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

Chapter 4: Analysis of Psalms 3-8progressively. Counting the imperfect in a prohibition as an ‘imperative’, thereare six directive verbs this strophe. In Psalms 3-8, none except מַ‏ ש ‏,אָ‏ one ofthe most common verbs in the Hebrew Bible, occurs more than once in theחָ‏ טָ‏ א (41:5:1), שָ‏ גַ‏ ז occurs on three times. The six verbs are אָ‏ מַ‏ ש corpus. Even.(120:46:1) בָ‏ טַ‏ ח (134:9:1) and זָ‏ בַ‏ ח ,(30:7:1) דָ‏ מָ‏ ם ,(5309:101:3) אָ‏ מַ‏ ש ,(238:9:1)46:4:1), ‏,מִ‏ שְ‏ כָ‏ ב)‏ “bed” A similar trend holds true for the nouns in this strophe:“heart” ‏,לֵ‏ בָ‏ ב)‏ 252:43:1). The latter observation is partly offset by the fact thatthe shortened form לֵ‏ ב (601:102:3) occurs in Psalm 4:8 and in Psalm 7:11.What this illustrates, in the context of this study, is that the middle strophe ofPsalm 4 does not contribute anything to word links between psalms.Verses 7-9. The third strophe opens with a rhetorical question by “many”, whoare asking “who will show us some good?” (v. 7a). Thereafter, it is dominatedby terms expressing the psalmist’s confidence in Yahweh. One phrase inבַ‏ קָ‏ ש namely, verse 2 pre-empted the expressions of confidence in verses 8-9,“you have relieved me in my distress”. Due to the surrounding ‏,הִ‏ שְ‏ חַ‏ בְ‏ ָ לִ‏ יimperatives, many regard ָ הִ‏ שְ‏ חַ‏ בְ‏ as a precative perfect (e.g., Craigie 1998;NIV and NLT), but it makes equally good sense to treat it as a normal perfectexpressing confidence in the Lord’s track record of granting relief and thusproviding the grounds for the confidence the psalmist later expresses. Theהִ‏ שְ‏ חַ‏ בְ‏ 2014:95:2) is similar to ָ ‏,נָ‏ תַ‏ ן (“you have given”, v. 8a; from נָ‏ תַ‏ ָ ה perfect118