Literary analysis of Psalm 16

gold photo   Click here to read the Translation of Psalm Sixteen

Opening with three problematic verses, Psalm 16 is, nevertheless, stately, hopeful

 

and sure of God’s beneficence. The song centres about the image of a boundary in

 

verse 6: “Legacies have fallen to me, pleasant [ones].” Both Hebrew and English infer

 

an allotment, but the Hebrew suggests an inheritance of land whose boundaries

 

were measured out by rope lengths (see Notes).  The image creates for the singer his

 

means of delineating the difference between himself and the idolaters (v. 4);

 

between, that is, “the way of life” and the territory of death (Sheol, abomination, v.

 

10). The boundary lines of these two paths or dimensions, he insists, can never meet

 

or intersect. Indeed, “never” is repeated four times throughout the song (v. 2, v. 4

 

twice, and v. 8). But, most essentially, the image of boundary lines unites the singer

 

with God: his own physicality –his body — bridges the boundaries between God and

 

the singer in his  image of God at his right side, as if  they are in step. He completes

 

this image of boundaries bridged by envisioning God’s “right hand”, in verse 11,

 

extending “pleasures” to His followers. The singer has thereby transformed

 

physicality itself, that which separates humans from the divine, into an instrument

 

of connection, human body and divine hand meeting in metaphor.

 

 

The first line of the Psalm names a Michtam, the first of the song’s puzzles. In this

 

case, puzzling simply because the exact Hebrew meaning has been lost.

 

Interestingly, Psalm 32, doubling 16 numerically, also begins with the name, now

 

lost, but presumably of a musical instrument (maskil, v. 1), and, as if doubling as well

 

in theme, also imagines a “way”, but this time it is the singer who proclaims to the

 

people Israel that he “will enlighten you as to the way in which you should go” (v. 8),

 

as if pointing out , in the later psalm, the direction God has taught him in this, the

 

earlier.

 

 

The second verse of the song poses another puzzle, this one a problem of ambiguity:

 

the last line of the verse declares, “my good is never up to You.” It could be that the

 

singer is stating that God does not owe him the quality of goodness; that goodness is

 

his own responsibility or choice. Or he could be asserting that God alone is his good.

 

Both interpretations are equally valid; in each, the singer affirms God. Thus the

 

singer pledges himself to God, through goodness, before contrasting himself to

 

those who “pledged” to “others” (v. 4), through savagery: pouring “their libations of

 

blood” to idols.

 

 

Whether or not these idol-worshippers are “the holy ones who are in the land, and

 

the powerful” is the puzzle in verse 3. For the singer adds, “all my desire [is] for

 

them”.  While he may be describing the devout whom he wishes to emulate –not the

 

idol-worshippers, that is, but, in fact, their opponents—it is more likely that he is

 

actually berating the idol-worshippers for their pretense of holiness, despite their

 

public authority.  This interpretation takes its credence from the very word “idol”:

 

the Hebrew root of “idol”, עַצְּבוֹתָם֘ , is similar to that of “sorrow”, עֶצֶב. The implication, then, is more subtle than sarcasm. It ensures the fulfillment

 

of the singer’s prophecy in verse 4: “Bountiful will be the sorrows of those who

 

pledged [themselves] to others”.  Their allegiance to idols has, certainly in the

 

Hebrew text, made their future of sorrow inevitable.

 

Verse 5 expands the contrast between the singer and the idolaters, though not

explicitly. Again the contrast is described in the words themselves. The blood

 

libations of verse 4 have their counter in verse 5 in the word ‘lot”:

 

Adonai, my share of my portion and of my cup,

You sustain my lot.

 

The Hebrew word for “lot”, גּוֹרָלִֽי, has the connotation of destiny as well

 

as of an allotted portion. The singer is thereby affirming that God is his allotted

 

destiny, his allegiance to God one of all time. His “cup “of benediction is the negation

 

of the blood of the idolaters’ cup: theirs is the spilt life-force of those they slaughter;

 

his, the transforming nourishment that is his “portion”. And so he makes clear that

 

his “legacies” of verse 6 are spiritual ones, not merely the allotment or portion of

 

land implicit in the Hebrew word.

 

 

The last 5 verses of the song build a sequence of bodily imagery: the singer declares

 

In verse 7 that “even [in the] nights, tormented me my conscience” – the literal

 

meaning of the Hebrew word for “conscience” is “kidney”, the organ that metaphorizes, in Biblical writings, the location of moral sense. And verse 9 proclaims,

 

“my being rejoices”; the literal Hebrew meaning for “being” is “liver”, the Biblical

 

seat of consciousness.  His body, sustained by God (v. 5), will never stumble (v. 8),

 

but will “rest securely”, no longer tormented but “gladdened” and rejoicing (v. 9).

 

 

The name “Adonai” sounds throughout the song (v. 2, 5, 7, 8), its four-times

 

repetition transforming the four repetitions of “never”. Negation has been

 

nullified as the song ends on jubilation. The song itself has mapped out “the way

 

of life” and the singer sees his bounty, his allotment, to be both “gladness’ and

 

“pleasures”, both emanating from God.  Imaging God’s “face” and “right hand” in the

song’s final verse, the singer metaphorically suggests a physicality that serves to

 

describe the guidelines to his song’s mapping. The last word of the song, “eternally”,

 

transforms time’s boundaries. “Life” and “eternally”, two words of affirmation,

 

allow the singer to follow, to “know”, God’s endless “way”.

gold photo