Draft. This siddur is waiting for a rav's review. For a halachic question, ask your rav.
Hebrew, then English. Open "What it means" under any line for the explanation.
Every day has its own psalm, the one the Levites sang in the Temple that day. On Friday:
הַיּוֹם יוֹם שִׁשִּׁי בַּשַּׁבָּת שֶׁבּוֹ הָיוּ הַלְוִיִּם אוֹמְרִים בְּבֵית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ.
Today is the sixth day of the week on which the Levites used to say in the Temple
יְיָ מָלָךְ גֵּאוּת לָבֵשׁ
Hashem has become King He has put on majesty
Does God wear clothes? Ibn Ezra (a Spanish commentator of the 1100s) says the clothing is a parable. It is the way of kings to wear royal clothes, so the psalm pictures God that way. Belting on strength, he adds, is like a person tying on a belt to show his power.
Ibn Ezra on Tehillim 93:1לָבֵשׁ יְיָ עֹז הִתְאַזָּר
Hashem has put on strength and belted Himself
Hashem has put on strength and belted Himself with it.
אַף תִּכּוֹן תֵּבֵל בַּל תִּמּוֹט.
Indeed the world is set firm it will not be shaken
Indeed, the world is set firm and will not be shaken.
Malbim (Rabbi Meir Leibush, a rabbi in Eastern Europe who died in 1879) reads "majesty" as God lifting Himself above nature to do miracles, and "strength" as the steady laws of nature. His point: even while God does a miracle, the fixed laws are not shaken, and the world stays firm.
Malbim on Tehillim 93:1נָכוֹן כִּסְאֲךָ מֵאָז מֵעוֹלָם אָתָּה.
Your throne is set firm since long ago You are from forever
Your throne is set firm since long ago. You have always been.
Midrash Tehillim (a collection of rabbinic teachings on Tehillim) uses this verse to show that God's throne is one of seven things that came up in His thought before the world was created. Its list includes the Torah, the Temple and repentance. The Gemara (the rabbis' discussion of the Mishnah) in Pesachim 54a has a similar list of seven.
Midrash Tehillim 93:2; Pesachim 54aנָשְׂאוּ נְהָרוֹת יְיָ נָשְׂאוּ נְהָרוֹת קוֹלָם יִשְׂאוּ נְהָרוֹת דָּכְיָם.
The rivers have lifted up, Hashem the rivers have lifted up their voice the rivers lift up their pounding
מִקֹּלוֹת מַיִם רַבִּים אַדִּירִים מִשְׁבְּרֵי יָם אַדִּיר בַּמָּרוֹם יְיָ.
More than the voices of many waters more than the mighty breakers of the sea Hashem is mighty on high
One reading in Midrash Tehillim goes back to Creation. The waters grew proud and rose to cover the earth again, until God rebuked them and set sand as the sea's border, like a fence around a vineyard. Now when the waves rise and see the sand, they turn back. Its proof is a verse in the prophet Yirmeyahu: "I set sand as a border for the sea."
Midrash Tehillim 93:3; Yirmeyahu 5:22עֵדֹתֶיךָ נֶאֶמְנוּ מְאֹד לְבֵיתְךָ נַאֲוָה קֹדֶשׁ יְיָ לְאֹרֶךְ יָמִים.
Your testimonies are extremely reliable for Your house, holiness is fitting Hashem, for length of days
Your testimonies are extremely reliable. Holiness suits Your house, Hashem, for length of days.
People say it at the end of Shacharit, because in the Temple the Levites sang it after the morning offering. In this siddur the Hoshienu verses (asking God to save us and gather us) come right after it.
Peninei Halakhah, Prayer 23:4; Siddur SefardPirkei DeRabbi Eliezer (a Midrash, a collection of rabbinic teachings, that retells Creation) puts this verse on the sixth day. All the creatures saw the newly made Adam, took him for their creator, and came to bow. Adam stopped them. Come, he said, let us crown the One who made us. Then he spoke, all the creatures answered after him, and together they said, "Hashem has become King, He has put on majesty."
Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 11The Mishnah (the first written collection of the oral law) lists the psalm the Levites sang in the Temple each day. For Friday it names Tehillim 93. Sunday's page explains how that worked. The Gemara (the rabbis' discussions built on the Mishnah) gives the reason: on the sixth day God finished His work and reigned over it. Rabbi David Luria, an 1800s commentator on Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, links this to Adam's words above.
Mishnah Tamid 7:4; Rosh Hashanah 31a; Beur HaRadal on Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 3:18Midrash Tehillim (a collection of rabbinic teachings on the book of Tehillim) tells a story about the Roman emperor Hadrian, who wanted to find where the ocean ends. He lowered ropes for three years, until a heavenly voice said, "Hadrian is finished." Next he wanted to know how the water praises God. He had glass boxes made, put people inside and lowered them down. They came up and said they had heard the ocean say, "Hashem is mighty on high," the end of verse 4.
Midrash Tehillim 93:4The same Midrash turns "He has put on" into a whole wardrobe. God put on a different outfit for each great rescue: majesty at the Sea, strength at Sinai, vengeance against Babylon, righteousness in the Purim story (Mordechai walks out in royal robes), zeal in the Chanukah story, and crimson garments against Edom. The seventh, white as snow, is for the days of the Mashiach (the Messiah).
Midrash Tehillim 93:1In Siddur Sefard, Tehillim 93 comes up again on Friday night, in Kabbalat Shabbat (the service that welcomes Shabbat). It follows Psalm 92, the psalm for Shabbat, which the Mishnah says the Levites sang on Shabbat. So this psalm is said once in the morning, as the week's work ends, and again as Shabbat begins.
Siddur Sefard, Kabbalat Shabbat; Mishnah Tamid 7:4The classic sources give two answers. The Gemara says the Levites sang this psalm on Friday because on the sixth day God finished His work and reigned over it. That points backward, to Creation.
But the commentators on the psalm itself often read it as pointing forward. Rashi (the main commentator on the Torah and Gemara, France, died 1105) says on the first words: they will say it in the future. Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi, Provence, died 1235) says this psalm and the ones after it are about the days of the Mashiach, when everyone will see that God rules over all and people will no longer act proud before Him, the way King Nebuchadnezzar did. Metzudat David (a commentary from the 1700s) says the same: in those days people will say, "Hashem has become King."
The Meiri (Rabbi Menachem Meiri, Provence, around 1300) gives both. To him the psalm seems to hint at the creation of the world, especially when the waters gathered into one place. Then he adds that some explain the whole psalm as about the days of the Mashiach, and that the verb malach ("has become King") is in the past tense where the future is meant.
How can one psalm be both? The sources do not say it in so many words. One way to read them is that they answer two different questions. The Gemara asks why the Levites picked this psalm for Friday. Rashi, Radak and Metzudat David ask what the psalm itself describes.
The Gemara has a similar argument about Shabbat's psalm. The Mishnah says Shabbat's psalm is a song for the time to come, a day that will be all Shabbat. In the Gemara, Rabbi Nechemya asks what reason there is to treat Shabbat differently, and says all the psalms look back to Creation. Either way, Friday's reason stays the same.
Rosh Hashanah 31a,Mishnah Tamid 7:4,Rashi, Radak, Metzudat David and Meiri on Tehillim 93:1The middle of the psalm is about noisy water. "The rivers have lifted up their voice. The rivers lift up their pounding." Then it says God is mightier than the roar of the waters. The sources do not agree on what the water stands for.
Ibn Ezra takes it as real water. After mentioning the earth and the heavens, he says, the psalm mentions the seas and rivers that never stop moving. They rise only because God wills it, through the winds He sends.
Rashi hears something else. For him the rivers are the nations, flooding in and raising their voices against God. He reads the verse as a cry of complaint, "Woe, Hashem, look at the nations pouring over us," and the next verse as the answer: more than those waters, God is mighty. Radak also calls it a parable, about Gog and Magog (the nations that, in the prophets' vision, gather to fight Jerusalem at the end of days).
Midrash Tehillim offers more than one reading. Resh Lakish (a rabbi of the Gemara) says "rivers" means the Philistines, because a verse in Melachim speaks of the land "from the River to the land of the Philistines." When they captured the Ark, he says, they boasted that they had captured not only the Ark but the Master of the Ark. Another reading goes back to Creation, when the waters tried to cover the earth again.
Malbim (Rabbi Meir Leibush, a Bible commentator of the 1800s) turns the rivers into witnesses, not enemies. In his reading the rivers and seas themselves speak. They say God's throne is firm and that He is mighty on high, because the sea stays inside the borders He set for it.
So the same noise is a threat in one reading and a testimony in another. In Ibn Ezra, Rashi and Radak, the next verse gives the answer: however loud the water is, God is mightier. In Malbim, the water itself is the one saying that God is mighty on high.
Tehillim 93:3-4,Ibn Ezra, Rashi, Radak and Malbim on Tehillim 93:3-4,Midrash Tehillim 93:2-3The last verse changes the scale. After thunder and floods it says: "Your testimonies are extremely reliable. Holiness suits Your house, Hashem, for length of days." The "house" is the Temple. So what does a building have to do with ocean waves?
Malbim says that is the point. The waves show that God is mighty on high, which could suggest a ruler far away. But the testimony God gave us, he says, is that He is not far off. He is present in the Temple, with a care that goes beyond nature. That care is steady, "for length of days," and not only a miracle now and then.
Rashi reads "testimonies" as the promises the prophets made about the Temple. Even though it has taken a long time, he says, those promises are still extremely faithful. Radak reads them as the prophets' words about God's rule, which will then come true, and says the verse looks to a Temple that will be beautiful for length of days, so that it will never be destroyed again.
Midrash Tehillim hears a request in the verse. Moshe tells God that He lowered the voice of the Torah and of His house and raised the voice of the wicked, and asks Him to raise the voice of the Torah and His house. The Midrash adds that King Shlomo built the Temple and it was destroyed, Ezra built it and it was destroyed, but this time it will be "for length of days."
Ibn Ezra makes a comparison. Heaven, earth and sea all testify to God, he says, but God's own testimonies are more trustworthy than all of them. That is why the verse adds "extremely."
The commentators differ on whether the verse is a promise, a plea or a comparison. They agree it is about the Temple.
Tehillim 93:5,Malbim, Rashi, Radak and Ibn Ezra on Tehillim 93:5,Midrash Tehillim 93:6Short ideas from the Chassidic masters, the Kabbalah and the Mussar teachers.
The Gemara says that wherever you find God's might, you also find His humility. So the Baal Shem Tov (the founder of Chassidut, who lived in the 1700s) asked: where is the humility in "Hashem has become King, He has put on majesty"? His answer: majesty is only what God wears. It is the clothing. Underneath, in who God is, you find humility. His grandson, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sudilkov, passes this on in his book Degel Machaneh Ephraim. Now read "He has put on majesty" again.
ה' מלך גאות לבש היינו שהלבוש הוא רק גאוה אבל באמת תוכן פנימיותו כביכול אתה מוצא ענותנותו
Baal Shem Tov, in Degel Machaneh Ephraim, PurimRebbe Nachman of Breslov (a Chassidic master in Ukraine in the early 1800s) says God's majesty is too big even for the Holy Temple to hold. Out of love for Israel, God covered it and narrowed it, so that we could take on His rule. That, he says, is the verse: when God wanted to show that He is King, He put on majesty like a garment and made Himself small, so we could bear it.
הִלְבִּישׁ וְצִמְצֵם אֶת גֵּאוּת שֶׁלּוֹ, כְּדֵי שֶׁנּוּכַל לִסְבֹּל קַבָּלַת עֹל מַלְכוּתוֹ עָלֵינוּ
Likutei Moharan, Part 1, 219The Zohar (the central book of Kabbalah) says that the day Israel received the Torah at Sinai brought God more joy than the day the world was created. On Creation day the world did not yet stand firm. Once Israel received the Torah, the world was made sweet and heaven and earth stood firm. The Zohar applies our psalm to that day, and says the "strength" God puts on is the Torah.
כֵּיון דְּקַבִּילוּ יִשְׂרָאֵל אוֹרַיְיתָא עַל טוּרָא דְּסִינַי, כְּדֵין אִתְבַּסַּם עָלְמָא, וְאִתְקְיָימוּ שְׁמַיָּא וְאַרְעָא
Zohar, Parashat YitroThe Zohar Chadash (a companion collection of Zohar teachings) reads the "breakers of the sea" as the waters of Creation. They kept rising and falling, and their voice reached the ends of the sky, until God rebuked them and put them in the deep. Now, when they rise, their strength breaks, and they go back down and do not go out, out of fear of their Master's might. That, it says, is "Hashem is mighty on high."
אִתְּבַר תּוֹקְפֵיהוֹן, וְנָחֲתִין וְלָא נָפְקִין לְבַר, מִדְּחִילוּ דִּתְקִיפוּתָא דְמָארֵיהוֹן
Zohar Chadash, BereishitRabbi Yaakov Leiner of Izhbitz (a Chassidic rebbe in Poland in the 1800s) is writing about Yaakov, who believed Yosef was gone and could see no help coming. Yehuda, he says, has the power to break through even a great hiding of God and show that there was never any hiding at all. Then he brings this verse. The roaring waters are the hiding. Even in that great hiding, "there too" God is "mighty on high."
מקולות מים רבים אדירים משברי ים אדיר במרום ה', היינו אף בגודל ההסתר גם שם אדיר במרום ה'
Beit Yaakov, Parashat MiketzThe practical laws. For a final ruling, ask your rav.
Anywhere the four-letter Name of God is written in the Torah or in a siddur, you say Adonai ("my Master"), says Peninei Halakhah (a modern guide to Jewish law by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed). This psalm has the Name five times, and this siddur prints it as two yuds. The Shulchan Aruch (the main code of Jewish law) says what to have in mind in blessings: that the reading means He is Master of everything, and that the spelling means He was, is and will be.
Peninei Halakhah, Likkutim I 5:8; Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 5:1Siddur Sefard has you say Friday's psalm and then, on Rosh Chodesh, Barchi Nafshi (Psalm 104) after it. The Vilna Gaon (the great Torah scholar of Vilna in the 1700s) kept a different custom, according to Maaseh Rav (a book of his personal practices). He said no two psalms in one day. On Rosh Chodesh he said Barchi Nafshi in place of the day's psalm, and it outranked even Shabbat's, and certainly Chanukah's. On Chanukah his psalm of the day was Psalm 30, but on Shabbat, Shabbat's psalm came first.
Siddur Sefard, Rosh Chodesh; Maaseh Rav 157, 158, 241The Kaf HaChaim (a Sephardic law commentary from the early 1900s) brings a teaching of the Arizal (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, a Kabbalist in Safed in the 1500s): each weekday draws some light from Shabbat. Sunday to Tuesday hold on to the Shabbat just past. Wednesday to Friday reach toward the coming one, and on Friday it is the neshama, a level of the soul. The siddur of the Rashash (Rabbi Shalom Sharabi, a Kabbalist in Jerusalem in the 1700s) has you say "Today is the sixth day" with that in mind.
Kaf HaChaim, Orach Chaim 132:26בששי היו אומרים ה' מלך גאות לבש וגו'
On the sixth day they would say: "Hashem has become King, He has put on majesty," and so on.
בששי היו אומרים ה' מלך גאות לבש על שם שגמר מלאכתו ומלך עליהן
On the sixth day they would say "Hashem has become King, He has put on majesty," because on that day He finished His work and reigned over it.
באותה שעה פתח אדם את פיו וענו כל הבריות אחריו והלבישו גאות ועוז והמליכו עליהן ליוצרן ואמרו ה' מלך גאות לבש
At that moment Adam opened his mouth and all the creatures answered after him. They clothed their Maker in majesty and strength, crowned Him over themselves, and said: "Hashem has become King, He has put on majesty."
שבעה לבושין לבש הקב"ה ... שביעי לימות המשיח
God put on seven garments ... the seventh is for the days of the Mashiach.
מעשה באדריאנוס שביקש לעמוד על סופו של אוקינוס ... שמע בת קול אומר כלה אדריאנוס ... עשה תיבות של זכוכית ... כך שמענו לאוקינוס מקלס אדיר במרום ה'
There was a story of Hadrian, who wanted to reach the end of the ocean ... He heard a heavenly voice say, "Hadrian is finished" ... He made glass boxes ... "This is what we heard: the ocean praises, 'Hashem is mighty on high.'"
כל אלה המזמורים עד לדוד מזמור הם עתידים על ימות המשיח
All these psalms, up to "Of David, a psalm," are about the days of the Mashiach.
ויש מפרשים שזה המזמור על זמן המשיח וה' מלך עבר במקום עתיד
Some explain this psalm as about the time of the Mashiach, with malach ("has become King") in the past tense in place of the future.
לְשׁוֹן צְעָקָה וְקוֹבְלָן הוּא זֶה ... הִנֵּה הָאֻמּוֹת הַשּׁוֹטְפִים כַּנְּהָרוֹת נָשְׂאוּ קוֹלָם
This is a cry and a complaint ... Look, the nations that flood like rivers have raised their voice.
העדות שקבלנו ממך היא שאינך רחוק מאתנו יושב מרום רק אתה יושב בבית המקדש
The testimony we received from You is that You are not far from us, sitting on high. You sit in the Temple.
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