You probably know the old joke about the psychiatrist who gave his patient a series of Rohrschach tests. The patient identified every single inkblot pattern as depicting a man and a woman copulating. The doctor then pronounced his official diagnosis: “You, sir, are obsessed with sex!”
“But, Doc, you’re the one with the dirty pictures!”
The search for sexual symbolism has been trivialized into a sort of parlor game for the unimaginative. “Freudian” literary analyses are inevitably subjective and not always convincing. As the good Doctor himself is said to have observed, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” (Freud’s own cheroot, however, which rarely left his mouth, was definitely more than just a cigar!) But when the subject matter is explicitly sexual, surely we are entitled to enjoy the double entendre. Even in the Bible.
Although it will cause few modern readers to blush, one of the Bible’s sexiest poems is Psalm 45. Far less explicit than the Song of Songs, the poem’s allusions to the ancient language of love and lust are too subtle and obscure for today’s audience.
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Psalm 45 was apparently composed for a royal wedding of an Israelite or Judean monarch to a foreign princess. Which king and when we do not know: Proposals range from the Solomonic era (tenth century B.C.E.) to the Maccabean era (second century B.C.E.). It might even be that the poem was meant for general use, since any bridegroom and bride can be king- and queen-for-a-day.1
The text of Psalm 45 is often difficult to translate and probably has suffered considerable scribal corruption. Some obscurities may be cleared up by inserting different vowels in a text originally composed of consonants;2 others can be illuminated by comparison with cognate literatures such as Aramaic, Ugaritic and Akkadian.
Here is my best approximate translation of Psalm 45, with nuance-laden words italicized. First comes the title:
The term “lilies” (šōšānîm) is found also in the superscriptions of Psalms 60, 69 and 80. It describes some aspect of the poem, perhaps its melody. But lilies are also an erotic symbol for the mouth in the Song of Songs.a The male lover “feeds among the lilies” (Song of Songs 2:16, 6:2–3; see also 2:1–2, 4:5, 7:3 [English 7:2]), and his own lips are lily-like (Song of Songs 5:13). As if to emphasize this aspect, the psalm is also labeled šîr yədîdōt “a love song.”5
2 My heart has cooked up a sweet word.
I shall say my creations, O king,
My tongue the pen of a fluent scribe.
The poet does not claim any sort of divine inspiration. He proudly claims the work as his own, fit for a king. His comparison of the tongue and the pen is ambiguous. Is the poet boasting that his tongue is as good as a pen, or that his pen is his tongue? Perhaps he is reading the work from a scroll.6
3You are the most beautiful of all Man’s Sons.
Favor drips from (?) your lips;
Therefore God has blessed you forever.
The Hebrew is again ambiguous; either God has poured “favor” onto the king’s lips, or “favor” spontaneously drips from them. The latter interpretation better suits the context: Because the king speaks in a manner pleasing to God, he is blessed. Either way, it is noteworthy that saliva figures prominently in biblical love poetry (Proverbs 5:3; Song of Songs 1:2, 4:11, 5:13, 7:10 [English 7:9]).
This king is no limp pretty-boy but a mighty warrior, Adonis and Hercules in one. That a king should be strong is self-evident. But his physical charms are also important, especially when the hereditary principle is not well established, which is why the Bible stresses the beauty of early royals like Saul (1 Samuel 9:2), David (1 Samuel 16:12) and Absalom (2 Samuel 14:25). To perpetuate a dynasty requires not just military prowess but sex appeal, a mastery of both martial and marital arts!
There is more to the imagery in Psalm 45:4–5 than meets the innocent eye. It is the tragic heritage of the male psyche to associate sex with violence and killing, whether in warfare or the hunt. Long, piercing implements of bloodshed like swords, spears and arrows are phallic symbols throughout Near Eastern literature.
For what battle does the king gird his sword upon his thigh? Or is this a metaphor? The root ḥgr, “gird,” means to attach something to the body’s midsection. For example, the related noun ḥăgōrōt describes the genital sheaths that Adam and Eve fashion from fig leaves (Genesis 3:7). A sword is naturally worn on the yārēk, “(outer) thigh” (Exodus 32:27; Judges 3:16; Song of Songs 3:8), but the term also includes the inner thigh, where the angel cripples Jacob (Genesis 32:26, 33 [English 32:25, 32]) and where oaths are sworn by holding the genitals (Genesis 24:2, 9, 47:29). Sometimes a man’s progeny is described as “emerging from his thigh” (Genesis 46:26; Exodus 1:5; Judges 8:30), in which case yārēk serves as a euphemism for “penis.” This association may also underlie King Rehoboam’s taunt to his subjects, “My ‘weeny’ (Hebrew qāṭonnî) is thicker than my father’s loins” (1 Kings 12:10)—although there the term is mōten, not yārēk, and most interpreters find a reference to the pinky finger.
The bawdy imagery becomes even more insistent in verse 5. The ambivalent root ṣlḥ (which I translate here as “prevail”) connotes both prospering and possessing, as in “Yahweh’s spirit overcame so-and-so” (Judges 14:6, 19, 15:14; 1 Samuel 10:6, 10, 11:6, 16:13, 18:10). Moreover, if the Aramaic meaning of the root survives in Hebrew, there is an additional connotation: “split, penetrate.” And it is hard to miss the erotic overtones of the command rkb, “ride, mount, lie atop, join”; in fact, Akkadian uses the same root in a sexual sense.
Let your right hand shoot for you fearsomely
6Your sharp arrows—
may nations fall at your feet—
into the heart of the king’s enemies.
Shooting off arrows—or, today, rifles—is a common way to celebrate a marriage.9 In the ancient Near East, the bow was a symbol for the penis, as when in Ugaritic mythology, the hero Aqhat and the goddess 036Anat quarrel over the possession of his wondrous bow.10 That archery equals sex—think of Cupid!—is clearest in the following salacious vignette from Ugaritic mythology of the Late Bronze Age, describing how the chief deity El—his name simply means “God”—rapes two women:11
While not every aspect of this translation is certain, even staid Ugaritic philologists unanimously recognize that the acts of extending the hand, hunting, cooking and eating symbolize sex. The gesture of nocking (mnn; compare Hebrew minnîm “stringed instruments”) an arrow also symbolizes penile erection, which is why harp and bowstrings feature prominently in Mesopotamian potency-restoring rituals.14 So, too, in Psalm 45, the poet exhorts the king to shoot—but then turns the phraseology into conventional royal praise. The king is to aim—where? Into his enemies’ hearts. While the image is that of warfare, the mention of the “heart” may also evoke love.15 In light of the Ugaritic passage, the phallic association of the king’s “right hand” in Psalm 45:5 seems obvious. Finally, “feet” in Hebrew can connote the genitals, as in Isaiah 7:20, “the hair of the ‘feet,’” and 2 Kings 18:27, “the water of the ‘feet,’” that is, urine.
7 Your throne, God, is eternal
Your royal scepter is a scepter of straightness
8 You love justice and hate guilt.
Therefore God, your god has anointed you.
The first verse has evoked much comment, because it seems to address the king as “God.”16 In the church, Psalm 45:7 serves as a prooftext that Jesus the Messiah is a divinity (Hebrews 1:8–9). But I am more intrigued by the punning reference to the king’s staff in the next line. In a neutral context, šēbeṭ mîšōr would be translated 037“scepter of justice.” But mîšōr literally means “straightness,” and, in a wedding psalm, the innuendo is blatant.
Myrrh, aloes and cassia are fragrances, for, then as now, scent and sex were inextricably linked, as any devotee of the Song of Songs will recall (also Proverbs 7:17). “Joy oil” (šemen śāśôn), mentioned only here and in Isaiah 61:3, is perfumed oil, the sort that Esther bathed in for a year to improve her odor and complexion (Esther 2:12). The term “joy” (śāśôn) is often associated with marriage (Jeremiah 7:34, 16:9, 25:10, 33:11).18 “All your clothes” probably means that the king’s robes are scented—less likely, that aromatic oils are all that he’s wearing!
As already noted, harpstrings symbolized masculinity in the ancient Near East. Moreover, the term minnay (the received text uses the singular minnî) recalls the Arabic root mny, “to ejaculate,” which also may explain the use of mnn in the Ugaritic archery scene translated above.
The psalm’s use of the rare term šēgal, “queen,” for a royal woman is significant. It is actually a loanword from Akkadian ša ekalli, “she of the palace.” But by fortunate or unfortunate chance, it also chimes with the unrelated Hebrew verb šgl, “sexually ravish.”
The rest of the psalm addresses the bride and contains nothing to crimson a maiden’s cheek—at least nothing I can detect. But it abounds with obscurities, far more than my translation indicates.
11 Listen, daughter, and see, and turn your ear.
And forget your people and your father’s house.
12 And let the king delight in your beauty,
For he is your master, so bow down to him.
13 And the daughter of Tyre with tribute,
The richest of people will supplicate you.
14 All glorious is the king’s daughter.
Her garments are lined with gold brocade.
15 In embroidered garb she shall be conducted to the king,
Her maiden companion followers will be brought to you.
16 They will be conducted with rejoicings and joy,
They will enter into the king’s palace.
According to the received vocalization (the text with vowels added), the psalm’s concluding lines turn again to the king. But the consonantal text is in fact ambiguous. Somehow I feel that the final verses originally addressed the young queen, consoling her for the loss of her family. And the poet also mentions himself again, implicitly claiming the immortality that he hopes to have conferred upon the happy couple.
17 In place of your fathers shall be your sons;
You shall set them as rulers in all the land/world.
18 I will memorialize your name
in every generation,
Wherefore peoples will praise you forever.
Think back to the anecdote about the psychiatrist and his patient. Has this essay taught you something new about Psalm 45—or has it just provided a glimpse into the drearily predictable mind of a particular (male) 042scholar? With some effort, I can read the poem with a straight face. Sometimes a sword is just a sword, a thigh is just a thigh, a conquest is just a conquest, a mount is just a mount, a bow is just a bow, a hand is just a hand, a foot is just a foot, and a straight scepter is just a straight scepter. But in a marriage song?19 After all, relieving the tension by suggestively teasing bridegroom and bride is a nearly universal custom. I cannot but think that the raunchy double entendre that I detect in Psalm 45 is real and deliberate. And also fun.
You probably know the old joke about the psychiatrist who gave his patient a series of Rohrschach tests. The patient identified every single inkblot pattern as depicting a man and a woman copulating. The doctor then pronounced his official diagnosis: “You, sir, are obsessed with sex!”
“But, Doc, you’re the one with the dirty pictures!”
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See the fascinating study of Theodor H. Gaster, “Psalm 45,” Journal of Biblical Literature 74 (1955), pp. 239–251.
2.
The vowel points were added to the text in the late first millennium C.E. When confronting a difficult passage, modern scholars often reject this received vocalization and focus on the consonants alone, which are of greater antiquity. A major exponent of this approach to the Psalter was Mitchell Dahood, whose controversial commentary on Psalm 45 has influenced my own readings and reconstructions (Psalms 1:1-50, Anchor Bible 16 [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965], pp. 269–276).
3.
These Levitical singers are supposed to have authored or transmitted Psalms 42, 44–49, 84–85, 87–88. Archaeological evidence of their existence comes from an eighth-century ostracon from Arad mentioning “Korah’s sons”; see Yohanan Aharoni, Arad Inscriptions (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), text 49.2, pp. 180–182.
4.
“Enlightenment” or “enlightener” (maśkîl) is a common Psalms superscription (Psalms 32, 44, 45, 52–55, 74, 78, 88, 89, 142). We do not know what it signifies.
5.
The term yədîdōt may also pun with yədûtûn, perhaps a type of song (Psalms 39, 62, 77) but later understood in Nehemiah and Chronicles as a man’s name: Jeduthun.
6.
To the Freudian fundamentalist, the tongue and the pen are phallic symbols, while cooking and eating symbolize sex. In some contexts, I would agree. But in Psalm 45, the focus is on the sexuality of bridegroom and bride, not the poet. (On some deeper level, admittedly, the psalmist might be competing with the king’s masculinity—but it is hard to be sure without putting the author on the couch.)
7.
With a minor modification I follow Dahood, reading *gəbar hôdəkā wahădārəkā hadrēk. The vocalized Hebrew text literally says, “Hero, your glory and your splendor and your splendor,” which is hard to parse as poetry.
8.
Again following Dahood, I redivide the consonants to read *w‘nw hṣdq, vs. the Masoretic Text’s w‘nwh ṣdq “and humility, justice.”
9.
Gaster, “Psalm 45,” p. 243.
10.
For a translation of the myth, see Simon B. Parker, ed., Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, SBL Writings from the Biblical World Series 9 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), pp. 49–80. On the phallic imagery, see Delbert R. Hillers, “The Bow of Aqhat: the Meaning of a Mythological Theme,” in Orient and Occident, Festschrift for Cyrus H. Gordon, ed. Harry H. Hoffner, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 22 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1973), pp. 71–80. Since 1929, the Syrian site of Ras Shamra, ancient Ugarit, has yielded hundreds of clay tablets dating from the 15th to 13th century B.C.E. In addition to diplomatic and economic material, dozens of tablets treat religious matters: myths, legends, rituals and incantations. Even more than the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Ugaritic tablets have revolutionized Old Testament studies, illustrating the Canaanite cultural milieu out of which and against which Israel arose.
11.
It is not clear whether the sex is consensual. My assumption is that, at the beginning of the episode, the women are crying for help. The entire myth is translated in Parker, Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, pp. 205–218.
12.
Literally, “lowers,” a usage found also in Psalm 18:35. For safety’s sake, one points the arrow downward when setting it to the string. To bend or string the bow, one can also use a stabilizing foot, hence the common idiom “to tread the bow.” I do not agree with the view that El is described as sexually impotent, just because his shaft momentarily droops.
13.
KTU 1.23.32-51.
14.
Robert D. Biggs, ŠÀ.ZI.GA: Ancient Mesopotamian Potency Incantations, Texts from Cuneiform Sources 2, (Locust Valley, NY: J.J. Augustin, 1967), pp. 17, 19, 20, 21, 35, 37, 53. The bow is also a masculine symbol in a Hittite potency-restoring ceremony; see James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), p. 349.
15.
Given the violent imagery, and assuming his wife is a foreign princess, the king’s metaphorical conquest of his queen may symbolize the actual conquest of her people (cf. Christoph Schroeder, “‘A Love Song’: Psalm 45 in the Light of Ancient Near Eastern Marriage Texts,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 58 [1996], pp. 417–432).
16.
Or as “Yahweh” (the personal name of the Israelite God). Most scholars believe that a scribe went through Psalms 42–83 (the so-called “Elohistic Psalter”) changing each Yahweh to Elohim, the more general word for a God. By this theory, the awkward “God, your god” in Psalm 45:8 originally read “Yahweh, your god.” But is it really possible that the king was called “God”? Yes, for his divine status is at least hinted at in Isaiah 9:5 [English 9:6]; Psalms 2:7–8, 21:5–7 [English 21:4–6], 72:5, 89:26–28, 110:3. And 1 Chronicles 29:23 baldly calls the Davidic throne “Yahweh’s throne.” But perhaps we should instead translate in Psalm 45:7 “your throne is divine, eternal.”
17.
This refers to decoration of ivory inlay; see 1 Kings 22:39; Amos 3:15, 6:4. On the ivory palace decorations, see Hershel Shanks, “Ancient Ivory,”Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 1985.
18.
The root śwś, “rejoice,” is used apropos of marriage in Isaiah 61:10, 62:5.
19.
A colleague with whom I shared this work puckishly raised the example of Psalm 23: “He makes me lie down, he restores my spirit … Your rod and your staff, they comfort me … You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” A Freudian die-hard would find erotic imagery here, too, where others might be skeptical. The difference is that Psalm 45, unlike Psalm 23, describes the beauty of a bridegroom and bride.
