Divine metaphors in a selection of biblical Hebrew psalms of lamentation

Emotions play an important part in the Psalms, more than in other books of the Bible, but until now, the book has not been surveyed in order to make an emotional map. Such a map should show the emotions present in the book and their distribution, the persons experiencing them, and the relationships and situations generating them. It would be hard to draw that map in this article, because there are some basic issues. Psychological theories differ considerably in their description and classification of emotions.1 Can modern psychological theory be of any use in the study of ancient descriptions of emotions? How do the ancient biblical texts express emotions? Are there specific emotional nouns or verbs? Do the texts show emotions in their description of body parts and gestures? May we link emotions to rhetorical structures?2 In this article, I would like to give some answers to the question what one could expect to find by drawing an emotional map of the Psalms. I will explore the field in two ways. First, I will concentrate on human emotions and the link between emotions and psalm genres by describing, as an example, the emotional layer of Psalm 6, an individual lament, and by reflecting on emotional transformations. Second, I will study the emotional world of God, surveying his emotions in Psalms 107–150.

Emotions in the Psalms

The paper investigates the literary and theological provenance of Ps 91. It is shown that Ps 91 (in its present form) was composed by someone who had access to Proverbs, in particular Prov 3, while Ps 91 itself played a role in the composition of Job 5:17–26. As part of the “triptych” formed by Pss 90, 91 and 92, the psalm was intended to strengthen the conviction of its author that Yahweh is able and willing to provide protection to the individual believer who attaches himself or herself wholeheartedly to his or her God, saving the true and wise believer from the fate that will befall the wicked fools.

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Psalm 91 and its Wisdom Connections

Proverbs 7:6-23 — A poetic narrative A narrative in poetic form is a contradictio in terminus from the viewpoint of modern literary criticism. In this article the poetic narrative in Proverbs 7:6-23 is read from both the narrative and poetic angles, investigating the effect on the reader of this unexpected combination of two different literary genres in one literary unit.

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Spreuke 7:6-23 — 'n Poëtiese verhaal

De kunst van het lezen: presentatie en bespreking van p. van der lugt, strofische structuren in de bijbels-hebreeuwse poëzie

SUMMARY The general aspects of Psalm 6 as an individual lament have so far been clarified by form-critical studies Its individual character and poetry, however, were, to a great extent, disregarded in spite of the developments in the field of Hebrew stylistics This article describes in an explorative way the style-phenomena found in Psalm 6 and evaluates their function in the given context In part one the author sums up the well-known discussion about strophes because this leads to the important question of how to examine and to describe the structure of a text Most scholars when speaking about strophes limit themselves to only one criterion, the metre, or the number of cola or the general content, however vague this may be Syntax as a constituent element has consistently been disregarded The structural analysis given here does not rely on criteria arrived at by deduction, but on the interrelation between the stylistic data (syntax, parallelism, rhyme, repetition) In this article the term ‘strophes

H. W. M. Van Grol

Papers

De kunst van het lezen: presentatie en bespreking van p. van der lugt, strofische structuren in de bijbels-hebreeuwse poëzie

Literair-stilistische analyse van psalm 6