Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/376

 possibly be so rendered that ל is treated as Lamed auctoris (Dathe, Olshausen): Thine, saith my heart, is (the utterance:) seek ye may face. The declaration is opposed to this sense, thus artificially put upon it. לך אמר are undoubtedly to be construed together; and what the heart says to Jahve is not: Seek ye my face, but by reason of this, and as its echo (Calvin: velut Deo succinens): I will therefore seek Thy face. Just as in Job 42:3, a personal inference is drawn from a directly quoted saying of God. In the periodic style it would be necessary to transpose בּקּשׁוּ פּני thus: since Thou hast permitted and exhorted us, or in accordance with Thy persuasive invitation, that we should seek Thy face, I do seek Thy face (Hupfeld). There is no retrospective reference to any particular passage in the Tôra, such as Deu 4:29. The prayer is not based upon any single passage of Scripture, but upon God's commands and promises in general.

Verses 9-10
The requests are now poured forth with all the greater freedom and importunity, that God may be willing to be entreated and invoked. The Hiph. הטּה signifies in this passage standing by itself (cf. Job 24:4): to push aside. The clause עזרתי היית does not say: be Thou my help (which is impossible on syntactical grounds), nor is it to be taken relatively: Thou who wast my help (for which there is no ground in what precedes); but on the contrary the praet. gives the ground of the request that follows “Thou art my help (lit., Thou has become, or hast ever been) - cast me, then, not away,” and it is, moreover, accented accordingly. Psa 27:10, as we have already observed, does not sound as though it came from the lips of David, of whom it is only said during the time of his persecution by Saul, that at that time he was obliged to part from his parents, 1Sa 22:3. The words certainly might be David's, if Psa 27:10 would admit of being taken hypothetically, as is done by Ewald, §362, b: should my father and my mother forsake me, yet Jahve will etc. But the entreaty “forsake me not” is naturally followed by the reason: for my father and my mother have forsaken me; and just as naturally does the consolation: but Jahve will take me up, prepare the way for the entreaties which begin anew in [[Bible_(King_James)/Psalms|Psa 27: