PSALM 24
1A David psalm.
The LORD’s is the earth and its fullness,
the world and the dwellers within it.
2For He on the seas did found it,
and on the torrents set it firm.
3Who shall go up on the mount of the LORD,
and who shall stand up in His holy place?
4The clean of hands and the pure of heart,
who has given no oath in a lie
and has sworn not in deceit.
5He shall bear blessing from the LORD
and bounty from his rescuing God.
6This is the generation of His seekers,
those who search out your presence, Jacob.
selah
7Lift up your heads, O gates,
and rise up, eternal portals,
that the king of glory may enter.
8Who is the king of glory?
The LORD, most potent and valiant,
The LORD Who is valiant in battle.
9Lift up your heads, O gates,
and lift up, eternal portals,
that the king of glory may enter.
10Who is he, the king of glory?
The LORD of Armies, He is the king of glory.
selah
PSALM 24 NOTES
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1. The LORD’s is the earth and its fullness. The cosmological proclamation of this and the next verse looks like an editorial introduction to the structure of question and response that makes up the rest of the psalm.
2. For He on the seas did found it. This is one of many psalms that invoke the Creation story—harking back to Canaanite mythology—of the deity who establishes the world by subduing the threatening power of the sea and setting a firm limit between land and sea.
3. Who shall go up on the mount of the LORD. These questions and responses, as scholarship has long recognized, are liturgical in nature. (Compare the parallel questions in Psalm 15.) One can easily imagine a procession of pilgrims ascending the Temple mount while a chorus chants these questions, perhaps with an antiphonal response.
4. given no oath in a lie. The Masoretic Text reads nafshi, which would yield the literal meaning of “has not borne My self [name?] in a lie.” Several manuscripts, however, read nafsho, “his self,” to “bear oneself” meaning to take an oath. There is really no place in this question-and-response structure for God’s speaking in the first person.
7. Lift up your heads, O gates. Scholarly consensus views verses 7–10 as an originally separate poem. It is formally linked with the previous poem by the liturgical questions and responses, but now the questions are directed not to the moral fitness of worshippers coming up the Temple mountain but rather to the identity of the king of glory who is entering the gates of the Temple. Many scholars have proposed that this second set of questions refers to a different procession, in which the Ark of the Covenant is brought into the Temple. If in fact the Ark was sometimes carried out to the battlefield, as it is in the early chapters of 1 Samuel, that would provide a special motivation for the reference here to God as a warrior.
9. Lift up your heads, O gates, / and lift up, eternal portals. In a manner appropriate to the liturgical occasion, as a refrain the language of the two preceding verses is repeated almost verbatim. (It is in keeping with the original biblical occasion of this psalm that later Jewish tradition should have adopted it to be sung when the Torah scroll is about to be returned to the Ark and carried around the congregation.) There is one small variation in the repetition here: The verb “lift up,” seʾu, is identical in both halves of the line, whereas in verse 7 it is used in two different conjugations (seʾu and hinasʾu).
10. Who is he, the king of glory? / The LORD of Armies, He is the king of glory. In this repetition of verse 8, the pronoun “he” (huʾ) is added for climactic emphasis, whereas “the LORD of Armies” is a kind of generalizing substitution for “most potent and valiant / . . . valiant in battle.” Whether or not this second part of the psalm was framed to celebrate a ceremonial bearing of the Ark into the Temple, it clearly envisages a triumphant return of YHWH as warrior-god to His terrestrial abode. Many psalms sound this military note: the Temple within the lofty walled city of Jerusalem is not only the cultic place where Israel is joined with God through harmonious worship but also the citadel from which Israel prevails against its enemies.