Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/615

 6]], which are most closely related by occasion, contents, and expression, are separated by the insertion of Psa 53:1-6, in which the individual character of Psa 52:1-9, the description of moral corruption and the announcement of the divine curse, is generalized. Psa 53:1-6 also belongs to this series according to its species of poetic composition; for the inscription runs: To the Precentor, after Machalath, a Maskı̂l of David. The formula על־מחלת recurs in Psa 88:1 with the addition of לענּות. Since Ps 88 is the gloomiest of all the Psalms, and Psa 53:1-6, although having a bright border, is still also a dark picture, the signification of מחלה, laxness (root חל, opp. מר), sickness, sorrow, which is capable of being supported by Exo 15:26, must be retained. על־מחלת signifies after a sad tone or manner; whether it be that מחלת itself (with the ancient dialectic feminine termination, like נגינת, Psa 61:1) is a name for such an elegiac kind of melody, or that it was thereby designed to indicate the initial word of some popular song. In the latter case מחלת is the construct form, the standard song beginning מחלת לב or some such way. The signification to be sweet (Aramaic) and melodious (Aethiopic), which the root חלי obtains in the dialects, is foreign to Hebrew. It is altogether inadmissible to combine מחלת with Arab. mahlt, ease, comfort (Germ. Gemächlichkeit, cf. mächlich, easily, slowly, with mählich, by degrees), as Hitzig does; since מחל, Rabbinic, to pardon, coincides more readily with מחה, Psa 51:3, Psa 51:11. So that we may regard machalath as equivalent to mesto, not piano or andante. That the two texts, Psa 14:1-7 and Psa 53:1-6, are “vestiges of an original identity” (Hupfeld) is not established: Psa 53:1-6 is a later variation of Psa 14:1-7. The musical designation, common