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

Chapter 7: Conclusion7.2.2 Conclusions regarding the organisation of the entire corpusMy analysis of the organisation of my corpus as a whole led to a fairly clearpicture of how it was compiled.A study of the headings led to the conclusion that Psalms 4-6 were a preexistingtrio of psalms from the music director’s collection. 152 It also suggesteda possible link 153 between Psalms 3 and 7 and singled out Psalm 7 as beingsomething of a “stranger” in this collection of psalms.In my quest to understand the reason for the presence and position of Psalm7, I began to wonder whether Psalms 3 and 7 might have been neighbouringpsalms in an earlier collection. This hunch gained credence when an in-depthstudy of verbal links between Psalm 3 and the rest of my corpus revealed thatPsalm 3 has strong verbal links with Psalms 4 and 7. Verbal analysis alsoshowed that Psalm 7 shares a larger number of lexemes with Psalm 6 thanwith any other psalm in my corpus, strengthening the conclusion drawn in the152 All three psalms share three components in their headings: (a) “a psalm of David”, (b) “forthe director of music” and (c) “for flutes/stringed instruments”.153 These two psalms contain historical allusions to circumstances in David’s life as part oftheir headings. These historical allusions are written in a similar form.308