1For the lead player, on stringed instruments, a David maskil.
2Hearken, O God, to my prayer,
and do not ignore my plea.
3Listen well to me and answer me.
In my complaint I sway and moan.
4From the sound of the enemy,
from the crushing force of the wicked
when they bring mischief down upon me
and in fury harass me,
5my heart quails within me
and death-terrors fall upon me,
6fear and trembling enter me,
and horror envelops me.
7And I say, “Would I had wings like a dove.
I would fly off and find rest.
8Look, I would wander far away,
and lodge in the wilderness,
selah
9would make haste to a refuge for me
from the streaming wind and the storm.”
10O Master, confound, split their tongue,
for I have seen outrage and strife in the town;
11day and night they go round it on its walls,
and mischief and misdeeds within it,
12disaster within it,
guile and deceit never part from its square.
13No enemy insults me, that I might bear it,
no foe boasts against me, that I might hide from him.
14But you—a man to my measure,
my companion and my familiar,
15with whom together we shared sweet counsel,
in the house of our God in elation we walked.
16May death come upon them.
May they go down to Sheol alive.
For in their homes, in their midst, are evils.
17But I call to God,
and the LORD rescues me.
18Evening and morning and noon
and He hears my voice.
19He has ransomed my life unharmed
from my battle,
20Ishmael and Jalam and the dweller in the east,
who never will change and do not fear God.
21He reached out his hand against his allies,
profaned his own pact.
22His mouth was smoother than butter—
His words were softer than oil,
yet they were drawn swords.
23Cast your lot on the LORD
and He will support you.
He will never let the righteous stumble.
24And You, O God, bring them down
to the pit of destruction.
will not finish half their days.
But I shall trust in You.
PSALM 55 NOTES
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2. Hearken, O God, to my prayer. These opening words announce the poem as a psalm of supplication. As the text unfolds, however, the subject of the supplication seems to shift. In verses 4–9, the speaker appears to be set upon by armed enemies who terrify him and make him want to flee. References to battles and political treachery abound in verses 19–22. On the other hand, in verses 13–15, the speaker complains of a once dear friend who has betrayed him, and whom he addresses in the second person. One can only guess whether two poems have been spliced together or in some other fashion confusion has been introduced in the editorial process. The perplexity is compounded by the fact that there are textual difficulties in verses 19–22, especially in the first half of verse 20.
4. From the sound of the enemy. This riveting expression of terror by the man under attack is made all the more powerful by the fact that, in an unusual syntactic pattern, the catalogue of disasters rolls on in a crescendo that is essentially one long sentence, running from the beginning of verse 4 to the end of verse 6.
9. from the streaming wind and the storm. The Hebrew represented as “streaming,” soʿah, appears only here. It is presumably either a very rare word or a nonce word coined to echo the sound of saʿar, “storm,” a phonetic effect replicated in this translation.
10. for I have seen outrage and strife in the town. At this point, and for the next three verses, the subject of complaint is not an external enemy but a band of insolent scoundrels who have taken over in the town.
11. they go round. The antecedent is “outrage and strife.”
14. But you—a man to my measure. Were it a known enemy showing hostility, the speaker would have found a way to bear the insult, but it is his intimate friend who has turned against him.
16. May death come upon them. In the context of the preceding verses, it would make no sense for the plural pronoun to refer to the treacherous friend, so the object of this curse would have to be the perpetrators of mischief and deceit mentioned above.
18. I complain and I moan. These two terms point back to the terms used in verse 3.
for many were against me. The usual sense of the preposition used here, ʿimadi, is “with me,” but there are some instances in which it, or its shorter form ʿim, can mean “against.”
20. Ishmael and Jalam and the dweller in the east. The translation here adopts an emendation that has considerable scholarly support, turning this into a small list of the enemies arrayed against the speaker. The Masoretic Text reads yishmaʿ ʾel weyaʿanem weyoshev qedem, literally, and unintelligibly, “God hears and answers them and is seated as of old.” In the reconstruction, the first two words and the last two remain unchanged, but they are construed as gentilic names rather than as references to God, and weyaʿanem is amended to weyaʿlam. Jalam is mentioned in Genesis 36:5 as one of the peoples descended from Esau.
21. He reached out his hand. The singular reference would be to the implacable enemies who do not fear God, with this particular kind of move from plural to singular clearly allowable in biblical usage.
22. and battle in his heart. The cryptic Hebrew literally says “and his heart’s battle.”
24. Men of bloodshed and deceit. These paired terms pick up at the end two different themes of the poem: “bloodshed” recalling the imagery of swords and armed attack, “deceit” harking back to the guile and deceit that never part from the town square.