Psa 81:1-5 | KD | STEP | Ps 80, which looks back into the time of the leading forth out of Egypt, is followed by another with the very same Asaphic thoroughly characteristic feature of a retrospective glance at Israel’s early history (cf. More particularly with ). In Psalms 81 the lyric element of Ps 77 is combined with the didactic element of Ps 78. The unity of these Psalms is indubitable. All three have towards the close the appearance of being fragmentary. Fro the author delights to ascend to the height of his subject and to go down into the depth of it, without returning to the point from which he started. In Ps 77 Israel as a whole was called “the sons of Jacob and Joseph;” in Ps 78 we read “the sons of Ephraim” instead of the whole nation; here it is briefly called “Joseph.” This also indicates the one author. Then Psalms 81, exactly like , is based upon the Pentateuchal history in Exodus and Deuteronomy. Jahve Himself speaks through the mouth of the poet, as He did once through the mouth of Moses - Asaph is κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν the prophet (חזה) among the psalmists. The transition from one form of speech to another which accompanies the rapid alternation of feelings, what the Arabs call talwı̂n el - chitab , “a colouring of a speech by a change of the persons,” is also characteristic of him, as later on of Micah (e.g., Mic 6:15.). This Psalms 81 is according to ancient custom the Jewish New Year’s Psalm, the Psalm of the Feast of Trumpets (Num 29:1), therefore the Psalm of the first (and second) of Tishri; it is, however, a question whether the blowing of the horn ( shophar ) at the new moon, which it calls upon them to do, does not rather apply to the first of Nisan, to the ecclesiastical New Year. In the weekly liturgy of the Temple it was the Psalm for the Thursday. The poet calls upon them to give a jubilant welcome to the approaching festive season, and in Psa 81:7. Jahve Himself makes Himself heard as the Preacher of the festival. He reminds those now living of His loving-kindness towards ancient Israel, and admonishes them not to incur the guilt of like unfaithfulness, in order that they may not lose the like tokens of His loving-kindness. What festive season is it? Either the Feast of the Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles; for it must be one of these two feasts which begin on the day of the full moon. Because it is one having reference to the redemption of Israel out of Egypt, the Targum, Talmud (more particularly Rosh ha - Shana , where this Psalm is much discussed), Midrash, and Sohar understand the Feast of Tabernacles; because seem to refer to the new moon of the seventh month, which is celebrated before the other new moons (Num 10:10), as יום התּרוּעה (Num 29:1, cf. ), i.e., to the first of Tishri, the civil New Year; and the blowing of horns at the New Year, is, certainly not according to Scripture, but yet according to tradition (vid., Maimonides, Hilchoth Shophar ), a very ancient arrangement. Nevertheless we must give up this reference of the Psalm to the first of Tishri and to the Feast of Tabernacles, which begins with the fifteenth of Tishri: - (1) Because between the high feast-day of the first of Tishri and the Feast of Tabernacles on the fifteenth to the twenty-first (twenty-second) of Tishri lies the great day of Atonement on the tenth of Tishri, which would be ignored, by greeting the festive season with a joyful noise from the first of Tishri forthwith to the fifteenth. (2) Because the remembrance of the redemption of Israel clings far more characteristically to the Feast of the Passover than to the Feast of Tabernacles. This latter appears in the oldest law-giving ( ; ) as חג האסיף, i.e., as a feast of the ingathering of the autumn fruits, and therefore as the closing festival of the whole harvest; it does not receive the historical reference to the journey through the desert, and therewith its character of a feast of booths or arbours, until the addition in , having reference to the carrying out of the celebration of the feasts in Canaan; whereas the feast which begins with the full moon of Nisan has, it is true, not been entirely free of all reference to agriculture, but from the very beginning bears the historical names פּסח and חג המּצּות. (3) Because in the Psalm itself, viz., in , allusion is made to the fact which the Passover commemorates. Concerning על־הגּתּית vid., on Psa 8:1. The symmetrical, stichic plan of the Psalm is clear: the schema is 11. 12. 12.

‏ Psalms 81:1-5

Easter Festival Salutation and Discourse

Ps 80, which looks back into the time of the leading forth out of Egypt, is followed by another with the very same Asaphic thoroughly characteristic feature of a retrospective glance at Israel’s early history (cf. More particularly Psa 81:11 with Psa 80:9). In Psalms 81 the lyric element of Ps 77 is combined with the didactic element of Ps 78. The unity of these Psalms is indubitable. All three have towards the close the appearance of being fragmentary. Fro the author delights to ascend to the height of his subject and to go down into the depth of it, without returning to the point from which he started. In Ps 77 Israel as a whole was called “the sons of Jacob and Joseph;” in Ps 78 we read “the sons of Ephraim” instead of the whole nation; here it is briefly called “Joseph.” This also indicates the one author. Then Psalms 81, exactly like Psa 79:1-13, is based upon the Pentateuchal history in Exodus and Deuteronomy. Jahve Himself speaks through the mouth of the poet, as He did once through the mouth of Moses - Asaph is κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν the prophet (חזה) among the psalmists. The transition from one form of speech to another which accompanies the rapid alternation of feelings, what the Arabs call talwı̂n el - chitab, “a colouring of a speech by a change of the persons,” is also characteristic of him, as later on of Micah (e.g., Mic 6:15.).

This Psalms 81 is according to ancient custom the Jewish New Year’s Psalm, the Psalm of the Feast of Trumpets (Num 29:1), therefore the Psalm of the first (and second) of Tishri; it is, however, a question whether the blowing of the horn (shophar) at the new moon, which it calls upon them to do, does not rather apply to the first of Nisan, to the ecclesiastical New Year. In the weekly liturgy of the Temple it was the Psalm for the Thursday.

The poet calls upon them to give a jubilant welcome to the approaching festive season, and in Psa 81:7. Jahve Himself makes Himself heard as the Preacher of the festival. He reminds those now living of His loving-kindness towards ancient Israel, and admonishes them not to incur the guilt of like unfaithfulness, in order that they may not lose the like tokens of His loving-kindness. What festive season is it? Either the Feast of the Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles; for it must be one of these two feasts which begin on the day of the full moon. Because it is one having reference to the redemption of Israel out of Egypt, the Targum, Talmud (more particularly Rosh ha - Shana, where this Psalm is much discussed), Midrash, and Sohar understand the Feast of Tabernacles; because Psa 81:2-4 seem to refer to the new moon of the seventh month, which is celebrated before the other new moons (Num 10:10), as יום התּרוּעה (Num 29:1, cf. Lev 23:24), i.e., to the first of Tishri, the civil New Year; and the blowing of horns at the New Year, is, certainly not according to Scripture, but yet according to tradition (vid., Maimonides, Hilchoth Shophar Psa 1:2), a very ancient arrangement. Nevertheless we must give up this reference of the Psalm to the first of Tishri and to the Feast of Tabernacles, which begins with the fifteenth of Tishri: - (1) Because between the high feast-day of the first of Tishri and the Feast of Tabernacles on the fifteenth to the twenty-first (twenty-second) of Tishri lies the great day of Atonement on the tenth of Tishri, which would be ignored, by greeting the festive season with a joyful noise from the first of Tishri forthwith to the fifteenth. (2) Because the remembrance of the redemption of Israel clings far more characteristically to the Feast of the Passover than to the Feast of Tabernacles. This latter appears in the oldest law-giving (Exo 23:16; Exo 34:22) as חג האסיף, i.e., as a feast of the ingathering of the autumn fruits, and therefore as the closing festival of the whole harvest; it does not receive the historical reference to the journey through the desert, and therewith its character of a feast of booths or arbours, until the addition in Lev 23:39-44, having reference to the carrying out of the celebration of the feasts in Canaan; whereas the feast which begins with the full moon of Nisan has, it is true, not been entirely free of all reference to agriculture, but from the very beginning bears the historical names פּסח and חג המּצּות. (3) Because in the Psalm itself, viz., in Psa 81:6, allusion is made to the fact which the Passover commemorates.

Concerning על־הגּתּית vid., on Psa 8:1. The symmetrical, stichic plan of the Psalm is clear: the schema is 11. 12. 12. Psa 81:1-5

The summons in Psa 81:2 is addressed to the whole congregation, inasmuch as הריעוּ is not intended of the clanging of the trumpets, but as in Ezr 3:11, and frequently. The summons in Psa 81:3 is addressed to the Levites, the appointed singers and musicians in connection with the divine services, 2Ch 5:12, and frequently. The summons in Psa 81:4 is addressed to the priests, to whom was committed not only the blowing of the two (later on a hundred and twenty, vid., 2Ch 5:12) silver trumpets, but who appear also in Jos 6:4 and elsewhere (cf. Psa 47:6 with 2Ch 20:28) as the blowers of the shophar. The Talmud observes that since the destruction of the Temple the names of instruments שׁופרא and חצוצרתּא are wont to be confounded one for the other (B. Sabbath 36 a, Succa 34 a), and, itself confounding them, infers from Num 10:10 the duty and significance of the blowing of the shophar (B. Erachin 3 b). The lxx also renders both by σάλπιγξ; but the Biblical language mentions שׁופר and חצצרה, a horn (more especially a ram’s horn) and a (metal) trumpet, side by side in Psa 98:6; 1Ch 15:28, and is therefore conscious of a difference between them. The Tôra says nothing of the employment of the shophar in connection with divine service, except that the commencement of every fiftieth year, which on this very account is called שׁנת היּבל, annus buccinae, is to be made known by the horn signal throughout all the land (Lev 25:9). But just as tradition by means of an inference from analogy derives the blowing of the shophar on the first of Tishri, the beginning of the common year, from this precept, so on the ground of the passage of the Psalm before us, assuming that בּחרשׁ, lxx ἐν νεομηνίᾳ, refers not to the first of Tishri but to the first of Nisan, we may suppose that the beginning of every month, but, in particular, the beginning of the month which was at the same time the beginning of the ecclesiastical year, was celebrated by a blowing of the shophar, as, according to Josephus, Bell. iv. 9, 12, the beginning and close of the Sabbath was announced from the top of the Temple by a priest with the salpinx. The poet means to say that the Feast of the Passover is to be saluted by the congregation with shouts of joy, by the Levites with music, and even beginning from the new moon (neomenia) of the Passover month with blowing of shophars, and that this is to be continued at the Feast of the Passover itself. The Feast of the Passover, for which Hupfeld devises a gloomy physiognomy, ^{▼▼In the first of his Commentationes de primitiva et vera festorum apud Hebraeos ratione, 1851, 4to.} was a joyous festival, the Old Testament Christmas. 2Ch 30:21 testifies to the exultation of the people and the boisterous music of the Levite priests, with which it was celebrated. According to Num 10:10, the trumpeting of the priests was connected with the sacrifices; and that the slaying of the paschal lambs took place amidst the Tantaratan of the priests (long-drawn notes interspersed with sharp shrill ones, תקיעה תרועה וקיעה), is expressly related of the post-exilic service at least. ^{▼▼Vid., my essay on the Passover rites during the time of the second Temple in the Luther. Zeitschr. 1855; and cf. Armknecht, Die heilige Psalmidoe (1855), S. 5.}

The phrase נתן תּף proceeds from the phrase נתן קול, according to which נתן directly means: to attune, strike up, cause to be heard. Concerning כּסה (Pro 7:20 כּסא) tradition is uncertain. The Talmudic interpretation (B. Rosh ha-Shana 8 b, Betza 16 a, and the Targum which is taken from it), according to which it is the day of the new moon (the first of the month), on which the moon hides itself, i.e., is not to be seen at all in the morning, and in the evening only for a short time immediately after sunset, and the interpretation that is adopted by a still more imposing array of authorities (lxx, Vulgate, Menahem, Rashi, Jacob Tam, Aben-Ezra, Parchon, and others), according to which a time fixed by computation (from כּסה = כּסס, computare) is so named in general, are outweighed by the usage of the Syriac, in which Keso denotes the full moon as the moon with covered, i.e., filled-up orb, and therefore the fifteenth of the month, but also the time from that point onwards, perhaps because then the moon covers itself, inasmuch as its shining surface appears each day less large (cf. the Peshîto, 1Ki 12:32 of the fifteenth day of the eighth month, 2Ch 7:10 of the twenty-third day of the seventh month, in both instances of the Feast of Tabernacles), after which, too, in the passage before us it is rendered wa - b - kese, which a Syro-Arabic glossary (in Rosenmüller) explains festa quae sunt in medio mensis. The Peshîto here, like the Targum, proceeds from the reading חגּינוּ, which, following the lxx and the best texts, is to be rejected in comparison with the singular חגּנוּ. If, however, it is to be read chgnw, and כּסה (according to Kimchi with Segol not merely in the second syllable, but with double Segol כּסה, after the form טנא = טנא) signifies not interlunium, but plenilunium (instead of which also Jerome has in medio mense, and in Pro 7:20, in die plenae lunae, Aquila ἡμέρᾳ πανσελήνου), then what is meant is either the Feast of Tabernacles, which is called absolutely החג in 1Ki 8:2 (2Ch 5:3) and elsewhere, or the Passover, which is also so called in Isa 30:29 and elsewhere. Here, as Psa 81:5 will convince us, the latter is intended, the Feast of unleavened bread, the porch of which, so to speak, is ערב פּסח together with the ליל שׁמּרים (Exo 12:42), the night from the fourteenth to the fifteenth of Nisan. In Psa 81:2, Psa 81:3 they are called upon to give a welcome to this feast. The blowing of the shophar is to announce the commencement of the Passover month, and at the commencement of the Passover day which opens the Feast of unleavened bread it is to be renewed. The ל of ליום is not meant temporally, as perhaps in Job 21:30 : at the day = on the day; for why was it not ביום? It is rather: towards the day, but בכסה assumes that the day has already arrived; it is the same Lamed as in Psa 81:2, the blowing of the shophar is to concern this feast-day, it is to sound in honour of it.