Psalms 5

 Here's the raw material for chapter 5 of the book of Psalms. You will note that I regress to earlier forms of presenting the Psalms - the hints in the final three columns are useful. There are those who can also use the square text more easily than the SimHebrew. The music of the te'amim follows.

thlim h	Psalms 5	Fn	Min	Max	Syll
a lmnxk al-hnkilot mzmor ldvid	1 For the leader on the flutes. A psalm of David.		3e	3f	13
b amrii hazinh ihvh binh hgigi	2 To my promise give ear Yahweh. Discern my meditation.		3e	4B	14
g hqwibh lqol wvvyi mlci valohii ci-aliç atpll	3 Attend to the voice of my cry, my king and my God, for to you I pray.		3e	4C	12 6
d ihvh boqr twmy qoli boqr ayroç-lç vaxph	4 Yahweh, morning, you will hear my voice. Morning I will arrange for you and I will be on lookout.		3e	4B	8 11
h ci la al kpx rwy ath la igurç ry	5 For not a God who delights in wickedness are you. Evil is not your guest.	C	3e	4C	9 5
v la-itiixbu hollim lngd yiniç wnat cl-poyli avvn	6 Boasters have no station before your eyes. You hate all workers of mischief.		3e	4B	12 9
z tabd dobri czb aiw-dmim umrmh ityb ihvh	7 You will make the speakers of a lie to perish. A person of blood and deceit Yahweh will abhor.		3d	3f	7 11
k vani brob ksdç aboa bitç awtkvvh al-hicl-qodwç biratç	8 But I, in your abundant mercy, will go into your house. I will worship in your holy temple in your fear.		3e	4B	13 15
't ihvh nkni bxdqtç lmyn worrii hiwr lpnii drcç	9 Yahweh, guide me in your righteousness on account of my watchers. Upright to my face be your way.		3e	4C	15 8
i ci ain bpihu nconh qrbm huot qbr-ptuk gronm lwonm ikliqun	10 For there is no stability in its mouth. Within them calamities. An open tomb their gullet. With their tongues they divide.	C	3d	4C	12 8 7
ia hawimm alohim iiplu mmoyxotihm brob pwyihm hdikmo ci-mru bç	11 Declare them guilty O God. Let them fall in their conspiracies. In their many transgressions banish them, for they provoked you.		3d	4B	14 9 3
ib viwmku cl-kosi bç lyolm irnnu vtsç ylimo viylxu bç aohbi wmç	12 And all those who take refuge in you will be glad. Forever they will shout for joy and you will overshadow them. And they who love your name will be elated in you.		3d	4B	21 12
ig ci-ath tbrç xdiq ihvh cxinh rxon ty'trnu	13 For you yourself will bless a righteous one, Yahweh. As the grappling hook with acceptance you will crown him.		3d	4A	7 2 9

Haïk-Vantoura has set this in mode 2, effectively e-major. I wonder if it is the right mode, but perhaps it is a good setup for Psalms 6. 

 

If you read the post on Psalms 4, you will immediately note that the incipit here is also low key, a recitation on the tonic and the supertonic. (You can't tell the mode for the poetry books from these two notes.)

When I first read these poems in my later life, the psalms attacked me in my individual self-centred, self-protective core. Psalms 4 and 5 lead to the plea of Psalms 6 (reprised in Psalms 38). We must lose this self-centred, self-protective shell. The individual-corporate tension of Psalms 4 must hint to us that there is something bigger at stake. (your love empty? your seeking a lie? ) The self-centred self-protective emptiness applies to both the individual and the limited corporate reality of social structures and nations. Nothing could be more obvious to us in these days of pandemic. But how many see that class, caste, religion, even that 'righteous' cocoon we were brought up in (should we be so lucky), must be left aside, lost, destroyed. God's care for the outsider and the poor and the weak becomes evident throughout the psalms. It surpasses all particularity of tradition, all our special status.

Psalms 5 is a setup for the next psalm. (Paul draws on Psalms 5 in Romans. By the way the its should probably read theirs. I just want to make you think about it.) What sense does the music give? The three recitations on the submediant, the high C, draw attention to the plea for help. (That's one reason I would not set it in a major key. Major-minor might work - mode 3.)

This is the third time that hgh is used in the Psalter. So the speaker can be identified with the subject of the muttering in Psalms 1. (You can see that I used a number of synonyms for this root from the concordance. None of them overlaps with other roots.) If it is the king, as some suggest, then it is the king praying to the king. I suggest that identity is moot, even vague, and anticipates or highlights the kings and priests motif.

We have in the psalms our ultimate identity which is not the caste we were born into of whatever self-centred and self-protective privilege it may allow us, whatever tendency we might have to read the humility of this prayer 5 with its very low lying verse 7 daring to describe God's justice. This is not a recipe for a prosperity gospel or any other social or capitalist caste system in which God is on 'our side'. He is not our sort. Our 'in-group' is no protection. Perhaps that is why verse 7 barely raises its voice above the incipit.

Verses 1 and 2 are without pause, each a single colon. Verses 3 and 4 are each bicola with the midpoint rest on the atenach (subdominant A).

Only one verse (5) in this psalm begins on a note other than the tonic. I do not see this note connecting this verse to verse 4 from a strophic point of view. It looks to me on the surface that the shape of the plea in the poem divides according to the descending maximum notes shown in the max column above.

Verses 6 and 8 are bicola, each with an A rest, and verse 7 a bicolon with an ole-veyored (f#) as pause.

Verse 9 is a plea against 'the watchers', - the opinions of others? Verses 10, 11, and 13 are all tricola. There are four ole-veyored in the poem (one bicolon and three tricola). It's very easy to pass over the last one (13) where the name (2 syllables?) is highlighted as the only word in the midsection of the tricolon.

I have no live performance of this psalm using the melody of the accents in the text. The pattern of consecutive max notes is (by verse) f-B, C-B, C-B, f-B, C-C-B, B-A. A sixteen line poem is not uncommon in the English canon. Perhaps it is somewhat unnecessary to look for strophes in short poems like this one. But these musical patterns are clear once we have a consistent mapping of the te'amim to their scale of reciting notes. The names of the te'amim by themselves would have no resonance as announcing a shape either to the tone of voice or to macro word and phrase structures.