#Psalmtweet #Psalter 40:3

 

Salvation

וַיַּעֲלֵ֤נִי ׀ מִבּ֥וֹר שָׁאוֹן֮ מִטִּ֪יט הַיָּ֫וֵ֥ן וַיָּ֖קֶם עַל־סֶ֥לַע רַגְלַ֗י כּוֹנֵ֥ן אֲשֻׁרָֽי		3 He brought me up from a noisy pit, from wine-soaked muck, and placed my feet on a cliff, establishing my steps.
g viylni mbor waon m'ti't hivvn viqm yl-sly rglii conn awurii	14 13	vi/yl\ni m/bvr wa\vn m/'ti't h/ivn vi/qm yl sly rgl\i cvn\n awr\i

Note this bi-colon has no rest on the subdominant (A) but only the rest on the supertonic (on the first note of bar 5). The music perhaps signals that there is no complete rest until the poet's "steps are established". There are 45 verses in the Psalter that have this limited structure.

This contrasts with the 298 verses that are tri-cola having both these cadences within them; 2,037 verses have a rest on the subdominant only. And 147 verses of the Psalms are single line verses with rests on neither the subdominant nor the supertonic. 

The total number of verses in the Psalms is 2,527 - of which 2,037 are bi-cola with a rest on the subdominant. That leaves 490 verses that are of variant harmonic forms (45 with just a cadence on the supertonic + 298 with both cadences + 147 with no internal cadence). 

There are also 11 verses that fail to end on the tonic. I will show an example in a later post (Ps 89 if you want to look ahead). 

Why did the ancient musicians hear this way?