Psalm 27 is a unique combination of trust and lament. The first six verses declare confidence in God’s salvation. After opening with two rhetorical questions, the speaker describes three attacks from which God will rescue him (vv. 2-3) and then expresses her desire for close relationship with the God (vv. 4-6).
The LORD is my shepherd;
I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me to aOthers “still waters.”water in places of repose;-a
He renews my life;
He guides me in right paths
as befits His name.
Though I walk through bOthers “the valley of the shadow of death.”a valley of deepest darkness,-b
I fear no harm, for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff—they comfort me.
You spread a table for me in full view of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
my drink is abundant.
Only goodness and steadfast love shall pursue me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
for many long years.
1
Of David.
The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom should I fear?
The LORD is my life’s refuge;
of whom should I be afraid?
2
When evildoers come at me
to devour my flesh,
These my enemies and foes
themselves stumble and fall.
3
Though an army encamp against me,
my heart does not fear;
Though war be waged against me,
even then do I trust.
4
One thing I ask of the LORD;
this I seek:
To dwell in the LORD’s house
all the days of my life,
To gaze on the LORD’s beauty,
to visit his temple.
5
For God will hide me in his shelter
in time of trouble,
He will conceal me in the cover of his tent;
and set me high upon a rock.
6
Even now my head is held high
above my enemies on every side!
I will offer in his tent
sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing and chant praise to the LORD.
7
Hear my voice, LORD, when I call;
have mercy on me and answer me.
8
“Come,” says my heart, “seek his face”;
your face, LORD, do I seek!
9
Do not hide your face from me;
do not repel your servant in anger.
You are my salvation; do not cast me off;
do not forsake me, God my savior!
10
Even if my father and mother forsake me,
the LORD will take me in.
11
LORD, show me your way;
lead me on a level path
because of my enemies.
12
Do not abandon me to the desire of my foes;
malicious and lying witnesses have risen against me.
13p
I believe I shall see the LORD’s goodness
in the land of the living.
14
Wait for the LORD, take courage;
be stouthearted, wait for the LORD!
Psalm 27 is a unique combination of trust and lament. The first six verses declare confidence in God’s salvation. After opening with two rhetorical questions, the speaker describes three attacks from which God will rescue him (vv. 2-3) and then expresses her desire for close relationship with the God (vv. 4-6).
When we come to verse 7, however, the psalm takes a hard turn. Confidence gives way to lament as the speaker pleads for God’s deliverance from threats that still beset her. The change in outlook coincides with shift in audience. Whereas the expressions of trust in verses 1-6 refer to God in the third-person and seem to be addressed to the congregation gathered around the speaker, the lament is addressed directly to God.
The tension between the two halves of Psalm 27 has led some scholars to question the psalm’s unity; maybe, they represent two distinct psalms and were not meant to be read together. Although this possibility cannot be ruled out, the prevalence and impact of Psalm 27 within Jewish and Christian traditions suggest the tension at its core is, in fact, what makes the psalm relatable and powerful. In Jewish tradition Psalm 27 figures most prominently during the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot. These holidays embody the trust found in the first part of the psalm as well as the need for God’s help expressed in the second.
In Christian liturgy, too, Psalm 27 occurs in contexts that combine trust and lament. For example, Christians may be most familiar with its regular use in funeral liturgies, which are opportunities to affirm in faith that our loved one will be welcomed into God’s kingdom but also to express feelings of grief and loss. Psalm 27 gives voice to both feelings.
We are left with one last challenge, however. The ending of Psalm 27 is highly ambiguous. Some translations take verses 13-14 as a straightforward declaration of faith, as if the speaker is returning to the confidence that began the psalm. Other translations hedge on this certainty. The NJPS, for example, renders verse 13 with a conditional clause (“Had I…) and an ellipsis. At issue is a single Hebrew word—lûlē’—which could support either translation (see below). The word is challenging, but we should not rush to choose one translation over the other. Instead, in the spirit of the rest of Psalm 27, we may see the ambiguous ending as another invitation to acknowledge the trust and doubt that comprise a life of faith.
Key Term
Hebrew lûlē’ is the word at the root of verse 13’s ambiguity. The word usually introduces a counterfactual conditional clause. If I said, for example, “If I didn’t have my glasses, I couldn’t read that sign,” the first clause is counterfactual because I do have my glasses and I can read the sign. Thus, the NRSV is probably right to assume that the word is beginning a positive statement. But the statement is never completed so the NJPS translation is right to question the strength of the affirmation. The dilemma is further complicated by the six dots that surround the word in the Hebrew text. According to one Jewish tradition, these dots highlight the doubt expressed in the verse and may explain the ellipsis in the NJPS translation. Alternatively, it’s possible that an ancient scribe added the dots to mark the word for erasure. Of course, if we erase the word, the NRSV and NAB translations look much more attractive.
Additional Commentary
Psalms/Now by Leslie F. Brandt
With the living and eternal God as my goal and guide, fear and anxiety need have no place in my life.
All the evil in the world cannot destroy Him nor can it destroy anyone within His loving embrace…
In her commentary, Rabbi Aubrey L. Glazer writes: “Hallelujah,” written by Montréal’s iconic poet and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, has become for many a post-modern psalm. Why? What is it about this contemporary classic that gives it the power of a canonical prayer? Or is it heresy to make such a claim?
How would you describe the overall tone of the Psalm? What images, themes, or emotions does the Psalm evoke?
Andrew Davis describes Psalm 27 reflecting both “trust” and “lament.” After reading the Psalm, what lines indicate trust? Which seem to strike a sense of lament? Do you think the conclusion of the Psalm resolves this tension? If so, how? If not, what questions remain for you?
Is this psalm familiar to you? In what setting(s) have you previously encountered it?
Which words or images in Psalm 27 are most striking to you?
What does the “House of the Lord” mean to you as a contemporary seeker?
How does the psalm’s tension between trust and lament resonate with you now?
Where do you feel trust in your spiritual life currently? What is something you are lamenting in your spiritual life?
The psalm contains imagery of “seeking” G-d’s face and asking G-d not to “turn away” from from the speaker. What emotions does this imagery evoke for you?
After reading through the NJPS and NIRV translation – How do they differ? How are they similar? Does one resonate with you more? Do you see a way to harmonize the two translations? If so, how?
Today is moving day. Everything must go, one way or another. Go through and examine closely everything you have accumulated. Not just the cursory glance given once or twice a year during spring-cleaning or when relatives come to stay. Go through every desk drawer and nightstand, leave no nook or cranny unturned. There is only so much that the boxes can hold and so you must evaluate everything you have. Make piles of keep, throw away, donate, keep going. Whittle down the mountain of “keep” to travel size.
Sort through the basement, those old suitcases of clothing you’ve kept with you in your moves from house to house over the years, even though you never did wear the them. Deep down you knew you wouldn’t; yet you weren’t prepared to part with the memories and fantasies that they had come to represent. Down in the cool dampness of the basement, try them on one last time. Let your skin feel the texture of the fabric. Stretch out your arms and see the way the material
hangs heavy on your frame. Let yourself feel the sadness of knowing what you’ve come to outgrow.
Take your time. It can’t happen all at once. Rather slowly, in stages. Pieces of furniture sold, eating down the food in the cupboard. Artwork and decorations you dread un-mounting from their place on the wall because, once they are down, the house just feels so stark, so raw. The walls, bare now, can be seen in all their imperfections. Cracks from age and weather spread like sprawling fingers from corners of the room. Nails and hangers remain in their places, dotting the surface of the walls with hints of the family photos and watercolors that used to hang on their hooks.
It’s freeing and nostalgic and exhausting. When you move it can feel like the world is falling apart because, in many ways, it is. Life carries on around you, other people go about their work and relationships, as you sit on the floor in too dark or too bright rooms, surrounded by dust bunnies and paint chips and the refuse of all you have come to call your own.
The memories of what has been open into grief at what you are leaving behind, which is never separate from the glimmer of anticipation for what the future holds. But for now, you sit in the discomfort of being in between. Everything turned from the inside out, all adornments gone, on the beautiful precipice between here and there.
This precipice is where we dwell during this sacred season. No longer the self we once were, but not yet the person we are becoming. During the month of Elul (the final Hebrew month before the High Holy Days) we prepare for our spiritual move. As the heat of summer peaks and turns towards fall, we feel the High Holidays creeping towards us and begin to evaluate our year. The days cool and shorten as Rosh Hashanah nears. We begin to pack our bags, choosing what of who we are will come with us and what we will leave behind. When we stand in front of the open ark at the end of Neilah (the last service of Yom Kippur), the final box will be sealed. Who will we be when that final cry of the shofar (ram’s horn) sounds? Thinking back on all we have done this past year we build our “keep” pile within our heart: our capacity for love, patience, humor, honesty, generosity, courage, healing, hope. And, unfettered by what has been, we have the freedom to leave aspects of ourselves behind—that which no longer fits, and perhaps never did.
We release anything that stands in the way of our returning to that house we are always seeking, that house which is our home no matter where we move. In the words of Psalm 27, the Psalm for the High Holiday season, “One thing I ask of God, this do I seek: to dwell in God’s house all the days of my life.” What is this home we are seeking?
It used to be that we conceived of God’s house as a mighty physical structure that we would visit for doses of the Divine. During the time when the Temple stood, Yom Kippur was the one day of the year when the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies, the empty space in the heart of the Temple and receive a new name for God. It was, as Rabbi Alan Lew (of blessed memory) describes, “the day we experience the charged emptiness at the Sacred Center.” It was in that place of the holy void that infinity and possibility mixed and new ways of seeing and being emerged.
The Temple no longer stands and there is no longer a High Priest to act as our proxy. Today, we move through the stuff of our lives on our journey to the Sacred Center within. We remove the adornments and lay our hearts bare. Each of us our own High Priest, braving the personal sanctum of our soul. We enter the now-empty rooms of our inner landscape. Walls echo, cracks along the surface show, imprints of what has been recede into the possibility of what will be. We tremble in the exhilarating terror of the emptiness, and from the depths we cry out in joy knowing we’ve made our way home.
Rabbi Adina Allen, co-founder and Creative Director of Jewish Studio Project, is a spiritual leader, writer and educator who believes in the power of creativity to revitalize our lives and transform Jewish tradition. Integrating a lifetime of experience in the creative arts with her rabbinic training, Adina pioneered the Jewish Studio Process – a methodology for integrating Jewish learning, spiritual reflection and creative expression that she has brought to thousands of Jewish educators, professionals and lay leaders across the country. A recipient of The Covenant Foundation’s 2018 Pomegranate Prize for emerging Jewish educators, Adina was ordained in Hebrew College’s pluralistic training program in Boston in 2014 where she was a Wexner Graduate Fellow.
Discussion Questions
What imagery does Rabbi Allen use to describe preparing for Elul? How do you react to this imagery? Are there moments from your own life that this description brings to mind? What were those experiences?
What do you feel ready to let go of? What feels important to hold on to you?
How does the image of “G-d’s house” relate to your own understanding of G-d?
Rabbi Allen ends with the image of someone crying out in an empty space with a sense of joy “knowing we’ve made it home.” What emotions does this image invoke?
What do you need to prepare for a journey to your spiritual home?
There are times when we are sure of ourselves, and then questions arise, our sense of confidence deserts us. The questions which we never truly faced before overwhelm us and after, we are left to try to pick up the pieces.
Psalm 27 narrates that very story. It begins with a voice that is supremely confident, “Adonai is my light and my savior, the stronghold of my life, whom should I fear?” It is the expression of a person who is a true believer: I know God is with me and so I have nothing to fear.
That faith is expressed here as a rhetorical question, whom should I fear? The answer seems obvious to the speaker: no one. But the rhetorical question then leads to another reflection, essentially a question: what is missing? If I have no fear, is something else gnawing at me?
Yes, says the narrator, I live a life of faith, but I don’t truly feel God beside me. Would that I could be with God, visit with God, walk with God, feel God’s wings embracing me!
And the recognition that God is not a palpable presence leads to a review by the narrator of experienced losses, a sense of desertion: I live in a world which can be treacherous, many of the people I know lack integrity, are corrupt, are unafraid to pervert the truth. Even my mother and father are imperfect, they live their own lives, and they, too, may desert me in my hour of need.
So, all I have left is my faith, a faith to see me through these dark times. I hold on to the hope it gives me. But hope is such a thin thread…
What are we left with at the end? The psalmist through an internal dialogue has raised deep questions, has taught us that the world of faith, when it is truly examined, does not issue in self-confidence, but in a life fully aware of vulnerability. That’s hard to live with, but that’s all we have really.
Rabbi Edward Feld is senior editor of the new Siddur Lev Shalem and of its sister volume Mahzor Lev Shalem, published by the Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly. His two books, The Spirit of Renewal: Faith After the Holocaust (Jewish Lights) and Joy, Despair and Hope: Reading Psalms (Cascade Books) have been widely praised.
Discussion Questions
Rabbi Feld reflects on the idea that the narrator of Psalm 27 comes to realize that “God is not a palpable presence.” How do you feel or experience G-d’s presence in the world? What are the ways in which you relate to the narrator of the Psalm? In what ways do you differ?
Rabbi Feld summarizes the narrator’s struggle with: “I live a life of faith, but I don’t truly feel God.” Does this summary match your experience of reading Psalm 27? Why or why not?
How do you relate to the idea of living a life of faith, but not experiencing the Divine?
How do you approach feeling challenged or a disconnect in your own faith?
Rabbi Feld concludes with the notion that a life of faith leads to a “life fully aware of vulnerability?” How does vulnerability play a relationship with your experience of the Divine?
c. Ḥazak v’ya-ametz libekha Be strong and brave in your heart
Psalm 27 is recited throughout the High Holy Day period, from the beginning of the New Moon of Elul/Virgo until the end of Sukkot/the Harvest Festival. The last verse of the psalm is a statement of faith and action. We are told to “take heart” and immerse ourselves in God’s love. Simultaneously we strengthen the heart and move forward with courage. We can hope, but we must also act. This passionate three part round contains a richness of interwoven sounds that can open the Gates of Heaven.
Discussion Questions
How does music play a role in your spiritual life?
What does it mean to you to “immerse yourself in G-d”? What images does this phrase call to mind? What emotions come to mind when you think about immersing yourself in the Divine?
Where you do you feel brave or strong in your own life? How does that strength relate to your relationship with the Divine?
Psalm 27 is a unique combination of trust and lament. The first six verses declare confidence in God’s salvation. After opening with two rhetorical questions, the speaker describes three attacks from which God will rescue him (vv. 2-3) and then expresses her desire for close relationship with the God (vv. 4-6).
Today is moving day. Everything must go, one way or another. Go through and examine closely everything you have accumulated. Not just the cursory glance given once or twice a year during spring-cleaning or when relatives come to stay. Go through every desk drawer and nightstand, leave no nook or cranny unturned. There is only so much that the boxes can hold and so you must evaluate everything you have. Make piles of keep, throw away, donate, keep going. Whittle down the mountain of “keep” to travel size.
There are times when we are sure of ourselves, and then questions arise, our sense of confidence deserts us. The questions which we never truly faced before overwhelm us and after, we are left to try to pick up the pieces.