The psalm starts with "I love," but love what?
The first line is odd. In Hebrew it is ahavti ki yishma Hashem et koli: "I love, that Hashem hears my voice." The words "I love" have nothing after them. Love whom? Love what?
Rashi reads it as a wish: "I longed for Hashem to hear my voice." Ibn Ezra (a Spanish commentator of the 1100s) gives the same reading first: how much I would love for Hashem to hear me when I plead. Then he reports another view, "I love Hashem, because He hears my voice," as if the word Hashem were part of the first phrase. Metzudat David (a commentary on Tehillim from the 1700s) reads it that way too. So does Radak, who adds that it is only right to love Him, since He hears him every time he calls.
Malbim (a commentator of the 1800s) looks at the next verse, "in my days I will call." Plain "days," he says, means good days. So the speaker loved to pray even when nothing was wrong.
Rava hears a question inside the same words. He has the Jewish people ask God: "When am I loved by You? When You hear my pleas." Now the love runs the other way. Feeling loved comes from being heard.
The Hebrew allows all of these. Longing (Rashi), gratitude (Radak), prayer in good times (Malbim) and being loved (Rava) are four answers to what a person is doing when they pray.
Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Radak, Metzudat David and Malbim on Tehillim 116:1,Pesachim 118bHow can a psalm of praise say "every person is a liar"?
Verse 11 is the strangest line in the paragraph: "I said in my panic, every person is a liar." It sits inside Hallel, the psalms of praise. Why is it there?
The Hebrew word, kozev, is not about lying in general. Rashi says it means a trust that fails, like a spring that dries up. He points to Yeshayahu 58:11, "whose waters do not fail." So "liar" here means someone who lets you down.
Rashi gives his own setting and then reports a second one that others give. In his own reading, David is running from his son Avshalom, who rebelled. He has just watched his own son turn on him and all Israel repay good with evil. In the other reading, King Shaul and his men are closing in on David, and "even the prophet Shmuel," who anointed him king, seems to be a liar. Ibn Ezra quotes an earlier commentator, Rabbi Moshe, who also reads the line as being about Shmuel, because Shmuel had promised David the throne.
Radak turns the line around. He says that even in his rush and his danger, David said: anyone who tells me I will not be king is a liar. "This was great faith," Radak writes. He points to Tehillim 31, where David in a rush feared Shaul would kill him, then argued himself out of it, because God had already promised him the throne.
So one verse, two moods. Either everyone fails, or anyone who says God's promise will fail is wrong. Either way, the psalm keeps the rushed moment in.
Rashi on Tehillim 116:11,Ibn Ezra on Tehillim 116:10,Radak on Tehillim 116:11,Yeshayahu 58:11What are the "lands of the living"?
Verse 9 says: "I will walk before Hashem in the lands of the living." The Hebrew is plural, artzot hachayim, and the sources do not agree on what it means. They give at least three answers.
Rashi and Radak say it is the Land of Israel. Rashi: David's enemies drove him out of it in Shaul's days, and he came back against their will. Radak: the cities of Israel are the lands of the living because the air there is better than in any other land, and the people who live there are healthy.
In the Gemara, Rav Yehuda (a leading sage of the Gemara, in Babylonia) says it means the place of markets. Rashi explains: the place where a person can find food to buy. David was always on the move, wandering from place to place, so he prayed that he would always find something to eat.
A third answer comes from Pesachim 118a, the Gemara passage on the five things Hallel holds, which the page for the blessing before Hallel tells. It finds the dead coming back to life in this verse.
The sources do not choose between these. All three stay standing.
Rashi on Tehillim 116:9,Radak on Tehillim 116:9,Yoma 71a, with Rashi,Pesachim 118a