Psalms 131 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Key Background

The point of naming a weaned child rather than a nursing one is that the child is no longer crying to be fed, so its contentment comes from the mother's presence itself rather than from getting something. Children in this culture were typically weaned around the age of three, which is late by modern habits and makes the child old enough to choose to be still. A psalm assigned to a king that refuses grand ambitions is unusual in the ancient world, where royal inscriptions from Egypt and Mesopotamia routinely boasted about the ruler's reach.