My People's Prayer Book

TRADITIONAL PRAYERS,

MODERN COMMENTARIES

Vol. 3 -P'sukei D'zimrah (Morning Psalms)

EDITED BY RABBI LAWRENCE A. HOFFMAN

CONTRIBUTORS

MARC BRETTLER DAVID ELLENSON

JUDITH HAUPTMAN

LAWRENCE A. HOFFMAN

LAWRENCE KUSHNER

NEHEMIA POLEN

ELLIOT N. DORFF

ELLEN FRANKEL JOEL M. HOFFMAN

REUVEN KIMELMAN

DANIEL LANDES

Jewish Lights Publishing Woodstock. Vermont

IC\Cfq

-.-------1

Prayer in the Bible and the Use of the Bible in Later jewish Prayer

Marc Brettler

Even the terms used for the Hebrew Bible reflect its central rqle within Judaism and western cUlture. In classic rabbinic texts, the Hebrew Bilble is often called mikra. meaning "that which is read," while the English term 1"Bible" ultimately derives from the Greek, biblia, "the books." Whether we are tjalking about what one normally reads or what must be seen as the book, the Bibl' fits the bill.

Given the central importance of the Bible within! Judaism, it is not surprising that it should exert a disproportionate influence on the liturgy. In some cases, entire biblical texts like Exod. 15:1-19, the Song of the S� (Shirat Hayam), or Deut. 6:4-9, the Sh'ma itself, are cited in full as part of the lfturgy. The same is trUe of psalms. Entire psalms are regularly cited verbatim in � or that liturgical context.

In other cases, biblical texts are woven together to �te a new but still biblically styled prayer. Even when the biblical text is not qupted, however, the form of the later liturgical composition often ·reflects a con1!inuation of forms found first in the Bible.

For these reasons, it is impossible. to apprecia� rabbinic liturgy without a clear understanding of its biblical predecessors, � earliest recorded examples of Jewish prayer.

·

Certainly, biblical prayers were in many ways q�te different from what we have in mind when we think of Jewish liturgy. For exaxPple, they were not synagogue-based, and they predate the various attempts to fontlalize the structUreS and wording of the statutory prayers like the Amidah or the rabbinic blessings over food that regularly (nowadays) begin formulaically with Baru/tfl atah Ationai. Yet, it is altogether proper to begin a historical consideration of tlhe Siddur with an exploration of"Prayer in the Bible" (below), which highlights the continuities and discontinuities betWeen biblical and post-biblical Jewish prayer.�Explicit utilization

15

MY PEoPLE's PRAl'EB. BooK

of biblical prayers in the post-biblical Siddur can then be ¢Xamined separatdy in "The Use of the Bible in Later Jewish Prayer."

PRAYER IN THE BIBLE

"Adonai is near to all who call upon Him; to all who � upon Him in truth" (Ps. 145:18). This verse from Psalms, now part of the liturgy lllso, expresses the premise of biblical prayer: one prays to a God who can hear and who: is fundamentally responsive, at least to those who call "in truth" (b'emtt). Other psalms: indicate that this response is not always automatic; sometimes God needs to be r�ded to listen or to be more attentive, as when the psalmist asks God: "Awake! Don't �eep, 0 Lord! Wake up! Do not forget forever! Why are You hiding your face, fo� our oppression and affliction?" (Ps. 44:24-25; cf. 35:22-23). Yet, the psalmist assumes that this outcry or reminder can be effective. God, who has been inactive,: can be roused to action by something as simple as a spoken prayer: "They cry out, a.Jild Adonai hears, saving them from all of their troubles" (Ps. 34: 18).

This notion that prayer works to get God to act on behalf of the individual or community is very common throughout biblical literat;Ure and is especially prevalent in the Book of Psalms. It is not, however, the only bibli� notion of prayer. The main section of the psalm associated with the Sabbath opens: ilt is good [tov] to give thanks to Adonai and to sing hymns to your name, Most High"1 (Ps. 92:2). Hymns that enol God's nature and activities are in themselves good. Prayer is not just a medium for requests and thanksgiving. Individuals may encounter th�e religious moment simply by reciting statements like, "How great are your actions, Adonai; your designs are so very deep" (v. 6).

These twO urges, to petition and to p�. seem to stand in a certain amount of tension. Yet that tension is apparent only, since many petitions contain a significant dement of praise, and many psalms that arq pure praise might have been used as a part of a broader liturgy, followed, per�ps, by dements of request. Neverthdess, in both biblical and post-biblical (rabbiniF) prayer, these twO dements, petition and praise, must be distinguished from each oth!er and seen as representing the fundamental human urges for having a relationship wi� God. On the one hand, the individual hopes for personal benefit (petitionary prayer); on the other, the relationship with God that naturally evokes praise (hymns) is valuable in and of itsd£

The Bible knows many kinds of prayer, no� just poetry, but prose as well. In f.tct, there are approximatdy one hundred prose pra� in the Bible. But the psalms, which epitomize the poetry of the Bible, play a parti<:ularly important role in both Jewish and Christian liturgy, to the point where · biblical prayer is associated predominandy, if not soldy, with the psalms. Cer(ainly the psalms represent a particularly fine example of biblical poetry, which is � by a combination of the following features:

16

i'RA1'Bil1N THE BIBLE AND 11IE USE OF 11IE BIBLE IN LAtfER JEWISH i'RA1'Bil

• Heightened or unusual vocabulary or imagery • Significant figuration (especially metaphors and similes) • Parallelism

The parallelism is especially noteworthy. A verse is commonly divided into two sections of near-equal length, and the second section typically! mirrors the first. For example, Ps. 6:2 reads, "Adonai, do not punish me in your anger, do not chastise me in your fury." The verse has two parts: (a) "Adonai, do not punish me in your anger"; (b) "do not chastise me in your fury." The second part is a restat�nt of the first. Later, the psalmist, expressing his great grief, says, "With my tears I mdlt my bed" (v. 7), an instance of the tendency toward heightened imagery. It is obviously a poetic exaggeration, where the word used for "bed" is not the usual mitab but the much more rare and poetic word erts. This preference for difficult vocabulary, extreme figuration, and especially the poetic parallelism, which is quite foreign to the English ear, makes biblical poetry especially difficult to translate.

The poetic aspect of the psalms raises a significant issue that is often overlooked: Why. do poetic prayers exist at all? Given the diffi�ty of the poetry, isn't it likely that worshipers didn't even understand the psalms th�tr were saying? This question becomes even more significant in the post-biblical po�c period, which (by the fifth or sixth century) featured ever-more complex liturgiW poetry known as piyyutim. Certainly the average synagogue Jew would never have understood the excessivdy difficult Hebrew of these poems, which allude obliqueJr to biblical texts and early rabbinic writings, and which depend on these allusions to �e their point. Why would people pray in a style or register that they do not understaJ�d?

This question is best answered by seeing the context$ in which prose and poetic prayer might have coexisted. Already in the biblical periocl, there was a tension between official, formal prayer and personal, spontaneous prayer, which existed side by side. This tension is seen most clearly in the first two chapters df Samud, which deal with Hannah's childlessness and her subsequent conception andi birth of the prophet Samud. In 1 Sam. 1:11, Hannah offers a prose prayer in the form of a vow: "0 Lord of Hosts, if You anentivdy see the affiiction of your maidservaq.t and remember me, and if You do not forget your maidservant and give your mai4servant a boy, I will dedicate him to Adonai all of the days of his life, and no razor shall ever touch his head." The vocabulary of Hannah's vow is typical: unlike poetic p�yers in the Bible, it contains no similes or metaphors and it is not balanced into p�d parts. It is easy to imagine such a prayer as the spontaneous utterance of the pained Hannah.

In contrast, after Samud is born, a poetic prayer is put in Hannah's mouth. Though not technically part of the Book of Psalms, it is nonethd� readily recognizable as a biblical psalm. She proclaims, for example (1 Sam. 2:8a), "He [God] raises the poor from the dust, lifts the needy from the dunghill." This verse has tile three characteristics of psalms mentioned above: heightened or unusual vocabulary <)r imagery, significant figuration (especially metaphors and similes), and parallelism. It uses the rare word

17

MY PEoPLE's PRADa BooK

"dunghill" (ashpot}; it refers metaphorically to Go4's saving grace in general; and the second half of the verse repeats and reflects the first! half, in different language.

But why does the biblical author attr�bute this psalm to Hannah? The question becomes even sharper when we realize that most of the psalm is concerned with the military victory of the Israelite king over � enemies- a context that is totally inappropriate to the natural outcry of a mother Vtfho has just given birth to a long­awaited child. Granted, Samuel is the prophet who -.vill eventually anoint the first king, Saul, but that will occur only much later in the narrative. Why would anyone imagine that a psalm of military victory would be said by a mother who finally bears the child for whom she has dreamed and prayed for years?

The key is found in the second half of 2:5, "until the barren women gives birth to seven, and the one with many children languishes," a single line that is indeed thematically relevant to Hannah and, additionally, �cribes well her relationship to her co-wife Peninah, who had children, while Hannah cUd not. This psalm was probably in existence before the Book of Samuel was compo�. The biblical author used it for Hannah because its allusions in verse 5 could be ,read in the context of the rivalry betWeen the co-wives Hannah and Peninah.

The assignment of the psalm to Hannah is therefore secondary, but it reflects something crucial about the nature of the �tation of psalms in ancient Israel: a psalm could be recited even if it was not fully �propriate, as long as some small section of it dealt with the issue at hand. We might iptagine that a woman like Hannah would want some "official" way, using elaborate laqguage, to thank God for her great triumph. She would then go to a particular type of:functionary, perhaps a Levite, and ask for the relevant psalm. It is unlikely that the ternre would compose such a psalm; instead, he would find the one that was most appropriate, even if the fit was somewhat tenuous.

It is not really so surprising that the psalm put in Hannah's mouth is not fully appropriate- how often might any one of us today recite a standard, statutory prayer that is only marginally relevant to our conc:qns? We all concentrate on certain prayers or sections of prayers that are particularly peJ:iclnent to the concerns or problems of the moment. Antiquity was no different- a wo� like Hannah could have recited what is basically a royal military psalm, while ignoring its primary meaning, and allegorizing a particularly timely line, "until the barr411 women gives birth to seven, and the one with many children languishes." A woman :would have chosen such a psalm, rather than compose her own, because she felt m.t nothing she could have written would express her gratitude as well as a ready-made ¢0mposition that had been used by others before her.

The existence in the Bible of both prose.and poetic prayer thus anticipates an issue that would later be explicitly articulated regarding rabbinic prayer: what is the relation between standard, already formulated prayer (lttva)-l.ike the psalm in 1 Samuel2 - and spontaneous, newly created prayer Quwvanah)-like Hannah's vow in chapter 1? The same tension that exists in the Bible between prose and poetic prayer,

18

PlLuu IN THE BIBLE AND THE USE OF THE BmLE IN LATJnl JEWISH PRADa

innovation and conservatism, is endemic to worship. In Judaism, it begins in the Bible, then continues in rabbinic liturgy, and is found in our own prayer life today.

Whether in prose or in poetry, biblical prayers follow s� patterns. Through natUral devdopment and outside influence, these patterns change 54>mewhat over time, but overall, they remain remarkably stable. The basic existence �f these patterns is hardly surprising, given people's desire to systematize and organize all aspects of human endeavor. What is somewhat surprising, however, is the extent to �ch biblical prayer relies heavily on the world of human relationships and interaction, what has been called •social analogy."

For example, the structure and some of the vocabulary � when a person supplicates an individual in power are mirrored in prayers in which � person supplicates God. We can, for instance, easily imagine a poor individual ad�ing a rich landlord in ancient Israel: "Mr. Boaz [address], I know that I am not everi worthy enough to speak to you [sdf-deprecation]; nevertheless, will you please allow pte to glean in your field [request]? I know that God will surely reward you if you do, [motivation]." The fOllowing prayer, recited by Jacob as he is anticipating a confrontaqon with his brother Esau, is fundamentally similar (Gen. 32:10-13): "0 God of my r.ther Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, Adonai, who said to me, 'Rerum to your np.tive land and I will deal bountifully with you' [address], I am unworthy of all the kindness that You have so steadfasdy shown your servant. . . [self-deprecation]. Deliver �e. I pray, from the Land of my brother, from the hand of Esau [request]; else, I fear m.t he may come and mike me down, mothers and children alike. Yet You have said, 'I .,.nll deal bountifully with you, and make your offspring as the sands of the sea, which � too numerous to CIJWlt [motivation].'"

These parallels in structure are not limited to prose prayers. Psalm 6, which we looked at before, is considered a lament of an individual who is suffering from mous troubles. The main part of the psalm opens with an invocation or address, •.Adonai," which is followed by a series of requests, such as "Do not punish me in your aager, do not chastise me in your fury. Have mercy on me.,.heal me . . .. Turn, Adonai ... . " This is followed by a motivation: "For there is no �embrance ofYou in me land of death; in Sheol, who will praise You?"

The most striking example of the power of the social analogy is in the use cl the "blessed" or baruleh formula in biblical and later liturgiC!al writings. As was pointed out in rdation to the official call to prayer, "Bless Adonai "fho is to be blessed" (ll.'lthu et Adonai ham'voraleh)- see Volume 1, The Shma and Its: Blessing.r, p. 29- it m:ms odd to bless God, who is, from the biblical perspective, 1the source, not the Rripient of all blessings. It makes perfect sense to say to a powerful patron who has llooe you a great favor, "May you be blessed by Adonai, by the �tor of heaven and anh" (Ps. 115:15). But who can bless God? Yet, the use of $ocial analogy is so widespread that the language by which people invoke blessing on those who show them kiodness is transferred also to God.

19

MY PEoPLE'S PRADll BooK

THE USE OF THE BIBLE IN LATER JEWISH PRAYER

Post-biblical prayer emulates many of the features of irs biblical predecessors, including the continued tension between poetic, formulaic prayer and spontaneow, prose prayer, as well as the continued we of genres such as petition and hymns. Beyond these broad influences, biblical formulas for prayer as well as en.rre sections, even whole chapters, from the Bible entered the liturgy verbatim. These i$clude variow psalms, such as the concluding chapters of the Book of Psalms (145-;-150) that are recited in P:su/en D'zimrah {see "The Daily Halle4" p. 107) and the p� that focus on God's kingship that are pan of Kabbalat Shabbat (Psalms 95-99). The most familiar material from other biblical books may be the Priestly Blessing, Num. 6:24-26 (see Volume 2, The Amidah, p. 176). The P:su/en D'zimrah, however, is ctSpecially rich in biblical citations. Aside from Psalms 145-150, we also find a prayer from 1 Chron. 16:8-36 (see pp. 78-90) immediately following the opening ble5$ing, Barulth she'amar ("Blessed is the One by whose speech the world came to be"), and a string of three prayers, from 1 Chron. 29:10-13, Neh. 9:6-11, and Exod. 14:30-+15:18, which are wed toward the conclwion of the rubric (see pp. 156-175), just prior to the final benediction, Yishtabach ("Let your name be forever praised"). In �dition to the complete citations, the liturgy contains prayers that are basically nothiQg more than pastiches of biblical verses, organized together thematically. The best �ple in the P:su!tei DZimrah is V11u rachum. . . ("And He is merciful . . . " [see pp. 92-97]). In other cases still, prayers allude to a biblical verse or tradition, even though it � not quoted, for instance, Birltat DavitJ ("Blessing for David") in the weekday Amit!ah (see Volume 2, The Amidah, p. 142), which contains phrases from variow biblical �c:xts concerning David. The three paragraphs of the Shma represent a special category, since in the Bible they are not prayers at all, but they have been moved to the lirurgy and recontextual.ized to become central to the prayer book.

The influence of the Bible on the liturgy soes even farther still. The blessing formula Barulth atah AJonai elohnnu melelth ha'olam ("Blessed are You, Adonai our God, ruler of the world") is central to rabbinic li� We see early signs of it in the late biblical books, such as David's prayer in 1 Chron. 29:[0, which opens, "Blessed are You, Adonai, the God of Israel our father, from the beginning of time to the ends of time." Similarly, Ps. 119:12 says, "Blessed are You, Adonai. !Teach me your statutes." But this is already a second stage of development. An earlier biblical formula, "Blessed is Adonai" (Barulth AJonai) can be found in Gen. 9�26 and Ps. 41:14. Although the longer formula Barulth atah AJonai is rare in the Bible, it becomes more common in the Dead Sea Scroll literature, which may here, as is often the case, be seen as an important transitional link between biblical literatute and the later rabbinic liturgical traditions.

Various biblical forms continue to influence classical liturgical compositions. For example, Psalm 18 (with its parallel, 2 Samuel 22) opens with variow descriptions of God, which function as praise, and then moves directly to requests of

20

PRAYElt IN THE BIBLE AND THE USE OF THE BIBLE IN LUml JEWISH PRAYElt

God- a direct parallel to the structure of the daily Amitiah, where three opening blessings of praise lead to thirteen blessings of petition. These latter blessings, a series of petitions, have no direct correlation in earlier biblicalliteratuJ!e, however, since the petitions of the Amitiah are for general benefits that anyone can Slay and that can form the basis of a regularized daily liturgy irrespective of the particl!llar circumstances of whoever the wonhiper happens to be. In the Bible, however, there is no regularized daily prayer service that generation after generation of people say� Biblical requests are c:xplicidy specific; they focus on a particular problem or affiicdon of the petitioner. Psalm 6 is something of an exception, in that the supplicant is suffering from both physical illness (v. 3) and from a threat by enemies (v. 8). It therefore moves in the direction of becoming an all-purpose prayer, listing anything liltely to be wrong and requiring help. But it does not become a daily staple that worshiper after wonhiper recites as part of a regular fixed wonhip service such as we hav¢ today. That kind of service is the invention of the post-biblical period, when, in lict,: Psalm 6 is eventually taken over as a daily prayer that people say whether they are acniWiy suffering or not. It is part of the rubric called the Tachanun, the subject of a later volume in this series.

Additionally, the biblical urge simply to praise God is not lost in post­biblical liturgy, not only from the rabbinic era, but even in later medieval compositions, such as A.don 0/am and Yigdal. two popular hymns that now belong to the early morning rubric called "Morning Blessings" (Bir!thot Hashachar). Finally, acrostic poems, that is, poems that follow the order of the Hebrew alp�t, are common in the Bible too. Usually, each verse gets a different letter of the alp�bet, as, for instance, Psalm 1 45, which is part of the PSultei D'zimrah (see p. 112). This same pattern is frequendy found in later liturgical compositions, for example� E/ Ation, a Sabbath expansion of the blessing that precedes the morning Shma. In post-biblical liturgy, however, the principle of using acrostics is expanded to include prayen in which every single word gets a different letter of the alphabet- for instance,: E/ baru!th giio/ de4h ("Almighty blessed great diviner ... "), a section of the same blessing in the daily prayen (see Volume 1, The Shma anti Its Blessings. p. 55).

There are several indications that classical biblical pJ:!ayer might have been associated either with sacrificial offerings or perhaps with the offering of the incense. Psalm 141:2, for instance, says, "Let my prayer be counted as � before You, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice." This obviously was not the case with synagogue prayer as it developed. However, some ritualistic atrs that accompanied biblical prayer continued into the classical liturgy of the synagogue. Bowing, a sign of obeisance, is often recorded in biblical texts in the context o( prayer. We hear, for instance, that when King Solomon completed his prayer to Goq, "he rose from where be had been kneeling" (I Kings 8:54). The aa of at least symboliqally bending the knees is incorporated later in places like Bar'lthu and the opening and dosing blessings of the Amitlah (see Volume 1, The Sh'ma anti Its Blessings, p. 29, and V9lume 2, The Amitiah, pp. 60, 70, 165, and 174). 1 Kings 8:48 and Dan. 6:11 (two late: passages reflecting the realities of living outside the Land of Israel) note the practice of �ng Jerusalem while

21

MY PEoPLE's PRADa BoOK

praying, and Daniel is pictured as praying three cimes daily as well, two conventions that became central by the time of the Rabbis of the Mishnah and that continue to this day. Yet not all of the physical rituals associated with prayer in the biblical period continued into later times. For example, as we saw above in Ps. 141:2 ("Let my prayer be counted as incense before You, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice"), the central position of prayer in the blblical period was to approach God with upraised hands. Solomon too prays not jwt �eeling, but "with his hands spread out toward heaven" (1 Kings 8:54). Though this position is still maintained by the leohanim (the priests) during the Priestly Blessing. it is no longer the predominant position of prayer.

·

The we of the Bible in the liturgy para,Uels the we of the Bible throughout post-biblical Jewish culture in general. It is quo11ed extensively, and its themes and struaures are extremely influential. Yet, as Judaisl)l continued to evolve, new themes (such as the resurrection of the dead) and new strUctures (such as rhythmic, rhyming poetry) were absorbed from outside cultures and: incorporated into the liturgy. The result is the Siddur as we have it, much of whi¢h the biblical authors would have recognized and felt comfortable with, even though me vast majority of its material is of post-biblical origin.

22