Psalm 54

Lines Scansion

NASB (In the Hebrew Bible this psalm begins with a superscription of two verses. Therefore the English verse numbers will have two less verses. The following discussion will follow the English verse numbers for convenience. The bracketed portions are altered.)

1       Save me, O God, by Your name,

         And vindicate me by Your power.

2       Hear my prayer, O God;

         Give ear to the words of my mouth.

3       For strangers have arisen against me

         And violent men have sought my life;

         They have not set God before them. Selah.

4       Behold [] God[,]

 

[He who is helping] me;

         The Lord is the sustainer of my soul.

5       He will recompense the evil to my foes;

         Destroy them in Your faithfulness.

6       Willingly I will sacrifice to You;

         I will give thanks to Your name, O LORD, for it is good.

7       For He has delivered me from all trouble,

         And my eye has looked with satisfaction upon my enemies.

Effect of the Metric Center on the Psalm’s Development

 

Psalm 54 is a Lament of the Individual that begins with the lament and ends with declarative praise (Westermann, Praise and Lament in the Psalms, 79-81). Typically, such a psalm has these elements:

            Invocation

            Lament (I, they, you)
            Expression of Confidence

            Petition (hear, intervene against enemies)

            Divine Oracle/Response

Expression of Confidence     

Praise/Vow to Praise

Psalm 54 restructures this pattern based on the crisis facing the psalmist:

            Invocation, 1a

            Petitions, (hear, intervene), 1b-2

            Lament (they), 3

            Expression of Confidence, 4-5a

            Petition (intervene), 5b

            Vow to Praise, 6

            Praise, 7

What stands out in this scheme is the reversal of emotions from frantic appeals to God because of the activities of the psalmist’s enemies (1-3) to the immediate and undeniable confidence that God has answered his prayers and intervened in the situation (4-7, “has delivered” and “has seen” in verse 7 are understood as Perfects of Certitude, Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 2^nd ed., 30; Gesenius, para. 106, i) . The turning point in the psalm, and the metric center, is the two words beginning verse 4, “Behold God.” God is both the cause for the emotional reversal and the solution to the problem. “Behold God” is all-encompassing and, when His attributes are contemplated in the midst of a crisis, they constitute a divine response to the prayers.

 

The justification for altering the NASB translation (and all English translations surveyed) stems from the accents in the Masoretic text of Psalm 54.  The accents represent important punctuation and interpretation considerations. Waltke and O’Connor write (An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, para. 1.6.4), “The accent system punctuates the text and is therefore a very important feature in its syntactic analysis. . . . . “At present it is best to consider the accents as an early and relatively reliable witness to a correct interpretation of the text.”

The significant disjunctive accent in Psalm 54:4a (D^eḥî or Ṭiphḥā, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, para. 15h) also occurs on the vocatives “O God” of verses 1 and 2. A disjunctive accent represents a syntactical break or pause before the following words. In verse 3 “God” also appears but with a conjunctive accent (Ṭarḥā, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, para. 15i) that joins it to the following term without a pause or break. Thus, the Masoretes, who formalized the pronunciation and interpretation of the text of the Hebrew Bible, indicated a pause after “Behold God” making the participle, “[He who is helping]” (עזר), function as a relative clause (Waltke and O’Connor (An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, para. 37.5) as in the above altered NASB translation.

At the center of the psalm, the demonstrative interjection “Behold” [הִנֵּ֣ה] abruptly “calls attention to the following noun” (Koehler, Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 252; see also Brown, Driver, Briggs. Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, 244-45, a. “pointing to persons”). This interjection along with the disjunctive accent on God (אֱ֭לֹהִים) takes center stage in the psalmist’s psyche. Meditating on the attributes of God soothes his soul and energizes his faith. Additional support for this emphasis on God’s attributes is the two-fold use of the “name” (שֵם, verses 3, 8), a term that “frequently means reputation,” or signifies “the nature or attributes of the person named” (Ross, Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis, Vol. 4, 150). Contemplating God by the psalmist immediately evolved into a revived spirit and confidence in the positive outcome of his troubles.

Summary

Psalm 51

Lines Scansion

 

NASB (The Hebrew Bible includes a two-verse superscription that is not part of the Psalm proper. Therefore, the numbering in the Hebrew Bible is two verses ahead of the English Bibles. For convenience, the following discussion will follow the English verse numbers.)

1             Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your

                    lovingkindness;

               According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out

                      my transgressions.

2             Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity

               And cleanse me from my sin.

3              For I know my transgressions,

               And my sin is ever before me.

4             Against You, You only, I have sinned

               And done what is evil in Your sight,

               So that You are justified when You speak

               And blameless when You judge.

5             Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,

               And in sin my mother conceived me.

6             Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being,

               And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.

7             Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

               Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

8             Make me to hear joy and gladness,

               Let the bones which You have broken rejoice.

9             Hide Your face from my sins

               And blot out all my iniquities.

 

10           Create in me a clean heart, O God,

               And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

 

11           Do not cast me away from Your presence

               And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.

12           Restore to me the joy of Your salvation

               And sustain me with a willing spirit.

13           Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,

               And sinners will be converted to You.

14           Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, the God of my

                    salvation;

               Then my tongue will joyfully sing of Your righteousness.

15           O Lord, open my lips,

               That my mouth may declare Your praise.

16           For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give

                    it;

               You are not pleased with burnt offering.

17           The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

               A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

18           By Your favor do good to Zion;

               Build the walls of Jerusalem.

19           Then You will delight in righteous sacrifices,

               In burnt offering and whole burnt offering;

               Then young bulls will be offered on Your altar.

 

Effects of the Metric Center on the Psalm’s Development

 

Commentators generally agree that Psalm 51 is a Lament of the Individual. According to Westermann, The Psalms:Structure, Content & Message, 55-72, 132, a complete psalm of this type includes the following:

  

Invocation

Lament (I, they, You)

Expression of Confidence

Petition

Oracle-Response

Praise/Vow of Praise

 

A quick perusal of Psalm 51, however, reveals that most of the elements are missing leading Tate, Psalms 51-100, 8, to conclude:

 

The psalm is not easily classified in the usual form-critical categories. It is usually placed in the general classification of the laments of the individual . . . .  However, such characteristic features as complaint about enemies and prayer for their defeat and/or punishment is missing, as well as any protestation of innocence on the part of the speaker in the psalm . . . , and there is not motivational appeal to God for action . . . . On the other hand, there is a full confession of sin which is without parallel in any other biblical psalm.

 

Since the primary focus of the psalm is confession of sin and appeals for forgiveness, some classify Psalm 51 as a Psalm of Penitence or Repentance (Westermann, The Psalms, 132.  Whatever the classification, the background situation underlying its composition indicated in the superscription is debated. Tate, Psalms, 8-12, discusses the issue, as do Bratcher and Reyburn, A Translator’s Handbook on the Book of Psalms, 467:

 

The identity of the psalmist and the reason he composed this prayer are given in the Hebrew title as David’s act of adultery with Bathsheba . . . .  Most modern commentators do not believe that the title reflects the actual circumstances in which the psalm was written . . . .  Some, however, strongly defend the traditional view . . . and, like the others, recognize that the last two verses are a later addition . . . , since these verses reflect a situation which did not exist in David’s lifetime. The Jewish commentator Ibn Ezra, of the twelfth century A.D., suggested that they were added by a Jew who was in exile in Babylonia.

 

The psalms generally do not depend upon the actual historical circumstances to make sense out of them. In fact, they remain “historically ambiguous” so that they can apply to a broad spectrum of human experiences and this becomes one major reason for their popularity. “Poetry often develops the intensity of a moment,” writes Ross, The Bible Knowledge Commentary, I, 832.

 

Tate, Psalms 51-100, 12, outlines the “interlocking structure” of Psalm 51 based on two major divisions 1-9 and 10-17 plus an addendum 18-19. The point of division begins at verse 10, and metrically represents the center of the psalm.

 

The center can be isolated by (1) the different contents in verses 1-9 and 10-19, (2) the focus on the “heart” (לֵב) in verses 10 and 17 with the latter passage capturing the essence of verses 1-9, (3) the inclusio in verses 1-9 with “blot out” (מחֵה)  and the semi-inclusio of “wash” (root כבס) in verses 1 and 7 that effectively separate the two major divisions of the psalm, and (4) the emphases of “heart” and “spirit”—לֵב (“heart”) in verses 10 and 17; רוּחַ (“spirit”) in verses 10, 11, 12, 17—found in the latter division only and representing the “solution” to the psalmist’s spiritual dilemma.

 

 

The psalmist’s sin has “crushed” (root דכה verses 8 and 17) his inner soul described as his “heart” and “spirit.” The “spirit” comes . . . to denote the entire immaterial consciousness of man” (Payne, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 836) whereas the “heart” in its abstract meanings, . . . became the richest biblical term for the totality of man’s inner or immaterial nature. . . . either to the inner or immaterial nature in general or to one of the three traditional personality functions of man; emotion, thought, or will (Bowling, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 466). Psalm 51 depicts a man physically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually crushed because of his sin against God. What he needs is a pure heart and a renewed spirit that he pleads for in the central verse (10).

 

Key repetitive terms throughout the first division of the psalm include no less than 12 references to the psalmist’s “sin” (חַטָּאת, 6 times—the verb חטא is also used once referring to “ceremonial cleansing” or “purifying,” perhaps to present seven appearances of the root חטא since the verb root טהר (“pure”) as a synonym was available and already in use at verses 4, 9, and 12; פֶּשַׁע (“transgression”), 3 times; עָוֹן (“iniquity”), 3 times). The terms that cross over into both divisions of the psalm include 4 references to “God” (אֱלֹהִ֣ים, no mention of Yahweh) and 3 references to “clean” (root טהר, also translated “pure”). Obviously the psalmist needs a “pure” heart and only the Almighty God can accomplish such a feat.  

 

 

Summary

Psalm 39

Lines Scansion

 

NASB (The Hebrew text adds the superscription as verse 1. The number in parentheses represent the Hebrew text numbering. The bracketed [ ] word and numbers that follow are my variations. Unless otherwise noted the Hebrew numbering will be used.)

 

1 (2)        I said, “I will guard my ways

               That I may not sin with my tongue;

                I will guard my mouth as with a muzzle

               While the wicked are in my presence.”

2 (3)        I was mute and silent,

               I refrained even from good,

               And my sorrow grew worse.

3 (4)        My heart was hot within me,

               While I was musing the fire burned;

               Then I spoke with my tongue:

4 (5)        “LORD, make me to know my end

               And what is the extent of my days;

               Let me know how transient I am.

5 (6)        “Behold, You have made my days as handbreadths,

               And my lifetime as nothing in Your sight;

               Surely every man at his best is a mere breath. Selah.

6 (7)        “Surely every man walks about as a phantom;

               Surely they make an uproar for nothing;

               He amasses riches and does not know who will gather
               them.

7 (8)        “[But] now,

 

               Lord, for what do I wait?

               My hope is in You.

8 (9)        “Deliver me from all my transgressions;

               Make me not the reproach of the foolish.

9 (10)      “I have become mute, I do not open my mouth,

               Because it is You who have done it.

10 (11)    “Remove Your plague from me;

               Because of the opposition of Your hand I am perishing.

11 (12)    “With reproofs You chasten a man for iniquity;

               You consume as a moth what is precious to him;

               Surely every man is a mere breath. Selah.

12 (13)    “Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear to my cry;

               Do not be silent at my tears;

               For I am a stranger with You,

               A sojourner like all my fathers.

13 (14)    “Turn Your gaze away from me, that I may smile again

               Before I depart and am no more.”

 

Effect of the Metric Center on the Psalm’s Development

 

Westermann, Praise and Lament in the Psalms, 66-67, classifies Psalm 39 as an Individual Lament. The following elements are typical in a complete psalm of this type:

Address to God

            Lament: They, I, You

            Confession of Trust

            Petition: (1) “Hear!” (2) “Save!”

            Motifs

            Vow of Praise

            Assurance of Being Heard

 

Psalm 39 both parallels and differs from this pattern by having (1) no Initial Address to God, (2) altering the lament (I, You, Foes), (3) limiting the confession of trust to verse 8, (4) containing no Motifs, Vow of Praise, or Assurance of Being Heard. The resultant pattern emerges as follows:

Lament — 2-7,

I, 2-4

You, 5-6

They, 7

Confession of Trust — 8

Petitions — 9-14

 

The psalm divides into two major sections, according to Gabelein, The Book of Psalms, 173, verses 2-7 and 8-14. Craigie, Psalms, 308-09, finds three dividing points, “The psalm is introduced by a description of the psalmist’s state of mind (vv 2-4) and then moves to a reflection on the transitory nature of human existence (vv 5-7), concluding with the principle portion which is the prayer as such (vv 8-14).” Furthermore, at verse 8 he continues, “Sobered by his reflection on the impermanence of human existence, the psalmist begins the more formal part of his prayer; in the opening words, he gets right back to the basics.” The transition point in this Psalm is the ועתה (“but now”) that begins verse 8, the exact center of the psalm metrically.

 

Bratcher and Reyburn, A Translator's Handbook on the Book of Psalms, 372, 377, reflect on what they find as the center, “Then at the very core of the psalm (verse [8]) there is a pivotal point: ‘My hope is in thee.’” This, however, is introduced with ועתה (“but now”) as noted by Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament , V, 296, “It is customary to begin a distinct turning-point of a discourse with וְעַתָּה: and now.” Given the dramatic change in the psalm’s direction at this point the conjunction is better translated “But” as found in the NET and NIV translations.

One of the key interpretive features of the psalm centers around the past, verses 2-7, and the present, verses 8-14. The psalmist’s reflections on his past troubles, probably partly self-generated, in verses 2-4, had moved him to finally address Yahweh directly in verses 5-7 as he meditated on the transitory nature of life itself. But he cannot continue to living in the past. There must be a “But now” moment and a refocusing on the present to which he turns in verses 8-14 with his very brief confession of trust in verse 8, “My hope is in You,” followed by seven imperatives. No indications exist in the psalm that his prayers were answered. It is a lament without a resolution.

 

 

Summary

 

 

 

A complaint psalm without a stated resolution leaving the psalmist and us with faith in the promises of God (2 Corinthians 4:16-18), 

Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.