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

Chapter 5: Concatenation in Psalms 3-8morning worship. It is, however, the heading of Psalm 3 that most seriouslyundermines the likelihood of a cultic basis for their placement. If these twopsalms were grouped together because of their regular function in morningand evening worship, would one not have expected them to belong to thesame early collection of psalms, such as the music director’s collection?Surely they would have been brought together during the pre-exilic period in atemple collection and then placed at the head of the canonical Psalter by itspost-exilic compilers. Yet there are strong suggestions that this was not thecase. The headings of Psalms 4, 5 and 6 all indicate that they belonged to themusic director’s collection. In fact, their headings are so similar as to suggestthey belonged to same original collection and were imported into the finalcollection as a mini-group (see §5.3, §6.1 and §6.2.3 for a full discussion). Bycontrast, the heading of Psalm 3 gives no indication that it belonged to themusic director’s collection. This argues against Psalm 3 being part of thesame original collection of psalms for use in temple worship as Psalm 4. Itsuggests that these two psalms were brought together in a later round ofediting than Psalms 4-6, which all belonged to the music director’s collection.Although this does not preclude the final editors from having a cultic rationalefor their arrangement, it does suggest that the two psalms did not share a longhistory of usage in the pre-exilic cult. Coupled with my belief that Psalm 3 is194