Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/1256



Verses 1-2
The poet will give thanks to Him, whom he means without mentioning Him by name, for His mercy, i.e., His anticipating, condescending love, and for His truth, i.e., truthfulness and faithfulness, and more definitely for having magnified His promise (אמרה) above all His Name, i.e., that He has given a promise which infinitely surpasses everything by which He has hitherto established a name and memorial for Himself (על־כּל־שׁמך, with ō instead of ŏ, an anomaly that is noted by the Masora, vid., Baer's Psalterium, p. 133). If the promise by the mouth of Nathan (2 Sam. 7) is meant, then we may compare 2Sa 7:21. גּדל, גּדול, גּדלּה are repeated in that promise and its echo coming from the heart of David so frequently, that this הגדּלתּ seems like a hint pointing to that history, which is one of the most important crises in the history of salvation. The expression נגד אלהים also becomes intelligible from this history. Ewald renders it: “in the presence of God!” which is surely meant to say: in the holy place (De Wette, Olshausen). But “before God will I sing praise to Thee (O God!)” - what a jumble! The lxx renders ἐναντίον ἀγγέλων, which is in itself admissible and full of meaning, but without coherence in the context of the Psalm, and also is to be rejected because it is on the whole very questionable whether the Old Testament language uses אלהים thus, without anything further to define it, in the sense of “angels.” It might be more readily rendered “in the presence of the gods,” viz., of the gods of the peoples (Hengstenberg, Hupfeld, and Hitzig); but in order to be understood of gods which are only seemingly such, it would require some addition. Whereas אלהים can without any addition denote the magisterial possessors of the dignity that is the type of the divine, as follows from Psa 82:1 (cf. Psa 45:7) in spite of Knobel, Graf, and Hupfeld; and thus, too (cf. נגד מלכים in Psa 119:46), we understand it here, with Rashi, Aben-Ezra, Kimchi, Falminius, Bucer, Clericus, and others. What is meant are “the great who are in the earth,” 2Sa 7:9, with whom David, inasmuch as he became king from being a shepherd, is ranked, and