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COLLECTION

Yale University Library

Two PsalMS.

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From the " Oriental Studies"
- . . . . ..o,f,the
Oriental Club of Philadelphia.
.-. ¦;¦• :,<"_ f ¦ 1894. '

M£xfi<} 894-j

AN INTERPRETATION OF TWO PSALMS.
PSALM TXXIII.
BY MARCUS JASTROW.
And 3^et there is a boon for Israel,
A God for those pure in heart.
But I — my feet had well nigh wavered,
It lacked but little and my steps had slipped.
For I envied the merry-makers,
When I beheld the peace of the wicked;
For there are no fetters for their ilk,
And their nature is strong.
In the trouble of man, they share not,
And with mankind are they not afflicted.
Indeed, their necklace is haughtiness,
Violence their fine embroidered cloak.
Their scheme has left the fat of their reins,
The carvings of their heart have gone forth.
Mockingly they speak of the evil ;
" It is a wrong from on high," they say.
They set their mouth against the heavens,
And their speech travels quickly over the land :
' ' Truly, let his people turn hither,
And waters of fulness shall be quaffed by them,
And let them say, ' How does God know,
Or is there knowledge in the Most High ?
Here are the villains,
And the prosperous men of the world —
They increase in wealth.
Verily, in vain have I cleansed my heart,
And washed my hands in innocency;
Yet have I been plagued all the day long,
And my chastisement was renewed with every morning.' "
CO

If I said, "Thus will I speak,"
Behold, here is the generation of thy children
To whom I should be faithless.
But thinking, I came to know this :
A trouble is this in my eyes,
Until I shall enter the sanctuaries of God,
When I shall get an insight into their destined end.
Verily, on slippery ground hast thou made a foundation
for them,
Thou castest them down into ruins.
How are they turned into desolation in a moment !
They are gone, they have ceased from terrifying,
As a dream disappears on awakening ;
O Lord, at the awakening
Thou makest contemptible their image. —
When my heart was fermenting,
And in my reins I was stung,
I was foolish and|knew not
That animal-like I was with thee.
But I will always be with thee ;
Thou seizest me by my right hand,
Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel,
Until at last thou takest me away in glory.
Whom have I in the heavens ?
And besides thee I want none on earth.
My flesh and my heart are consumed :
The rock of my heart and my portion
Is God forever.
For behold those far from thee
Shall perish ; thou silencest
Every one that strayeth away from thee.
But I — the nearness of God is my boon. x
I place in the Lord God my trust,
To proclaim all thy messages.
There are in the above translation only a few devia
tions from the accepted version, which need a justifica
tion. Umotham, in verse four, is translated in the King
James' version and others "in their death" (from ma-

vetK). Mr. Leeser has "for them", taking Pmotham as
a poetic form for Vmohem or lamo. In Talmudic He
brew we have k1 mothi for kamothi, k'1 motho for kamohu,
etc. Vmotham might therefore be translated by "for
those people," "people of that ilk."
The usual translation of yasa meheleb enemo "their
eyes stand out with (or from) fatness," apart from its
harshness of expression, is physiologically incorrect. It
is the eyes of haggard persons that stand forth. We
take kayin to be scheme, plan, (cf. Job, xi. 20 and xxxvi.
7) and heleb to be a poetic expression for kilyahy
kidney, with which heleb is frequently associated (cf.
Lev. iii. 4, 10, and the expression "fat of kidneys of
wheat," Deut. xxxii. 14). The kidneys are to the He
brew the seat of deliberation and counsel; the heart, the
seat of thought and speculation. In our poem, the
heart is compared to a quarry or workshop in which the
marble is hewn and shaped into maskiyoth. The figure
of speech gains additional significance by reference to
Leviticus xxvi. 1, where eben maskith is shown, by the
context, to mean a carved stone used as an idol.
When the work is finished, it leaves the workshop to
be exhibited to public gaze. So have the carvings of
those wicked men left the workshop — the heart — just as
their schemes have gone forth from the kidneys in which
they were planned. To this figure of speech corresponds
"image," (selem) in verse twenty, where it says, "Thou
despisest" — 1. e. showest the contemptibility of — "their
image." Of minor deviations from the accepted version, I shall
mention only ya^atof shith in verse six. The union of
these words (by means of the Makkef) proves that yaiatof
is here meant to be a noun. As a proper noun Yaakob is

formed from lakab : so a noun, ya'atof, is formed from
lataf, the construct being ya'atof, a wrap. The last
word of our psalm, mal&khothekha, usually translated
"thy works," has been taken in the sense of malahkuth
(Haggai, i. 13), "message."
As a parallel to our psalm, as well as in illustration of
it, let us read the utterances of that prophet, who, both
in style and temperament, approaches most nearly to a
mean between the two divisions of Israel's religious
poetry — the prophetic and the psalmodic :
"Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I plead with
thee : yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments :
Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? where
fore are all they happy that deal treacherously?
" Thou hast planted them, yea, they have taken root :
they grow, yea, they bring forth fruit : thou art near in
their mouth and far from their reins. But thou, O Lord,
knowest me : thou hast seen me and tried mine heart,
toward thee : pull them. out1 like sheep for the slaughter,
and prepare them for the day of slaughter.
" How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of
every field wither, for the wickedness of them that dwell
therein? The beasts are consumed and the birds; be
cause they said, He shall not see our last end." (Jere
miah xii. 1-4.)
Both the prophet and the psalmist of whom we speak
lived in one of those epochs of human history when
despair threatens to seize noble and sympathetic souls.
I would call them the "might-makes-right" periods.
Power, in self-glorification, occupies the throne ; her
minions surround her, covering all defects with flat
tery's gorgeous cloak; her self-seeking servants greedily
seize the morsels of spoils which are thrown out from

the tents of tyranny. Festivity in the palaces, weeping
in the huts ; revelry among the upper thousands, star
vation among the oppressed ; wealth and abundance the
portion of the cruel, poverty and toil the lot of the pure
in heart. And where, during all this time, is the ever-
living, the ever-wise, ever-beneficent, all-ruling God
whom Israel's teachers proclaim ? to spread whose name
among the nations, Israel was commissioned at Sinai's
foot? "Come, ye foolish ones, ye who still keep aloof
from the seat of tyrannical power, who prefer bearing
the weight of oppression to ranking among the oppres
sors! Don't you see, the world is a fish-pond ; the large
fish swallow the small ! Come with us, kneel down be
fore the throne of might, and partake of the crumbs of
plenty that fall to our share from the table of despot
ism !" This is the theme: numberless are the varia
tions upon it in all such periods when "might makes
right." The noble-hearted hear this proclamation of
the rule of material force, and sigh and ponder, and ask
question after question. No response comes to them,
and their faith is shaken to its very foundations. A
moment of such deep despair gave birth to our psalm.
It begins with a protest against the singer's own doubts.
"And yet Israel possesses a boon, the pure-hearted
have a God," of whom no ill fate can rob them. His
own feet came very near -going astray, his steps had well
nigh slipped. "I- envied," says he, "the merry-makers,
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have
no fetters to restrain them, they have a strong consti
tution." The conscientious find restrictions at every
turn. "Conscience doth make cowards," says Hamlet,
the pessimist. Where the thoughtless man rushes for
ward, trusting in his strength, the pure-hearted asks, Is

it right? and hesitates, while those who recognize no
power but material force have reached the goal ere he
has yet made a start. "Happy are the merry-makers,"
says he, "for in the misery of humanity they share not,
and when men suffer they feel no pain." To the psalm
ist, in his despairing mood, sympathy with suffering
humanity is a source of misery and distress: happy are
those whose hearts beat not for others. Even more,
"haughtiness is their necklace, violence their fine em
broidered cloak." There are periods in the history of a
nation when the crafty despoilers of the people no longer
find it necessary to hide their wicked schemes, but
rather boast of them openly.
So says the poet. They boast of their wrongs, "their
schemes have gone forth, have left the fat of their reins."
As we said before, by the ancients, the kidneys were
held to be the seat of counsel, of scheming — "the carv
ings of their hearts have left their workshop" — they are
on exhibition, a psalmist of our day would say. Further
more, they speak scornfully, they talk of oppression as
an evil. "It comes from on high," they say mock
ingly. "They set their mouth against heaven, and their
speech travels quickly over the land." "It is your
God," say they to the suffering believers in divine jus
tice. "Therefore, let his people come hither, and let
them quaff water in full draughts." What boots it to
suffer for an idea? It is time to cast off the yoke of use
less martyrdom in order to drain freely the cup of earthly
pleasure. "Let his people come over to us and say,
'How does God know? How can I say there is a Prov
idence? Here are those whom I call wicked constantly
increasing in prosperity, while I am sorely afflicted, and
misery is my portion.' "

The mockery here placed in the mouths of the wicked
seems even more striking to us when contrasted with
the prophecy of Isaiah. He foretells the time when the
nations will recognize that Israel has suffered for their
good, when they will say: "He was despised and
shunned by men, a man of pains and acquainted with
disease; but only ourdiseases did he bear himself, while
we considered him stricken, smitten of God and
afflicted." In our psalm just the reverse is expressed.
The enemy says, " Let the faithful of God's people come
over to us, and admit that all martyrdom was in vain."
For a moment our poet wavers. He thinks, "Sup
pose I speak in the same vein, suppose I dissemble, and
pretend to give up my mission, suppose I surrender" —
but he looks at the young, the growing generation, and
feels that he would be faithless to them, to Israel's fu
ture, were he, though but in appearance, to join the
ranks of the persecutors.
But how is the problem to be solved ? Why is the
way of the wicked successful? Why do the faithless
prosper? "And in my reflection," says he, "I learnt
this: the wrong and the misery that I see about me are
such in my eyes only while I am here on earth, until I
enter the sanctuary whence God directs the world, until
I shall be able to look beyond the narrow present, and
see the vast future unrolled before me. Wrong is a cas
tle built on slippery ground, a rock on an inclined plane
— one shock, and the stronghold is shattered! What ap
peared so frightful in the dark, the spectre that imagin
ation conjured up in the twilight, disappears when the
sun rises, and we laugh at our fears. The morning
comes, the dream is fled, and when the hour of awaking
arrives, the Lord shows the schemes of the wicked in
their true, contemptible light.

And now our psalmist turns from the sufferings of his
people to the condition of his own soul. Was he right
to murmur against divine dispensations ? Was not his
very doubt a departure from God? "No," says he,
"when my heart was troubled, when I felt the stinging
in my reins, I was indeed ignorant, for I knew not that
even unconsciously I was with thee. ' ' Is not indignation
at the sight of wrong a manifestation of the deep-seated
sense of right in the heart of the noble? As a discord
offends the finely attuned ear of the musician, so the
true man's heart is torn with emotion when he sees the
weak oppressed and the strong haughty. This bitter
ness of heart is in itself an instinctive worship of the
all-just God. "But," continues the psalmist, " I will
always be with thee; thou seizest me by my right hand,
thou wilt lead me by thy counsel, until at last thou tak-
est me away to glory." In the religious poetry of the
Scriptures, death is a "being taken away." This short
span of life will soon be ended, and a morning of glory
will rise for me.
"Whom have I in heaven but thee? and on e^rth,
too, I desire none but thee. I will yield to no power
but thine. My flesh and my heart will perish, but the
rock of my heart, my portion, is God forevermore. For
behold those who are far from thee shall be lost, thou
annihilatest all that stray away from thee." Here and
in the life beyond, the day of reckoning will come.
"But as for me, the nearness of God is my boon. I
place in the Lord my God my trust, to proclaim all thy
messages." Thus the poet closes with the confirmation of the pro
test with which he began: "And yet Israel has a boon
there is a God for those pure of heart ! ' '

PSALM XC.
BY MARCUS JASTROW.
A Prayer of Moses, the Man of God.
O LordJ thou hast been our Providence in all generations.
Before yet the mountains were brought forth,
And the earth and the world began their course,
Even from everlasting to everlasting,
Thou art God.
Thou sentest man back to the dust,
When thou saidst, Return, ye children of man.
Indeed, a thousand years in thy sight
Are but as yesterday when it is passed,
And as a watch in the night.
Thou pourest them out — they are a sleep.
In the morning, the grass-like glistens,
In the morning, he blooms and glistens;
In the evening, he is cut down, he is withered.
Truly, we perish in thine anger,
And by thy wrath are we carried away.
Thou hast set our iniquities in thy presence,
What we would hide — before the light of thy countenance.
Indeed, all our days pass away in thy wrath,
We finish our lives like a flash of thought.
The days of our lives — at times seventy years,
And if by strength — eighty years,
And their pride — toil and vanity;
For the wind strikes,
And we are blown away.
Who understands the strength of thine anger ?
And that like the fear of thee is thy wrath ?
Make known a basis for the days allotted to us,
That *ve may carry off a wise heart.
Return, O Lord, unto my people,
And bethink thyself of thy servants !
Satisfy us in the morning with thy grace,
And we shall sing and rejoice throughout all our days.

IO
Give us joy according to the days,
When thou didst afflict us,
The years wherein we saw evil.
Let thy doing be visible to thy servants,
Let thy glory shine upon their children,
And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us,
And what our hands undertake, confirm thou for us;
And what our hands accomplish, give permanence to it.
"A Prayer of Moses, the man of God." The desig
nation of Moses as the man of God clearly indicates to
us that the poet will not have us look upon Moses as
the author of the poem ; at the outset he wishes to convey
to us the idea that he is placing himself in the position
and frame of mind of Moses, that he would pray as
Moses might have prayed in the troublous times to
which the song refers.
Were a modern poet to introduce a poem with the
words, A Prayer of Moses, no one would fail to under
stand that he had selected some important situation in
the life of Moses as his theme in order to give poetic ex
pression to Mosaic thoughts. Are we not justified in
attributing to this unknown author the same feelings
and impulses that have at all times called into activity
the best powers of the poetical imagination ?
What situation in the life of Moses has been selected
by our poet can be determined only by an examina
tion of the poem itself, and by a comparison between it
and certain scenes depicted for us in the Pentateuch.
The poem speaks of the sin of the people and of the
punishment following thereupon. (V. 7-9). •
Does one not immediately think of the erection of
the golden calf and of the subsequent plague? (Exodus
xxxii. 35, cf. Ps. cvi. 19-23).

II
Our poet likewise has in mind the prayer of Moses, on
the same occasion, that Israel may be forgiven, and that
the majesty of the Lord may again dwell in its midst, as
well as the expression of the ardent desire of the great
prophet to know the ways of God. In a few verses, ex
quisite in their poetry, he combines all this material in
his "prayer," in which we find some of the very words
and phrases of the source of his inspiration.
"Return from thy fierce wrath and bethink thee of
the evil of thy people," says Moses (Exodus xxxii. 12b).
"Return, O Lord, unto my people and bethink thyself
of thy servants," says our poet.
Even though the translation here offered for mathay,
be set aside as unwarranted, and the customary "how
long yet" be substituted in its place, nevertheless the
two passages quoted agree sufficiently to justify the
assumption of a studied connection between them. It is
not a matter of chance that the parallelism in each case
depends upon the words shub and hinnahem.
We find the phrase ''ad mathay used thus abruptly in
only one other instance, Psalm vi. 4, in which the in
tense excitement of the poet not only justifies the un
finished exclamation, but is most vividly brought before
our minds by this most artistic and dramatic device. In
the poem under consideration, however, the prevailing
tone is calmly speculative. We have before us the
prayer of a philosopher, and the phrase "how long
yet" would detract from the beauty of the poem rather
than heighten its effect.
If, however, we derive mathay from mHliim, the verse
acquires new force. We have m'thayikh and mHhav,
why not also mathay becoming mathay in pause? The
exigencies of the rhythm could in all probability ac
count for the change from me to ma.

12
The validity of these assumptions granted, the poem
displays a delicacy and beauty that have hitherto escaped
us entirely.
In the Talmudic literature our attention is directed
to the fact that God says to Moses: "Get thee down,
for thy people, which thou hast brought up out of the
land of Egypt, is corrupt" (Exodus xxxii. 7), while
Moses prays: " Why should thy wrath wax hot against
thy people that thou hast brought forth out of the land
of Egypt?" (v. 11) and again, "Consider that this
nation is thy people" (xxxiii. 13).
Our poet, recalling these verses, combines the two
points of view, exclaiming, "Return, O Lord, to my
people, and bethink thee of thy servants."
There is but one more essential departure from the ac
cepted interpretation of the text of this poem to be con
sidered before proceeding to an analysis of its meaning.
The word ken in verse 12, if looked upon as a particle,
stands entirely without connection in the sentence; in
addition, the phrase hodla limnoth yamemi (teach to
number our days) is, to say the least, harsh in construc
tion. We should expect hodi{enu (ekh) limnoth yamenu.
I take ken and ni'noth to be substantives, the first mean
ing basis, reality, permanence or true existence, and
translate ni'noth yamenu "our allotted span of life,"
just as m'nath kosi means my allotted portion.
"Make known to us the principle of the life-time allot
ted to us," i. e. teach us the true meaning and purpose of
life, especially of the life of the Israelitish nation, "that
our hearts may gain in wisdom, that we may learn to
know thy Providence." This idea is in complete accord
with the prayer of the prophet, "Make me know-thy
way that I may know thee, in order that I may find
grace in thy eyes" (Ex. xxxiii. 13), the parallel to which

*3
we find further on in the chapter, in the words, "Let
me see thy glory." (V. 18.)
After these preliminary remarks, we may turn to the
elucidation of the meaning of the poem:
The poet reflects how God has ruled from the begin
ning of all things, how he has ever been the guide and '
the teacher of mankind.
He selects the term malon to express the idea of
Providence. Just as makom from kum signifies place
and also that which gives permanence (hence in post-
biblical Hebrew it is used to indicate God), so does
ma^on mean glance {vide i Sam. ii. 32, sar ma1 on, with
envious glance), provision (ib. v. 29, asher sivvithima^on,
the offerings which I have commanded as a provision
for the priests), and personified. Providence. The sig
nification, dwelling-place, must be traced to a different
association of ideas, an investigation of which lies out
side the limits of this essay.
God's providence, says the poet, is eternal and un
changing. He ruled before the earth was brought forth,
and his existence will ever continue, from everlasting
unto everlasting. This reflection leads the poet to think
of the first man, of death decreed as a punishment for his
sin. At that time God said to him, "Dust thou wast,
to dust thou shalt return," for Adam had been warned,
" On the day that thou eatest therefrom, thou shalt
surely die."
Our poet uses the term dakka (crumbs), instead of
iafar (dust), and he sings, "Thou sen test man back
to the dust when thou saidst, Return, ye children of
men." (Gen. ii. 17, and iii. 19.)
Adam, it is true, attained the age of nearly one thou
sand years; but in comparison with God's eternity, a
thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past, etc.

H
God pours out a thousand years like rain, and when
past, they are but as a night's sleep, a dream, a vision.
Man's life is even as the life of a flower; he, too, lives
but for a day, a morning and an evening; he, too,
blooms and fades away. The comparison of the life of
man to the life of a flower (Is. xl. 6-8 ; li. 12; Ps. cii. 12 ;
ciii. 15 ; cxxix. 6, et al.) is so frequent in biblical dic
tion that the poet could employ kehasir, "the grass
like" as a designation for man.
After this general observation, the poet turns his at
tention to the existing situation.
He sees the human flowers rearing their heads proudly
aloft in the morning, and at evening withered and cut
down. A plague works havoc among the people against
whom the anger of the Lord burns fiercely; and his
wrath is just, for their sin ascends before the judgment-
seat of the Lord to accuse them, even though the offend
ing object has been removed from the eyes of men.
Man seeks to conceal his fault, hence the poet uses
ialume?tu as a parallel to ''dvonothenu.
If God will not, in his mercy, cry a halt to the devas
tating plague, the nation whose existence has but just
begun must perish from the earth, like a thought that
is forgotten when scarcely conceived.
And what is the length of man's life, his day of ex
istence? Seventy years, at most eighty years (about
the age of Moses, which he looks upon as a special
favor of Providence,) and its boast is but pride and
vanity. A wind passes over the flowers, and they are
blown away. The abstract term hish (haste) is used
for the concrete ruah (wind) (vide Ps. ciii. 16), just as
dakka was used for 'afar.
" Who understands the strength of thine anger, and
that like the fear of thee is thy wrath?"
Kimchi has explained this difficult passage correctly

*5
by a reference to Lev. x. 3 ("on those' who are near
unto me will I be sanctified," etc.) Both Bible and
Talmud again and again express the thought that he
who is destined for high purposes, he from whom great
things are expected, bears a heavier weight of responsi
bility than the ordinary human being, and must suffer
more severe punishment for his sins. It is unnecessary
to cite particular instances. Such is the idea here ex
pressed by our poet. It is true that the very violence
of divine wrath against Israel is a proof of its high
mission, that the Lord's indignation is in proportion
to the reverence for him expected from Israel and
promised by it: but who can understand the law of
God's rulership? Whose is the wisdom rightly to com
prehend and appreciate these divine dispensations?
Therefore he prays that God may reveal to him the
true priuciple of (Israel's) existence, in order that man
may gain wisdom from the trials of life. In the same
spirit Moses exclaims, "Let me know thy ways that I
may comprehend thee," or "Let me behold thy
glory. ' '
He prays that the majesty of the Lord may return to
Israel's camp, that God may again become reconciled
to his chosen servants, that thereby may be made man
ifest the principle underlying life. If the Lord's mercy
were shown them in abundance now in the morning of
their existence, happy would be the consequences
throughout the life of the people, joy would brighten
their entire career. "We will sing (the praise of the
Lord), we will rejoice all our days."
It would surprise us greatly not to find in this poem
any reference to the sufferings in Egypt, since the passage,
in Exodus referred to speak so frequently and with such
emphasis of the deliverance from slavery. And indeed,

i6
the reference in verse 15 is more than a mere allusion.
In a truly poetic, spirit, the bard makes use of the
fact that the sinning people has but just risen from
the degradation of slavery to the heights of national
existence. "Give us joy even as the days of our sufferings, the
years wherein we knew evil." After centuries of op
pression and slavery, may not a people justly lay claim
to the happiness which the Lord, in his mercy, can be
stow upon them? Therefore, let the present generation
clearly behold God's mercy, let its reflection brighten the
path of all posterity.
What is the visible sign of God's return to his peoples
of his forgiveness?
"For wherein shall it be known, in any wise," says
Moses, "that I have found grace in thy eyes, I with
thy people? Is it not in that thou goest with us? So
shall we be distinguished, I and thy people, from all
the people that are upon the face of the earth."
The erection of a portable dwelling in which God re
sided in Israel's midst when Israel halted, and which
journeyed with it when it went on its way, the build
ing of the tabernacle and the divine worship connected
with it, form this visible sign.
The Midrash, with delicate insight, connects the end
of our poem with the completion of the tabernacle.
(Num. Rabbah, 12).
In this particular, too, the psalm stands in close rela
tion to the Pentateuchal text. The elevation, the sub
limity of this prayer that God may firmly establish
and sanctify the work of man, dispels the gloomy
and depressing air surrounding this poem, which
has so frequently led to the misinterpretation of our
psalm as a pessimistic reflection on the vanity of human
life. M_

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