Psalm 24 Macrosyntax
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Psalm 24/Macrosyntax
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Meeting the king
Psalm 24
Please note: Resources for Psalm 24 are in the process of being reformatted for visual consistency and improved functionality.
Macrosyntax
Macrosyntax Diagram
| Macrosyntax legend | |
|---|---|
| Vocatives | Vocatives are indicated by purple text. |
| Discourse marker | Discourse markers (such as כִּי, הִנֵּה, לָכֵן) are indicated by orange text. |
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The scope governed by the discourse marker is indicated by a dashed orange bracket connecting the discourse marker to its scope. |
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The preceding discourse grounding the discourse marker is indicated by a solid orange bracket encompassing the relevant clauses. |
| Subordinating conjunction | The subordinating conjunction is indicated by teal text. |
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Subordination is indicated by a solid teal bracket connecting the subordinating conjunction with the clause to which it is subordinate. |
| Coordinating conjunction | The coordinating conjunction is indicated by blue text. |
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Coordination is indicated by a solid blue line connecting the coordinating clauses. |
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Coordination without an explicit conjunction is indicated by a dashed blue line connecting the coordinated clauses. |
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Marked topic is indicated by a black dashed rounded rectangle around the marked words. |
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The scope of the activated topic is indicated by a black dashed bracket encompassing the relevant clauses. |
| Marked focus or thetic sentence | Marked focus (if one constituent) or thetic sentences[1] are indicated by bold text. |
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Frame setters[2] are indicated by a solid gray rounded rectangle around the marked words. |
| [blank line] | Discourse discontinuity is indicated by a blank line. |
| [indentation] | Syntactic subordination is indicated by indentation. |
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Direct speech is indicated by a solid black rectangle surrounding all relevant clauses. |
| (text to elucidate the meaning of the macrosyntactic structures) | Within the CBC, any text elucidating the meaning of macrosyntax is indicated in gray text inside parentheses. |
If an emendation or revocalization is preferred, that emendation or revocalization will be marked in the Hebrew text of all the visuals.
| Emendations/Revocalizations legend | |
|---|---|
| *Emended text* | Emended text, text in which the consonants differ from the consonants of the Masoretic text, is indicated by blue asterisks on either side of the emendation. |
| *Revocalized text* | Revocalized text, text in which only the vowels differ from the vowels of the Masoretic text, is indicated by purple asterisks on either side of the revocalization. |
(Click diagram to enlarge)
- The discourse discontinuity between vv. 6 and 7 is indicated by סֶֽלָה and the salient pattern of imperatives and vocatives from v. 7 onwards.
- v. 1 – The phrase לַֽ֭יהוָה begins the verbless clause to indicate the exclusive focal nature of creation's belonging "to YHWH (and no one else)." See the SG21's cleft structure: C’est à l’Eternel qu’appartient "It is to the Lord that belong..."
- v. 2a – The pronoun ה֭וּא is focus fronted, either as polar (i.e., "It was he who...") or exclusive focus. See the REB's cleft structure: "For it was he who founded it on the seas" (cf. TOB).
- v. 2 – The prepositional phrases עַל־יַמִּ֣ים and עַל־נְ֝הָר֗וֹת (following the focus-fronted ה֭וּא in the first instance) are fronted to create a poetic pattern of repetition, which concludes the first section of the psalm (see poetic structure).
- v. 4b – The prepositional phrase לַשָּׁ֣וְא appears before *נַפְשׁוֹ* in order to set up the pattern of repetition with the structure of 4c, which lacks a constituent corresponding to *נַפְשׁוֹ*, and in order to create the line-final pattern of 3ms *נַפְשׁוֹ* and קָדְשֽׁוֹ in the previous verse.
- The vocative position as clause-medial in vv. 7a/9a can be (tentatively) understood simply to slow down the processing and to partition the line into manageable chunks (since the imperatival verb phrase is "all new" and somewhat "out-of-the-blue"). Other explanations include mitigation/marking superiority of addressee (Revell 1996, 338; Kim 2022, 187), dividing between theme-rheme (Kim 2022, 191) or simply "poetic" (ibid., 190) None of these three explanations are satisfying here.
- vv. 7b/9b – According to Kim's (2022) understanding of a C-unit, פִּתְחֵ֣י עוֹלָ֑ם would be C-unit medial (as the resulting weyiqtol clause would be contained within the same C-unit), and either "focusing" the weyiqtol clause or at least delaying its utterance for higher prominence. They also follow the line-second position of the preceding vocatives in vv. 7a and 9a with a ballast variant (making the lines of comparable length even in the absence of a direct object, like "your heads").
- (There are no notes on discourse markers for this psalm)
- (There are no notes on conjunctions for this psalm)
- ↑ When the entire utterance is new/unexpected, it is a thetic sentence (often called "sentence focus"). See our Creator Guidelines for more information on topic and focus.
- ↑ Frame setters are any orientational constituent – typically, but not limited to, spatio-temporal adverbials – function to "limit the applicability of the main predication to a certain restricted domain" and "indicate the general type of information that can be given" in the clause nucleus (Krifka & Musan 2012: 31-32). In previous scholarship, they have been referred to as contextualizing constituents (see, e.g., Buth (1994), “Contextualizing Constituents as Topic, Non-Sequential Background and Dramatic Pause: Hebrew and Aramaic evidence,” in E. Engberg-Pedersen, L. Falster Jakobsen and L. Schack Rasmussen (eds.) Function and expression in Functional Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 215-231; Buth (2023), “Functional Grammar and the Pragmatics of Information Structure for Biblical Languages,” in W. A. Ross & E. Robar (eds.) Linguistic Theory and the Biblical Text. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 67-116), but this has been conflated with the function of topic. In brief: sentence topics, belonging to the clause nucleus, are the entity or event about which the clause provides a new predication; frame setters do not belong in the clause nucleus and rather provide a contextual orientation by which to understand the following clause.