Psalm 14 Participant analysis

Back to Psalm 14

Psalm Overview

• Grammar
• Semantics
• Story behind the Psalm
• Discourse
• Poetics

Overview

There are four participants/characters in Psalm 14:

• David
• YHWH
  • YHWH
  • God (אֱלֹהִים)
• The wicked
  • Fool (נָבָל)
  • Humanity (בְּנֵי־אָדָם)
• The righteous
  • My (=David's) people (עַמִּי)
  • His (=YHWH's) people (עַמּוֹ)
  • Righteous generation (דּוֹר צַדִּיק)
  • Israel/Jacob

Participant Relations

The relationships among the participants may be abstracted and summarised as follows:

• The wicked reject YHWH and do not call on him.
• Instead, they eat his people and shame them.
• But YHWH is a refuge for the righteous, and he will bring them salvation.

Participants in the Psalm

• The main actor in this psalm is the wicked.
• The righteous appear mostly as predicative participants and only rarely as subjects.
• The only 2nd person address is in v. 6, where the wicked are addressed.
• "In reference to 'my people': A key question in the interpretation of the psalm revolves around v. 4a, in which the psalm refers to my people. Should one understand the speaker as God or simply as the psalmist expressing concern over the suffering of my people? One’s interpretation of the structure of the psalm hinges on how one resolves that question. Here, the view is that the voice speaking v. 4 is the same as the one speaking in the rest of the psalm—a priest or teacher who feels responsibility for the community." If David, the king, is taken as the speaker of the psalm (cf. v. 1), then the reference to "my people" is a natural expression of the relationship between a king and his people.

Participant Analysis Diagram

Legend

Diagram

The following image is the grammatical diagram overlaid with information regarding the participants, or characters, of the psalm. It makes explicit who is doing what to whom.

Chart