Psalm 18

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Psalm 18 sung in Hebrew (Ogg Vorbis audio file, length: 6 min 41 s, 155 kbps)
Words from Psalm 18 verse 19 in a mosaic ensemble (here below) that symbolizes the seventh Beatitude of Jesus
Words from Psalm 18 verse 47 on a street corner board in Gotha : The Lord lives and praised
be my refuge, and the God of
my salvation must be exalted
Psalm 18 verse 50 in the Utrecht Psalter

The 18th psalm (according to Greek counting the 17th) is a psalm of David from the biblical book of psalms . It belongs to the series of "Thank You Songs from an Individual".

structure

Hermann Gunkel structures the psalm in the following way:

  1. Verse 2f .: hymnal introduction
  2. Verses 4–20: Main part of the first part : narration of the event
    1. Verse 4: Brief summary
    2. Verse 5f .: Report of the poet's distress
    3. Verse 7ab: Invocation of YHWH
    4. Verses 7c-20: Record of salvation
      1. Verses 8-16: YHWH's intervention
      2. Verses 17-20: YHWH's act of salvation
  3. Verses 21–31: Meditations on divine intervention
    1. Verses 21-25: The reason for help: the singer's own righteousness
    2. Verses 26–28: The lesson that the speaker has learned from his destiny
    3. Verse 29f .: personal experience of the poet, his trust
    4. Verse 31: general confession
  4. Verses 32–51: second part
    1. Verse 33–37: The preparations: YHWH has equipped the victorious himself for the army
    2. Verses 38–43: Description of the victorious battle and the flight of the enemy
    3. Verses 44–46: Ascending the victorious hero to the "head of the nations"
    4. Verses 47–49: first final section
    5. Verse 50f .: Second final section

Remarks

The most striking feature of the psalm is its parallelism to 2 Sam 22  EU . Textual criticism mostly deals with the question of how the two texts differ from one another. According to the English Old Testament scholar WOE Oesterley, for example, both texts had the same original and the differences were due to tradition.

literature

  • Donald K. Berry: The Psalms and their readers: interpretive strategies for Psalm 18 (1993)

Web links

Commons : Psalm 18  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hermann Gunkel: Die Psalmen, 6 1986.
  2. ↑ Donald K. Beryy: The Psalms and Their readers. Interprative strategies for Psalm 18 (1993), p. 23.
  3. ↑ WOE Oesterley: The Psalms (1953), S. 162nd