מַשְׂכִּיל לְאֵיתָן הָאֶזְרָחִי׃ - A Maskil of Eitan the Ezrachite.
Chazal expound that "Eitan" refers to Avraham Avinu, and "HaEzrachi" is related to the word mizrach (east) - "Who aroused righteousness from the east," which refers to Avraham. But that is a homiletical interpretation (derashah); the Radak brings the plain meaning of the text (peshat), as we have already seen above: just as it is said of King Shlomo, "And he was wiser than all men, than Eitan the Ezrachite" - Eitan the Ezrachite is Eitan the son of Zerach, the son of Yehudah. This is how Targum Yonatan renders it, and it is explicitly stated in Divrei HaYamim: "And the sons of Zerach: Zimri, and Eitan, and Heiman." And he was one of the wise men of Israel.
Eitan composed this psalm concerning the prolonged exile, in which the kingdom of the House of David was uprooted. In exile, the kingdom of the House of David - the pride and glory of Israel - ceased, and with the coming of the Mashiach, the exile will be gathered in and the kingdom will be restored. Therefore, the psalmist's entire lament is over the fact that no king has arisen from the seed of David. For this reason, the text specifically states, "A Maskil of Eitan the Ezrachite," the son of Zerach, the son of Yehudah - the psalmist is from the tribe of Yehudah, and he therefore mourns the absence of the kingdom of Yehudah.
The Malbim explains that the psalm was composed in exile, and is founded upon the covenant that the Holy One, Blessed is He, made with the House of David - a covenant that appears, as it were, to have been broken, since there is currently no ruler over Israel from the seed of David. The psalmist takes this matter as an analogy for Hashem's general providence over the world. Hashem's governance of the world is based upon two attributes: chesed (lovingkindness) and emunah (faithfulness). Likewise, the covenant with David is founded upon chesed and emunah. Just as the Holy One, Blessed is He, guides the universe with lovingkindness and truth, so too He maintains a specific providence guided by lovingkindness and faithfulness, which is the kingdom of the House of David. The microcosm reflects the macrocosm: the kingdom of David is a mirror for the governance of the entire universe.
And over this, the psalmist cries out bitterly: The lovingkindness and faithfulness of universal providence still endure - the world stands firm, and the laws of nature operate continuously. If so, why have the lovingkindness and faithfulness of the kingdom of the House of David, which were promised in the very same manner, ceased and vanished?
חַסְדֵי יְהֹוָה עוֹלָם אָשִׁירָה לְדֹר וָדֹר אוֹדִיעַ אֱמוּנָתְךָ בְּפִי׃ - I will sing of Hashem's lovingkindness forever; to all generations I will make known Your faithfulness with my mouth.
There is a dispute among the grammarians as to whether the meteg beneath the chet causes the samech to be vocalized or not - that is, whether to read "חַסְדֵי" (chasdei) or "חַסְדֵּי" (chasdē, with a dagesh in the dalet). Some grammarians maintain that it should be read "חַסְדֵי", and this is certainly the Sephardic custom, as well as the view of Rav Mazuz. Among Yemenite Jews, the matter is subject to debate: their general rule is always to read "חַסְדֵּי" - as in "chasdē edno yazkir" - yet the Mahariatz rules that this chapter is an exception and is read "חַסְדֵי". Rav Tzuberi, as is his way in many instances, disagrees with the Mahariatz and asserts that Chapter 89 is not an exception, and one reads it here as in every other place, "חַסְדֵּי". Indeed, this is how most Yemenites practice, making no change in this chapter.
Here the Malbim lays the foundation for this entire lengthy psalm of fifty-three verses. Chesed (lovingkindness) is that which one gives without any prior promise, out of pure generosity of heart - not out of obligation and not in exchange for anything. Emunah (faithfulness), on the other hand, denotes truth and reliability: "I promised, and I fulfilled; I am true to what I said." Emunah follows a promise: when someone obligates himself and provides, or when the Holy One, Blessed is He, says, "Give and you will receive," and you gave and received - this is not an unearned gift, but faithfulness. Chesed, by contrast, is giving without prior promise and without any obligation whatsoever.
According to this, the general preservation of the world through the laws of nature stems from the attribute of emunah (faithfulness). Why? Because once the Holy One, blessed be He, established the laws of nature, those laws remain faithful to their mission, and their functioning is constant. Once it was set that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius, it will always boil at 100 degrees; no one will ever claim he heated water to 500 degrees and it failed to boil. Once gravity was woven into nature, a stone thrown into the air will always fall; it cannot suddenly decide to fly. The laws of nature are faithful to their Source, faithful to the framework in which the Creator established them. Hashem decreed that rain fall in its season, that there be summer and winter - an unalterable law.
We have already learned the principle taught by the Ramchal in Daas Tevunos, that the Holy One, blessed be He, willed that nature function consistently so that man could guide his actions accordingly. Many of our everyday decisions rest upon our knowledge of nature's fundamentals, even in matters we take entirely for granted. When a person steps out to cross the street and sees an oncoming car, all his calculations rely on ingrained assumptions about nature: how long it will take me to cross, how quickly a car moving at that speed will reach me, and whether I have enough time. We do not pull out a calculator and crunch numbers - it all comes from prior knowledge. And why do we instruct children not to cross alone? Because they lack precisely this awareness: they do not yet have the experience to know that crossing takes a second and a quarter while the car will arrive in one second. We are fortunate that the laws of nature are constant. Imagine if they were unpredictable, and one's walking suddenly slowed to a crawl - before crossing the street, he would cross over into the Next World. All our actions rely on the certainty that nature behaves predictably.
Moreover, all scientific research is founded on the constancy of nature. A researcher who says, "I achieved such-and-such in the laboratory," but when asked to replicate the experiment replies, "It only works for me, only in my lab" - such a person is not a scientist but an impostor, and no one would take him seriously. Scientific research means research that anyone, anywhere, can reproduce: the same substances in identical quantities will produce the same reaction in any laboratory in the world. This is the very meaning of natural laws: Hashem established laws that are faithful, constant, true, and immutable. Were He to change them continually, He would, as it were, compromise His emunah - establishing a rule only to discard it. It emerges that the laws by which the world operates reflect the attributes of truth and faithfulness.
In contrast, when the Holy One, blessed be He, performs a wondrous miracle, this stems not from truth and emunah, but from chesed (loving-kindness). By the laws of nature, the sea is not meant to split; it had never split before, and there was no natural reason for it to do so - it runs contrary to nature. When it did split, it was solely an act of His chesed: Hashem performed an act of pure kindness to bring His nation safely through the sea. He had never made a natural guarantee to split the sea for us; that He did so was purely an act of grace. It is these two distinct modes of divine providence that the Psalmist addresses in our chapter.
"The loving-kindness of Hashem I will sing forever (olam)" refers to the miraculous guidance, which represents chesed. "To all generations (l'dor vador) I will make known Your faithfulness with my mouth" refers to the constant, natural order, which represents emunah. Here we must examine the wording carefully: of chesed he sings "olam," while of emunah he proclaims "l'dor vador." The Malbim has repeatedly pointed out that there is a fundamental distinction between "olam" and "dor vador": "olam" denotes continuous, indivisible time, like an unbroken straight line; "dor vador" denotes segmented time - generation after generation, like a dashed line.
Logic would seem to suggest the exact reverse: for emunah - the preservation of the world through the constant laws of nature - it would have been appropriate to say "olam," since nature functions continuously. For chesed - the miraculous order that does not operate continuously, for the Holy One, blessed be He, does not perform miracles without interruption, but rather bestows supernatural favors from generation to generation - it would have been fitting to say "l'dor vador." Why, then, does the verse state the opposite?
The Malbim explains: We already addressed this very question earlier, on chapter 36, verse 6, "Hashem, Your kindness is in the heavens, Your faithfulness reaches the skies," and the resolution given there applies equally here. There too, the terms seem reversed: "the heavens" refer to the lower celestial sphere, the realm of the natural order, where it would have seemed appropriate to say "Your faithfulness"; while "the skies" (shechakim) - the higher realm, where the manna is prepared for the righteous - represent the supernatural dimension, where it would have seemed fitting to speak of "Your kindness." Yet the Torah comes to teach us that this is not so: even the natural order fluctuates according to human deeds, whether for punishment or for reward.
This is a profound realization. When the Torah states, "If you walk in My statutes... then I will give you your rains in their season" - what is changing here? Nature itself. One might have thought that nature is rigid and constant, representing emunah, whereas miracles are what vary. Scripture teaches us: You are mistaken. Nature itself shifts according to human actions. The Holy One, blessed be He, directs the natural world for our benefit when we act properly, and, Heaven forbid, withholds it when we turn astray. It turns out that natural occurrences also function as reward and punishment, and are far less static than one might imagine.
Conversely, the chesed that appears temporary and incidental is, in truth, deeply permanent. Our Sages teach: The Holy One, blessed be He, made a condition with the sea at the very time of Creation that it would split for Israel. Thus, the miracle was not an impromptu, temporary innovation; it was woven into the very fabric of Creation from the beginning. So too, our Sages taught that the mouth of the earth, the mouth of the well, and the mouth of the donkey were all created during twilight on the eve of the first Shabbat. Are such miracles merely transient, or are they permanent? They are permanent, engraved into the primal foundations of the world.
We find, therefore, an extraordinary paradox: that which seems most fixed - the rainfall and the cycle of nature - is actually contingent upon human deeds; while that which seems fleeting - the miraculous act of chesed - was already fixed during the Six Days of Creation. For this reason, the verse says, "The loving-kindness of Hashem I will sing forever (olam)": the miraculous guidance is fixed for all time, rooted in the dawn of Creation, and is not merely an ad hoc response to a single generation. In contrast, "to all generations (l'dor vador) I will make known Your faithfulness": the functioning of the natural order depends on the conduct of each generation - a generation whose deeds are upright receives abundant natural blessings, while a stubborn and rebellious generation causes the heavens to be shut up so that no rain falls.
People do not compose songs about natural things; they merely report them. Today, of course, people write songs about everything that moves, and it doesn't take much imagination either: open a dictionary, pull out words and string them together, and who will notice that nonsense is being said? On the contrary, people might even think something profound was expressed, the proof being that I don't understand it! This does not refer to the true poets of earlier times who spoke with substance. The same goes for painters: once, a person painted and you saw a picture, but today it is just scribbles, "abstract" - we have become a world of falsehood. A person piles up nonsense and calls it something "high-level," scribbles something his child could have drawn better, and tells you: this is art, you just don't understand art.
In any case, this is the precision: "I will sing of the kindnesses of Hashem forever" - one sings about them because they are not natural phenomena, but rather the aspect of Hashem's kindness, and yet they remain constant in the world. But "Your faithfulness," which is the daily routine of nature - the sun rising and setting, rain, and the like - is not the subject of song, but rather "I will make known": I recount it to generation after generation.
In Tehillot Maharit, he asks: How can a person say, "I will sing of the kindnesses of Hashem forever"? After all, he does not live forever; how long does a person live - up to one hundred and twenty years? Rather, if a person transmits and makes known the kindnesses of Hashem to his children, and his children recount them to their children after them, it turns out that through this, he sings of Hashem's kindness forever. True, I personally cannot sing forever, but "to all generations I will make known Your faithfulness with my mouth" - I will inform my children, and they their children, and they their children. The kindness of Hashem in taking us out of Egypt - those who left Egypt are no longer with us, yet we still sing about it, by virtue of their having made it known to their children, down to our own fathers who told us. And by virtue of "to all generations I will make known," it is possible to sing to Hashem forever.
כִּי־אָמַרְתִּי עוֹלָם חֶסֶד יִבָּנֶה שָׁמַיִם תָּכִן אֱמוּנָתְךָ בָהֶם׃ - For I said: The world is built on kindness; in the heavens You establish Your faithfulness.
Radak explains: I thought that the kindness shown to David - giving the kingship to him and his descendants after him - would be built forever and never cease, that it would be an eternal kindness, just like the heavens in which You established Your faithfulness and which endure forever. This is the meaning of "as the days of the heavens above the earth": just as the heavens endure, so David's kingdom would endure. And Rashi explains: what You promised David through Natan the prophet, "I have made a covenant with My chosen one" to establish his seed forever, as we find in Sefer Shmuel. If so, I was certain that this promise would remain forever - so why do I see that it is not being fulfilled?
The Malbim adds: At the time of Creation, the Holy One, blessed be He, created His world through the revelation of these two attributes. The beginning of Creation stemmed from the attribute of chessed (kindness) - to whom was He indebted when He created the world? In return for what was it given? To whom had He promised anything? It was absolute chessed, "the world is built on kindness," with no prior obligation and no prior promise; likewise, He established the laws of nature through pure kindness. But after He created the world in His kindness and set its laws during the six days of Creation, the attribute of emunah (faithfulness) was established: the continued existence of created beings and the perpetuation of natural laws throughout the generations exist by virtue of His having, as it were, promised their survival. Thus, already at Creation you see the combination: He began with kindness and continued with truth and faithfulness, as if promising that the laws of nature would endure forever and never cease.
The Malbim continues: The fixed laws of nature are "from the heavens," meaning from the sphere of the celestial orbs downward. But above the heavens is already a lofty spiritual realm, which he terms "the intellective realms," referring to the angels. An angel is termed a "separate intellect" (sechel nivdal) - as discussed several times, in the terminology of the early authorities, angels are called separate intellects: pure intellect without a body. Man possesses both intellect and a body, whereas an angel is intellect alone, separated from a physical body. There, above the heavens, is the realm of wonder - an elevated, non-fixed reality. Nature, by contrast, is the material reality, the realm of truth and faithfulness. This is the meaning of "in the heavens You establish Your faithfulness": the heavens represent the natural order - sun, moon, stars, galaxies, the entire physical realm - and in them rests Your faithfulness to uphold their laws. Therefore, it does not say "You establish Your kindness in them," for it is not speaking here of what lies above the heavens or of the higher spiritual chessed, but rather of the physical world, wherein there is faithfulness, for Hashem is faithful to maintain His world.
כָּרַתִּי בְרִית לִבְחִירִי נִשְׁבַּעְתִּי לְדָוִד עַבְדִּי׃ - I have made a covenant with My chosen one; I have sworn to David My servant.
"I have made a covenant with My chosen one" - this is what Hashem told David through Natan the prophet, "and I will establish his throne forever." "My chosen one" - the one I selected, as in the phrase "and He chose David." The very statement itself is already tantamount to an oath: with flesh and blood, an oath is required for one to be confident that it will be fulfilled, and even then there is no certainty; but with the Holy One, blessed be He, from the moment He speaks, it is considered "I have sworn to David My servant." Radak continues that this is part of the Psalmist's bewilderment: Master of the Universe, why do the heavens endure, yet the kingdom of David, to which You swore, does not endure?
The Malbim explains: What we perceive regarding kindness and faithfulness in the world at large - that kindness is the creation of the world and faithfulness is the natural laws that sustain it - we have received from the prophets that this extends to individuals as well; one can speak of kindness and faithfulness regarding an individual. The prime example is King David: "I have made a covenant with My chosen one" - Hashem chose him, and what did David do to earn this? Nothing. He was chosen by Hashem, not out of consideration of his deeds nor because he was worthy and fitting - this is the attribute of chessed, an outpouring of favor with no correlation to deeds. Thus we pray for Hashem's chessed to bestow good upon us even when we are not worthy. In contrast, "I have sworn to David My servant" - this is the aspect of faithfulness, which is giving what is deserved according to truth: because he is His servant, clinging to Hashem through all the troubles and trials he underwent and serving his Creator, he deserved the promise. It is exactly as with the world: its beginning was in kindness, when He was indebted to no one, and subsequently He enacted fixed laws, which are faithfulness. So it was with David: initially "My chosen one" through kindness, and then "My servant" through promise and faithfulness, in accordance with his deeds. Just as in the macrocosm - the universe - so in the microcosm - man.
עַד־עוֹלָם אָכִין זַרְעֶךָ וּבָנִיתִי לְדֹר־וָדוֹר כִּסְאֲךָ סֶלָה׃ - I will establish your seed forever, and build up your throne to all generations. Selah.
Just as Natan the prophet said, "Hashem will make you a house" - and this is "and build your throne for generation to generation": the building of the house refers to sons and grandsons forever. It certainly does not mean that He took wooden planks and built a physical throne that would endure for generations, but rather it is a metaphor. Since a king sits upon his throne, when one wishes to express that his kingdom will endure, one says that his throne will remain established. And this is what we pray for in "Et tzemach David avdecha" - that the Holy One, blessed be He, establish the throne anew, meaning the kingdom of the House of David.
The Malbim notes the precise distinction here between "ad olam" (forever) and "dor vador" (from generation to generation): "ad olam" is continuous time without interruption, whereas "dor vador" refers to time divided into separate generations. "Forever I will establish your seed" - David's lineage will endure forever without interruption, an eternal continuity. But "and build your throne for generation to generation" - the throne is not promised continuously, and you see with your own eyes that we do not have the kingdom of the House of David today. There is a generation that has it, and there is a generation that does not. Whenever "dor vador" is written, it does not mean an unbroken continuity, but when "ad olam" is written, it refers to one complete, continuous sequence.
And indeed, so it is: even today, descendants of King David are among us. And when we await Mashiach, we do not await David himself, but Mashiach ben David. It is written that had David not stumbled regarding Batsheva, we would have awaited David himself as Mashiach; but once he stumbled, we await Mashiach who will arise from his lineage. And where is he? He lives among us. In every generation there is a person worthy of being Mashiach, descended from David's dynasty, and the moment a directive is issued from Above, he is revealed; it is possible that even he himself does not know. And if not - not. It turns out that the lineage is forever and never ceases, but the actual kingship - "your throne" - is for generation to generation. And "Selah," according to the Malbim, signifies that the psalmist has concluded this matter (whereas according to other commentators, Selah means forever), and here he moves on to another subject.
וְיוֹדוּ שָׁמַיִם פִּלְאֲךָ יְהֹוָה אַף־אֱמוּנָתְךָ בִּקְהַל קְדֹשִׁים׃ - "And the heavens shall praise Your wonder, Hashem, even Your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones."
Here the psalmist transitions to the second part of the psalm. Even the "assembly of the holy ones" above the heavens - the realm of miraculous providence - also praise Your faithfulness. That is, they also activate the laws of nature in such a way that they are joined with wondrous providence; and miracles as well, as we have said, are a predetermined system of providence - for the Holy One, blessed be He, already stipulated with the sea from the six days of Creation that it would split. Thus, in actual practice: the things that appear to you fixed in nature are also subject to supernatural providence based on human deeds, whether rain or other matters, which is the aspect of wonder (pele). And likewise in the "assembly of the holy ones," which is the supernatural governance of the angels, there is "Your faithfulness" - that which Hashem decreed from the beginning to be so.
The Chasam Sofer asks: seemingly it should have said "gam emunatecha" (also Your faithfulness) in the assembly of the holy ones; why does it say "af"? After all, our Sages taught that whoever opens with the word "af" does not end well - the serpent opened with "af": "Even though (af ki) God said, you shall not eat of any tree of the garden" (Bereishis 3:1), opening with "af" and meeting an ill end. (This calls to mind the well-known riddle on "Judges and officers shall you appoint for yourself in all your gates" - but isn't it written "kings," and two kings cannot share a single crown? The first answer is: it does not say "kings" at all! So too here, one answer might have been that it does not say "af" - except that here, it actually does say it.)
Rather, says the Chasam Sofer, the departure of the righteous is called a wonder, as it says, "And Hashem will make extraordinary (ve-hifla) your plagues" (Devarim 28:59), which Chazal interpret as referring to the departure of the righteous. And this is "And the heavens shall praise Your wonder, Hashem": in heaven they give praise to You, Master of the Universe, when You perform this wonder and take the righteous, for Hashem rejoices and is glad when the soul of a pure, righteous person returns to Him, and in heaven they rejoice that the tzaddik has arrived above. But down below, "af emunatecha bikhal kedoshim" - for us it is wrath (af), for us it is pain and sorrow over the departure of the tzaddik. It is comparable to a righteous person moving from one city to another: in the place he has left they grieve, while in the place he has arrived they rejoice.
Psalm 89 was composed in exile, lamenting the length of the exile and the cessation of the Davidic dynasty, authored by Eitan HaEzrachi of the tribe of Yehudah. The psalm rests upon two attributes of divine governance: chesed - giving without prior commitment, which is wondrous providence and the very origin of the world's creation; and emunah (faithfulness) - truth and loyalty to a promise, which is the fixed laws of nature. The novel insight here is that what appears fixed (nature) changes according to human deeds, and what appears temporary (the miracle) was already established during the six days of Creation - hence "I will sing of the kindnesses of Hashem forever" and "to generation after generation I will make known Your faithfulness." These same two attributes are also present in the covenant with David: "My chosen one" through chesed, "My servant" through emunah. Hence the psalmist's outcry: if the chesed and emunah of the world's governance remain steadfast, why have the chesed and emunah of the kingdom of the House of David been suspended? And the answer is hinted at in the distinction between "Forever I will establish your seed" - the lineage endures forever - and "and build your throne for generation to generation" - that the actual monarchy is apportioned to generations, and in every generation there is someone worthy of it, until Mashiach ben David arrives.