LBC Principal gives sermon at the Magdalene Chapel in Cambridge
LBC Principal, Rabbi Professor Deborah Kahn-Harris, was invited to take part in ‘The Psalms: Songs for Our Time’ series of sermons.
She delivered her sermon on Psalm 131, entitled ‘A recipe for contentment’ at the Magdalene Chapel in Cambridge on Sunday, 23rd November 2025. Read the full sermon below:
A Recipe for Contentment
Rabbi Professor Deborah Kahn-Harris
Choral Evensong
Magdalene College, Cambridge
23 November 2025
At sixteen I was required to read Voltaire’s Candide at school. I am not sure that at sixteen I truly understood a word of it, but my English teacher insisted that Candide was a work that demanded repetition. ‘Reread it again in ten years,’ she instructed us, ‘and every ten years thereafter.’ She assured us that Voltaire’s message would speak to us differently at different points in our lives and that to truly gain the benefit of it; we would need to remind ourselves of its message as we aged.
I ignored her advice for some decades, but a few years ago in an attempt to move my book group away from the latest middle brow must read, I suggested that we read Candide, for me again, for others for the first time. Would Voltaire’s unrelenting satire of Enlightenment philosophy speak to us, too, as a critique of twenty-first century post-modernity and late-stage capitalism? Voltaire describes a world rife with injustice, both political and religious, as well as gender-based violence and environmental crisis, so not so different from our own. The reviews from my book group were mixed. Some thought Candide ridiculous, oversimplified, but many of us found Voltaire’s relentless skewering of optimism in the face of corrupt authority refreshingly, if not disturbingly, relevant. For among the many shared challenges of both our time and Voltaire’s is the problem of grandeur.
When Candide himself points out that an honest man who they had just met ‘seems to be in a situation far preferable to that of the six kings with whom we had the honour of supping’ [pg. 86], Dr Pangloss, the ever optimistic philosopher replies
“‘Grandeur … is extremely dangerous according to the testimony of philosophers. For, in short, Eglon, the King of Moab, was assassinated by Ehud; Absalom was hung by his hair, and pierced with three darts; King Nadab, the son of Jeroboam, was killed by Baasa; King Ela by Zimri; Ahaziah by Jehu; Athaliah by Jehoiada; King Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, and Zedekiah were led into captivity. …” [pp 86 -7]
If nothing else, Voltaire knows his Hebrew Bible, perhaps better than many of us. Each of these monarchs is brought down in large part as a result of their own hubris, which in varying degrees led to poor leadership, corruption, and abuses of power. But notably missing from Pangloss’s list are some of the most powerful monarch’s in the Hebrew Bible, ones who despite their many successes are no less problematic. Perhaps topping that list ought to come King David.
David, the hero par excellence of the monarchical period, is, like so many biblical figures, deeply flawed. True, he has outstanding military skills, is beloved of the Divine, and cuts a fine figure as a musician and poet. But he is a deeply discontented man, never satisfied with what he does have when something more might be just within his grasp. Take the matter of Bathsheva – David, already married many times over, is a voyeur, always on the lookout for another beautiful woman to possess. And Bathsheva is just within his sightline; the only challenge is that she is already married. But the king’s grand ego worries not about such details. He simply sends her husband to the frontlines to die, so that he might possess her for himself. He might have simply restrained himself, found a way to be content with the women already in his life, but why should a king do that?
Perhaps this very story could lie behind Psalm 131, a tiny jewel of a psalm, tucked deep inside the series of psalms known the Psalms of Ascent (Psalms 120 – 134). They are demarked by the superscription ‘שיר המעלות’ (psalm of ascent), though a handful of them, four to be precise, add לדוד. The additional appellation is grammatically vague; it can have the force either ‘for’ or ‘by’ David. Either way, the king is central to the understanding and interpretation of this psalm. As it is short, let me read it in full, both in Hebrew, for the poetry, and, for clarity, in my own English translation.
שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת לְדָוִד
א יְהֹוָה | לֹא-גָבַהּ לִבִּי וְלֹא-רָמוּ עֵינַי
וְלֹא-הִלַּכְתִּי | בִּגְדֹלוֹת וּבְנִפְלָאוֹת מִמֶּנִּי:
ב אִם-לֹא שִׁוִּיתִי | וְדוֹמַמְתִּי נַפְשִׁי
כְּגָמֻל עֲלֵי אִמּוֹ כַּגָּמֻל עָלַי נַפְשִׁי:
ג יַחֵל יִשְֹרָאֵל אֶל-יְהֹוָה מֵעַתָּה וְעַד-עוֹלָם:
The Psalm of Ascent of David
Eternal One, my heart is not elated and my eyes are not elevated
and I have not engaged with grandeur or wonders beyond me.
Have I not composed and stilled my breath
like a weaned child upon his mother? Like that weaned child is my desire within me.
Hope, Israel, in the Eternal One, from now until forever.
I could spend an hour or more unpicking the translation of the psalm, for the grammar and syntax are complex and contested, not to mention the exact translation of some of the vocabulary. But I am delivering a sermon not a seminar, so if you are interested in those issues, come find me after the service.
Instead, I direct us to the general sentiment, the overall gist of Ps 131. The first verse superficially seems straightforward enough. The psalmist appears to tell us that he (and without a longer digression, the psalms were almost certainly all written by men) isn’t arrogant. But the choice of language is telling. The psalmist might have declared his humility positively. Instead he presents the reader with a series of things he is not. Indeed, the combination of hearts and eyes along with verbs denoting elevation are employed elsewhere, notably in Proverbs and Isaiah, to convey haughtiness. So perhaps we have a case of the psalmist protesting a bit too much. But it is in the second half of this verse where matters become interesting.
To the astute Hebrew reader, the terms ‘גדלות’ (grandeur) and ‘נפלאות’ (wonders) can describe only one biblical figure and it is most certainly not David. Indeed, the most famous use of these terms, similarly in parallel, is from Job 9:10 (a verse which is recited daily in the Jewish evening liturgy)
עֹשֶֹה גְדֹלוֹת עַד-אֵין חֵקֶר וְנִפְלָאוֹת עַד-אֵין מִסְפָּר
Who performs great deeds which cannot be fathomed,/And wondrous things without number.
And who is this figure? None other than God. Only God performs unfathomable deeds and innumerable wonders. The psalmist, who has addressed God directly at the beginning of the verse, suggests through this clever inversion that he in no way regards himself as approaching the grandeur of God. He knows that he is not God and yet, in even broaching the comparison, we, the readers, know that a kernel of something darker, a bigger struggle, lies in this verse. The king, so powerful in his own right, must find a way to differentiate himself from God. And in this separation, the psalmist segues neatly into the second verse.
Verse two is notoriously tricky. Most English translations do not do it justice nor do they render it in ways fully comprehensible. But the thrust of the verse is the psalmist explaining that he has had to learn to still his breath, to control his desires, like a weaned child must learn to do in order to rest peacefully on its mother’s breast.
For those of you who have never weaned a child, I can speak from first-hand experience; it is often not an easy process. First the infant must reach a stage where they can understand that they and their mother are not a single entity. For a young infant, their sense of where they end and others begin is not yet developed. The mother with her nourishing breast is experienced as an extension of the infant’s own selfhood. As such weaning is the means by which the child learns to deal with internal conflicts and to adjust to frustration. According to D W Winnicott, the influential English paediatrician and psychoanalyst, a feeding infant is ‘a bundle of discontent…who has raging lions and tigers inside him’ [Winnicott, The Child, pg 23]. To learn to control such feelings and, hence, be able to lie contended on the mother’s breast is no small matter.
The psalmist, in the guise of king, is telling us something profound about the route to contentment in these two short verses. First, however elevated one’s status (and biblically, for humans, monarchy is the highest status achievable), the first step is to recognise we are not God. When that is achieved, we must learn to still our breath, to calm ourselves, even when our desires are at their strongest, even when they rage inside us, even when our sense of our own grandeur threatens to overwhelm us.
For Candide the response to grandeur is straightforward. As Pangloss drifts off into an endless list, Candide interrupts him. “’I also know,’ said Candide, ‘that we must cultivate our garden.’” [pg 87] And, perhaps, in the end this advice is not so far from that of Psalm 131. The Hebrew word translated here as ‘compose’ appears most closely related the use of the same word in Isaiah, where it refers to the final stage of preparing a field for planting. The term denotes the act of breaking up any large clumps of soil, adding manure, and levelling the surface to prepare for the planting of seeds. The psalmist does the same, deliberately cultivating his breath, preparing himself to be calm, content.
Whether we cultivate a real garden or simply the breath of our own inner garden, the message is clear. Contentment comes not from the relentless pursuit of grandeur and the excesses that inevitably flow from it, but from a stepping back when we are overwhelmed with whatever desires rage within us and simply breathing, in and out, while, as the psalmist enjoins us in the final verse of Ps 131, we find hope.