Arrangement and Inscriptions

 Thesis: (per Dr. D)

that psalms with similar prominent thoughts, or even with only markedly similar passages, especially at the beginning and the end, are thus strung together, may be observed throughout the whole collection...

This is somewhat helpful and is among many things I noted when writing my own book on the Psalms 10 years ago. Is it enough? It is enough for a few local 'arrangements', but not for the overall purpose of organizing a book of praises. And by itself it does not indicate sequence but only adjacency.

His first example - Psalms 1 and 2 connected by awri is much stronger than mere similarity in that what begins and ends must be also sequential. As book ends enclose books on a shelf, so psalm 2 must follow psalm 1 by virtue of the enclosing verses and not vice versa. Similarly Psalms 2 and 149 enclose the whole set of praises. This principle of grouping by enclosure is stronger than mere similarity. The content of the enclosing elements allows insight into the purpose: viz of psalms 1 and 2 - happiness, and of psalms 2 and 149 - judgment of the nations, tribes, and sovereigns by the merciful (ksdim).

lywot bhm mwp't ctub hdr hua lcl-ksidiv hllu-ih

To make in them judgment inscribed. This honour to all under his mercy. Hallelu Yah.

There is no rest in this verse - no atnah, nor ole-veyored..

Closely connected with this principle of arrangement is the circumstance that the Elohimic psalms (i. e., those which, according to a peculiar style of composition as I have shewn in my Symlolae, not from the caprice of an editor, almost exclusively call God alhim, and beside this make use of such compound names of God as ihvh alhim xbaot, ihvh xbaot and the like) are placed together without any intermixture of Jehovic psalms. 

This is certainly well known - the Psalter as a sandwich, Yahweh the bread, Elohim the meat. I had not thought of it as mirroring the source-critical idea from the Pentateuch, but perhaps.

Community in species of composition also belongs to the manifold grounds on which the order according to the subject-matter is determined. Thus the mwcil (xlii-xliii. xliv. xlv. lii-lv) and mctm (lvi-lx) stand together among the Elohim-psalms. In like manner we have in the last two books the wir hmylot [ed. correcting the typo hmxlot] (cxx-cxxxiv) and, divided into groups, those beginning with hodu (cv-cvii) and those beginning and ending with hlluia (cxi-cxvii, cxlvi-cl) — whence it follows that these titles to the psalms are older than the final redaction of the collection.

N.B. his conclusion with respect to the titles and inscriptions. He holds back no disdain for those who put down the inscriptions as late or irrelevant. Also he notes the lack we have due to the loss of the understanding of these words.

Instances like Hab. iii. 1 and 2 Sam. i. 18, comp. Ps. lx. 1, shew that David and other psalm-writers might have appended their names to their psalms and the definition of their purport. And the great antiquity of these and similar inscriptions also follows from the fact that the LXX found them already in existence and did not understand them; that they also cannot be explained from the Books of the Chronicles (including the Book of Ezra, which belongs to these) in which much is said about music, and appear in these books, like much besides, as an old treasure of the language revived, so that the key to the understanding of them must have been lost very early, also appears from the fact that in the last two books of the Psalter they are of more rare, and in the first three of more frequent occurrence.

There is a great deal said about the music indeed. The undoing of our misunderstanding is a long journey. This will become more obvious in the next several posts.