Form and Meaning in Psalm 131

Which should come first, form-critical analysis or exegesis? Many commentators first attempt to establish the literary form of a text, and then interpret it accordingly. On the face of it, this is the common-sensicaI thing to do: until we know what sort of literature we are dealing with, how can we analyse its meaning? The trouble with doing this with ancient biblical literature is that the genres are not easy to establish. All too often, a scholar decides that a text belongs to a particular genre and then has to rewrite it because some parts sit rather uneasily with what the characteristics of the genre are supposed to be. Thus, with our present Psalm, one recent commentator decides that because, as it stands, it begins with an address to God but lacks a petition, it must be incomplete, "a fragment" ¹. There are no ancient handbooks of Hebrew rhetoric to tell us what the genres actually were. We have to deduce them from the text, and then read the text in the light of the hypothetical genres; a somewhat precariously circular procedure. For this reason, I shall begin with an attempt to expound the text of our Psalm, and defer a verdict on the Form (and related matters, such as dating) for the time being. For the moment I shall simply observe that this short Psalm — "surely one of the most beautiful prayers in the psalter" ² — is usually styled a Psalm of Confidence, like Psalms 16, 23 and 62  ³. Mowinckel thought it a national Psalm of Lamentation, uttered by an individual on behalf of all ⁴. There are those who take the "I" to be the King. It is commonly believed, however, e.g. by Anderson  ⁵, that the "I" in this Psalm is a private individual. Some think that v. 3 was added later. The original Sitz im Leben is controverted. Vv. 1-2 are regarded by Michel⁶ as written in imitation of the sort of moral interrogation that we find at the beginning of an entrance liturgy (e.g. in Psalms 15 and 24). Quell accepts this for 1-2a, but 2b he thinks had a separate origin, being a sentiment to be sung by a female worshipper. The two poems may, in his view, have been deposited (as Mowinckel had suggested that texts may sometimes have been) in the Temple. The two brief poems were subsequently joined together, and v. 3 added, to make the Ascent Psalm that we now have  ⁷. Seybold also strikes a feminist note, arguing that vv. 1-2, if not v. 3 too, are "a personal expression of piety made at the gates of the temple by a woman pilgrim carrying her child" ⁸. H.Seidels, however, takes the Psalm to be a professional pilgrimage song emanating from the circle of the Levites ⁹.

I. Exegesis

V.1a. It has been observed by several commentators that it is remarkable that a Psalm so apparently individual as 131 should have the expression dwdl in its superscription, whereas the following Psalm, which is very much concerned with the Davidic king and his dynasty, should lack it. It seems conceivable that it has wandered through scribal inadvertence from the one Psalm to the other,

particularly since the Targum, the Lucianic recension of LXX, and Jerome"s Psalterium Juxta Hebraeos lack the phrase in this Psalm. The need, however, for kings to be humble is a favourite theme of the "Davidic" Psalms: cf 18,28 [EVV18,27] ("You deliver a humble people, but the haughty eyes you bring down"), 34,7 [EVV 34,6] ("This poor man cried..."), and 101,5 ("A haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not tolerate"). There are other connections too with the monarchy. As noted by de Boer, in 2 Chr 32,25 several of the terms found in our Psalm are used of Hezekiah. Being a proud man (wbl hbg), he was not grateful for the good done to him (wyl( lmg), that is, his recovery from illness¹⁰. We shall say more of this text later, but at the moment it is sufficient to note that a royal reading of the Psalm has a certain plausibility. We may add that Ps 62, with which it has affinities (especially with vv. 2.6 [EVV1.5]]: y#$pn hymwd Myhl)-l) K) and y#$pn ymwd Myhl)l K)), is confidently identified by Eaton ¹¹ as a Royal Psalm. These considerations favour the retention in 131,1a of dwdl.

V. 1b. hwhy. The Psalm begins with an address to the deity, but ends (v. 3) with a call to Israel to trust in God. If v. 3 is integral to the Psalm, rather than a liturgical addition, it is quite possible that the initial invocation to Yhwh is redactional and that the addressee throughout is Israel. In which case, the Psalm could originally have been more in the nature of a personal reflection than a prayer to God. We shall return in due course to the question of the Psalm"s unity.

V. 1b. The Psalmist here, as Beyerlin notes, employs the figure synecdoche, the part (heart; eyes) standing for the whole person. The part mentioned, however, as he shows, is not chosen at random: the Psalmist is speaking of his whole self, but with special reference to his heart and his eyes. He is not haughty in his heart — that is, probably, in his thinking; he is not lifted up in respect of his eyes — that is, probably, in his way of looking at things. The two expressions thus add up to a single thought, the renunciation of arrogance ¹².

V. 1c. twldgb ytklh. The Psalmist could easily here have continued the synecdoche by saying that his feet have not stood on high ground; what he has written is, however, perhaps more elegant. If 131 is a Royal Psalm, the implication may be that it belongs more to a king to serve than to seek self-aggrandizement and glory. Greatness and the marvellous pertain more to God than mankind: God is lwdg and works tw)lpn, Ps 86,10; he alone works twldg tw)lpn, Ps 136,4; it is for the Psalmist to meditate on and recount God"s t)lpn, Pss 9,2 [EVV 9,1]; 26,7; 105,2; 145,5 and his twldg, Ps 145,6. (See also Job 5,9: God"s tldg are unsearchable, his t)lpn innumerable.) Probably, therefore, whether one is a king or not, "to "go about" (b Klh) these normally divine activities is to arrogate divine attributes to oneself" ¹³. In course of time the great matters came to be interpreted as the problems of Greek philosophy (Sir 3,21-24); Keet, indeed, who believes the Psalm to be post-exilic, supposes this to be quite probably the original meaning ¹⁴. Quell, for whom the speaker is a woman, takes the sense to be that she has forsworn theological or cultic reflection, being an unlearned person ¹⁵.

V. 2a. )l-M). This is normally here (as in e.g. 2 Kgs 9,26; Job 1,11) taken to mean "verily, truly, indeed": GKC 149b. (Originally, when used in this sense, the words were supposedly followed by an imprecation.) So, for example, apart from the majority of modern commentators, David Kimhi ¹⁶. G.R. Driver, however, argued for it here meaning "but" (cf the Peshitta and the Syrohexaplar), like the Aram. )l), Syriac "ella" ¹⁷ (cf Ezek 3,6). I favour, however, the usual interpretation. The idiom was no doubt chosen because the )l would pick up the threefold use of the word in v. 1. We may follow Beyerlin ¹⁸, therefore, in here translating it "No!"

ytyw#$ is usually taken, I think rightly, to come from hw#$ I, to be even or level, giving the meaning "I have made level" (as with the ground, in Isa 28,25; and perhaps of quieting mental disturbance at Isa 38,13, though the text and meaning of that verse are very uncertain), or "I have calmed." Jerome (proposui) seemingly took it from hw#$ II = "to set or place", as did Kimhi, who rendered it by the verb My#& ¹⁹, but this is less satisfactory. Emendations such as yt(w#$ I have cried out [cf Ps 30,3 (EVV 30,2)], or ytwx#$ I have bowed down [cf Ps 38,7] (Cheyne), are unnecessary. LXX and Peshitta (I humbled) and Vulgate (humiliter sentiebam, I felt humble) probably have the MT reading, and take the verb to be hw#$ I.

It should be noted, however, that hw#$ I can also mean "to resemble" (cf 2 Sam 22,34; Ps 18,34 [EVV18,33]; Prov 26,4; Dan 5,21), and was taken so here by Symmachus ( e)ci/swsa). We shall return to this point.

Loretz ²⁰ believes that a noun (perhaps ybl) has fallen out after ytyw#$w. This is an attractive suggestion, since it would give a more regular structure to the Psalm, or at least to vv. 1-2, which would consist of four bicola, each displaying parallelism:

1b    O LORD, my heart is not haughty,
        my eyes are not lifted up.

1c    I have not occupied myself with great matters,
with things too wondrous for me.

2a    I have indeed (?) calmed (?) [? my heart]
        and I have quieted (?) my soul.

2b    Like a weaned child on its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul to me.

His understanding of 2b is doubtful, but otherwise the analysis is attractive. I am not persuaded, however, that he is right to emend. The fact that an emendation produces a more regular structure is not conclusive. How do we know that the Hebrew Psalmists operated with strict rules about such things? The text of many of the Psalms that has come down to us must suggest otherwise. It might have been better to write Loretz" version of 2a; but that does not mean that that is what the Psalmist wrote. I think that the Psalm does use parallelism, but that 2a is an imperfect bicolon (or a colon with internal parallelism).

V. 2a. ytmmwdw is supposedly a polal form from Mmd I = be silent, quiet. So Jerome: silere feci. Peshitta does not seem to have anything corresponding to it. LXX and Vulgate have I have exalted, which presumably translates ytmmr (found in a few Hebrew manuscripts). This seems likely to be a misreading. de Boer thinks that this took place because wm) yl( was taken to mean (rightly, he supposes) against its mother²¹. The MT reading is doubtless correct: the Psalmist speaks of his passive self-abandonment to God.

Crow wonders whether the author has chosen the verb Mmd because of its similarity to hmd, "to resemble", a synonym in one of its senses of the verb hw#$. (Symmachus indeed renders it w(moi/wsa) Crow suggests that the Psalmist is punning, using two verbs to express calming or quietening which coincidentally suggest the idea of comparison, by way of introducing the simile of the weaned child²². This seems quite plausible. We may therefore perhaps translate: "I have made my #$pn like something calm, like something quiet."

y#$pn. It is now widely accepted that #$pn (like the Ugaritic npš [as in npš mt, the maw/gorge of Death]) sometimes means neck, throat, gullet, appetite or breathing/speaking apparatus (the meaning of the root being to breathe). KB recognize a number of instances, including several in the Psalter: 44,26; 63,6; 107,9,18; 119,25; 143,6. Dahood identifies still other occurrences, including Pss 7,3; 27,12 and 41,3. No one, however, finds the idea in Ps 131,2, yet this is surely one of the cases where the word #$pn carries some of the connotation of "throat". The Psalmist, having previously been raucous, has now abated his complaining. Thus, as with bl and Myn( there is an element of synecdoche about the use of #$pn. I suggest further that something of the same sort is found in the preceding Psalm: when he says that his #$pn has waited for Yhwh, that it <hopes> in his Master, Ps 130,5-6, the Psalmist is picking up the appeal in v. 2 to the divine Master to hear his voice and the sound of his pleading. Similarly in Ps 62,2.6 [EVV 62,1.5], quoted above, y#$pn hymwd Myhl)-l) K) and y#$pn ymwd Myhl)l K) may carry connotations of making a silent cry to God.

If the #$pn were identical with the "I", as is commonly supposed, how could a relationship between the two be envisaged, even an "imaginary" one, as predicated by Beyerlin ²³? Beyerlin rightly draws a parallel between our Psalm and Ps 42-43 (a single Psalm originally), where the Psalmist addresses his #$pn and calls upon it to wait in hope for Yhwh (the same verb as we have in 131,3). He does not, however, acknowledge how appropriately connotations of "throat" can be predicated of the word #$pn in that Psalm: it yearns and thirsts for God like a hart for waters (42,2-3).

The accentuation, with the word y#$pn carrying the accent "фlи w^eyфred, has a pause after 2a. Quell, in the light of this, argues for taking 2a with verse 1. He contends that the metre also favours this, vv. 1-2a consisting of three phrases in 2+2 metre (hwhy being excluded from the calculation, being in anacrusis), followed by 3+3 in 2b  ²⁴. Metrical calculations are, of course, somewhat speculative ²⁵. Further, the ancient Rabbis also indicate a pause after yty#$w in 2aa, witness the presence of the disjunctive accent "azla l^egarmeh (similarly with the accent shalsheleth magnum after ytklh in 1c), which Quell ignores since it would not help his case. The accentuation in fact of v. 2 is perfectly consistent with its being taken as a unit ²⁶.

V. 2ba. wm) yl( lmgk. lmg means, among other things (e.g. to ripen), something like "to deal fully or adequately with" (BDB). When babies are in question (as in Hos 1,8 and Isa 11,8 and 28,9) the procedure indicated is commonly taken to be weaning. P. de Boer, however, thinks it improbable that yl( here means "on": a local sense "occurs nearly always in connection with places, rivers and the like". When lmg is followed by li(, the sense is "to do something to another person, to deal with someone, to give him what is coming to him, in malam et bonam partem." He therefore translates 2b "just as one does with his mother, thus I have made myself content." He supposes that the Psalmist is referring to a proverb, and he notes a Sumerian saying: "Accept your lot, and make your mother happy; do it quickly and make your god happy"²⁷. I find this distinctly unconvincing: not only, as de Boer acknowedges, is one"s mother seldom in the OT a person to care for, but his translation would surely require emendation. Nevertheless, de Boer has, I suspect, put us on the track of the correct understanding of 2b (see below).

VanGemeren argues that "the word gamul can also mean contented...the essential picture is that of contentment regardless of the age". Thus in Isa 28,9 blxm ylwmg will mean "satisfied with milk", whether of sucklings who have just been satisfied with their mothers' milk or of children who have been weaned off it. In 1 Kgs 11,20 the meaning may be that Genubah"s mother brought him up or adopted, rather than weaned, him in the house of the pharaoh (cf LXX e)ce/qreyen). In Isa 11,8 we read of the lwmg who puts his hand in the viper"s nest, after reference to the suckling who plays near the hole of the cobra. It is not clear, VanGemeren says, whether the two words are virtually synonyms indicating very young children, or whether the lwmg is distinguished from the suckling as a slightly older child who has been weaned. The meaning "satisfied" or "contented" fits well, he argues, for Hebrew proper names such as Gamul, Gamaliel and Gemalli (and Accadian names such as Gamal-ilim and Gamal-Shamash). He therefore translates v.2 "Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul; like a contented/satisfied child (suckling or infant) upon (by) his mother"²⁸. VanGemeren may or may not be right to be suspicious of taking lwmg to mean "weaned" in some of the texts quoted, but, as we shall see, his approach does not help us much with the troublesome 2bb, y#$pn yl( lmgk.

The ancient versions are at one in taking the first lmg to mean a weaned child, and I think we should follow them. 2ba will surely mean "like a weaned child on its mother". That toddlers were carried on a parent"s shoulders is attested by b. Hag 5b-6a (cf ANEP 49). It is true that l( with a person seldom means "on"; it tends to carry a connotation of the burdensome or the oppressive ²⁹. But we have a close parallel to the situation envisaged in our text at Isa 49,22, "they will bring your sons in their bosom, and your daughters will be carried on (l() their shoulders". But why does the Psalmist specify a weaned child rather than a baby? Children were weaned late (as late as three years, in 2 Macc 7,27); the idea may therefore be, as Anderson supposes, that before weaning they got increasingly restless as their mothers found it more and more difficult to satisfy their appetites. A newly weaned child is, therefore, likely to have recently ceased to be raucous, and thus provides the writer with an apt image for his own attainment of quiet contentment ³⁰. The image of the weaned child thus follows well upon the claim that the Psalmist has calmed and silenced his wpn.

Is there any suggestion here of a maternal side to the deity? Does the Psalmist imagine himself as snuggling up to God? The mention here of the mother rather than the father of the child may have been suggested simply by the idea of weaning. On the other hand, maternal affection (or, to speak more accurately, an affection that is more than maternal) is certainly ascribed to God on occasion in the Old Testament³¹, so it may well be implied here too.

V. 2bb. y#$pn yl( lmgk. These words have been the despair of translators and commentators. Most of them fail to translate the article, but this is defensible if it is taken as referring back to the first lmg  ³². The Peshitta renders them, "and like a weaned child, so was my soul to me", which would surely require Nk. "To me" is a possible rendering of yl(, though l( in this sense (=in my eyes: Rashi) is a post-exilic usage (BDB, l( 8) ³³. RV has my soul is with me like a weaned child; NEB and REB as a weaned child clinging to me (they delete the words, though); RSV like a child that is quieted is my soul, which omits yl( and mistranslates lmg  ³⁴. NRSV my soul is like the weaned child that is with me would make sense only if (as suggested by Quell and Seybold) spoken by a worshipper carrying a child ³⁵. I find it hard to believe that a poem would have found its way into the Psalter if it could have been sung only by a minority of the congregation. JB and NJB, as is their wont, translate creatively, unconstrained by the actual Hebrew text: as content as a child that has been weaned and like a little child, so I keep myself. The New Latin Psalter has Sicut parvulus, ita in me est anima mea, which mistranslates lmg and has a dubious rendering of yl(. The translation of l( as "within" was already rejected by BDB as "incorrect". Some take yl( as "within me" at Pss 42,5; 142,4 and 143,4, but very questionably³⁶.

VanGemeren, taking lmg, as we have seen, to mean contented rather than weaned, comes up with the translation "So is my soul contented/satisfied within me"³⁷. This seems to me unsatisfactory on several counts: he is taking k as if it were Nk; he is ignoring the gender of #$pn, which would require hlwmg; he is taking no account of the article with lmg; and he is taking l( in a doubtful sense.

Loretz, as we have seen, takes v. 2 to mean Like a weaned child on its mother; like a weaned child is my soul to me. He finds here the parallelismus membrorum that he detects throughout vv. 1-2. He further ³⁸ finds a formal parallel to Ugaritic usage, as in the tricolon As is the heart of the cow to its calf/ As is the heart of the ewe to its lamb/ So [literally, As] is the heart of Anat after Baal (KTU 1.6 II 28-30). Loretz takes the Psalmist to be using repetition for emphasis, in conformity to long established linguistic usage. He may be right, but if so the Masoretes were presumably in error in pointing the second lmgk in the way that they did. Moreover, Loretz" interpretation entails taking l( in a different sense in the two cola.

Dahood re-points yla(f as yl'(f which, he says, "parses as the Phoenician third-person suffix" (in Isa 52,14, he similarly amends the text, from Kyl( to yk yl() and translates "Like an infant with him is my soul". This seems somewhat contrived.

Some of the ancient versions take the verb lmg in 2bb to mean, as it often does, "to recompense": LXX w(j a)ntapo/disij [al. e3wj a)ntapodw/seij] e)pi th\n yuxh/n mou; Symmachus ou3twj a)ntapodoqei/h th=| yuxh=| mou; Vulgate ita retributio in anima mea; Syrohexaplar "so you did recompense me". Unfortunately, they do not manage to get a satisfactory sense out of the Hebrew text, partly because they take )l-M) to mean "if not." Thus LXX and Vulgate take the Psalmist to say, "If I have not been humble but have exalted [ytmmr] my soul, then, just as a weaned child is to its mother [i.e. a nuisance?], so let retribution come upon my soul" ³⁹. This is unconvincing, not least because it depends on the reading ytmmr, which would have been less likely to suffer corruption than the better attested ytmmd, and it would require emendation to lmg Nk. It does, though, point us in the right direction, namely to taking l( closely with lmg. I suggest that we need to make a minimal textual emendation and read y#$pn yl( lmgt yk (which may well be what the Syrohexaplar is translating) in the sense "surely you have dealt kindly with me" ⁴⁰. The Psalmist is deliberately using the verb lmg and the noun #$pn in two different senses: "Surely I have calmed and quieted my voice/breathing apparatus like a weaned child on its mother"s shoulder. Surely you have dealt kindly with me" ⁴¹. The pun cannot readily be rendered in English, though we could perhaps translate lmg as "toddler" and lmgt (rather less felicitously) as "coddled".

As noted above, de Boer has drawn attention to a text in 2 Chronicles (32,25) where we find not only the idiom l( lmg used in this sense, but also the verb hbg used of bl: Hezekiah, being a proud man (wbl h@bg) was not grateful for the good done to him (wyl( lmg). The closeness of the two texts makes it likely, I would suggest, that the Chronicler was aware of, and was deliberately recalling, Ps 131. His familiarity with the preceding and the following Psalm is evident from 2 Chr 6,40-42, where Solomon is made to echo them. My suspicion that l( lmg is being used in our text in the sense claimed is confirmed by the striking parallel with Ps 116,7 ykyl( lmg hwhy-yk ykyxwnml w#$pn ybw#$, "Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you." (NRSV)

It is time to return to the question of whether 2b goes with 2a, or whether it marks a new statement. On the whole, I think it goes with both what precedes and what follows. The Psalmist notes that he has quieted his complaints, and proceeds in v. 3 to encourage his fellow-Israelites similarly to trust in Yhwh. 2b does, though, build on what has gone before: although 2a has not directly used maternal imagery, it has spoken of calming the wpn, using verbs which suggest assimilation with something shortly to be identified.

V. 3. Skehan among others has noted connections with the previous Psalm. In Ps 130,7 [EVV 130,6] the phrase found at 131,3 occurs: hwhy-l) l)r#&y lxy; both Psalms also speak of y#$pn (130,5,6; 131,2 [bis]). Further, in both Psalms the writer adopts a lowly pose; and both Psalms are, as Dahood notes, bipartite: beginning with an address to Yhwh and ending with a call to the congregation. Presumably the redactors have deliberately placed our present Psalm after one which speaks of hope and waiting⁴².

Some commentators, as we have said before, treat v. 3 as a redactional addition. If the Psalm was originally a purely personal poem, this is possible. If, however, it was designed to be sung by the King, an invitation to the congregation to follow the singer"s example of trust would have been very appropriate.

A free translation of the text as slightly emended may now be offered:

1b    O LORD, my heart is not haughty,
        my eyes are not lifted up.

I have not occupied myself with great matters,
        with things too wondrous for me.

2a    No, I have made like something calm
and like something quiet my heaving breast:

2b    like a toddler on its mother,
surely you have coddled my heaving breast.

3    Await in hope, O Israel, for the LORD,
  from now and for evermore.

II.Literary Form and Sitz im Leben

Was the Psalm written as a unity? Was it cobbled together from fragments of devotional poetry deposited in the Temple and subsequently worked up into a song for congregational use? Was it (or part of it) designed for use at the Temple gates by a female worshipper with a child on her shoulder? Was it sung by the King? It is hard to say, particularly since some of these life-situations are somewhat hypothetical: we do not know whether things were deposited in the Temple (like petitions on a present-day prayer-board at the back of a church?) We do not know whether things were ever written to be used specifically by women worshippers. We do not even know for certain whether some Psalms were proclaimed by the King, though this at least is very likely.

If I had to take up a position on these matters, I should opt for taking Ps 131 as a Royal Psalm. As Crow has noted, it is plausible to take the denial of hybris as a rejection of the arrogance attributed to foreign kings in Isaiah and Ezekiel ⁴³. Even if it was not originally a Royal Psalm, it can be argued that Ps 131 became one when dwdl was added (if it was) to the superscription. The Psalm in its final form serves as a warning that kings should not be proud but should place all their trust in their divine Master and call upon their subjects to do likewise ⁴⁴.

But is our Psalm early enough to be a Royal Psalm? Many commentators admittedly suppose it to be post-exilic, but this is little more than surmise⁴⁵. Some of the Psalms of Ascent (but not this one) have unusual lexical features, such as the use of -#e$, which may be late; on the other hand, they may be archaisms or survivals. (-#$e is found in one of the very earliest passages of the Hebrew Bible, the Song of Deborah: Judg 5,7 [bis] ⁴⁶.) Beyerlin and Crow both treat the Psalm as post-exilic. Beyerlin ⁴⁷ posits a connection with the Wisdom movement, seeing a significant parallel with Job 42,2-6, where Job says that he has learnt his lesson and will henceforth forswear speaking of tw)lpn. Not only is the thinking comparable, he says, but the Job passage is form-critically similar to a divine oracle or to a Certainty of a Hearing section in a Psalm of Individual Lament or Confidence, such as our present Psalm is. I am not persuaded by the argument. A similarity between Job 42,2-6 (and other parts of that book) and the Psalms of Individual Lament is evident enough, but what does it prove? Surely not that any individual Psalm of Lament (or, for that matter, any Jeremianic Confession) comes from the same period as the Book of Job. If a direct influence needs to be posited in respect of Ps 131 and Job 42, the Psalm could surely have influenced the author of Job rather than the reverse. But why need such a connection be made? Talk of God"s tw)lpn is not confined to Wisdom texts: it is found in both prophetic⁴⁸ and historical⁴⁹ texts.

Was the Psalm written as it now stands, as a unity? It is hard to be certain, but the arguments urged against this supposition do not convince me. The main problem is that whereas verse 1 is addressed to Yhwh, verse 3 is addressed to Israel. Should we regard either the Tetragrammaton in v. 1 or the whole of v. 3 as redactional? Let us examine the arguments. I take the case of v.1 first. It is possible to argue that the ancient Rabbis found the word hwhy here problematic on the basis of the "Note-line" that follows it. This line is usually taken as the sign legarmeh, part of the accent mehuppak legarmeh, which has a disjunctive force. This, though, tends to show, at most, that the Rabbis took the divine name to constitute an anacrusis. Kennedy, however, believes that there is no distinction between paseq and legarmeh. He thinks, pace Wickes, that the "Note-line" antedates the accentual system. The Masoretes, "viewing "Paseq" as if it were really a mark occasionally inserted to separate words in a sentence, adopted their accentual arrangements in accordance with this erroneous idea, as they deemed best in every passage where it occurred"⁵⁰. There are fifteen different reasons for the insertion of the paseq, and both the occurrences in Ps 131,1 are instances of the fifteenth, namely to question the originality of the word that precedes it ⁵¹. If Kennedy is right, the ancient copyists will have regarded hwhy and ytklh as incorrect readings. It is difficult, I think, to see why they should have thought this of hwhy, unless of course they anticipated some modern scholars in supposing that a Psalm that ended by addressing the people could not have begun by addressing the deity. Even if this view should have such early backing, however, I remain unconvinced that the reading hwhy is wrong.

Nor am I persuaded by form-critical arguments that something has fallen out after hwhy. Crow, as noted earlier, maintains that there must be a petition missing:

With the vocative, "O Yhwh " at the beginning, one naturally expects that a petition will follow. This is reinforced by the "negative confession" of v. 1, the purpose of which is normally to provide the grounds for divine action on the supplicant"s behalf ⁵².

As for the initial address, it is true that it is hard to find an example of a Psalm where it is not followed by a request ⁵³ or an expression of thanks⁵⁴. But it seems hard to rule that an ancient Jewish writer who wanted to express his confidence in God had always to refer to him in the third person. It seems unlikely that there were hard and fast rules about such things. Similarly with what Crow calls the negative confession: although the common context of protesting one"s innocence was to plead for help⁵⁵, it is readily conceivable that an author should have wanted on occasion to tell God that after a struggle with self-will he had achieved a calm and humble confidence in him. Indeed, I think that Ps 130 (which with Volz and Weiser I take as a Psalm of Thanksgiving⁵⁶) we have a good parallel: in v. 1 he reminds Yhwh that he has in the past thrown himself upon his mercy, using the plea spelt out in vv. 2b-6. He implies that his appeal had been successful, and proceeds in vv. 7-8 to urge others to follow suit. If this is right, the temptation to excise verse 3 of our Psalm should also be resisted. It forms the natural culmination to the Psalm: the Psalmist"s gratitude to God for the peace of mind he has achieved leads him naturally to call on others to place their trust in him too. In Ps 62, we find the same situation in reverse: in vv. 1-11, the Psalmist tells the people that he has committed his silent trust to the LORD, and he calls on them to do likewise; then in v. 12 he addresses the LORD.

What is clear above all is that the language of this, as of most other Psalms, is sufficiently general for all to be able to identify with its sentiments and make it their own. That is the beauty of the Psalms: although they for the most part clearly spring from deep personal experience, the language in which they are clothed is so chosen as to make them suitable for use by all sorts and conditions of men and women.

As is widely known, there is no scholarly consensus on the significance of the word twl(m (steps, ascents, extolments?) in the designation of Psalms 120-134 as twl(mh ry#$; nor are scholars agreed on the reason for these Psalms being described in this way. The majority view is that the term characterizes these Psalms as in some sense pilgrimage songs. It is widely accepted, however, to be unlikely that they were all originally composed as such. This particular Psalm was probably not in the first instance created to be sung by pilgrims. As for the phrase wm) yl( "it seems...likely that the metaphor is used as a metaphor, with no factual connection to the speaker" ⁵⁷. Nevertheless, the Psalm works quite well as a member of a collection of pilgrimage songs. Fyall has written: "The Psalter expresses the emotions and feelings of the pilgrim people of God and, though rooted in particular times and places, speaks to pilgrims in circumstances far removed from those who originally wrote and sang these songs" ⁵⁸. What this particular poem expresses is the conviction that the true pilgrim must travel in humility, hoping and trusting in God, and is inviting others to do the same: in v. 3, "the confidence in the LORD of one pilgrim is offered to the company of pilgrims" ⁵⁹.

What has this Psalm to say in particular to those who read it as part of the Christian Bible? From the start Christians have drawn inspiration from the study and recitation of the Psalms. Athanasius, in To Marcellinus on the Interpretation of the Psalms, waxed lyrical on the subject:

All of our scripture, old and new, is divinely inspired...But the Book of Psalms has a special claim on our attention...since it is like a paradise garden containing all the fruits of Scripture and expressing them in song, making them its own...It seems to me that those who sing the Psalms are furnished with a mirror in which to contemplate themselves and their own feelings and to give expression to these feelings ⁶⁰.