Psalm 7/Figurative

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Figurative

Metaphor

  • v.2a. Yahweh is a refuge.
  • v.2b. The image of "pursuers" (רדפים) may be metaphorical.[1]
  • v.15. "The origin of the wicked person's sin is described in the metaphor of conception and pregnancy... As a woman labors painfully, yet lovingly, with the child soon to be delivered, so too does the unrepentant sinner with his iniquity."[2]
  • v.16. "The poet turns to another metaphor, in which he makes clear the course that evil runs; the wicked person falls into the pit he was digging for others."[3],

Simile

  • v.3.‎ כְּאַרְיֵה – David's pursuers are compared to "a lion" (cf. 10:9; 17:12; 22:13, 21; 35:17; 57:4; 58:6). "Of all the animal species profiled in the Psalter, the most common is the lion."[4] "The Israelites based their opinion of the lion on their encounters with it as pastoralists (Amos 5:19). They knew the lion as a ruthless, almost unstoppable killer, taking from the flock at will."[5] Lion imagery, therefore, "heightens the psalmist's helplessness before the overwhelming power of the enemy, like prey before a predator. The enemy exhibits a fearsome combination of stealth and aggression. As consummate predators, the wicked are cast as eminently bloodthirsty, reveling in the destruction of the weak."[6],

Metonymy

  • v.4b. Hands (כפים) are metonymic for doing/acting ("a metonymy of cause"[7]): "If there is injustice in my hands" = "If I have acted unjustly."
  • v.6ab. Ground/Dust (ארץ // עפר) are metonymic for defeat and death – "a metonymy of adjunct for the grave."[8]
  • v.6c. Honor (כבוד) stands for the person ("Metonymy of the effect"[9]) and "emphasizes the noblest part of a person (cf. Ps. 4:2; 16:9; 30:12).[10]
  • v.7a. Rising (קוּם) is metonymic for taking action, in this case, judicial action (vv.7c-8). In Psalm 76, God, the judge (שֹׁפֵט), rises (קוּם) for the judgment (לַמִּשְׁפָּט) to rescue the poor in the land (Ps. 76:10).
  • v.10c. "Hearts/minds and kidneys" (לבות וכליות) are metonymic for people's innermost thoughts and desires.,

Synecdoche

  • vv.3a, 6a. The נֶפֶשׁ stands for the whole person.
  • v.4b. אִֽם־יֶשׁ־עָ֥וֶל בְּכַפָּֽי׃ – "Hands" represent the whole person – "a kind of Metonymy or Synecdoche, by which a part of a person is put for the whole."[11]
  • v.17. The head (ראשׁ // קדקד) stands for the whole person.,

Anthropomorphism

  • v.7. עוּרָה – "Wake up" implies that God is sleeping and thus draws on the motif of the sleeping warrior (cf. Ps. 78:65-66).
  • vv.7-14. Yahweh is a righteous judge (v.12, שֹׁפֵט). Rising up (v.7a), he decrees judgment (v.7c) and presides over the "assembly of peoples" (vv.8-9a). His judgment is upright, upholding the righteous (vv.9, 10b) and putting an end to wickedness (v.10a). This judicial imagery (vv.7-12) is blended with battle imagery (vv.11-14), as the Judge takes up sword and bow against the wicked. The two metaphorical schemas (Yahweh as Judge; Yahweh as Warrior) are intrinsically related: Israel's pre-monarchical judges (שֹׁפְטִים) were political/military leaders who enacted משׁפט on the battlefield (e.g., Jdg. 2:9-10) as well as in the courtroom (e.g., Jdg. 3:5). In Israel, "the civil officer (the שׁפט) had the executive as well as judicial powers. He also executed or caused to be executed judicial decisions."[12] Thus, in the book of Judges, שֹׁפֵט is practically synonymous with מוֹשִׁיעַ (Jdg. 2:16; 3:9, 15; etc.). This is the case also in Psalm 7: מ֝וֹשִׁ֗יעַ יִשְׁרֵי־לֵֽב (v.11b) / אֱ֭לֹהִים שׁוֹפֵ֣ט צַדִּ֑יק (v.12a).
The target domain for Yahweh's warring against the wicked is the dynamistic process described in vv.15-17. "One must observe the juxtaposition of the description of Yahweh as warrior (vss. 13f.) with that of the dynamistic process (vss.15-17). This very juxtaposition implies that the dynamistic process, though expressed in impersonal terms, is in reality the outward form which Yahweh’s warfare takes. Yahweh the warrior, cartying out his legal sentence, masquerades, as it were, in the dynamic. The omission of specific mention of him has a particular intention: it highlights the inevitability, equivalence, orderedness and even mysteriousness of the process; it stresses that such perversions of order as underlie this text boomerang upon the perpetrator."[13]
  1. ↑ so Craige, Psalms 1-50, 100.
  2. ↑ Peter Craige, Psalms 1-50, Word Biblical Commentary 19 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1983), 102.
  3. ↑ Peter Craige, Psalms 1-50, Word Biblical Commentary 19 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1983), 102.
  4. ↑ William Brown, Seeing the Psalms (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 136
  5. ↑ Leland Ryken, James Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III, eds, “Lion,” in Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1998), 514.
  6. ↑ William Brown, Seeing the Psalms (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 139
  7. ↑ Allen P. Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Kregel Acadeic, 2011), 280.
  8. ↑ Allen P. Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Kregel Acadeic, 2011), 281.
  9. ↑ E.W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech in the Bible (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1898), 561.
  10. ↑ Allen P. Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Kregel Acadeic, 2011), 280.
  11. ↑ E.W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech in the Bible (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1898), 411.
  12. ↑ Robert D. Culver, "שׁפט," TWOT (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), 2443.
  13. ↑ Robert L. Hubbard, “Dynamistic and Legal Processes in Psalm 7,” Zeitschrift Für Die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 94, no. 2 (1982): 267–79.
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