Psalm 34/Overview/Background

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  • The appropriate response to YHWH's deliverance is to bless/praise YHWH (cf. Ps. 103).
  • Lengthening one's days (i.e., living a long time) and seeing "good" is a tremendous blessing (cf. Ex. 20:12; Deut. 5:16, 33; 6:2; 25:15; 1 Kgs. 3:14; cf. Paul Sanders, "A Long Life as a Blessing in the Old Testament and the Ancient Levant," forthcoming).
  • Fearing YHWH is the key to a long and peaceful life (cf. Deut. 5:33).
  • The alphabet is a symbol of completeness (cf. Gottwald 1954:23-32; IVP Dictionary, “Acrostic”, Soll Anchor Bible Dictionary; Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry 2001; Zenger 1993:211). In an acrostic poem, the poet takes a topic (e.g., Torah [Ps. 119], or the virtuous woman [Prov. 31]) and expounds on it completely (from every possible angle), so that the reader walks away with a high-resolution image of the topic (i.e., he/she understands it “from A to Z”).