1To the lead player. A David psalm.
2Happy who looks to the poor.
On the day of evil may the LORD make him safe.
3May the LORD guard him and keep him alive.
May he be called happy in the land.
And do not deliver him to his enemies’ maw.
4May the LORD sustain him on the couch of pain.
—You transformed his whole bed of illness.
5I said, “LORD, grant me grace,
heal me, though I offended You.”
6My enemies said evil of me:
“When will he die and his name be lost?”
7And should one come to visit,
his heart spoke a lie.
He gathered up mischief,
went out, spoke abroad.
8One and all my foes whispered against me,
against me plotted my harm:
9“Some nasty thing is lodged in him.
As he lies down, he will not rise again.”
10Even my confidant, in whom I did trust,
who ate my bread,
11And You, O LORD, grant me grace, raise me up,
that I may pay them back.
12In this I shall know You desire me—
that my enemy not trumpet his conquest of me.
13And I, in my innocence, You sustained me
and made me stand before You forever.
14Blessed is the LORD God of Israel
forever and forever,
amen and amen.
PSALM 41 NOTES
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2. Happy who looks to the poor. The verb maskil, which more commonly refers to understanding, also can mean to see or look (as “see” idiomatically in many languages can mean “to understand”). The frequent verb in rabbinic and modern Hebrew, histakel, “to look,” is derived from the same root.
3. maw. More literally, the Hebrew nefesh refers to the gullet. In any case, the image is of being swallowed up by the enemy.
4. You transformed his whole bed of illness. This switch from verbs in the jussive (“May the LORD sustain him”) to a perfect tense marks the transition from the generality of the prayer for the wretched to the actual subject of the psalm—thanksgiving for recovery from a grave illness. It must be said that the Hebrew here sounds awkward: literally, “All his bed You turned over in his illness.”
5. I said. The speaker now launches on a narrative account of the time in the past when he was ill, beginning with a quotation of the prayer he uttered for healing.
9. is lodged in him. The literal sense of the Hebrew verb is “poured,” a term typically used for the pouring of molten metal into a mold.
10. was utterly devious with me. The meaning of the Hebrew is not entirely certain. Because ʿaqev suggests crookedness but also means “heel” (because of the crook of the heel), the phrase might also mean “showed me his heels,” “left me in the lurch.”
11. And You, O LORD, grant me grace. This verse and the next appear to be another self-quotation of the speaker’s plea to God in the time of his illness. The poem is dramatically structured around three brief speeches: the initial supplication from the bed of suffering; the harsh words of schadenfreude, spoken by the false friends; and a second supplication, which repeats “grant me grace” and adds to the initial prayer the desire to pay back the gloating enemies.
12. trumpet his conquest. The Hebrew verb yariʿa means “to shout joyously,” though in contexts such as this, vocal gloating is clearly implied. The term is also associated with the sound made by trumpets and ram’s horns.
14. Blessed is the LORD . . . / forever . . . / amen and amen. This verse is not an integral part of the psalm but an editorial flourish to mark the end of the first of the five books (on the model of the Torah) into which the redactors retroactively divided the Book of Psalms.