Tag: morality

April 16th, 2023

Psalm 36
(director: of the servant of the Lord, of David)

* * *

From its first line, Psalm 36 surprises. It starts with the hallmark of the prophetic oracle, the word ne’um, which is usually followed in the Bible by the divine name— “the word of the Lord”; “thus says the Lord”—and only rarely, by another human (Balaam in Numbers, David in 2 Samuel). Only here does the word personify a concept, pesh’a, revolt, transgression. Rebellion’s oracle is delivered to another abstraction: the criminal who lives in the speaker’s heart. The gesture is strikingly self-conscious for biblical art, as befits such an inward-looking series of verses. It’s Wrong who diagnoses the crook in the heart, the criminal whose eyes are not at all concerned about the Lord. We go down and in. Inside this cheat who lives in the heart are eyes that do not see but are “smoothed over, ”a second personification nested within the first. These are Russian dolls of self-deception and, as we learn in 2b, layers of self-loathing: “finding guilt | hating it.” Verse 3 moves swiftly out to the consequences: “The words of his mouth | harm and fraud / he is done being smart |doing good.”

From this inside-inside-out setup, the psalm turns to the much more common vertical axis: lying on a bed followed by standing on a road (4), care and faithfulness and justice to the skies and clouds and mountains, high and higher (5), “verdicts | the mighty deep” (6). Badness might be deep within the heart, a guilt, a hatred of guilt, a covering over of guilt or of the hatred of guilt, but four of the Lord’s key traits are mapped onto the planet’s heights and depths.

Shrewdly, the psalm turns from inwardness and upwardness to immersion, the nestling in wings (7), this suffusion with rich oil and “the stream of your charms” (8). The liquid is participatory: “you give them to drink / For with you is | the spring of life” (9); “draw out your care” (10). So is the psalm’s most immersive, participatory line, which returns to the eyes from verses 1 and 2: “by your light | we see light” (9).

The final stanza’s turn is a return. It retrieves both the inward and the vertical. “Those who do harm” recalls “harm” from verse 3 as well as, from verse 4, the one who “plots harm | from his bed” and “stands himself | on a road not good” (4). This one who plots harm, in context, was “the cheat in the heart” of verse 1, as verse 11 reminds, “the hand of cheats | not wave me away” (11). Here by the end of the poem, marked by a locative “there,” all of those who do harm have fallen— downward— “they were shoved down | and could not rise” (12). To the modern ear, the thought of something dangerous inside being “shoved down” sounds like a recipe for disaster. Freud spoke on dreams, of the mind’s art of disguise and disguising disguise. But in the outside world, the cheats standing by the road are dropped and the Lord’s care remains drawn out and soaked through.
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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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April 13th, 2023

Psalm 33
* * *

So much of the Bible—of every scripture, indeed of all art—is revisionary. Texts make sense of other texts, making meaning by difference. This psalm begins as praise but it becomes something else, “a new song” (3).

The first stanza conveys typical images of a laudatory psalm: “thank the Lord | with the lyre / with the ten-string | strum to him” (2). Melody and volume are encouraged twice. “A hymn is lovely” and “play nimbly” suggest craft, while “Shout” and “loud noise” imply gusto (1, 3). But the crucial terms are “a new song” and those who are singing and shouting and playing: the just (tsaddiqim), and the plumb or level or upright (yesharim) (1). These last two terms, frequently paired, convey alignment on two different axes. “Justice” is the horizontal fairness of the balance scales, while “uprightness” is the moral upstanding of the vertically plumb. The terms return in verses 4 and 5, interlaced with two other frequently paired terms, which are mappable on the same axes: the vertical emunah (4) and the arguably horizontal, arguably vertical chesed (5), the first based on firmly planted pillars, the second on a relationship of care.

It’s that care that this new song privileges. The morally upright are on the level because the word and work of the Lord are rooted sure and true. But the stanza emphasizes “the care of the Lord,” which fills the whole earth (5). Not just the stanza, either. The whole psalm culminates with chesed: “Let your care Lord | be upon us / just as we have held out | for you” (22). The very eye of the Lord is not only on “those who revere on him,” but on those “who hold out | for his care” (18).

What makes the song new is clear from its allusions to Psalm 1 and to Psalm 18. Like the first psalm, Psalm 33 describes who is “all set” based on where they sit and where they stand. Instead of the singular, “All set, she who” of Psalm 1, we have the plural, “All set, the people | whose God is the Lord” (12). Yet instead of standing and sitting being associated with the troubled and the wrong, as they are there, here sitting and standing convey rootedness on both the horizontal and the vertical: “All the earth | reveres the Lord / they stand amazed by him | all who sit in the world” (8). And why? Because he spoke and commanded, and “so it stood” (9); the Lord’s plans “stand forever” (11). In case the two axes aren’t clear, note how the Lord sees “from the base of his sitting… all who sit | on the earth” (14). The verticality is insistent. The horizontal is subtle. Unlike the older songs, the moral lesson is not for the lone individual, but for “all”— all the earth, all who sit, “all | the human race.”

To the same revisionary end, verse 13 calls to mind a different psalm, in which the Lord “from the skies | leaned down to see humans / to see if anyone’s smart… no one’s doing good” (14:2-3). Here, in Psalm 33, the Lord’s scanning leads to beautiful lines: “he shapes their heart | together/ makes sense of | all their deeds.” That’s not “no one doing good.”

To Psalm 18, which pairs cosmic history with the bellicose sanctioning of the king, Psalm 33 has a separate, related reply. Complementing a series of allusions to God’s creation in verses 6-9, verses 16 and 17 present a king who is not clothed in might. The statement is profoundly anti-militaristic.

No king is rescued by        great force

no hero is freed by             great might

a myth                               the horse to the rescue

yet with its great might    it cannot deliver

Rescue is not smashing enemies’ teeth or making migrants cower at the borders. Psalm 33 supplants force with care.

*

33:1 you just… the plumb These two terms for the Lord’s devotees are explicitly paired. The verse moves from the immediacy of second-person plural address to a broader characterization in the third-person plural. But both moments emphasis the worshippers’ rectitude and propriety, drawing attention to their virtue.

33:2 with the ten-string Lit., “with a harp of ten”

33:5 of the care of the Lord This object phrase is emphasized because it precedes verb and subject (“the earth is full”). At the same time, the Lord’s care momentarily feels like an extension of the description of the Lord in the first half of the verse, “who loves the just | and the right.”

33:7 in the cellars The fanciful expression captures the underground location of “the deeps” as well as the actions of amassing and storing for later.

33:8-9 they stand amazed… all who sit… and so it stood The verb yaguru is the word for sojourning, but also for fear and amazement (cf. Ps. 22:23, where, as here, it parallels yira’). Because sitting and standing both imply dwelling, there’s a curious texture to this stanza. It literally describes the erecting of order out of the chaos of verses 6 and 7. At the same time, it moves from verbs for settling migration to settlement to rooting.

33:10 the others’ plans… peoples’ plots These possessive constructions pair common synonyms for intentions (the nuclei of the genitive phrases) and common synonyms for other ethnic and cultural groups (the modifiers). While sometimes the Israelites are included among the goyim (usually rendered as “the nations”), more often the term refers to peoples other than the Israelites, hence “the others.”
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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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April 8th, 2023

Psalm 28
(of David)

* * *

There has to be a least interesting psalm. Psalm 28 volunteers. Full of circumlocutions, abstractions, and cleverness, its petty moral sensibility leaves readers little to reward attention. It reads like a wordy elaboration on the first verses of Psalm 18/2 Samuel 22: “my cliff” (28:1, 18:2), “my strength my shield” (28:7, 8; 18:1, 2), “the stronghold” (28:8, 2 Sam 22:33).

What is it that the speaker wants? Having worshipped, she calls for a response: “hear the voice of my pleas | when I shout to you / when I lift my hands | to your hallowed shrine” (2). What kind of pleas are these? “May you not haul me off | with the vile” or with those who make trouble or those who “speak peace… with bad in their heart” (3).

Other psalms provide passionate evidence of the trouble the “I” is in. Other psalms call for justice that would prove the speaker’s innocence, or tug at the Lord’s pity, or remind him of his fidelity and care. This speaker speaks instead in a coy second-person imperfect—not the imperative. Rather than demanding with a full-throated imperative, not to be lumped in with the bad, she speaks indirectly, deferentially, “may you not” (“you do not” is possible as well).

Worse, instead of justice for herself, she seeks punishment for wrongdoers in general, not anyone who has specifically wronged her:

give them for their doing       for the bad of their deeds

for the work of their hands    give them

return to them                     their recompense

The language is generic, not to mention repetitive. Parallelism can do so much more! It can intensify, clarify, deepen, map. What does “give them” add the second time? How does the cliché “the work of their hands” focus or adjust “for the bad of their deeds”? Maybe there is a matching here, the three kinds of bad in verse 3 matched with appropriate retribution? But nothing is specific about either the crime or the punishment. “I have worshipped, so please don’t treat me like those awful people who get what’s coming to them?” The piety begrudges; it grates.

These central moments of the psalm are led and followed not by details, but by puns. The bad do bad (ra`ah) to their friends (re`eihem) in verse 3, which is similar wordplay to Psalm 23 (see note to Psalm 23), though this pales in comparison with that, in range and significance. In verse 5, the play is somewhat stronger, ki lo‘ yabinu, “because they do not sense,” which is met by velo‘ yibneim, “he shall not build them up.” But what doings of the Lord has the psalm asked the reader to sense?

Read Isaiah 1, I want to tell the speaker, whom I feel sure I’ve met before.

*

28:1 don’t keep quiet from me A very literal rendering of the Hebrew idiom, which describes not just any kind of silence, but privation or secrecy.

28:3 May you not haul me off The verb mashak does not necessarily suggest a formal register, though the verb’s conjugation in the indicative makes it more polite than the imperative would have been. Some readers may find this translation too informal, others may think it too formal. That tension is in the Hebrew.

28:3 their friends | with bad A Hebrew pun, as the introduction to Psalm 28 points out: re`eihem ra`ah enacts the corruption of friendship.

28:5 let him raze, not raise them The pun in the verse actually pairs velo’ yibneim “not raise them” with ki lo’ yabinu, “for they do not sense.” In the Hebrew, then, the etymology suggests that the Lord’s refusal to establish the bad is rooted in their failure to discern. This translation’s pun gives only the flavor of the original.
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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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April 7th, 2023

Psalm 27
(of David)

* * *

All poems and hymns are composite, whether they seem the work of one hand or many. Lines and stanzas take different angles. New images complement or challenge old ones. Abstractions butt heads. It would be valuable to be able to know whose hands—whose eyes, whose ears—put which pieces where and when, who arranged Psalm 25 to mirror Psalm 34 with Psalm 29 in the middle. And to know who paired Psalm 27 and Psalm 31. It would be nice to know which seams within psalms were intentioned by authors and which by editors— if there was even a difference. And yet the whole exercise, trying to find which parts were made by whom, is fraught with logical circles.

As an instance of this unknowable intentionality, Psalm 27 relies on a curious shift. In reductive applications of form criticism, it is often called a psalm of “trust,” as if one word could convey a theme, let alone a genre. The whole psalm, it should really be said, pokes at the tissue of trust. It presents a psychologically rich portrait of trust being torn and repaired, with layers of bravado and vulnerability and dread. It’s a therapist’s stomping ground.

The psalm begins with a doubled question of identity, a move seen before in Psalms 15 and 24. The questions in Psalm 27—not about who, but “of whom” should I be afraid?—become more than rhetorical. Verses 1-3 sound like bluster. Given that the Lord is my fortress and light, the zombie-like horde of villains who pile up in verses 2 and 3 are met with two statements of calm: “my heart does not fear… through this I lean back.” The word betach, the most common biblical word for “trust,” relies on an image of relying on, of reclining in peace. The picture of a teambuilding trust-fall comes to mind, or of carrying children off to bed.

From leaning, however, the psalm turns to images of sanctuary. Verse 4 is a strange leap after confidence, the sudden wish to live in the temple, a movement clearly marked as a retreat:

For he hides me in his den     on the bad day he conceals me

under cover of his tent          to a cliff uplifts me (5).

There are three locations here, at least two of them metaphorical— the Lord’s tent, likely literal, flanked by an animal’s burrow or warren or den, which goes down, and a cliff to which the speaker is “uplifted” seemingly within the tent. From safety, within the tabernacle or temple, above the enemies, the speaker offers song. But how does this retreat from threat relate to reclining in trust? The psalm has moved from confidence to concealment.

Once the psalm shifts to first-person address, the image of hiding returns. In the song that the speaker sings, rather than narration, we hear a complicated desire and plea:

Of you my heart said            wish for my face

your face Lord                     I wish for

Don’t hide                          your face from me

don’t turn away                   in anger your subject

You’ve been my help           don’t leave me

don’t desert me                   God of my rescue

though father and mother   desert me

the Lord                             will take me in          (8-10).

That wish in verse 8f or the face to stay—literally “seeking” the face— is particularly blurry. A vulnerable sentiment is expressed: Look for my face, Lord! I look for yours! Is that “trust”? Having voiced confidence in the face of armies, the speaker is whisked into sanctuary, whereupon she sings this song of what smacks of desperation: “don’t hide… don’t turn away… don’t leave me / don’t desert me” (9). You don’t need a counseling degree to want to ask a follow-up to verse 10: “though father and mother | desert me / the Lord | will take me in.” Tell me more about your parents…?

Maybe the hiding doesn’t last. The final four verses anticipate movement away from shelter: “Show me Lord | your road / lead me on a smooth path | because of my opponents” (11). How curious, then, that the psalm ends with the speaker waiting. The word qavah means to be expectant, to hope, to gather while waiting.

But it’s not just waiting. The final verse is a first-person address to some second-person singular who is not the Lord. That “you” might be liturgical, to be sure, one worshipper to another: “Hold out for the Lord | stay stout / may he toughen your heart | hold out for the Lord” (140. But within the poem, this reads more like someone psyching herself up. A declaration of trust at the beginning has transformed, gone vulnerable, grown up, gone deep. Here at the end that trust has become a kind of self-encouragement, far removed from a naïve trust fall. But then, maybe trust is hope or holding out, a mirror scene of telling yourself to stand firm, stay strong.

*

27:5 in his den A figure for the tabernacle, to be sure (e.g., Ps 76:2), the word is also used for the shade where lions lie (Job 38:40).

27:8 Of you my heart said | wish for my face An example of the tremendous power of preserving ambiguity. Most translations deploy quotation marks and reverential capitalization of “my” here to read “wish for my face” as the speaker citing God’s desire for the speaker to seek God’s face. But it is also possible to read the line more simply as the speaker’s desire to be sought. The more common idiom understands the speaker to be beseeching the Lord—as indeed happens in the second line of the verse: “your face Lord | I wish for.” But this line admits the opposite as well: the speaker also wants to be wanted. See also the introduction to this psalm.

27:13 false and breathing foul The meaning of vipeiach, a hapax legomenon, is uncertain.

27:13 Oh, if I had not stood firm | to see The word lulei is counterfactual, “unless I had stood firm,” which makes literal translation unsatisfactory. Some translations supply a “then” to complete this line’s “if not” clause: for example, “[I had fainted] unless I had believed” (KJV). The emotive power, however, comes from not knowing or not stating what would have happened.
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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.
Recent Posts
- Psalm 150
- Psalm 149
- Psalm 148
- Psalm 147
- Psalm 146
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