Psalm 55 Interpreted in View of its Textual,Metatextual and Intertextual Connections

Psalms 52-55 constitute a cluster of psalms with significant links to one another, to Proverbs, and also to the history of David. Psalms 52 and 55 were both also influenced by motifs from Jer 9. These features point to their having been composed (Ps 52) or edited (Ps 55) with a specific focus in mind. This article attempts to read Psalm 55 on its own, but also within the context of the cluster and in its relationship to Jer 9 as well as David’s history in order to refine our knowledge of the problems, values, hopes and expectations of the Persian period editors who compiled and edited the cluster.     

Dwelling Brothers,Oozing Oil,and Descending Dew: Reading Psalm 133 Through the Lens of Yehudite Social Memory

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the ways in which Psalm 133 contributes to and is shaped by social memory in Yehud. By reading this psalm as a voice within a larger discourse of cultural memories, the images of brothers dwell-ing together, flowing oil, and dew can be understood to fit within a standard narrative structure according to which the Yehudite community fashioned its stories, highlighting a sense of continuity between Israel’s perceived golden age and its anticipated utopian future. In this paper, I argue that through the collective reliving of shared memories, the community was able to virtually participate in the glorious existence that it perceived to be due to it as YHWH’s chosen people, contributing to a sense of collective identity.     

Foreign Yahwistic Singers in the Jerusalem Temple? Evidence from Psalm 92

Psalm 92 is generally approached as a wisdom, royal, or hymnic song composed for the Sabbath liturgy. The present study, however, reveals that behind this ostensible meaning, this psalm alludes to the integration of foreign Yahwistic singers among the clergy at the Jerusalem temple and the opposition that it provoked among some of their Israelite peers. Though this reality remains visible in the linear reading of the psalm, its full expression emerges only after the psalm is set in a cross-responsa fashion, a mode of complex antiphonal performance that mixes two voices singing the same text in the inverse order of its verses.     

The Decline of the Shepherd Metaphor as Royal Self-Expression1

In the Old Testament, shepherd is a common metaphor of kingship, and this metaphor is sometimes also used to denote the Israelite god as a ruler (See for instance HALOT entry ??? ). In Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian and Greek works this metaphor is remarkably more common in pre-exilic literature than in the later Greek and Roman literature, where it is almost absent. In this article I argue that shepherding was central to Assyrian and Babylonian ruling class identity, while absent as royal self-expression in the Persian, Achaemenid Empire. The imageries of these empires were influential as models for court life throughout the Ancient Near East, and beyond.