---
title: Psalms 78:23 (JPS 1917) — And He commanded the skies above, and opened the doors of heaven; · tree and pragmatics
description: And He commanded the skies above, and opened the doors of heaven; Who acts: God. Psalms 78:23 in JPS 1917 with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Psalms 78:23 · JPS 1917

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And He commanded the skies above, and opened the doors of heaven;

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**Who acts:** God · **What happens:** command, open · **To what, where:** skies, doors · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is Psalms 78:23 · JPS 1917 in the English of the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 translation, from Mova's open Bible corpus. The page gives the sentence's syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies, parsed by Mova and checked by a teacher model — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (God), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it. The original of the verse links back to its own tree and to the Targum.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = jps:PSA:1350
# text = And He commanded the skies above, and opened the doors of heaven;
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	commanded	command	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	skies	sky	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
6	above	above	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	opened	open	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	doors	door	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	heaven	heaven	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
14	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **command** | past | God | the skies |  |  |  | above *property* | vn supervision-95.2.2-1 «NP V NP.predicate»: agent=Agent sky=Eventuality |
| 2 | **open** | past | God *not said here* | the doors of heaven |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location door=Theme |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

## The Hebrew of this verse {#hebrew}

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וַיְצַ֣ו שְׁחָקִ֣ים מִמָּ֑עַל וְדַלְתֵ֖י שָׁמַ֣יִם פָּתָֽח׃

[Psalms 78:23: the Hebrew tree, its pragmatics and the Targum →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/ketuvim/PSA.78.23/)

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**Source.** The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text, Jewish Publication Society, 1917, from eBible.org: public domain. Sentence `jps:PSA:1350` of Mova's parse database.

**The tree and the speech act** come from Mova's cycle: the small model's draft, read by a large model as teacher, passed by Mova's gates (Elamur Cosmic License). **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the chapter read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence of the chapter.

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