(director: skilled, of David, when Doeg the Edomite went to announce to Saul that David had come to the house of Ahimelech)

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Psalm 52 contrasts the politics of strength with an ethic of care. It opposes the “strong man” of verse 1 with the “just” of verse 6, with the “yours who care” of verse 9 and with the psalm’s speaker, who does all the right and caring things. By verse 7, that strong man (haggibor) has become a “strong-ish man” (haggeber), his “hunger” (havvot, 2; behavvatov, 7) his undoing. He is all tongue, this razor of guile, this fraud (2,4). His lust for might has a consequence, to be thrown down by being uprooted (5). By contrast, the speaker is “like an olive tree | green”: “in the house of God | I have leaned / on the caring of God | forever and on” (8).

The second line of the first verse crystallizes the opposition between care and strength: “the care for power | all day long,” chesed ’el kol hayyom. As elsewhere, the word chesed nearly always indicates a relationship of care, while ’el most often means God. But often enough, ‘el functionally means “power,” as when Laban tells Jacob, yesh-le’el yadai, “there’s power in my hand” (Gen 31:29, cf. Deut 28:32, Prov 3:27). Very rarely, chesed seems to mean a kind of taboo or scorn (Lev 20:17). If indeed Psalm 52:2 is one of those instances where one or both of these words slip their meanings, the whole first verse, first and third stanzas, and indeed the whole dialectic of the psalm all become clearer. Why is ‘el used twice in the psalm, connected with the strong man (1, 5), while ‘Elohim appears three times, opposed to the strong man (7), but linked to the speaker (8 x2)? The strong man misunderstands care even as he confuses power with God. The result of his twisted “care for power” is that it’s Power that undoes him: it “throws you down… picks you up… tears you from your tent/ uproots you” (5). As a coup de grace, the final verse’s line corrects the strongman’s error, in both God’s name and what care means: “I hold out | for your name / how sweet it is | to be right there with yours who care” (9).

In this reading, the psalm’s superscription makes perfect sense as an allusion. That “strong man” who will be upended by his own quest for power, is he to be figured as Doeg the Edomite, who does Saul’s dirty work of murdering at least eighty-five priests (1 Sam 22:6-23)? Or is the strong man Saul? Or even David? All three pursued power when what is needed is care.