1Hallelujah.
For it is good to hymn to our God,
for it is sweet to adorn with praise.
2Builder of Jerusalem, the LORD,
Israel’s scattered ones He gathers in.
3Healer of the broken-hearted,
He binds their painful wounds.
4He counts the number of the stars,
5Great is our Master, abounding in power,
6The LORD sustains the lowly,
casts the wicked to the ground.
7Call out to the LORD in thanksgiving,
hymn to our God on the lyre,
8Who covers the heavens with clouds,
readies rain for the earth,
makes mountains flourish with grass,
9gives the beast its food,
to the raven’s young who call.
10Not the might of the horse He desires,
not by a man’s thighs is He pleased.
11The LORD is pleased by those who fear Him,
those who long for His kindness.
12Extol, O Jerusalem, the LORD,
praise your God, O Zion.
13For He strengthens the bars of your gates,
blesses your children in your midst.
14He bestows peace in your land,
He sates you with choice wheat.
15He sends down His utterance to earth,
quickly His word races.
16He pours forth snow like fleece,
17He flings His ice like bread crumbs.
In the face of His cold who can endure?
18He sends out His word and melts them,
He lets His breath blow—the waters flow.
19He tells His word to Jacob,
His statutes and laws to Israel.
20He did not thus to all the nations,
and the laws, they did not know.
Hallelujah.
PSALM 147 NOTES
Click here to advance to the next section of the text.
1. to adorn. Following a proposal by the Israeli linguist Yehosua Blau, this translation understands naʾawah not as an adjective but as an infinitive verb (parallel to zamrah, “to hymn”) meaning “to adorn” or “to embellish.”
2. Builder of Jerusalem. This epithet is evidence for the composition of the psalm in the fifth century B.C.E., after the rebuilding of Jerusalem. The gathering in of Israel’s scattered ones in the second verset is a reference to the return from exile (and the verb used, kanes, is a Late Biblical term). The strengthening of the bars of the city gates in verse 13 is another allusion to the rebuilding and refortification of Jerusalem. It is the gratitude for this national restoration that is the particular reason for praising God in this psalm.
3. Healer of the broken-hearted. Although the specific reference is to those who had suffered the despair of exile, the general nature of the formulation points to an embracing celebration of God’s benevolent compassion and prepares the way for the comprehensive praise of God’s cosmic greatness in the next line.
4. He counts the number of the stars. In Genesis 15:5, God invokes the stars as an instance of that which cannot be counted, but of course He is able to count them.
to all of them gives names. This is a neat illustration of the heightening or intensification of an idea in the second verset of the poetic line. God not only can count the multitudinous stars but actually gives a name to each one of them.
5. His wisdom is beyond number. The literal sense is “His wisdom has no number.” The use of the term “number,” mispar, pointedly follows God’s counting the number of the stars in the preceding line.
8. covers the heavens with clouds. After invoking God’s mastery over the starry spaces, the poet moves to “heavens” in the sense of sky, then downward to earth where God’s providential care is manifested in rainfall, the growth of verdure, and the providing of food to all creatures.
10. Not the might of the horse . . . / not by a man’s thighs. This is a transitional verse. The horse belongs to the realm of nature, like the raven’s young of the preceding verse, but “the might of the horse” refers to man’s use of the horse in battle. From here, the line moves on to the power of the warrior concentrated concretely in the muscles of his thighs (with perhaps as well a metonymic glance at his sexual power). All this brings us back to the historical situation for which the psalm was composed: Israel has been returned to its land not through any feat of arms but because it faithfully revered its God.
12. Extol, O Jerusalem, the LORD. In the concluding movement of the poem, the restored city is apostrophized and exhorted to join in the praise of God that has been taken up by its inhabitants in verse 1 and verse 7.
15. His utterance . . . / His word. Although it cannot be excluded that both these terms refer to God’s commands to Israel, which are explicitly mentioned in verse 19, the context of the next several lines suggests that what is in view here is God’s bidding to nature, which He rules absolutely.
16. scatters frost like ash. This verset is the alliterative jewel in this splendid evocation of winter in the hill country of the land of Israel. The Hebrew is kefor kaʾefer yefazer.
18. He lets His breath blow. Although the noun ruaḥ could also mean “wind,” the anthropomorphic vividness of God’s melting the ice and snow by blowing on them makes “breath” the more likely sense here.