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

Chapter 6: Composition of Psalms 3-8Psalm 3 Psalm 4 Psalm 5 Psalm 6 Psalm 7 Psalm 8רּוםרּום ש ‏ֹאשש ‏ֹאש שַ‏ עשַ‏ ע שָ‏ שָ‏ עשָ‏ שָ‏ ע שּובשּוב שֵ‏ םשֵ‏ ם שֵ‏ ם 11 6 11 13 8Table 6.7 shows that Psalm 7 has a high proportion of shared terminologywith Psalm 6 (13 shared lexemes) and, to a lesser extent, also with Psalm 5(11 shared lexemes). With respect to Psalm 6, this observation is surprising.In my analysis of the relationships between Psalms 6 and 7 in the previouschapter (see §5.4), the way shared lexemes were used did not give theimpression that they were strong link words. This table suggests that thesheer number of shared lexemes, though not necessarily used in contextuallysimilar ways, contributed to the editors’ decision to place Psalm 7 immediatelyafter Psalm 6. Intuitively, I expected to discover that Psalm 7 shared more“significant” lexemes with Psalm 3, with which it seems to have been linked inan earlier collection (see §6.2.1), and with Psalm 5, which is intuitively similarto Psalm 7 due to their shared focus on terminology related to “righteousness”254