Tuesday 30 July 2013

Key verses - Psalm 4 - and the process of inspiration

Labuschange and I are bound to disagree on this one. My recurrence table shows that verse 3 is without recurrence. That makes it stand out.
Children, each of you,
how long will you humiliate my glory?
your love empty? 
your seeking a lie?
Selah
Labuschange has verse 5 as would be expected since he is doing mid-point verses. (There is no atenach in this verse - curious. I am using the Me'ir Halevi (Max) Letteris edition of the te'amim.)
Shudder and do not sin
promise in your heart
where you lie down and be mute
Selah
The numerological approach could be a strategy for locking in the copying process.

Similar to verse 3, no word is repeated from verse 8 in the rest of the poem.
You have given gladness in my heart
more than when their grain
and their new wine multiplied
Imagine this: 
  1. Poet reads Torah, or an early prophet 
  2. inspired to write psalm, composes or copies key text(s) on the gift(s) received
  3. sketches the keywords, 
  4. writes poem around the key verses using keywords and parallelism to lock in the vertical grammar, 
  5. holds the word(s) revealed (in this case verses 3, 8), 
  6. sketches the music, 
  7. and then locates the centre of the poem and locks in the content by imposing word counts.
Redaction process to come ... Courage, friends - and count the words in the whole book...
Word and gloss * first usage12345678910VsRoot
* בקראי when I call
2קרא
* צדקי my righteousness
2צדק
* ושׁמע and hear
2שׁמע
סלה Selah
3סלה
כי --
4כי
יהוה יהוה
4יהוה
יהוה יהוה
4יהוה
* ישׁמע will hear
4שׁמע
* בקראי when I call
4קרא
* אמרו promise
5אמר
* משׁכבכם you lie down
5שׁכב
סלה Selah
5סלה
* זבחו offer
6זבח
* זבחי offerings of
6זבח
* צדק righteousness
6צדק
* ובטחו and trust
6בטח
יהוה יהוה
6יהוה
* אמרים say
7אמר
יהוה יהוה
7יהוה
* אשׁכבה I will lie down
9שׁכב
כי for
9כי
יהוה יהוה
9יהוה
* לבטח to trust
9בטח


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