Although this can be read as a standalone post, I highly recommend reading my How to Learn Tehilim (Psalms) post first, in order to familiarize yourself with the methodology I'll be using.
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| Artwork: Wildest Dreams, by Daniel Ljunggren |
Tehilim 92: Mizmor Shir l'Yom ha'Shabbos
Here is the text of Tehilim 92:
Tehilim 92
(1) A psalm, a song for the Sabbath day. (2) It is good to thank Hashem and to sing to Your Name, O Exalted One; (3) to recount Your kindness in the morning, and Your faithfulness in the nights. (4) Upon a ten-stringed instrument and upon lyre, with singing [accompanied] by harp. (5) For You have gladdened me, Hashem, with Your actions; about Your handiwork I will sing joyously. (6) How great are Your works, Hashem; [how] very deep are Your thoughts - (7) a boorish man doesn’t know, and a fool doesn’t understand this - (8) when the wicked bloom like grass, and all the doers of iniquity blossom, it is to destroy them forever and ever. (9) But You [remain] exalted forever, Hashem. (10) For behold Your enemies, Hashem, for behold – Your enemies shall perish; dispersed shall be all doers of iniquity. (11) You raised like a re’eim my pride; I was saturated with fresh oil. (12) My eyes have seen my foes; when those who would harm me rise up my ears have heard. (13) A righteous person will flourish like a date palm, and like a cedar in the Lebanon he will grow tall. (14) Planted in the house of Hashem, in the courtyards of our God they will flourish. (15) They will still be fruitful in old age, vigorous and fresh they will be, (16) to tell that Hashem is upright, my Rock in Whom there is no injustice.Let's review our basic method. The four questions we're going to try to answer are:
(1) What is this perek about as a whole? What is the main idea? What major insight is this teaching us about Hashem and His relationship to His world - or how He relates to man, in particular?
(2) What is being said in detail, and how? How does each pasuk - or each word and phrase - contribute to the main idea?
(3) Is this perek true, in whole or in part? Remember: it's not enough to know what David ha'Melech thought, nor is it enough to accept the truth of Tehilim based on the authority of Torah she'bi'Chsav (even though we have no choice but to start with this). We must strive to verify the contents of this perek to the satisfaction of our own minds.
(4) What of it? What "inspiration via knowledge" is this perek written to bring about? How is the main idea in this perek supposed to affect your life, your view of reality, and your relationship with God? What else follows - what is further implied or suggested by the insights? What else can you do to internalize and be moved by these ideas?
The only question we will not attempt to fully answer is Question #2, since I specifically want to avoid getting too bogged down in details, as I wrote about in my methodology article.
Question #1: What is this perek about as a whole?
According to our methodology, the first step is to find "the pivot point." In this case, the pivot point is obviously verse 7: "a boorish man doesn’t know, and a fool doesn’t understand this." This is a unique type of pivot point in that it can be read with either half of the perek. [1] If read with the first half, it will look like this:
A psalm, a song for the Sabbath day. It is good to thank Hashem and to sing to Your Name, O Exalted One; to recount Your kindness in the morning, and Your faithfulness in the nights. Upon a ten-stringed instrument and upon lyre, with singing [accompanied] by harp. For You have gladdened me, Hashem, with Your actions; about Your handiwork I will sing joyously. How great are Your works, Hashem; [how] very deep are Your thoughts! A boorish man doesn’t know [how great Your works are], and a fool doesn’t understand [how very deep are Your thoughts].
If read in accordance with the second half, it will look like this:
A boorish man doesn’t know, and a fool doesn’t understand [the following phenomenon]: when the wicked bloom like grass, and all the doers of iniquity blossom, it is to destroy them forever and ever. But You [remain] exalted forever, Hashem. For behold Your enemies, Hashem, for behold – Your enemies shall perish; dispersed shall be all doers of iniquity. You raised like a re’eim my pride; I was saturated with fresh oil. My eyes have seen my foes; when those who would harm me rise up my ears have heard. A righteous person will flourish like a date palm, and like a cedar in the Lebanon he will grow tall. Planted in the house of Hashem, in the courtyards of our God they will flourish. They will still be fruitful in old age, vigorous and fresh they will be, to tell that Hashem is upright, my Rock in Whom there is no injustice.
Now that we've discovered the pivot point, the four sub-questions we must answer under the heading of Question #1 are: (a) What is the main idea of the first half? (b) What is the main idea of the second half? (c) What is the unified idea (i.e. the main idea of the perek)? (d) What is the purpose or function of the pivot point?
In this case, I believe we can answer all four sub-questions in one shot. Here is my summary of the main idea in four sentences:
The purpose of this perek is to answer the question of how the wicked are able to flourish in a world governed by Divine justice.[2] David ha'Melech's answer is that the only person who will be bothered by this question is the foolish, boorish man who doesn't comprehend the perfection, harmony, and depth of God's wisdom in nature. To the extent that a person recognizes how all natural systems operate in accordance with perfect justice - with every component perfectly suited to achieve its end, and each species receiving exactly what it needs for the continuity of the system as a whole - he or she will also recognize that there must be a similarly perfect system which governs human beings; just as there will inevitably be destructive consequences for interfering in a natural system, so too, there will be destructive consequences for those who deviate from the Creator's laws which govern human interactions. True, the wicked may flourish, but their success is short lived, like lowly grasses that quickly wither and die, whereas the righteous flourish like date palms and cedars - tall, long-lasting, and bearing fruit into their old age.
This answers all of the sub-questions under Question #1: (a) the main idea of the first half is that nature is absolutely perfect and reflects the profound wisdom of the Creator in its lawful design; (b) the main idea of the second half is that the flourishing of the wicked is only temporary and is destined to end in destruction, whereas the flourishing of the righteous is the opposite; (c) the unity in the perek is that the human realm is merely a special case of the general character of the universe as a whole, and operates in accordance with the same principles, the same perfection, and the same justice; (d) the function of the pivot is to bring us to the realization that the key to seeing the justice in the human sphere is to recognize the justice in the natural world, and that to the extent that one recognition is lacking, so will the other.
Question #2: What is being said in detail, and how?
As I said, I'm not going to go into this part in depth. I'll just write a few brief comments on each pasuk or two in order to give you an idea of how deep and how not deep I like to go when answering Question #2:
(1) Shabbos embodies the main idea of this perek since it is a day devoted to both objectives: recognizing God's wisdom in nature (zeicher l'Maaseh Bereishis - remembering the Act of Creation) and His justice in the human realm (zeicher l'Yetzias Mitzrayim - remembering the Exodus from Egypt). Moreover, Shabbos affords us the opportunity to re-calibrate ourselves to the Maaseh Bereishis framework, since the issur melachah (prohibition of creative work on Shabbos) forces us to withdraw our energies from striving to dominate the material world and to invest that energy in the contemplation of Hashem's reign over the natural world.
(2) Hodaah (giving thanks) and zemirah (singing praise) are two vehicles of achieving the recognition that is central in this perek; David refers to Hashem as "the Exalted One" to emphasize His transcendent supervision of the physical universe.
(3) "your chesed (kindness)" refers to the totality of the Creator's beneficence in nature, as it is stated: "the world was built with chesed" (Tehilim 89:3), and "your emunah (faithfulness)" refers to the reliability of Hashem's hashgachah klalis (laws of nature); David describes himself as engaging in this praise "morning" and "night" to emphasize the infinite depth and breadth of Hashem's chesed and emunah in the universe, saying that in order to express his recognition, he would have to be involved in praise all day and all night.
(4) Who knows what the significance of the "ten-string instrument," "lyre," and "harp" are? Who even knows what these instruments were? As far as I'm concerned, trying to explain these details would be pure speculation, and the answer isn't going to have any bearing on the main idea anyway.
(5) David is pointing out yet another benefit of contemplating Hashem's works: not only does this answer the question of how the wicked can flourish, but it is also an enjoyable activity in and of itself!
(6) and (7) we explained in our summary of the main idea.
(8) "it is to destroy them forever and ever" implies that there are two types of destruction that the wicked will suffer: the natural consequences of their lifestyle in Olam ha'Zeh, and the consequences to their soul in Olam ha'Ba.
(9) see my comments on (2).
(11) and (12) contain David's testimony about how he has seen the truth of this perek play out in his own lifetime; in addition to encouraging the reader to check out this claim by examining the events of David's life, this also provides an important piece of advice, namely, that a person should look for evidence of this in his own observations of the wicked and the righteous.
(13) In addition to the general idea that the righteous will succeed, I believe that the "flourishing plants" metaphor also suggests that the righteous person's success goes hand in hand with his development as a tzelem Elokim; plants are a perfect mashal for this, since we associate plants with natural growth and development.
(14) It is unclear to me whether "house of Hashem" and "courtyards of Hashem" are references to the Beis ha'Mikdash (the Sanctuary) - and, by extension, Batei Kenesiyos (synagogues) and Batei Midrashos (study halls) - or whether they are a reference to the universe as a whole. [3] Either way, the idea is that by aligning oneself with the lawfulness which governs the human realm and seeking to comprehend the lawfulness in nature, a person will, in effect, be "planted" (i.e. permanently established in a manner which provides sustenance and continued growth) as a component part of the system of the universe - in contrast to the wicked, who seek to detach themselves from the system in a futile attempt to dominate it.
(15) The lifestyle of the righteous as portrayed here will result in a prolonged and enhanced old age, in which the person's tzelem Elokim and righteous actions will continue to bear fruit - as I wrote about in my article On Aging: With (and Without) Torah.
(16) In a very "ecosystem-esque" manner, the righteous who live in this manner will, through their words and their actions, pass on their worldview to the next generation of mankind, thereby moving others to recognize the benefits of praising the Creator.
This is a good example of the level at which I like to answer Question #2. My goal is to be able to read the perek and see how most of the words and phrases contribute to or reflect the main idea. I'm not trying to get everything.
Question #3: Is this perek true, in whole or in part?
Personally, this perek didn't raise any questions of veracity to me. However, if I taught this in school, I would have to be prepared to demonstrate the truth of the following three claims:
- that nature exhibits profound wisdom and perfection
- that the success of the wicked is only temporary, and is destined to end in destruction
- that tzadikim will flourish and enjoy a long life
Originally I was going to write out how I would go about doing that, but I think this would take us beyond the scale of this blog post. Suffice it to say: watch nature documentaries for #1, and learn Mishlei, for #2 and #3.
Question #4: What of it?
What function does this serve in our avodas Hashem? I think the answer is clear from the perek: whenever we see the wicked flourishing and we feel troubled, we need look no further than the natural world around us. The more we recognize the absolute justice and benevolent functionality of nature, the more we can rest assured that the wicked will get what they deserve, no matter how successful they appear at the present.
Similarly, if we are in doubt as to whether following the laws of the Torah will result in the best life for ourselves and for society as a whole, all we have to do is contemplate any ecosystem in nature. Each organism is cared for by Hashem's hashgachah klalis, and everything exists in peace and harmony. The same is within the reach of human beings, if only we align ourselves with the will of our Creator.
Concluding Thoughts
I hope this walk-through of Tehilim 92 has been beneficial in its own right, and in familiarizing you with our method of learning Tehilim. I plan on writing a post on Tehilim 23 in the near future, and possibly more later on in the summer. I'd love to hear your feedback!
[1] Rabbeinu David Kimchi (Radak), Commentary on Sefer Tehilim 92:7
[2] Note that this is specifically an answer to the question of why the wicked flourish, in a general sense, but this is NOT an answer to the specific problem of tzadik v'ra lo (how can bad things happen to a righteous person) which is addressed in Sefer Iyov.
[3] see, for example the Rambam's explanation of Hashem's praise of Moshe as "the most trustworthy in My house" (Bamidbar 12:7) in the Moreh ha'Nevuchim 1:54.
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