Better is One Day

Remember that lame praise and worship song? Know where it comes from? Psalm 84.11 (84.10 in English), the NIV reads-

Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than dwell in the tents of the wicked.

Most translations (CEV, ESV, JPS, KJV, and NRSV at least) do more or less the same thing. However to accomplish this, the translators must rearrange the text of the BHS. To follow more clearly, open up your BHS to pages 1166 and 1167. A digital text will display the verse in a linear fashion and not include the “paragraphing” of the BHS’ editors. Here’s the biblical text.

Psalm 84.11
כי טוב־יום בחצריך    מאלף בחרתי
הסתופף בבית אלהי    מדור באהלי־רשע

If we were to arrange the text the way most translations think of them, we would see בחרתי move and a hole (represented by אאא) after אלף .

כי טוב־יום בחצריך    מאלף אאא
בחרתי הסתופף בבית אלהי   מדור באהלי־רשע

In English-
Better is one day in your courtyards than a thousand ???
I would rather be a doorkeeper…

The BHS clearly arranges בחרתי on the first line. However, these translations rearrange the text for their preferred reading with no clear reason (other than the text doesn’t make sense to me the way it is).

Here, we offer a translation and explanation of the verse that does not rearrange the text.

Psalm 84.11 – Translation
For better is one day in your courtyards than a thousand (days in a place that) I would have chosen. (For better is it) to lie like a beggar at the doorway of my God’s house, than it is to live in the tent of wicked ones.

Two things-
1. Within the immediate context of this verse (courtyards) and the larger context of the psalm (v2-5), it is clear that the concept place is in play. The comparison made by the preposition (מ(ן creates a logical hole that is easily (and automatically, we dare say) filled by the language user. What’s the hole(s)? Better is one day in your courtyards than a thousand _________ I would choose. If these lines were synonymously parallel, we would expect something very similar to day in your courtyards to fill the empty spot. But as these lines are being compared in an antithetical way, we should expect something opposite of day in your courtyards. And what’s opposite one day in the courtyards of Yahweh? Perhaps a thousand days in some place that I would choose.

There’s no need to move the text around. It makes sense just fine in Hebrew, though in English, we have to fill in the hole.

2. This reading leaves the hitpolel infinitive construct הסתופף starting the second line of the verse, just like the Bible does. How then are we to make sense of the phrase to lie like a beggar at the doorway of my God’s house starting a poetic line? By finishing the verse.

In this second line we have another comparison made by (מ(ן, thus it is logical to read the כי טוב of the first line of the verse as also elliptically beginning the second line, thus-
(For better is it) to lie like a beggar…

Sometimes texts present problems created by the transmission process and they need to be amended. And other times, we just need to think longer and leave the text alone.