[CatherineTorpey]

Hello friends!

Psalm 139 is gorgeous. Our preacher tomorrow, Jozeppi Angelo Morelli, will preach from verses 13–18. The sermon is “Say My Name Changes My Narrative.”

Below I have put Robert Alter’s translation of Psalm 139:13-18, and his notes about the language below that.

See you 10am to 11am on Zoom!

13 For You created my innermost parts,
wove me in my mother’s womb.
14 I acclaim You, for fearsomely I am set apart,
wondrous are Your acts,
and my being deeply knows it.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
when I was made in a secret place,
knitted in the utmost depths.
16 My unformed shape Your eyes did see,
and in Your book all was written down.
The days were fashioned,
not one of them did lack.
17 As for me, how weighty are Your thoughts, O God,
how numerous their sum.
18 Should I count them, they would be more than the sand.
I awake, and am still with You.

ALTER’S NOTES FOR THESE VERSES
13. innermost parts. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “kidneys.” Though the kidneys are generally thought of as the seat of conscience in the Bible, the context here (see the parallel verset, “wove me in my mother’s womb”) suggests that in this case the term is a synecdoche for all the intricate inner organs of the human creature. The location in the womb is associatively triggered by the idea of being enveloped in darkness expressed in verses 11 and 12.

14. for fearsomely I am set apart. The Hebrew ki noraʾot nifleiyti is not clear. Most interpreters understand nifleiyti as a variant spelling of nifleiyta, a verb whose root means “wonder” and render it here as “wondrously made.” But there is scant evidence that this verb can mean “wondrously made” rather than simply “was wondrous.” Spelled as it is with a heh and not an aleph, the verb means “to be set apart” or “to be distinct.” That meaning might be appropriate for the speaker’s reflection on how he evolved in the womb from an unformed embryo to a particular human being with the consciousness of his own individuality.

15. knitted in the utmost depths. The literal sense of the Hebrew phrase is “in the depths of the earth.” With the movement from the enveloping darkness of a cosmic netherworld to the womb earlier in the poem, at this point there is an archetypal association between womb and the chthonic depths. (The Aramaic Targum renders this phrase flatly as kereisa deʾima, “mother’s womb.”) This translation chooses an English phrase that might suggest both womb and netherworld.

16. and in Your book all was written down. The Hebrew is obscure—an obscurity compounded by the introduction of a plural (literally, “they all are written down”).

The days were fashioned. The textual difficulties continue. If the received text is correct, it might mean “the future days of the child to be born were already given shape in the womb.”

not one of them did lack. The enigmatic Hebrew text says literally, “and not one in them.” The verb “did lack”—in Hebrew, this would be yeḥsar—is added as an interpretive guess.

17. weighty. The Hebrew root y-q-r more often means “precious,” but the sense of “weighty” registers an Aramaic influence, reflecting the late composition of this psalm.

18. I awake. The effort of many modern interpreters to link the verb with qets, “end,” is dubious, because heqitsoti elsewhere always means “I awake.” What the poet may be imagining is that after the long futile effort of attempting to count God’s infinite thoughts, he drifts off in exhaustion, then awakes to discover that God’s eternal presence, with all those endless divine thoughts, is still with him.

Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary: Three-Volume Set (p. 3303). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

[Author]

Posts