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

Chapter 5: Concatenation in Psalms 3-85.2.1 Verbal linksExcluding their headings, Psalm 4 contains 88 words with 64 unique lexemes,while Psalm 5 has 125 words with 91 unique lexemes. 105 These are the 16shared lexemes (the numbers in parentheses indicate the frequency ofאַ‏ ָ ה ,(1:2) אֶ‏ ‏ֹלהִ‏ ים ,(2:2) אֶ‏ ל ,(1:1) אִ‏ יש ,(1:1) אָ‏ הַ‏ ב psalm): occurrence in eachףַ‏ ל ,(1:1) מִ‏ ן ,(5:5) לְ‏ ,(2:5) כִ‏ י ,(1:1) כָ‏ זָ‏ ב ,(5:5) יהוה ,(7:7) וְ‏ ,(1:1) הַ‏ ,(6:8) בְ‏ ,(1:2)(2:1). Psalm 4 shares 25 percent (16/64) of its שָ‏ מַ‏ ע (1:1) and פָ‏ נֶ‏ ה (2:1),vocabulary with Psalm 5, while Psalm 5 shares 18 percent (16/91) with Psalm4. The gross verbal overlap is 11.5 percent (i.e., 16 of 139 lexemes areshared).The most important observation about this list of shared lexemes is that therarest shared word זָ‏ ב)‏ ‏(כָ‏ appears 31 times in the Hebrew Bible. The next‏,כָ‏ זָ‏ ב occurs well over 200 times. With the possible exception of ‏(אָ‏ הַ‏ ב)‏ rarestrare shared lexemes played no role in the editors decision to place Psalm 5beside Psalm 4.105 These figures are calculated by counting the Hebrew article, conjunction and inseparableprepositions as separate words. If these conjoined lexemes were not counted separately,Psalms 4 and 5 would have 73 and 106 words respectively.197