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

Chapter 6: Composition of Psalms 3-8and 2005; Goldingay 2006), that Psalms 9 and 10 formed one compositionand that Psalm 33 originally bore a לְ‏ דָ‏ וִ‏ ד inscription, then it is clear that theentire body of Book I is a collection of לְ‏ דָ‏ וִ‏ ד psalms (Anderson 1994; Bratcher2006a; Labuschagne 2007). Therefore, the significance of לְ‏ דָ‏ וִ‏ ד throughoutBook I is that it served as the earliest and most basic criterion for bringing thisgroup of psalms together (McFall 2000). This observation is not of greatsignificance for this study since it is one of the “givens” upon which the studyis built. It is self-evident that Book I is first-and-foremost a collection of Davidicpsalms. What I am really probing is how the editors arranged this collection ofDavidic psalms.The next clearest parallel between the headings is that all except Psalm 7זָ‏ מַ‏ ש is derived from the verb מִ‏ זְ‏ מוש The noun ‏.מִ‏ זְ‏ מוש bear the genre designation(Wolf 1999b:§558), which denotes “playing a musical instrument in thecontext of worship, usually a stringed instrument” (Allen 1996:§2376.1).Delekat (1964) argued that מִ‏ זְ‏ מוש indicates “that a psalm was a composedpiece, designed for a particular occasion” (Kidner 1973:37). There are 57מִ‏ זְ‏ מוש psalms in the Psalter, 22 of them in Book I. Amongst the 57 מִ‏ זְ‏ מושpsalms, only five occur in isolation (Pss 15, 73, 92, 98 and 143). Theremainder all occur in clusters ranging in size from two to seven consecutive234