Tag: David

May 13th, 2023

Psalm 64
(director: a David lyric)

* * *

Psalm 64 has a narrative pleasure that’s obvious—a tight story of revenge—and a marvel of sounds that are hidden in English.

The story is taut and clear. The curtain opens. The speaker, surrounded, is calling for help. Villains, armed to the teeth, wield metaphorical weapons: “who’ve whetted | like a sword their tongue / nocked their arrows | bitter words” (3). They aim at the innocent: “just like that they fire at her” (4). By the middle stanza, their tactics become both less direct and yet more blatant: “they practice baiting traps | said who could see them / they plot wrongs | we’ve plotted a perfect plot” (5b-6a). These bad ones who gang up on the speaker have gotten cocky, slinking there in the shadows. They perseverate about their “plotting.”

In the fourth stanza, God responds in kind, a hidden archer if ever there was, and “fires at them | an arrow / just like that | they have been struck” (7). The effect is surreal, even cartoonish: “he makes them stagger | their tongues against them / all who see them | skitter away” (8). In payback for plural figurative arrows (3), God shoots one literal arrow (7). It pierces what was one collective tongue (3), cutting it into plural tongues (8), which they appear to trip over (or perhaps their tongues trip over them!). The crowd disperses. Stanza Five—almost called it Scene Five—shows the people fearing, as the “cheats” and “troublemakers” did not. The curtain falls on the singular just person, around whom now not the bad, but the good, gather and effuse.

What really makes this psalm, however, is not its pat plot but its verbal dexterity, a dazzle of puns on the words “fear” and “see,” and a half-dozen other similarities that loop threads through verses to tie the whole together. In verse 2, for instance, the speaker asks God, “cover me” (tastireni). Two verses later, the deceitful mob hurls its insults “from cover” (bammistarim). In this case, the English word “cover” manages to get both senses of the Hebrew seter, to protect and to keep secret. In the case of the Hebrew word tam, there’s no English word that conveys both innocence (“bystander” in 4) and perfection (“perfect” in 6), so the English version loses that ironic barb. We do get just fine the word pit’om for “suddenly” or “just like that” in verses 4 and 7, which marks both the instant of crime and of punishment. But we don’t see in translation the word qerev, rendered here as “gut” in verse 6, calling back the word cherev, “sword,” from verse 4. And we can’t notice in English the unscrambling by which wayyakshiluhu in verse 8, “he makes them stagger,” resolves itself in hiskilu in verse 9, “they consider.” In this wordplay, in a poem on the theme of language misused, and in the divine contrapasso, arrow for arrow, the psalm calls to mind the Tower of Babel story.

Psalm 64’s most significant pyrotechnics are touched off in verses 2 and 3 with merei`im and devar mar: “from the cheats” and “a bitter word.” These sound clusters erupt first in verse 4, with lirot…yoruhu vel’o yira’u: “to fire… / they fire at her | and do not fear.” In the first half of verse 5, the “bitter word” comes back as devar ra`, “a bad thing.” In the second half of verse 5, both yoruhu “they fire” and yira’u “they [do not] fear” return from verse 4 as mi yir’eh lamo, “who could see them,” the words that the troublemakers say to convince themselves they’re invulnerable. Their verbal archery, lack of reverence, and not-half-as-secret-as-they-think self-confidence are lashed together. In verse 7, God’s response, vayyorem, “he fires at them,” is not just the slinging of an arrow. It punishes their lack of reverence and of sight as well. After all, the upshot of the punishment is that “all who see them…” (kol ro’eh vam) flee, and “all mortals fear them” (wayyir‘eu kol adam). The ra` of badness, the ra’ah of sight, the yara’ of reverence, and the yarah of shooting—all catch fire together in a tour de force.
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My name is Mark Minster. I’m an English and Comparative Literature professor with a background in ministry and in poetry. I teach courses on writing, reading, religion, and nature.
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May 12th, 2023

Psalm 63
(of David, lyric, when he was in the wilderness of Judah)

* * *

The value of translating nefesh not by the anachronistic “soul” but by its literal sense of “neck” or “throat” becomes perfectly clear in Psalm 63, where “my throat” is paired with “my body” (1), “my mouth” (5), and “your right hand” (8). The word shows up a fourth time as that part of the speaker that has been hunted by the villains, “those who to waste it | seek my throat” (9). Even God’s name only appears three times.

Pronouns for “me” and for “you,” however, are even more prominent. I count eleven first-person-singular suffixes for nouns: my God, my throat, my body (1); my lips (3); my life, my hands (4); my throat, my mouth (5); my bed (6); my throat (8), my throat (9). I count twelve second-person-singular suffixes for nouns and verbs (“behind you” in verse 8 functions as a preposition and a a noun): I greet the dawn for you (1); I have looked to you, your power, your glow (2); your care, venerate you (3); I kneel to you, your name (4); I have remembered you (6); your wings (7); behind you, your right hand (8). In addition, there are prepositional suffixes: “for me” or li (7) and “held me up” is literally “for me supported your right hand,” started by the word bi (8); the two “for you” clauses (lekha) in the middle of verse 1, and the “of you” ending (bakh) of verse 6. The first verse of the psalm includes the standalone preposition “you” (’attah). That totals thirteen first-person suffixes, “me” or “my,” and sixteen explicit second-person markers, “you” or “your,” all but one of these concentrated in just the first eight verses.

All of this is to say that the first eight verses of the poem are remarkably intimate. They linger in the depths of the speaker’s throat, which thirsts and fills and murmurs and hews to “you.” These verses starts at dawn and wake in the night. They name two bodies the way lovers do, the way a Yehuda Amichai poem does: “my lips,” “my hands,” my mouth,” “your glow,” “your wings,” “your right hand.”

It’s those last verses, verse 9 through 11, though, that change the poem’s experience entirely. They fit the first eight verses by the images of “throat” and “mouth” which bracket them (9a, 11c), but not by much else. There’s no first or second person after “my throat” in 9a. You and I disappear. Instead, the psalm becomes desire for punishment for bad guys we didn’t even know were there, desire for the king’s joy, and a general statement about the importance of telling the truth. The punishments are vivid and memorable, but they pose a problem. So much of the poem is about a relationship of care, which takes place intimately, in and between the speaker’s body and God’s. That’s why the throat matters, our readiest way to open to food and drink and air. And yet the only body parts here at the end are the slammed jaws of liars and the guts of people the speaker fears, poured over the pommel of a sword, devoured by foxes.
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My name is Mark Minster. I’m an English and Comparative Literature professor with a background in ministry and in poetry. I teach courses on writing, reading, religion, and nature.
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May 11th, 2023

Psalm 62
(to Jeduthun, a David lyric)

* * *

“Once God spoke | twice I heard this,” the speaker of Psalm 62 says near the end of this duplicative, twice-heard poem (62:11). The first and third stanzas, verses 1-2 and 5-6, are near-doubles that work as a refrain. Partly the lines repeat: “from him | my rescue / oh him my rock | my rescue / my fortress” (1b-2 =5b-6). But differences between verses 1a and 5a seem less like variations on a theme and more like textual variants, “Oh God of gods | the calm of my throat” becomes “Oh for God | calm down, my throat.” To be fair, that first version might just be a preposition and the name “God”—“Oh to God.” But if the first stanza does locate God within the company of plural gods (‘el ‘elohim can easily be read this way) before the third stanza refers to just a singular God (l‘elohim), then that third stanza functions almost as a kind of corrective, an erasure of those other gods.

The fourth stanza, verses 7-8, elaborates on verses 5-6. It takes up the words “God,” “my rescue,” and “my rock” and does so insistently. It names God three times instead of once, adds “and my heft” to “my rescue,” and turns “my rock” into “my strong rock and refuge | in God… God our refuge.”

Seeing the first and third stanza as a kind of repeated chorus, with the fourth stanza as a kind of second chorus, we can see the second and fifth stanzas, verses 3-4 and 9-10, as curiously parallel. Both are plural: “How far will you all go” and “they conspired to overthrow” in the second stanza, “Oh air are the lowborn | the highborn a lie” in the fifth. Neither mentions God explicitly, but a powerful presence is felt. In verse 4, unnamed others are warned

How far will you all go | railing at someone

you’ll be killed, all of you | like a wall collapsed, a hedge torn down

Oh at his rising | they conspired to overthrow

they like a lie | with their mouth they bless

with their insides they curse.

Who are these others? Against whom do they rail and conspire and lie? And who will kill them?

These questions are not answered by the fifth stanza, which turns all humans to vapor upon “the scales” of what we assume is divine justice: “on the scales they go up | together lighter than air” (9).

Explicitly, these two stanzas are about people. The plural conspirators in verse 3 rail against a person, `al ’ish, while “lowborn” and “highborn” are literally benei ’adam and benei ’ish. It’s humans, after all, who speak a lie (kozav 4, kazav 9) and who trust or rely on “shakedowns and theft” (10). And yet the mere possibility that `elohim in verse 1 could be plural—see, for example, Psalm 82— colors the “others” of verse 3 as lesser gods, mutinous gods. The “he” implied by “Oh at his rising” becomes not a person but God. Read this way, the distinction between the lowborn and the highborn in verse 9 takes on mythic significance. Plural, lowercase ‘elohim weigh no more than mortals.

This reading finds double meaning in the final stanza’s twin assertions “that power | is God’s / and yours my lord | is care” (11b-12a). Power belongs neither to renegade gods nor to upstart mortals, nor could either of these groups tip the scales of justice, nor can they be relied on for chesed, care. In the context of the poem, this final stanza emphasizes that neither conspiratorial lying nor the briberies and robberies of the rich can prevent God’s system of retributive justice, in which “you pay back each | as he has done” (12).

Detached from this psalm, the final lines could be marshalled as prooftexts for claims about an afterlife or for attempts to explain suffering as punishment for crimes. Those uprooted interpretations, however, lose much when ripped from the whole psalm. That “each” at the end of the psalm, it is the word ’ish returning from verse 9, the “highborn,” returning from verse 3, the person the conspirators attacked. The insubstantial scales are the crucial image here, everything lighter than air. The scales depend on power, the poem says God says. The speaker suggests we hear this twice, before adding, in the speaker’s own voice, “and yours my lord | is care” (12). Caveat lector.
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My name is Mark Minster. I’m an English and Comparative Literature professor with a background in ministry and in poetry. I teach courses on writing, reading, religion, and nature.
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May 10th, 2023

Psalm 61
(director: on strings, of David)

* * *

There is so much conventional imagery in this plain psalm that it’s not hard to imagine it might have been written by a king, as many suppose. It doesn’t take much: verses 6-7 refer to a king; verses 5 and 8 use the first person. Still, such conjectures are better avoided. What can we know about ages lost? Does it matter to how we read now?

Many claims about the life-setting of psalms, not just those with Davidic superscriptions, beg the question. A psalm that mentions a king is called a royal song, which, it’s said, must have been used in royal settings because it mentions a king and is a royal song. The details can be more elaborate, but the arguments usually no less circular. All depends on assumptions, interpreted. But with Psalm 61, to imagine that perhaps a king wrote it seems a relatively harmless guess. All it assumes is that kings have skillsets other than poetry.

The psalm is tidy and contained, four four-line stanzas with a Selah break in the middle (4). Three imperatives frame the first stanza: “Hear… heed… lead” (1-2). The second stanza adds two more wishes, cohortative, to its matrix of four locations: “let me stay… let me nestle” in “my shelter / a tower of strength… your tent… the secret of your wings” 3-4). These verb forms skip the third stanza but return in the fourth, imperative and cohortative, “appoint” and “let me hymn” (7-8). That’s a satisfying pattern, four imperatives plus three cohortatives, spaced out nicely within a psalm that largely moves from the spatial to the temporal. Whoever this psalmist was, they sought order in form.

To guess this psalmist was a king also assumes that rulers are willing to offer their own third-person intercessions, which again doesn’t seem like a stretch. There’s the first-person statement in verse 5 that makes sense in the voice of a leader: “you’ve given me the gift | of those who revere your name.” The next four lines shift person, however: “days to the days of a king | you keep adding…. He sits forever / at the face of God” (6-7). The second half of the poem shows abiding interest in preserving not just the realm but the reign of this individual king. Most telling, however, is that final imperative, “appoint,” in the line “appoint care and fidelity | they guard him” (7b). Who but a king would consider “those who revere your name,” the God-fearers, as a personal bequest, his own property? Who but a king would imagine chesed and `emet, care and trust, as being appointed and delegated rather than mutual and relational?
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About Me

My name is Mark Minster. I’m an English and Comparative Literature professor with a background in ministry and in poetry. I teach courses on writing, reading, religion, and nature.
Recent Posts
- Psalm 150
- Psalm 149
- Psalm 148
- Psalm 147
- Psalm 146
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