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Blow the trumpet at the New Moon,
At the [a]full moon, on our feast day.

For this is a statute for Israel,
An ordinance of the God of Jacob.

He established it for a testimony in [b]Joseph
When He went throughout the land of Egypt.
I heard the language [of One whom] I did not know, saying,

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Footnotes

  1. Psalm 81:3 Or New Moon, lit covering, i.e. when the moon is “covered” or hidden. This was taken by the ancient rabbis to refer to the festival of the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashana).
  2. Psalm 81:5 Curiously, in this one verse Joseph’s name has an extra letter, an “h.” In an example of rabbinic lore, the ancient rabbis said that because Joseph sanctified the divine name in private (by resisting Potiphar’s wife) he merited having one letter of the divine name (Yahweh) added to his. Another rabbinic explanation is that when Pharaoh was about to elevate Joseph to power, the astrologers demanded that Joseph speak the 70 languages of the world. The angel Gabriel came to teach him, but Joseph was unable until Gabriel added to his name the extra letter from the divine name.

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