Psalm 16/Notes/Lexical.v. 6.425015

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  • The adjective delightful (נָעִים) is a keyword in this psalm. It occurs in v. 6, at the conclusion of the psalm's first main section (vv. 2–6, בַּנְּעִמִים [masculine]), and it occurs again in the last line of the psalm (v. 11c, נְעִמוֹת [feminine]).[1] Both times, it occurs as a substantival adjective: "delightful [places]" (v. 6), "delightful [things]" (v. 11) (cf. Job 36:11). Outside of this psalm, the word is rather rare and occurs only in poetry (2 Sam 1:23; 23:1; Pss 81:3; 133:1; 135:3; 147:1; Prov 22:18; 23:8; 24:4; Job 36:11; Song 1:16). It refers to a "state in which a person or object has qualities that inspire love and appreciation" (SDBH). In Genesis 49:15, the verb נעם is applied to land: "But he sees that the resting place is good And that the land is delightful (נָעֵמָה)" (Gen 49:15, GNT).
  1. ↑ The use of a different grammatical gender in each instance might be a poetic device. As Berlin notes, Hebrew poets sometimes used the same root in different genders to create morphological parallels across lines (2008, 41–44). The use of the root נעם in two different genders in vv. 6, 11 might represent the same feature at a macro-level.