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

Chapter 6: Composition of Psalms 3-8used in Psalm 5:9 with a meaning almost identical to ש ‏.קושֵ‏ In the cases ofPsalms 3 and 6-8, there are also allusions to enemies using ‏,אויֵב “myenemies” in 3:8 and 6:11 and “the enemy” 135 in 7:6 and 8:3 (see Row 2).These enemies are consistently portrayed in three ways in Psalms 3-8, whichare reflected in Rows 3-7. First, they are characterised as being “wicked”(using the root ‏(ששע and/or “evil” (using the lexeme וֶ‏ ן ‏.(אָ‏ Thesecharacterisations cover Psalms 3 and 5-7. Second, they are portrayed as liarsin Psalms 4, 5 and 7, using a broad range of terms (see Rows 5 and 6).Despite the varied terminology, the portrait is of evil liars who use all forms ofdeception and slander to attack the psalmists. Third, they are violent mendetermined to shed the innocent blood of the psalmists. Images of violentenemies can be found in Psalms 3, 5, 7 and, to a lesser extent, 8 (see Row7).These many allusions to the psalmists’ evil, lying, aggressive enemies providethe entire corpus with a clear thematic unity, a thread that runs through all sixpsalms. Even the two psalms that at first seem out of place in the corpus,135 Although the Masoretic Text has the anarthrous masculine singular participle אויֵב in bothinstances, it is appropriate to translate it into English using the definite article, hence “theenemy” (so ASV; ESV; KJV; NASB; NKJV; NRSV; RSV).275