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 sight of its inhabitants, Num 33:3, cf. Exo 14:8 (Hengstenberg), but the going out over a country. Elohim is the subject, and צאת is to be understood according to Exo 11:4 (Kimchi, De Dieu, Dathe, Rosenmüller, and others): when He went out for judgment over the land of Egypt (cf. Mic 1:3). This statement of the time of itself at once decides the reference of the Psalm to the Passover, which commemorates the sparing of Israel at that time (Exo 12:27), and which was instituted on that very night of judgment. The accentuation divides the verse correctly. According to this, שׂפת לא־ידעתּי אשׁמע is not a relative clause to מצרים: where I heard a language that I understood not (Psa 114:1). Certainly ידע שׂפה, “to understand a language,” is an expression that is in itself not inadmissible (cf. ידע ספר, to understand writing, to be able to read, Isa 29:11.), the selection of which instead of the more customary phrase שׁמע לשׁון (Deu 28:49; Isa 33:19; Jer 5:15) might be easily intelligible here beside אשׁמע; but the omission of the שׁם (אשׁר) is harsh, the thought it here purposeless, and excluded with our way of taking בצאתו. From the speech of God that follows it is evident that the clause is intended to serve as an introduction of this divine speech, whether it now be rendered sermonem quem non novi (cf. Psa 18:44, populus quem non novi), or alicujus, quem non novi (Ges. §123, rem. 1), both of which are admissible. It is not in some way an introduction to the following speech of God as one which it has been suddenly given to the psalmist to hear: “An unknown language, or the language of one unknown, do I hear?” Thus Döderlein explains it: Subitanea et digna poetico impetu digressio, cum vates sese divino adflatu subito perculsum sentit et oraculum audire sibi persuadet; and in the same way De Wette, Olshausen, Hupfeld, and others. But the oracle of God cannot appear so strange to the Israelitish poet and seer as the spirit-voice to Eliphaz (Job 4:16); and moreover אשׁמע after the foregoing historical predicates has the presumption of the imperfect signification in its favour. Thus, then, it will have to be interpreted according to Exo 6:2. It was the language of a known, but still also unknown God, which Israel heard in the redemption of that period. It was the God who had been made manifest as יהוה only, so to speak, by way of prelude hitherto, who now appeared at this juncture of the patriarchal