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

Chapter 5: Concatenation in Psalms 3-82) The exact form בודִ‏ י ‏,כְ‏ a singular noun with a first person commonsingular suffix, occurs in both 3:4 and 4:3. By conducting amorphological search I discovered that this exact form occurs 22 timesin the Hebrew Bible, including 7 times in the Psalter. These 22occurrences cover three senses, namely, (a) depicting Yahweh’s glory(Exod 29:43, 33:22, Num 14:22, Isa 42:8, 43:7, 48:11, 66:19, Ezek39:21 and Mal 1:6), (b) referring to a human being’s honour (Gen45:13, Job 19:9, 29:20, Pss 3:4, 4:3, 7:6 and 62:8) and (c) as acircumlocution for “self” (Gen 49:6, Pss 16:9, 59:9 and 108:2). Amongstthe 7 occurrences in the Psalter, 3 are circumlocutions for thespeaker’s self (see Swanson 1997:§3383.8). The remaining four referto the psalmist’s honour (Pss 3:4, 4:3, 7:6 and 62:8). Since כְ‏ בודִ‏ י occurswith reference to the speaker’s honour only seven times in the HebrewBible and only four times in the Psalter, it provides a strong verbal linkbetween Psalms 3 and 4.185