Template:PsalmFrontPage/ExploreTheLayers

Explore the Layers

Exegetical Issues

What do we mean by this?

The Hebrew of the psalms can be difficult to understand at times. In this section, you can explore (in either video or text format) what we've deemed to be the three most important difficulties in the Hebrew, and follow our reasoning as we do a deep dive in scholarly work and explain our conclusions.

• The Unity of Ps 19
• The Text and Meaning of Ps 19:5a
• The Meaning of זֵדִים in Ps 19:14

Grammar

What do we mean by this?

A full, detailed diagram showing the grammatical function of each word/morpheme in the Hebrew text, along with accompanying notes.

• Explore the Grammar layer

Semantics

Lexical and Phrase-level Semantics

What do we mean by this?

Lexical semantics is the study of word meanings. It examines semantic range (=possible meanings of a word), the relationship between words (e.g. synonymy, hyponymy), as well as the relationship between words and larger concepts (conceptual domains). One component of our approach involves not only the study of the Hebrew word meaning, but also of our own assumptions about word meaning in modern languages. Because the researcher necessarily starts with their own cultural assumptions (in our case, those of Western-trained scholars), this part of the analysis should ideally be done afresh for every culture. Phrase-level semantics analyses the meaning of syntactic units which are larger than the level of the word and smaller than the level of the clause. Specifically, this layer analyses the meaning of prepositional phrases , construct phrases (a special type of construction in Hebrew), phrases formed by a coordinating waw conjunction, and noun phrases which consist of a noun plus a determiner (such as "the") or a quantifier (such as "all").

• Explore Lexical and Phrasal Semantics

Verbal Semantics

What do we mean by this?

Verbal Semantics focuses on the relationship between verbs, time and modality, and gives details about each verb in the psalm. This is important for interpretation and translation, and how one analyses a verb can have a significant effect on how it is rendered.

• Explore Verbal Semantics

Story Behind the Psalm (Unit-level Semantics)

What do we mean by this?

The Story Behind triangle tells the "story" (reading from left to right, beginning at the bottom left corner) of what might have prompted the psalmist to write this psalm. The events and ideas on the triangle are taken from the Propositions and Assumptions table below. Propositional content is the part of the meaning of a clause or sentence that is constant, despite changes in such things as voice, illocutionary force, tense/aspect/mode, person/gender/number, etc. It refers to “the kind of situation or event described by the underlying proposition.” Once we have identified the propositional content, we ask, “what would the world have to be like for this [proposition] to be true?” That is, what does this proposition presuppose about the world? What does it entail? What might be implied? In what kind of situation does this make sense? In other words, what assumptions are bound up with this proposition? We distinguish three kinds of assumptions:

• Common-ground assumptions
• Local-ground assumptions
• Playground assumptions

See the Legend accompanying the chart for more details on the types of assumptions.

Understanding the assumptions involved will help translators understand the implicit information present in the text, so that they can decide which of these to make explicit in the translation or biblical helps for their audience to understand the text's larger meaning.

• Explore the Story Behind the Psalm

Discourse

Participant Analysis

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What do we mean by this?

This layer examines each participant in the psalm, whether they have speaking roles in the psalm, or are just referenced in the poem. Often, the relationships and interactions among participants sheds much light on the understanding and translation of a psalm. The summary visuals give a view of the participants in the psalm as a whole, while the tables list the participant information for each clause.

• Explore Participant Analysis

Macrosyntax

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• Explore Macrosyntax

Speech Act Analysis

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• Explore Speech Act Analysis

Emotional Analysis

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• Explore Emotional Analysis

Repeated Roots

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Poetics

Poetic Structure & Features

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• Explore further Poetic Analysis

Verse-by-Verse Notes

View all of Psalm 19 Verse-by-Verse Notes, or click on an individual verse below.

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