Psalm 8/Notes/Phrasal.V. 3.146712

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  • How has YHWH established a fortress to protect his people? The fortress comes out of the mouths of nursing children (מִפִּי עוֹלְלִים וְיֹנְקִים).[1] This prepositional phrase is fronted for marked focus.[2] In other words, YHWH has founded a fortress not by means of the powerful and eloquent, but by means of the helpless cries of the weakest and most vulnerable.
  • Why has YHWH founded a fortress? According to v. 3b, YHWH has founded a fortress because of (לְמַעַן)[3] his adversaries (צוֹרְרֶיךָ). YHWH's "adversaries" may be either "historical persons and nations (Ps 2:1-3) or mythological beings and disruptive cosmic forces (Pss 74:13; 89:10; 93:3)."[4] Those who argue for the latter think that "the enemy and avenger in v. [3]c are best explained as a reference to the foes that God overcomes in the process of creation."[5] Those who argue that the adversaries are human and historical point to the use of the phrase "your adversaries" (צֹרְרֶיךָ) in Ps 74:4 and "vengeful enemy" (אויב ומתנקם) in Ps 44:17 to refer to Israel's enemies[6] along with the fact that "here, as throughout the psalms, the psalmist is fluidly able to identify personal enemies with those hostile to God" (cf. Ps 2:3).[7] This view is probably correct, and the enemies probably refer to the enemies of God's people.[8]
  • The phrase vengeful enemy (אוֹיֵב וּמִתְנַקֵּם) (lit. "the enemy and the avenger" [ESV]) is probably, like "nursing children," a hendiadys ("the vindictive enemy" [NET]).[9]
  1. ↑ Some understand the prepositional phrase "Out of the mouths of nursing children" to modify the previous clause ("your glory is bestowed out of the mouths of nursing children") (cf. RSV, REB, GNT) rather than the following clause ("out of the mouths of nursing children you have founded a fortress"). But the oldest and best witnesses to the division of the text (Masoretic accents, LXX [cf. Matt 21:16], Syriac Peshitta, Jerome) group the phrase with the following clause.
  2. ↑ Lunn 2006, 296 – "MKD".
  3. ↑ "לְמַעַן is a subordinating conjunction that is also used secondarily as a preposition" (BHRG 40.36). In this clause, where is governs only a NP, it functions as a preposition (see grammatical diagram). "The clause or noun phrase with לְמַעַן typically follows the matrix clause" (BHRG 40.36).
  4. ↑ Rogerson and McKay 1977, 42.
  5. ↑ Jacobson 2014, 123. Jacobson continues, "As is well known, the mythic concept of creation as a conflict was commonly held among Israel’s neighbors. Within the Old Testament, vestiges of this mythic idea are found... It is particularly enlightening that both Psalms 8 and 74 refer to God’s might (ʿōz; cf. Isa 51:9; Ps 89:11). The term is part of the vocabulary of the creation conflict myth, lending support to the view that the phrase you have established might because of your foes, to put an end to enemy and avenger is another reference to the act of creation" (Jacobson 2014, 123-4; cf. Anderson 1972, 102; Terrien 2003, 129).
  6. ↑ E.g., Baethgen 1904, 21.
  7. ↑ Wilson 2002, 203. Cf. 1 Sam 30:26, where Israel's enemies are called "YHWH's enemies."
  8. ↑ Others have argued that "no attempt should be made to sort out one type of enemy or another" and that "the enemies in this context embody whatever or whoever threatens the divine purpose of the Creator" (Tate 2001, 353). Cf. Zenger: "die pleonastische Zusammenstellung der Feindbegriffe meint alle JHWH-widrigen Mächte und Individuen" (Zenger 1993, 79).
  9. ↑ Cf. Baethgen 1904, 21; Brown 2002, 155.