לַמְנַצֵּחַ אַל־תַּשְׁחֵת לְדָוִד מִכְתָּם׃ - For the conductor, [set to] Al-Tashchet, of David, a Michtam.
The three psalms we are studying open with the same heading: "Lamnatzei'ach al tashchet" ("For the conductor, do not destroy"). As we explained, David is pleading that they not destroy him - against those individuals who provoked Saul and incited him against David, he prays that their efforts will not lead to his destruction. "LeDavid michtam" - a michtam is the name of a musical melody, as Rashi explains: each song had its own unique tune, and michtam was the melody to which this psalm was played.
The Malbim explains that this psalm is directed against Saul's men who incited him to pursue David. When David was in the cave and cut off the corner of Saul's robe, and afterward told him "Please recognize" and showed him the corner of the robe - see, I was inches away from you, I could have killed you and did not kill you, I do not seek your life - Saul was appeased. However, there were people who incited him: Doeg and his men, and it is brought there that this was Abner. What did he tell him? The robe was torn on a thorn. That is to say: You were walking along the path, your robe caught on thorns and briars and tore, David found the torn piece, immediately recognized that it belonged to the king's robe, and now he comes and claims you were in his hands. Against these agitators, spreaders of false accusations and purveyors of lashon hara, David recites this psalm.
הַאֻמְנָם אֵלֶם צֶדֶק תְּדַבֵּרוּן מֵישָׁרִים תִּשְׁפְּטוּ בְּנֵי אָדָם׃ - Do you indeed speak righteousness in silence? Do you judge uprightly, O sons of men?
Rashi explains that "ha'umnam" is an expression of truth and faithfulness. David is referring to the subsequent incident, when he reached the barricade: he bypassed all the guards stationed around, reached the place where Saul was lying asleep, took the spear and the jug of water, and left the camp. Afterward, he awakened them and said to Abner: You have failed in your duty; your job was to guard the king, so how did you guard him? Here is his jug, here is his spear. "Will you not answer, Abner?" - there, you concocted stories that the robe caught on a thorn, but what will you say now? Even here the excuses did not end: Abner claimed that the attendants had gone to draw water from the well and forgot the king's jug there, and David merely found it. But David says to him: Will you not answer, Abner, what more can you possibly say? See for yourself that I do not wish to kill him! And regarding this he says: Ha'umnam - has the truth been struck mute from your mouth? Has righteousness become silenced? The uprightness with which you ought to have judged and stated the truth, that David does not seek Saul's life - you have been struck dumb.
The Radak takes a similar direction, but explains the word "elem" as an expression of gathering, like "va'anachnu mealmim alumim" ("we were binding sheaves"), which denotes gathering and binding sheaves together. That is to say: the truth is, if you were to gather together - "you would speak righteousness," you would see the justice on my side, you would realize how upright my deeds and words are, and that I am not pursuing Saul at all but rather that it is all a product of his imagination, and you would not incite Saul against me. If you were to gather to judge my case - and not only mine, but that of all the oppressed like me - you would surely and unequivocally judge with equity.
The Alshich HaKadosh explains that David levels two claims against Abner here: not only that he speaks falsehood, but also that he remains silent and does not tell the king, "Why are you repaying evil for good - a man into whose hands you fell and who sent you away in peace, who could have killed you and did not, yet you pursue him to put him to death?" With this, he offers a wonderful explanation of the word "ha'umnam": it says in Pirkei Avot, "I found nothing better for the body than silence." Silence is a great virtue, but David notes that this applies only to bodily matters, not to matters of Heaven (milei d'shmaya); in matters of Heaven, quite the opposite, one must speak up. And this is the meaning: Ha'umnam - it is true that elem, making oneself like a mute, is generally a good thing; but in this case, "tzedek tedaberun" - here it is far better to speak up and speak righteousness, "in righteousness shall you judge your fellow," to judge righteously and give the benefit of the doubt. Why, then, did you not tell Saul that in truth David does not seek his life? Do not say that silence is a mitzvah in every situation - in this case, speaking righteousness is what is demanded of a person.
The Malbim likewise interprets "elem" as derived from alumot (sheaves), though not in the sense of a court convening. According to him, David is voicing an astonishment: How is it possible for two contradictory things to be bound together in a single sheaf? And what are these opposing things? Here the Malbim teaches us that the clauses of the verse are parallel. As we have explained several times, when there are four clauses, the continuation of the first is the third, and the continuation of the second is the fourth. Here: "Ha'umnam elem tzedek tedaberun" ("Do you indeed speak righteousness in a bundle") continues into "Af belev olot tif'alun" ("Even in your heart you work iniquities"); and "meisharim tishpetu bnei adam" ("do you judge uprightly, sons of men") continues into "ba'aretz chamas yedeichem tefalesun" ("in the land your hands weigh out violence").
And this is the explanation: with your mouth you speak righteousness, constantly chanting about justice and rebuking others to act justly - these were the men of the royal court, distinguished individuals through whom the king upholds his kingdom and justice with righteousness. But what is in the heart? "Even in your heart you work iniquities" - olot means injustices (avlot). The heart contradicts the speech: with your mouth you preach righteousness, yet in your heart you harbor wicked thoughts and perpetrate injustice. And not only that: "do you judge uprightly, sons of men" - you judge the thieves in order to rescue the robbed from the hands of the oppressor, yet on the other hand, "in the land your hands weigh out violence" - you yourselves pave the way for violence in the land, openly and publicly. I have never seen, David says, such a glaring contradiction between words and deeds: toward others you are judges of righteousness, but when it comes to me, you proliferate violence in the land.
The Malbim explains more deeply: Tzedek (justice) is always spoken of in the context of the statutes of law; its setting is the court of law - to judge righteously. Meisharim (equity), on the other hand, is akin to acting beyond the strict requirement of the law, according to fairness and integrity, even where the letter of the law does not obligate it, and this is a higher level than tzedek. It is usually applied to speech and reproof, as in "and he shall judge the poor with righteousness" - that is legal judgment, and continuing, "and reprove with equity." And behold, they went even further: in their speech they reproved according to strict justice, and in their legal rulings they judged according to equity, which is even higher than justice - how scrupulous and exacting they appeared! Yet when it came to David, they did everything in reverse.
אַף־בְּלֵב עוֹלֹת תִּפְעָלוּן בָּאָרֶץ חֲמַס יְדֵיכֶם תְּפַלֵּסוּן׃ - Indeed, in heart you work injustices; in the earth you weigh out the violence of your hands.
"In heart you work injustices" - referring to wrongful deeds, as explained. "And in the earth you weigh out the violence of your hands" - you make things heavy and decisive through the violence of your hands, as though this violence carries great weight, weighing it on the scale and tipping the balance with it. And what does tefalesun mean? The Ibn Ezra explains: you carry out this violence covertly, like someone who aligns his action with a plumb line and scale, making it seem as though this is precisely what the law requires.
Consider a real-life example to make this easier to understand: it is like the High Court of Justice, which carries out all its injustices while hiding behind learned legal arguments. It just so happens that these arguments are always against Sephardim, against observant Jews who keep the Torah and mitzvot, against the settlers, always against anyone whose agenda differs from that of the High Court, against our traditional Judaism, and always in favor of the Reform movement and liberal organizations. When you come to argue against them, they tell you it is all based on legal doctrines: human rights, a person's right to their body, women's rights - there is no end to rights and flimsy legal arguments - yet it always hides behind justice, behind equity, behind the law. They tell you that demolishing terrorists' homes harms someone living there, when dealing with someone who cut down innocent lives in their prime and when the demolition serves as a vital deterrent. Here people are dying, while over there someone is troubled by a wall - and everything is wrapped in reasoned legal arguments, in the name of justice and equity. This is "you weigh out the violence of your hands": committing injustices, while presenting everything as aligned with a straight plumb line of justice and law.
The Radak cites Midrash Shocher Tov: What is the meaning of "Indeed, in heart you work injustices"? What does "indeed" (*af*) signify? The heart was created solely for truth, as it is written, "and speaks truth in his heart" - yet you, even in the heart, work injustices. To explain the deeper meaning: even when an ordinary person lies, he usually lies with his mouth, outwardly, but deep inside he knows that his words are false. That is the case with a decent, ordinary person, not someone so warped that he constructs theories for himself and then actually comes to believe them. God made man upright and created his heart straight. This was the accusation against them: the place that is meant to serve as a person's inner compass, his plumb line, the voice that proves to him he is lying even while he spins tales to the outside world - you have distorted and twisted it so severely that even in your heart you work injustice. The lie seems straight in your eyes; you feel no shame at all. You repeated the lie so many times that you began to believe it, and the falsehood took up residence in your heart.
Likewise, "in the earth you weigh out the violence of your hands" - along the lines of the Ibn Ezra: you proclaim it throughout the land and make it palatable to people through persuasive arguments. There will always be some demagogue to justify any injustice; nowadays everyone has a spokesperson, and the spokesperson will always find ways to say that all these injustices are necessary and that there is no other choice, so that it appears to have been done with a scale and with integrity. What was the well-oiled propaganda machine of Goebbels, his associates, and *Der Stürmer*? How did they reach a state where they could herd people into gas chambers while Germany stayed silent - and not only stayed silent, but actively participated? The answer: by successfully convincing people that cockroaches are treated with one pesticide and Jews with another. By dripping the message again and again that these were not human beings at all, but a species of beasts and vermin, that there was no choice and no alternative - until everyone concluded that this was how one must act. This is the meaning: they made injustices palatable through reasoned, intellectual explanations, and through this, people bought into their words and believed those lies.
In *Tehillot Maharitz*, Rav Dushinsky offers another explanation: "Indeed, in heart you work injustices" - I have clear proof that your wicked deeds are not unintentional. Sometimes a person harms his fellow unintentionally, without any desire to cause harm; but with you, the injustices are premeditated, carried out according to an organized plan. And what is the proof? "In the earth you weigh out the violence of your hands." We have a principle: anything done with precision and exact measure is planned.
One undeniable proof that the Holy One, blessed be He, created man is the precise way he is constructed: the eyes are above, the mouth is lower, everything is centered in the head, the hands move with precision, and the entire synchronization of the digestive system works seamlessly. When you see something made with such precision, it did not happen by itself. If someone were to find a shard of a Coca-Cola bottle on the moon, no one would claim that an explosion occurred there that melted the sand and coincidentally formed that shape; they would immediately say that someone had been there. Design points to a designer, period.
And this is what David is saying: I look and see that your violence is "weighed out," measured and precise like a scale. You have a coherent doctrine, you have an orderly plan, with nothing lacking and nothing superfluous. Such a thing happens only in a premeditated and calculated manner, and one cannot say about it, "Excuse me, I made a mistake, it was unintentional." Therefore, "Indeed, in heart you work injustices" - the injustices stem from the heart; you have organized plans in your heart on how to cause harm and inflict evil. And the proof is that in the earth you weigh out the violence of your hands; with precision and careful calculation, you carry out your violence.
This psalm is David's outcry against the instigators - Avner, Doeg, and their companions - who spread false accusations after the incident of the corner of the cloak and the incident of the spear and the water jug. "Do you indeed speak righteousness in silence?": Has justice fallen silent from your mouths (Rashi), or if you were gathered together (*aluma*) to judge, would you truly judge uprightly (Radak)? And according to the Alshich, while silence is good for the body, it is not so in matters of Heaven, where one is obligated to speak righteousness. The Malbim reveals the contradiction bound in a single bundle: righteousness on their lips, yet injustice in their hearts; uprightness in judicial pronouncements, yet violence in actual deed. "You weigh out" - the wrongdoing is cloaked in arguments as straight as a plumb line (Ibn Ezra), seasoned for the public with sophisticated explanations until the falsehood is accepted. And most severe of all: "even in the heart" - for even the inner compass created for truth has been warped, and falsehood has taken up residence within it. And from the meticulous calculation in their deeds, it is evident that this is no mere error, but deliberate design - and design points to a designer.