Shelah Lekha (Psalms)

Psalm 64: Protect me from Hidden Enemies

After a long hiatus (almost the entire book of Vayikra), during which we have focused mostly on celebratory psalms, specifically those from the last two books of the Psalter, we now return to the more prayerful psalms, uttered by an individual in times of trouble and despair. And after all, is it not appropriate? No sooner do the Israelites fold camp and commence their journey through the desert, as described in last week’s parsha (Numbers 10), then we read of a series of murmurings, if not outright rebellion. But more on that shortly.

Psalm 64 is a short prayer of a person beset by enemies who turns to God for help and protection. It opens with the most direct imaginable appeal: ‘Hear, O God, my voice in speaking to you.” From that point, the psalm is divided almost symmetrically into two sections: the person’s appeal to God for help, coupled with a detailed description of his enemies’ plots and schemes (vv. 2-7); and his deliverance, when God gives them their ”comeuppance,” described as corresponding almost precisely to what they had planned to do to him, even using the same language (vv. 8-9). This is in the spirit of the principle of middah keneged middah (“measure for measure”), or of the biblical law that one shall mete out to one who tries to implicate his enemy in crime through false testimony that which he planned to do to him (Deut 19:15-21, esp. 19). The psalm concludes with the religious lesson to be learned from this by others: God’s might, and His actions on behalf of the righteous and the upright (vv. 10-11).

Almost the first thing we are told about the anonymous victim’s enemies is that they use words as weapons: they take counsel against him (“…the secret gathering [or: plots] of evil [conspirators], the whisperings of evildoers”—v. 3), and they use gossip and malicious tales as one of their weapons (“they whet their tongues like a sword”—v. 4). This is evidently the connection between the parsha and the psalm: the spies, who returned an “evil report of the Land” (Num 13:32), were guilty of lashon hara, of evil speech, to dissuade the Israelites from entering the land. Indeed, the midrash calls them delatorin, “tale bearers,” those who use speech to accomplish their wicked aims.

In addition, of course, these people use lethal weapons—but these, too, are distinguished by their secretiveness: bow and arrow, which may be shot from a hiding place (“suddenly he shoots and fears not”); and “traps”—some ancient forebear of land mines traps. There seems to be a covert implication that this form of warfare, in which the aggressor can strike without being seen, is somehow less “fair,” less honest and straightforward, than traditional hand-to-hand combat, in which each side has a “fighting chance,” as in the European duel. In the second half, as mentioned, they get their comeuppance. God will, so to speak, shoot them down with arrows; cause them to falter in their tongues; and, instead of mocking our hapless hero, laugh and shake their head to see their downfall.