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

Chapter 4: Analysis of Psalms 3-8Terrien (cf. Kselman 1987; Murphy 1996; Auffret 1998), however, disagreeswith this interpretation of the psalm’s structure. He believes that the fourstrophedivision is not the correct understanding of the structure of the poem.Its structure is generally presented as a series of four strophes(vv. 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9), but this division does not do justice to theequilibrium or its rhythm and themes, for it does not respect therigor of its discursive modes. The appellations to Yahweh in thesecond person (vv. 2-4 and 8-9) are clearly separated by ameditation on Yahweh in the third person (vv. 5-7), and thismeditation constitutes the centre of the whole development(Terrien 2003:89).John Kselman (1987), Pierre Auffret (1998) and Samuel Terrien (2003) arguethat the psalm consists of three strophes. Each strophe consists of twounequal substrophes, the first substrophe having two bicola and the secondone bicolon. Each strophe closes with a declaration of confidence in Yahweh(vv. 4, 7 and 9). “In each case the [second] substrophe prepares a transitionto the next strophe, and the last one provides a conclusion to the wholeprayer” (Terrien 2003:89).Should the positioning of three selah’s be considered a better indication of thestructure of the psalm than Kselman’s (1987) and Terrien’s (2003) appeal to95