Psalm 20

Psalm 20 recited in Hebrew (Ogg Vorbis audio file, length: 49 s, 166 kbps). Text in Hebrew

Psalms 20 to 21 in the Biblia Hebraica Kittel (1909)

The 20th psalm (according to Greek counting the 19th) is a psalm of David and belongs to the series of royal psalms. It was sung for a king of Judea . Due to content and semantic similarities, a literary dependence on the Amherst 63 papyrus can be assumed.

structure

A possible structure looks like this:

1. Verses 1-6: Prayer for the King: good wishes.
2. Verses 7-10: Assurances in prophetic style: proclaiming a divine oracle.

subjects

Name theology

The Old Testament scholar Hermann Gunkel emphasizes the role of the name of God in his psalm commentary . Finally, the psalmist does not speak directly of the deity, but of the name of the deity (verses 2, 6 and 8). The naming of names plays a special role in the Old Testament: With the pronouncement of the name YHWH, raise your hands in prayer and call on him (cf. also Ps 63,5  EU and Ps 116,17  EU ), the blessing , the prayer begins and the hymn - knowing God's name means "having religion".

Evaluation of victims

Together with Psalm 66, the psalm shows a consistently positive evaluation of material sacrifices (verse 4) - unlike, for example, Psalm 51 without a critical tendency.

Web links

Commons : Psalm 20  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Psalm 20 in the standard translation , the Luther Bible and other translations from bibleserver.com
• Psalm 20 in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) on bibelwissenschaft.de
• Public domain sheet music of settings for Psalm 20 in the Choral Public Domain Library - ChoralWiki (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hermann Gunkel : The Psalms . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen ⁶ 1986, p. 82.
2. ↑ Hermann Gunkel: The Psalms . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen ⁶ 1986, p. 83.
3. ^ Christiane Radebach-Huonker: Sacrifice terminology in the Psalter . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2010, p. 103.