Psalm 24 Discourse
From Psalms: Layer by Layer
Macrosyntax
Notes.
Word order:
- v. 2a: ליהוה focus fronted (probably exclusive)
- v. 2b: הוא focus fronted (probably verum/exclusive)
- v. 2b-c: PPs על־ימים and על־נהרות fronted for poetic superimposition
- v. 4b: PP לשׁוא pre-patient as either (1) repeating (in this case, preemptively) the structure of 4c which has no object or (2) contrasting focus to the actions/attitudes of v. 4a
- Paragraph breaks are indicated by סלה and imperatives/vocatives from v.7ff.
- Vocative position vv. 7a/9a: Tentatively, the medial-vocative simply slows down processing and partitions the line into manageable chunks (since the imperatival VP is 'all new'). Other explanations include mitigation/marking superiority of addressee (Revell 1996: 338 / Kim 2022: 187), dividing theme-rheme (Kim 2022: 191) or simply "poetic" (ibid.: 190) None of these are satisfying here.
- Vocative position vv. 7b/9b: According to Kim's (2022) understanding of a C-unit, פתחי עולם would be C-unit medial (as the resulting weyiqtol clause would be contained within the same C-unit), and either "focussing" the weyiqtol clause or at least delaying its utterance for higher prominence / attention-grabbing. I think that works here.
Speech Act Analysis
For Visual, click "Expand" to the right
