The Happiest Psalm of Them All

Embedded in the Hebrew prayer book is a particularly beautiful psalm that also happens to be longer than most poems found in the siddur. The beauty is not all that surprising—there’s no dearth of beautiful poetry in those pages; what’s surprising is how often, and in how many different Jewish liturgical traditions, either part or all of this particular poem has been slipped into the service. Why, with so many psalms to choose from, should Psalm 104, known in Hebrew by its opening words, barkhi nafshi, be singled out? And why, especially, once a month like clockwork, does it appear at the very end of the morning service, just when most weekday worshippers are fretting at the lateness of the hour and anxious to get to their day jobs?

Perhaps the appeal of Barkhi nafshi is related to the way it restages the entire story of Creation but adds a happy ending. True, the Creation story itself, as told in the book of Genesis, ends happily enough with the arrival of the Sabbath on the seventh day. But pretty soon thereafter things begin to degenerate: remember the snake in the garden, remember the Flood? Let’s face it, in Genesis the Lord falls out pretty quickly with mankind; the book’s very first Torah reading ends on this grim note: “And God regretted that He made man upon the earth, and was aggrieved in His heart.”

By contrast, Psalm 104 goes right back to the beginning and takes a stab at making it all come out better. Not only that, but by focusing on how happy the Lord remains with what He has made, the poem also makes Him seem much less (if I may be permitted) irritable.