Smith DTh Thesis (final).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

Chapter 4: Analysis of Psalms 3-8summarise prevailing scholarly views on the psalm. The sixth element is abrief synopsis of the major theme(s) of the psalm.The fifth element, terminology, forms the backbone of the analysis of eachpsalm. Since verbal linkages are the most objective and measurable kind oflinks between psalms, I endeavour to present detailed statistical observationsabout word frequencies of all important nouns, verbs, adjective and adverbs.After each Hebrew term, I indicate how many times its root occurs in theHebrew Bible, in the Psalter and in my corpus. The statistical data ispresented in the following format: ‏,אֵ‏ מֶ‏ ש 48:7:1, v. 1a. This indicates that theHebrew lemma is מֶ‏ ש ‏,אֵ‏ it is found in verse 1a of the psalm and it occurs 48times in the Old Testament, 7 times in the Psalter and once in my corpus. Tomy knowledge, this is the most thorough analysis to date of the frequency ofword-occurrences in this corpus of psalms and represents the first aspect ofmy own contribution to the study of these psalms.4.1 Psalm 34.1.1 Textual variantsThe variants in Psalm 3 pose few difficulties. In verse 3, the Septuagint hasἀντιλήμπτωρ (“helper; protector”) for the Masoretic Text’s מָ‏ גֵ‏ ן (“shield”), butthis seems to be an idiomatic rendering rather than a true variant. In verse 8,88