Psalm 46/Notes/Phrasal.v. 1.971598

The superscription in v. 1 contains a few construct and prepositional phrases (on which also see the Grammatical Diagram above). The meaning of למנצח in the Psalter is debated (on this, see further Lamnaṣṣēaḥ). Here it is rendered as for the music director per discussion in Lamnaṣṣēaḥ. The ל preposition in this phrase can indicate "interest" or "advantage".^[1] Thus, based on inner- and extra-biblical evidence, it has been argued that למנצח should be read as "to be recited by the ofﬁcial in charge".^[2] Alternatively, it could signify possession, i.e., "for the leader... for/belonging to the one in charge."^[3]

↑ JM§132d. Cf. "for the conductor... to describe the activity of the Levite musicians... throughout the Psalms, Lamenatse᾽ach prefaces some performance instruction in the superscription" (Jacobson 2016).
↑ "In the language of the Chronicler, the verb niṣṣeaḥ, ‘be in charge of’ shares two important characteristics with menaṣṣeaḥ in the headings: it occurs only in a religious context, namely the building of the Temple, and it is followed by the preposition ‘al. (4) Finally, the evidence of the Akkadian ritual texts, in which each rubric speciﬁes an ofﬁcial to sing or recite the composition (the kalu-priest, the mashmashu-priest, or the like), conﬁrms the obvious assumption that the term should be rendered: ‘to be recited by the ofﬁcial in charge’. Why only some of the psalms have this term in their heading, and how it is that so many of the ancient versions reject this rendering in favour of more imaginative, liturgical and eschatological inventions (‘triumphal ode’, ‘to the end of the world’) no one can say. But in the light of what we have seen of the combination of archaic terminology and rabbinic originality in the Psalm headings, it would be unwise to ignore the main bulk of the evidence for the meaning of la-menaṣṣeaḥ in Masoretic tradition" (Saywer 2011: 296).
↑ de-Claisse-Walford et al. 2014. Due to the brevity of the superscription, it is difficult to know with certainty how the preposition should be understood. Additionally, while the definite article does not appear often in Psalm 46, its occurrence with the lexeme למנצח (if taken to mean "director") would identify the director's presence in the setting envisaged by the psalm, even though this individual has not been properly introduced. This use of the definite article would be of the "identifiability - implication" type which marks entities present in a situation, even if they were not previously mentioned.

[1] JM§132d. Cf. "for the conductor... to describe the activity of the Levite musicians... throughout the Psalms, Lamenatse᾽ach prefaces some performance instruction in the superscription" (Jacobson 2016).

[2] "In the language of the Chronicler, the verb niṣṣeaḥ, ‘be in charge of’ shares two important characteristics with menaṣṣeaḥ in the headings: it occurs only in a religious context, namely the building of the Temple, and it is followed by the preposition ‘al. (4) Finally, the evidence of the Akkadian ritual texts, in which each rubric speciﬁes an ofﬁcial to sing or recite the composition (the kalu-priest, the mashmashu-priest, or the like), conﬁrms the obvious assumption that the term should be rendered: ‘to be recited by the ofﬁcial in charge’. Why only some of the psalms have this term in their heading, and how it is that so many of the ancient versions reject this rendering in favour of more imaginative, liturgical and eschatological inventions (‘triumphal ode’, ‘to the end of the world’) no one can say. But in the light of what we have seen of the combination of archaic terminology and rabbinic originality in the Psalm headings, it would be unwise to ignore the main bulk of the evidence for the meaning of la-menaṣṣeaḥ in Masoretic tradition" (Saywer 2011: 296).

[3] -Claisse-Walford et al. 2014. Due to the brevity of the superscription, it is difficult to know with certainty how the preposition should be understood. Additionally, while the definite article does not appear often in Psalm 46, its occurrence with the lexeme למנצח (if taken to mean "director") would identify the director's presence in the setting envisaged by the psalm, even though this individual has not been properly introduced. This use of the definite article would be of the "identifiability - implication" type which marks entities present in a situation, even if they were not previously mentioned.

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