לַמְנַצֵּחַ, מַשְׂכִּיל לִבְנֵי-קֹרַח.
כְּאַיָּל, תַּעֲרֹג עַל-אֲפִיקֵי-מָיִם– כֵּן נַפְשִׁי תַעֲרֹג אֵלֶיךָ אֱלֹהִים.
(For the leader, Maschil of the sons of Korah.) “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.” – King James Bible.
The original Psalm is replete with ideas of breath, comparing men to plants and their souls to breathing essences. The King James Bible is translated as if the translators are looking forward to their next opportunity to hunt, or at least translating it in those terms so that it could be understood. I learn that the original ‘אַיָּל’ (ah-yawl) is a male deer – a ‘stag’ – and nothing as specific as a ‘hart’. A hart is a mature, male deer which was coveted by hunters, a term adapted from the Chase. It is a nice image, yet actually more specific than the original goes, almost as if the KJV translators are trying to inflate the image for some reason. Perhaps because the Psalms are supposed to be from King David – who could aptly be compared to a ‘hart’ – or perhaps because the recitation of the Psalms in Jacobean England is simply an old man’s game. Although it makes us blessed that, unlike now, the Jacobeans were sufficiently attentive to the natural world that they bothered to distinguish between different kinds of deer. Now, most translations render it as ‘deer’, which is a little more unspecific than it’s supposed to be.
Why are we supposed to imagine a ‘stag’ in the original, and why do most translators render this as ‘deer’? It might be that we are supposed to be imagining some essentially strong creature, yet one who pines for simple, innocent comforts like drinking water. It makes us curious about the recitation of Hebrew psalms, which I suppose remains shrouded in mystery. Yet such recitation must have been more grounded in ideas about the human situation within the living natural world and ecosystem, and a less clear theory of how one is separated from animals. This is evidenced by the fact that the Hebrew world for ‘soul’ – נַפְשִׁ (nah-fesh) – merely means ‘that which breathes’. I am led into an insatiable curiosity about what the natural world was really like when the Psalms were composed and recited, which no film will ever satisfy.
Squidditas 