the psalm’s center is reinforced by the kaf-to-lamed acrostic, which, again, spells the word “all.”

 At the same time, alternative chiastic centers can be identified. One comes in the transition from verse 9 to 10, “over all his works / They thank you Lord | all your works,” framing the psalm’s only mention of thanksgiving. Another comes in the transition from 12 to 13, in the three-in-a-row of malkuto / malkutekha malkut kol-`olamim, “his realm / your realm a realm of | all the evers” (which unavoidably calls to mind the similar-sounding, similarly self-referential “Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich” scene from Being John Malkovich). As with the case of the missing nun, any single interpretation may be less valuable than the plural possibilities, a “yes, and” altogether fitting for a psalm of so much “all.”   

(didactic, of David when he was in the cave, a prayer)

* * *

The dual experience of a psalm of lament is to stand in two places at once. As we read, we are the petitioner, reciting and reliving, identifying with another’s cry we make our own. And yet as we listen, we are also the petitioned, overhearing, trying to understand that cry or help. To really hear a protest or wail, we listeners attend to at least three things at once: the pathos of the voice, what exactly it laments, and what we are supposed to do about it.

The particular voice of the speaker in Psalm 142 is marked in interesting ways as perfectly lucid, thoroughly traditional, and insistently self-aware, all features consistent with derivative, performative work. There are no textual complications or semantic confusions here, just linguistic clarity and syntactical precision (as, for example, in the preposition + infinitive constructions of the superscription, 3a, and 7b). The speaker doesn’t just call; she “pours” a “protest” (2a). The diction sounds similar to earlier psalms, often psalms of David. Verse 1 sounds like Psalm 30:8 and 77:1; verse 3 like Psalm 31:4. Manos, “shelter,” in verses 4 and 5 is also in Psalm 59:16 and 2 Samuel 22:3. “Pay attention to my shout” in verse 6a recalls similar expressions in Psalms 17:1 and 61:1; “free me from who harass me” in 6b echoes Psalm 31:15, and “they are too strong for me” quotes Psalm 18:17 exactly. From these similarities, from their sheer number, and, though this is wobbly logic, from the editorial position of the psalm near the end of the Psalter, these seem like quotations that have been adapted to be more emphatic than the originals.

The psalm’s self-awareness comes from its insistent use of the first-person. Psalm 142 begins and ends with the self. “My voice,” the first verse begins, then says again (1). The final line, the second half of verse 7, begins and ends with first-person prepositions bi and alai, “with me” and [to] “me.” Every line but 7b explicitly marks the first-person singular at least once. Every line through 5a marks it twice. The reflexive stem of the word for pity or feeling (or grace or charm) in verse 2 seems particularly rich. “I implore” means, in super-slow-motion, “I make myself pitiful.” So does the self-pitying statement in verse 6a: “oh I am so low” (6a). It can be a challenge to feel for people with such a sizeable head start on their own pity.

 To sympathize, it helps to know what exactly is happening. The psalm offers few clues and many clichés. There is “crying out” (1a, 5a) and there is “distress” (2b), there are a “trap” (3b) and a lack of shelter (4a), present enemies (6b) and absent friends (4). All of these are common metaphors of complaint, generic enough to apply to any situation from embarrassment to assault. The most specific images in Psalm 142 are the catching of the breath (3) that has led some to assume the psalmist lay on a literal deathbed, and the “prison” (7) that has led others to characterize the speaker as either a literal prisoner, or a figurative inmate of an anachronistic hell. We could equally imagine the speaker as an exile or refugee (4), as a bullied child, a stranger, orphan, or widow (6), or as a temple priest, one whose only “share in the land” is the Lord (e.g., Num 18:20, Deut 14:27, 18:1), or as one of the indigenous opponents of Nehemiah (Neh 2:20). The voice is as easily that of a despot as is it of someone powerless.

The most concrete detail in the psalm comes in the superscription, which grounds this allusive lament in a narrative detail from the chronicles of David’s life: “when he was in the cave,” presumably the cave of Adullam, between the glories of his youth and his accession to the throne. Reading the psalm as David’s has a curious effect, limiting our ability to identify with the speaker, who as a figure of legend cannot be us, as well as limiting our ability to do much about that speaker’s distress. The psalm’s purpose becomes Davidic— to make sense of David’s loss of breath, David’s imprisonment. The location of this particular psalm, near the middle of the final cluster of psalms associated with David, Psalms 138-145, makes clear that a main project of the psalm is legacy work, what to do with a legend and a lost monarchy.

Everything depends, then, on the prepositions in the last verse. All of the quotations and allusions, the superscription, and its context at the end of the psalter make Psalm 142 about the departure of David in multiple ways. It’s David who, like a Levite, now has only the Lord as his share in the land, the land of the living (5). In verse 7, when David, buried in a cave, asks to be led out, his stated desire is “to give thanks | to your name” (7b), not to reclaim a throne. The last two lines, framed by the self-conscious “me” and “me,” reveal how David is to be led from prison, how his neck and breath are to be restored, “With me the just | circle around / oh you reward | me” (7c-d). The word bi, “with me,” can certainly be understood as the more messianic “to me,” which changes things dramatically, from circumference to spoke. But then, the phrase “you reward | me” can also be understood less positively as “you pay me back,” just deserts. The import of the last verse, however, even through these lively ambiguities, is to suggest a fitting fate for a king whose go-to poetic image was of being hemmed in by encircling foes. His compensatory liberation, here, is not to be crowned and worshipped. His voice, rather— “my voice,” “my voice” (1), “me,” “me” (7)— becomes part of the surrounding, the circle of devotees.