Psalm 17

Psalm 17 verse 8 on a memorial stone for Italian prisoners of war in Great Britain

The 17th Psalm (according to Greek counting the 16th) is a Psalm of David and belongs to the genre of the "innocent songs".

structure

The psalm can be structured as follows:

1. Verse 1f: extended introduction: invocation of YHWH in request and desire
2. Verses 3-5: Affirmation of innocence
3. Verses 6–8: Expressing requests and wishes based on certainty of innocence
4. Verses 9-12: The evil kind of enemies
5. Verse 13f .: Request and wish for vengeance against his enemies
6. Verse 15: Request and wish for the poet himself

interpretation

Verse 15b

Psalm 17 verse 15 together with a piece from Psalm 3 in the Michaelerkirche in Vienna

Psalm 17 verse 5 in a Maryland cemetery

The awakening mentioned in the final verse "But I [...] will be saturated when I wake up with your image" ( Elberfelder ) caused problems for research and was interpreted in various ways:

• Heinrich Georg August Ewald and Bernhard Duhm and others suggest waking up in the morning, that is, the psalm is to be understood as an evening song.
• Rudolf Kittel interpret awakening as the resurrection, since sleeping in the Old Testament often symbolizes death .
• Friedrich Baethgen and Emil Kautzsch see Israel awakening from its powerlessness.
• Hans Keßler sees the passage as "spoiled", that is, as rendered pointless by later editing.

Web links

Commons : Psalm 17  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Psalm 17 in the standard translation , the Luther Bible and other translations from bibleserver.com
• Psalm 17 in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) on bibelwissenschaft.de
• Sheet music in the public domain of settings for Psalm 17 in the Choral Public Domain Library - ChoralWiki (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hermann Gunkel : Die Psalmen ⁶ 1986, p. 55.
2. ^ Hermann Gunkel: Die Psalmen ⁶ 1986, p. 56.