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Psalm 87 · a question people ask

Who says "All my springs are in you" (87:7), and what does it mean?

In the text

In the WEB it is "Those who sing as well as those who dance" (87:7). The Hebrew line is short, and it has no verb for say; the WEB supplies it. It names two groups. The first is those who sing, from shir, the verb for singing. The second is a form of a verb that Brown-Driver-Briggs gives as "play the pipe, pipe", and for the plain stem, the stem printed here, it gives the words "as well the singers as the pipe-players"; for another stem, the Polel, the same entry gives "dancers". The WEB has those who dance. These notes set both beside each other and don't choose between them. The psalm doesn't explain springs (tap springs), or say more about whose they are than that the singers and dancers say my. What it does show is where the springs are: in you, the same Hebrew word as about you in "Glorious things are spoken about you, city of God" (87:3). These notes don't add a meaning the psalm doesn't give.

The verses

“Glorious things are spoken about you, city of God. Selah.”
Psalm 87:3 · World English Bible
“Those who sing as well as those who dance say, “All my springs are in you.””
Psalm 87:7 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Psalm 87

Psalm 87: This one was born there

Psalm 87 names Rahab, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre and Ethiopia, and then says, "This one was born there" (Psalm 87:4): the same three Hebrew words the LORD counts when he writes up the peoples (Psalm 87:6). And its last word, in you (Psalm 87:7), is in Hebrew the word it used to speak to the city of God (Psalm 87:3).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions