Singing of the Songs of Zion

Singing of the Songs of ZionSongs of the Heart: An Introduction to the Book of Psalms by Nahum M. SarnaReview by: MURRAY H. LICHTENSTEINProoftexts, Vol. 15, No. 2 (MAY 1995), pp. 202-208Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20689420 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 19:36

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Prooftexts.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.162 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 19:36:18 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=iupress

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20689420?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


202 REVIEWS

it fully in his interpretation of Jonah. Nevertheless, Craig points to some very interesting ways that literary criticism can play a useful role in conjunction with historical-critical methodology in the overall interpretation of biblical literature.

MARVIN A. SWEENEY School of Theology at Claremont

Claremont, Ca.

Singing of the Songs of Zion

Nahum M. Sarna. Songs of the Heart: An Introduction to the Book of Psalms. New York: Schocken Books, 1993, 298 pp.

Nahum Sarna's Songs of the Heart: An Introduction to the Book of Psalms is a welcome and worthy counterpart to his previously published introductions

Understanding Genesis and Exploring Exodus.1 Well known and much appreciated by students and teachers alike for their scholarship, accessibility, and clarity of

exposition, these earlier works are joined by the author's latest contribution toward rendering the Hebrew Bible comprehensible and meaningful to the widest

possible public. Even more so, however, Songs of the Heart is a work of pedagogical passion.

Sarna's professional preoccupation with the Book of Psalms for some thirty-five years in his teaching, publishing, and lecturing imparts to this particular work all the richness of seasoned reflection and mature insight. There is obviously much of the author's heart in Songs of the Heart, a transcending mtimacy and personal involvement that cannot be lost on the reader. Indeed, at times the voice of the

meticulous scholar-teacher crackles with missionary zeal, as he laments the

neglect of the Book of Psalms in "our twentieth-century secular society" (later termed "this age of spiritual and moral chaos"), which "no longer relates to those vast spiritual, moral, and intellectual treasures of the Psalter that our ancestors so

reverently and fondly cherished" (pp. 4, 207). The introduction to the work is wisely kept succinct and focused on a limited

number of issues. Of these, the most engaging and stimulating discussions are those in which Sarna shares the fruits of his own research on the compositional structure of the Book of Psalms, and the historical processes by which it has reached us. In particular, his repeated emphasis on the critical role of Levitical

musical guilds will doubtless be rewarded with future historical-archaeological confirmation on the order of the Arad inscription he cites (p. 21), which mentions the Korahites as functioning at that First Temple cult center. Thus, one might add to Sama's observations on musical accompaniment on the kinnor (pp. 6-9) reference to the painted scenes from Kuntillet Ajrud, which, for all the tantalizing problems they raise, clearly associate the text of a formal blessing in the name of

1. Understanding Genesis: The Heritage of Biblical Israel (New York, 1966; 1970). Exploring Exodus: The Heritage of Biblical Israel (New York, 1986).



Prooftexts 203

Yahweh with the prominent depiction of a seated lyre player.2 The introduction is matched by a very brief (three pages) afterword, which distills the "animating ideas and concepts" of the Psalms, and the "thought-world of its authors and the

worshipers" (pp. 205-6). While this kind of summary and review harks back, perhaps, to the pedagogical background and commitment of the author, the

clarity of Sarna's writing throughout the book renders such a review largely superfluous. Following the afterword is a bibliography, the comprehensiveness of

which bears witness to the erudition and industry of its compiler. The choice of particular psalms for an introduction to the Book of Psalms as a

whole would seem to be not simply a matter of scholarly judgment, but ultimately reflective of one's own personal tastes and priorities. Thus, heavily (and, perhaps, disproportionately) featured in this collection are pointedly didactic psalms focusing on Torah and Wisdom, namely, divine instruction and commandments, retribution, and specifically moral and ethical issues (Psalms 1,15,19, 24, 82, 94). Others, this reviewer included, may have preferred a greater representation of those psychologically and emotionally oriented psalms that delve more deeply into the inner crises, processes, and resolutions of the troubled worshiper. Such a

psalm is represented in Sarna's collection almost exclusively by Psalm 30, leaving one (for better or worse) precious little time to linger in that poignant landscape of

despair the psalmists knew so well. Other choices serve to mitigate the pervading gravity of the "psalm-sermons." On a more jubilant note, Psalm 8 and Ps. 19:2-7 offer exuberant celebrations of God's creation, Psalm 48 allows one to take in the

glory of an impregnable Jerusalem from lofty towers to solid ramparts (aptly compared to the opening and closing motif of the Gilgamesh epic), and Psalms 24 and 93 afford a tantalizing glimpse of temple pageantry.

Sarna's exegetical approach to his collection rests largely on the illumination afforded by (a) ancient Near Eastern texts, and (b) mutually ?luminating biblical

passages, be the question at issue conceptual or philological in nature. With

respect to the former resource, Sarna demonstrates his wide-ranging command of the available sources, and the genre, structure, literary motifs, and language of the

psalms included for discussion in Songs of the Heart are deftly juxtaposed to

appropriate counterparts in Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, and Egyptian composi tions. An especially effective, but by no means isolated, case in point is Sarna's innovative application of the traditional motifs of Near Eastern solar hymns to the elucidation and interpretation of Psalm 19 (see p. 74, n. 12).

Liberal use is also made of the Canaanite mythological texts from Ugarit, even though they do not at present furnish representative examples of the broad

spectrum of literary genres reflected in the biblical psalms and, for example, Mesopotamian poetry (e.g., lament, petition, wisdom, and thanksgiving and royal hymns). While other scholars have tended to concentrate on the shared techniques of poetic parallelism in Canaanite and Israelite poetry, Sarna's comparisons to

Ugaritic poetry are largely applied to the illumination of broader literary, and

especially mythological, motifs. One may question, however, the aptness of Sarna's otherwise welcome discussion of the divine combat motif in Ugaritic and

2. See, most conveniently, William G. Dever, Recent Archaeological Discoveries and

Biblical Research (Seattle and London, 1990), pp. 140-45.



204 REVIEWS

biblical poetry (pp. 57-61) in specific connection with Ps. 8:3. Here, in the absence of any clear connection between combat and creation, or cosmic and historical

foes, as seen elsewhere, the terms Dj?3nn - rPiK - ^pTp* more plausibly refer to

those human enemies who oppose the divine order in the world of mankind, which, after all, is the real focus of this psalm. Specifically, this more anthropo centric interpretation is suggested by the attested usage of the verb n^tfn "to

bring to a halt" in exclusively nonmythological contexts, and its absence from the

repertoire of divine combat language in the Psalms and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. The same may be said for the phrase Diritti rrjiK in Ps. 8:3, the only other instance of which (Ps. 44:17) refers unambiguously to human foes. So, too, ̂Tjte "your foes" recurs only in Ps. 74:4, 23, again with respect to human beings.3 The

question raised here is perhaps more editorial than substantive, since Sarna's

well-developed and well-documented discussion of Canaanite and Israelite divine combat traditions could surely find a more secure home elsewhere in the

book, as, for example, in his chapter devoted to Psalm 93 (see pp. 183-84). The second mainstay of Sarna's exegesis is the use of mutually illuniinating

biblical texts. The most obvious case in point is his combination of Psalms 15 and 24 in one chapter, based on considerations of both form (i.e., the question-and answer format) and content (i.e., specification of ethical conduct qualifying the ideal worshiper on the temple mount). In this chapter, both psalms are generously glossed by citations from 1 Samuel, Psalms, Proverbs, and the classical prophets addressing the relative demands of cult and conscience. (Not out of place here would have been a comparative reference to the Egyptian wisdom instruction for Merikare: "The loaf [others: 'the character'] of the upright is preferred to the ox of the evildoer.")4 In his comments on Psalm 24, especially illuminating are Sarna's

synoptically demonstrated points with respect to the idiom "to seek the presence

[of God]" in v. 6 (pp. 125-26), and the terms "holy place" (v. 3, see p. 242, n. 113) and "just reward" (v. 5, see p. 243, n. 114).

By the same criterion, however, Sarna's treatment of the idiom m xt?n in Ps. 24:4 is, to say the least, equivocal. The complete phrase at issue is Kt^a ?b

K)\$b rendered: "who has not taken a false oath by My life" (pp. 99,124). Here the antecedent of "My life" is clearly understood as the Deity, and the idiom Kfcn

presumably denotes invoking the "fife" of the Lord as part of an oath formula

(cf. Jer. 51:14; Amos 6:8). But while the translation strives to be true to our

3. Ps. 74:12-17 is, of course, a locus classicus of Israelite poetic "mythology," including the direct association of the motifs of divine combat and creation. This, however, does not

gainsay the fact that in the same psalm ^ (vv. 3,10,18), yY)X (w- 4>23?c*- ? 1?)'and ? ?

(v. 23) all refer to the Deity's human antagonists. Certainly, one may speak of the use of poetic allusion in v. 23, for example, where the terms hip and ]iK# associated with the enemy resonate with the din of the personified sea monster's waves (cf. Isa. 17:12-13; Ps. 65:8, and,

more remotely, Jer. 51:55). But neither the pointedly causal connection between combat and

creation in Psalm 74, nor its use of patently allusive language, are in any way matched, or

even faintly discernible, in Psalm 8. In any event, the troubled text of Ps. 8:2-3 is too fragile and vulnerable a support for so important a discussion as that of mythic combat in the Bible.

4. Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 1 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and

London, 1973,1975), pp. 106 and 109, n. 28. Cf. William Kelly Simpson, ed., The Literature of Ancient Egypt (New Haven and London, 1972), p. 191.



Prooftexts 205

Masoretic text, it does so despite, and not because of, the evidence of inner biblical

usage. As noted by Sarna himself (p. 243, n. 116), the idiom #93 Kt^j as attested in the Hebrew Bible denotes not "to take an oath," but "to long for, aspire." Further, the MT reading nfJQJ runs counter to the ancient translations of the text, and to

Masoretic tradition as well, which read 1ttf?3 "his life/being/desire." (Here the antecedent of "his" would more logically be taken as the same person who has

just been described as having "clean hands and a pure heart," especially since the

Deity speaks nowhere else in Psalm 24, in the first person or otherwise.) The

problem is that, having advised the reader of such serious obstacles to his own

translation, he stops short of suggesting a viable translation or interpretation of what remains, not to mention altering his translation accordingly. Thus, one is left without any alternative to accepting, and rendering, the MT as is, even after one's confidence in it may have been largely undermined.

Following the evidence provided, one would have expected a suggested rendering such as: "one who has not set his heart on [lit., "lifted his desire to"] illusion [or futility]," as in the Septuagint, whereby Hebrew Ktpj would further correspond to Akkadian libba naS?, "to desire, covet" (lit., "to lift one's heart/mind to").5 Equally plausible would have been something on the order of "one who has not turned to futility." The latter rendering finds support in Pss. 86:4 and 143:8, where the idiom Ktp3 appears in the clear context of invoking and/or putting one's trust in God.6 The "futility" of our verse ( #) refers, on the

contrary, to nongods, ones who are unable to respond, and trust in whom is the mark of a fool and a knave (cf. Ps. 31:7; Jer. 18:15; Jon. 2:9)7

Sarna's treatment of the idiom raises a basic and most important question, one that might be raised elsewhere in his rendering and interpretation of the Psalms: At what price is the traditional Hebrew text to be retained and translated as is? Put otherwise, at what point does one cease to regard the elsewhere helpful evidence of inner biblical usage, especially when it is corroborated by the witness of ancient versions, and, in this case, Masoretic traditions as well? Of course, there are sound arguments to be made for a conservative approach to textual criticism,

both here and elsewhere. What is being suggested in this review is that in his

5. CAD, vol. 11 (part 2), p. 105; cf. s.v. nis libbi, p. 296, 4a.

6. In Ps. 86:4, the idiom #95 Ktp} is preceded and followed by the verb Kip "to call, invoke" (w. 3,5, 7). Also significant for establishing the usage of Ktp} is the verb ntp3 in

Ps. 86:2 (cf. w. 3-4), which appears in parallelism with Kt?n in Ps. 143:8.

7. Sarna's retention of MT in Ps. 24:4 is rationalized somewhat in his comment "The

negatively formulated rules reject the one who makes profane or frivolous use of the divine

Name in oath-taking and the person who commits perjury in order to practice deceit"

(p. 124). Sarna would thus seem to interpret n?to3 " ?6 Kt?n as involving an oath at least

partially on the basis of the parallelism in this verse with rop-p1? ysr?tt "to swear deceitfully." One may counter that, construing... b #93 Kt?r? as "turning to" (i.e., invoking or trusting in), the offense of rejecting Yahweh for another is itself juxtaposed to that of various kinds of

improper oath-taking in, e.g., Hos. 4:13-15; 12:1-2; cf. Jer. 5:7. So, too, in the decalogue the

two sins are listed in close proximity to each other (e.g., Deut. 5:9-10 and 11), and they also

appear together in such prophetic lists as Jer. 7:9 and Mai. 3:5. Thus, the parallelism in

Ps. 24:4 need not be taken as synonymous, but rather as one of thematically associated

concepts.



206 REVIEWS

exegesis of Psalm 24, Sarna would have done better by the student to take some

position on the larger question, rather than presenting evidence and then remain

ing enigmatically silent as to its actual value. A related question may be raised with respect to Sarna's retention of the MT

of Ps. 19:10. Once again, it is Sarna who calls attention to the textual problem, here the inappropriate use of the phrase

' " "fear of the Lord," within the context

of Ps. 19:8-11:

In each other instance (w. 8-10), the compound phrase expresses something that originates with God. Not one is a human quality, but rather a divine gift bestowed on human beings. In this case, however, "fear of God" would seem to refer to an individual's relationship to the deity, (p. 87)

Sarna removes the difficulty to his satisfaction by demonstrating that "fear of the Lord" is "something that can be taught and learned" (p. 87) and, more to the

point,

can describe the entire religious relationship which, in the Bible, is governed by divinely imposed norms and commitments, not by an individual's feeling or emotional attitude nor by natural piety or popular perceptions of right and

wrong, (p. 88)

Sarna thus sees the difficulty as conceptual, and quite naturally seeks a conceptual solution.

Even on this score, however, one may well counter that the passages adduced

by Sarna, namely, Ps. 34:12 and 2 Kings 17:25-28, only speak of human beings teaching other human beings "fear of the Lord." In Psalm 19, "teaching," "decrees," "precepts," "instruction," and "judgments" all represent direct divine

oral pronouncements, and the inclusion of "the fear of the Lord" as part of this

particular series of terms remains an incongruous intrusion. However, the long

proposed textual emendation of ' ? to

' "the pronouncement of the Lord"8 restores to the list in Psalm 19 a term for which no abstract conceptual rationalization need be sought. While one may rightly object to what seems to be a

conjectural emendation, and all the more so when it is offered without support from the ancient translations, the suggestion is neither refuted, nor addressed, nor even mentioned by Sarna.

To the mind of this reviewer, the problem of '

? in Ps. 19:10 is not so much

conceptual, or even text-critical, as it is literary. And in a traditional literature such as the biblical Psalms, literary conventions ought to be accorded due weight.

Whether one is disposed to textual emendation or not, a review of stylistic and

8. See, e.g., C. A. Briggs and E. G. Briggs, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the

Book of Psalms, vol. 1. (ICC; Edinburgh, 1906), p. 173. It may be added that the significance of the orthographical similarity between

~ and *;, which share all but one consonant

each, is compounded by their also sharing the identical vowel sequence (namely, hiriq

shezva-patah).



Prooftexts 207

other literary usage favoring the reading ' rn?k might, at the very least, alert the

reader to the uniqueness of the phrase '

"}? in Psalm 19 (on other than purely conceptual grounds), and so to its possible significance as an innovation. The constraints of space allow for only an outline of major points here, but it is hoped that the following observations will be helpful, not only in terms of this particular verse or psalm, but in terms of the broader methodological issue raised.

A. The term rQtttf, and not n#"V, belongs to an unusually uniform constella tion of associated terms identical to those in Ps. 19:8-10. Thus, Psalm 119 furnishes no fewer than nine separate instances of the inclusion of the term ̂ "Your

(i.e., God's) pronouncement" in a consecutive series also including all five other terms appearing in 19:8-10: rqin, nny, DHipa, ?ron, D^tf p. In a series containing

most, but not all, of the terms appearing in Ps. 19:8-10, ^? ? . occurs another ten

times, while ^ ? occurs only once in the entire psalm (v. 38), where it appears together with, but not in any way synonymous with, ^ri-ppK.9

B. In Ps. 19:10, ? is qualified by the adjective lin?, a combination that never appears elsewhere in the Bible, while ^ and anni? are so described in Prov. 15:26 and Ps. 12:7. In the latter, nini? is coupled with a poetic synonym ^ "refined" (cf. Mal. 3:3), which modifies in Pss. 18:31; 119:140; Prov. 30:5 (cf. the association of terms in Ps. 105:19), but cjny, like nino, never modifies n*TP.

C. In Ps. 19:10, ' is also described iyb rnpiy "abiding forever," which is

a notion elsewhere unattested, while iyb rnttij/ . . . ' corresponds to the

ever-enduring "word" (Isa. 40:8), "counsel" (Ps. 33:11), and "precepts" of God

(Ps. 111:7-8). Indeed, Sarna's own well-chosen hymnic parallels from the literature of the ancient Near East uniformly speak of the "pure," "unchanging," "perma nent," quality of the divine "word" and "utterances," and it is the divine

"ordinances," not the pious awe or reverence of human beings for the deity, which "stand fast and are not destroyed" (pp. 88-89). Just so, ivV rrpp?y rqln?

' nini*

"the pronouncement of the Lord is pure, abiding [lit., "standing"] forever." D. The term iqk is a Leitwort in Psalm 19, recurring in w. 3, 4,15, and the

appearance of ' in v. 10 would impart thematic unity to the composition by virtue of its inclusion in each of the three units of the psalm (see pp. 74-75). Thus, above, the Deity's creation is celebrated in the speech of the heavens, their majesty proclaiming the greatness of their maker. From above, divine speech instructs the world of humankind below with precepts and commandments. And below, the

9. For the identical constellation of terms encountered in Psalm 19 with n*$sK instead of

ri*-)? see Psalm 119: (n) w. 33-40; (l) w. 41-48; (n) vv. 57-64; ("?) vv. 73-80; (n) vv. 97-104; (y) w. 121-28; (a) vv. 129-36; (*) vv. 137-44; ( ) w. 161-68. Cf. the use of ^ together with

most, but not all, of the terms found in Psalms 19 in the following structural units of

Psalm 119: (a) w. 9-16; (t) vv. 49-56; (o) vv. 65-72; (a) vv. 81-88; (o) vv. 113-20; (p) vv. 145-52; ( ) vv. 153-60 (twice); (rt) vv. 169-76 (twice). It is indeed tempting to see in the juxtaposition of n-ppx and nipp, in Ps. 119:38 a likely source for either (a) the inadvertent contamination or

confusion in Ps. 19:10, or (b) the strange innovation of ")? in Ps. 19:10, depending on one's

point of view.



208 REVIEWS

Deity is fervently appealed to in human speech, the petitioner begging purification from guilt and divine acceptance for his heartfelt words.10

Philological and textual questions such as those that have been raised here, however, are not likely to distract the general reader or even the serious student from savoring this expertly executed introduction to the Psalms. Happily, there is

much richly nuanced, elegantly sung music to be heard in Sarna's Songs of the Heart.

MURRAY H. LICHTENSTEIN Department of Classical and Oriental Studies Hunter College, City University of New York

10. The reviewer is heartened to find that the literary-structural interpretation offered

here was anticipated in the comments of Michael Fishbane, Text and Texture (New York,

1979), pp. 86-89. Fishbane, however, arrived at his conclusion without recourse to the

emendation of rupp. and thus without the impetus of the verbatim repetition of the t?tivort

in each of the three sections of the psalm. Indeed, his rendering of the phrase 'n nfc-p as "the

Splendor of YHWH," is offered without explanation or argument. One would assume he

has in mind Akkadian puluhtu (from palahu "to fear"), which, in association with Akka

dian melamm?, denotes the dazzling aura of a god or king. Taken, however, in the specific context of the other five terms employed in Ps. 19:8-10, Fishbane's "Splendor of YHWH"

strikes the reviewer as even more incongruous than the customary rendering "fear of the

Lord," as retained by Sarna.



Documents

Singing of the Songs of Zion