1Hallelujah.
I acclaim the LORD with full heartℵ
in the council of the upright and the assembly. ב
2Great are the deeds of the LORD, ג
discovered by all who desire them.ד
3Glory and grandeur His acts ה
and His bounty stands for all time.ו
4A remembrance He made of His wonders, ז
gracious and merciful the LORD.ח
5Sustenance He gives to those who fear Him, ט
He recalls forever His pact.י
6The power of His deeds He told His people, כ
to give them the nations’ estate.ל
7His handiwork, truth and justice,מ
trustworthy all His precepts,נ
8Staunch for all time, forever,ס
fashioned in truth and right.ע
9Redemption He sent to His people, פ
forever commanded His pact.צ
Holy and fearsome His name.ק
10The beginning of wisdom—the fear of the LORD, ר
good knowledge to all who perform it.ש
His praise stands for all time.ת
PSALM 111 NOTES
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1. Hallelujah. Although scholars often classify this as a psalm of thanks-giving, it is more accurate to call it a psalm of praise because it is a list of God’s provident attributes rather than an expression of gratitude over a particular act of benevolence, such as being saved from a grave illness. In keeping with this recitation of divine attributes, the psalm is framed as an alphabetic acrostic (one of eight in the Psalter)—in all likelihood as an aid to memory, although it is possible that the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet were also thought of as a manifestation of comprehensiveness. This and the next psalm in sequence are short acrostics: instead of one line of poetry for each letter, each half line, or verset, begins with a different letter of the alphabet in sequence. (By way of contrast, Psalm 119 is a long acrostic, with eight lines of poetry for each letter of the alphabet.) Most of the lines begin with either a noun or an adjective exhibiting the appropriate alphabetical character in its initial letter, and this translation mirrors that syntactic “fronting.” For example, in the Hebrew we have Gedolim maʿsey YHWH (gimmel, “Great are the deeds of the LORD”); Derushim lekhol ḥeftseyhem (dalet, “discovered by all who desire them”); Hod wehadar poʿolo ʿheh (“Glory and grandeur His acts”).
the council of the upright and the assembly. The first term suggests an elite group, the second a larger convocation.
2. who desire them. The Masoretic Text reads “their desires.” The translation revocalizes the word as ḥafeitseyhem, “those who desire them.”
3. His acts. The Hebrew uses a singular.
6. The power of His deeds He told His people. The second verset of this line suggests that the “telling” consists of God’s giving land to His people.
8. right. This word in the Hebrew, yashar, is vocalized as though it meant “upright,” an adjectival form, but some manuscripts read, more plausibly, yosher, the noun “right.”
10. The beginning of wisdom—the fear of the LORD. This biblical commonplace is a fitting end for this poem, which as a kind of doxology is little more than a versification of standard formulas about God’s greatness and His kindness to His people.