Psalm 54 - I Will Praise Your Name

TEXT (Hebrew text at end)

1. For the leader; with instrumental music. A maskil.1 Of David,

2. when the Ziphites came and said to Saul, ‘‘Is not David hiding among us!”2

3. O God, through your name, deliver me; through Your power vindicate me.

4. O God, hear my prayer; give ear to the words of my mouth.

5. For strangers have risen against me, and the ruthless have sought my life; they do not set God before them. Selah.

6. Behold, God is my helper; my Lord, the great sustainer of my life.

7. He will requite the evil of my watchful3 foes; by Your faithfulness, demolish them!

8. 4-With a free-will offering-4 I will sacrifice to You; I will praise Your name, O LORD, for it is good,

9. for it5 has saved me from every adversity, and my eye has seen my enemies.6

Notes

1. Meaning uncertain.

2. See I Sam. 23:19.

3. “Watchful” is added to “foes,” reflecting that the root puns on “seeing.” See Commentary on “seeing” below.

4. With possible additional implications of "generously" or "of my free will."

5. Possibly, "He."

6. That is, their defeat.

COMMENTARY

Caveat – when using other translations and commentaries, note that some do not number the first two verses, so that there may be a two-verse difference in verse numbers.

Psalm 54 is a concise and compact presentation of what many commentators see as a perfect model of a “lament.” It presents few difficulties. Here I comment briefly on a few points of interest.

Brief and Comprehensive

Psalm 54 is described as “short and terse” (Hacham), “simple and lucid” (Weiser), and yet, "comprehensive" (Meltzer). Broyles calls it “a good example of the key motifs characterizing individual prayer psalms.” In summarizing, Weiser divides it into four sections (others subdivide by verse!): petition, lamentation, trust, and thanksgiving.

This concise presentation perhaps reflects immediacy or emergency. In any case, one wonders whether the speaker would claim that any prayer of request should include the elements that are included here. The reader is left to judge whether all the elements are necessary and whether they are sufficient.

What’s in a Name?

The framing term of Psalm 54 is “name,” specifically, God’s name, in verses 3 and 8. In fact, in a poetic flourish, the final verse (9) personifies that name, and makes it the actor in place of God.

This emphasis on God’s name is found in several places in biblical literature. By way of example, the priestly blessing is followed by the statement: “And they shall put my name on the Children of Israel and I shall bless them” (Num. 6:27). In Deuteronomy (28:58) the text warns the people lest they not revere “this honored and awesome name, the LORD your God.” In prescribing worship at the central sanctuary, Deuteronomy (12:5) calls it “the site the LORD your God will choose… to establish his name there,” and at the dedication of the Temple (I Kings 8:29), Solomon, who limits God's location to heaven, speaks of the sanctuary as “the place of which You said, ‘My name shall be there.’” This theological gesture (often associated with literature connected to Deuteronomy) seems to be an effort to maintain both God’s incorporeality and His presence. If Psalm 54 sharply personifies the name (see note, v. 9), it takes the process one step further.

The psalm further plays on this emphasis through its careful use of appellations for God. The first four references are to “God,” an international term, befitting the address of the psalm to “strangers” (v. 4). The speaker then moves to “my Lord,” allowing for a personal relationship, and finally, after the second reference to his name, in verse 8, he refers to “LORD,” His personal Israelite name. This could reflect either a growing intimacy as the prayer reaches acceptance or an appropriate introduction to the personification of the name―and probably both.

A Fascinating Sight

Seeing is also basic to this short psalm. The final phrase “seen (the defeat of) my enemies” is also used elsewhere, in Psalms 112:8 and 118:7 (In all three cases, the enemies are indicated by the Hebrew letter-of-preposition bet, thus distinguishing this from simply seeing them, which would take a direct object without that preposition.) I also note that the core root of the term “foes,” which I have translated “my watchful foes” (v. 7), is another root for “to watch” or “to see”; Psalm 92:12 also puns on that same word: “my eyes will see (the defeat of) my watchful foes.” The association of sight with enemies is striking and deserves further investigation.

The Psalm as Attributed

This psalm is associated with the incident when the Ziphites informed King Saul that David was hiding among them (I Sam. 23:19). That attribution seems somewhat inappropriate, for the Ziphites were Israelites, and the poem refers to “strangers,” using the international term “God” in that section. Traditional Jewish commentaries sometimes (Ibn Ezra, Radak) solve the problem by applying only “ruthless” of verse 5 to the Ziphites and “strangers” to some unknown group that was with them. This hardly fits the usual Hebrew syntax. Still, the story is a suitable one for the tone of psalm as a whole, and we see once again that whether the attributions were added by an original author or later, the psalm seems to have been written independent of it, the connection to an incident in David's life a general one at best.

The Flow: Verses 5 and 6

In the case of Psalm 54, the musical interruption “selah” at the end of verse 5 properly marks a point of transition from request to assurance. That said, the poet carefully connected the two sections. Verse 5 ends “they do not set God before them,” whereas verse 6 indicates the exact reverse, “Behold, God is my helper.” Further, in verse 5 they “sought my life,” whereas in verse 6 God is “the great sustainer of my life.”

* * * * * * *

Additional Notes

1. Apropos of the use of God’s “name” to represent Him, it is of some interest that in modernity some Jews have returned to this model. There is a longstanding tradition of not pronouncing God’s name as it is spelled (out of fear and/or respect) and as time has gone by, this respect has been extended by some to avoiding pronunciation of other terms used as substitutes. In recent times, a common replacement for both the proper name and the other substitutions is the Hebrew word for “the name,” Hashem, which one can even encounter in transliteration in some English translations of prayer books and other texts. Although the practice did not originate in Psalm 54, it finds its first foreshadowing there.

2. Later Hebrew exhibits a development parallel to the usage here of “seeing” the enemy. The root for “eye” ('ayin) is used for a term meaning enemy ('oyen).

　

　

The author of these essays is Rabbi Benjamin Segal, former president of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem　and author of The Song of Songs: A Woman in Love (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2009). This material is copyright by the author, and may not be reproduced. If you are interested in using the texts for study groups, please be in direct contact with the author, at psalmblog@gmail.com.

  

HEBREW TEXT

(א) לַמְנַצֵּחַ בִּנְגִינֹת מַשְׂכִּיל לְדָוִד:

(ב) בְּבֹא הַזִּיפִים וַיֹּאמְרוּ לְשָׁאוּל הֲלֹא דָוִד מִסְתַּתֵּר עִמָּנוּ:

(ג) אֱלֹהִים בְּשִׁמְךָ הוֹשִׁיעֵנִי וּבִגְבוּרָתְךָ תְדִינֵנִי:

(ד) אֱלֹהִים שְׁמַע תְּפִלָּתִי הַאֲזִינָה לְאִמְרֵי פִי:

(ה) כִּי זָרִים קָמוּ עָלַי וְעָרִיצִים בִּקְשׁוּ נַפְשִׁי לֹא שָׂמוּ אֱלֹהִים לְנֶגְדָּם סֶלָה:

(ו) הִנֵּה אֱלֹהִים עֹזֵר לִי אֲדֹנָי בְּסֹמְכֵי נַפְשִׁי:

(ז) ישוב }יָשִׁיב{ הָרַע לְשֹׁרְרָי בַּאֲמִתְּךָ הַצְמִיתֵם:

(ח) בִּנְדָבָה אֶזְבְּחָה לָּךְ אוֹדֶה שִּׁמְךָ יְהֹוָה כִּי טוֹב:

(ט) כִּי מִכָּל צָרָה הִצִּילָנִי וּבְאֹיְבַי רָאֲתָה עֵינִי: