Psa 120 | KD | STEP | These songs are all inscribed שׁיר המּעלות. The lxx, according to the most natural signification of the word, renders: ᾠδὴ τῶν ἀναβαθμων; the Italic and Vulgate, canticum graduum (whence the liturgical term “gradual Psalms”). The meaning at the same time remains obscure. When, however, Theodotion renders ᾆσμα τῶν ἀναβάσεων, Aquila and Symmachus ᾠδὴ εἰς τάς ἀναβάσεις (as though it were absolutely למּעלות, as in ), it looks even like an explanation. The fathers, more particularly Theodoret, and in general the Syria church, associate with it the idea of ἡ ἀπὸ Βαβυλῶνος ἐπάνοδος. Ewald has long advocated this view. In his Introduction to Die poetischen Bücher des Alten Bundes (1839), and elsewhere, he translated it “Songs of the Pilgrim caravans” or “of the homeward marches,” and explained these fifteen Psalms as old and new travelling songs of those returning from the Exile. The verb עלה certainly is the usual word for journeying to Palestine out of the Babylonian low country, as out of the country of the Egyptian Nile Valley. And the fact that the Return from the Exile is called המּעלה מבּבל in Ezr 7:9 is enticing. Some of these Psalms, as , , , , Ps 132, , are also suited to this situation, or can at least be adapted to it. But , if it is to be referred to the Exile, is a song that comes out of the midst of it; might, so far as its first half is concerned, be a travelling song of those returning, but according to its second half it is a prayer of those who have returned for the restoration of the whole of Israel, based upon thanksgiving; and assumes the existence and frequenting of the Temple and of the holy city, and the full exercise of the Temple-service. It is also inconvenient that מעלה, which in itself only expresses a journey up, not a journey homewards, is without any closer definition; and more particularly since, in connection with this form of the word, the signification of a something (a step, a sun-dial, rising thoughts. ) is at least just as natural as that of an action. שׁיר העלים would have been at once palpable. And what is meant by the plural? The interpretation of the plural of the different caravans or companies in which the exiles returned, assumes a usus loquendi with which we are altogether unacquainted. Relatively more probable is the reference to the pilgrimage-journeyings at the three great feasts - according to a later Hebrew expression, the שׁלשׁ רגלים. This going up to Jerusalem required by the Law is also usually called עלה. So Agellius (1606), Herder, Eichhorn, Maurer, Hengstenberg, Keil, and others, and so now even Ewald in the second edition (1866) of the Introduction to Die Dichter des Alten Bundes , so Kamphausen, and Reuss in his treatise Chants de Pèlerinage ou petit Psautier des Pèlerins du second temple (in the Nouvelle Revue de Théologie , i. 273-311), and Liebusch in the Quedlinburg Easter Programm, 1866: “The pilgrim songs in the Fifth Book of the Psalter.” But מעלה in this signification is without precedent; and when Hupfeld says in opposition to this, “the fact that a noun accidentally does not occur in the Old Testament does not matter, since here at any rate it is a question of the interpretation of a later usage of the language,” we may reply that neither does the whole range of the post-biblical Hebrew exhibit any trace of this usage. Thenius accordingly tries another way of doing justice to the word. He understands מעלות of the different stations, i.e., stages of the journey up, that are to be found in connection with the festive journeys to high-lying Jerusalem. But the right name for “stations” would be מסּעות or מעמדות; and besides, the notion borrowed from the processions to Mount Calvary is without historical support in the religious observances of Israel. Thus, then, the needful ground in language and custom for referring this title of the Psalms to the journeyings up to the feasts is taken from under us; and the consideration that the first three and the last three songs are suited to the hymn-book of a festal pilgrimage, and that they all bear in them, as Liebusch has demonstrated, the characteristic features of the spiritual national song, is not able to decide the doubtful meaning of מעלות. We will now put the later Jewish interpretation to the proof. According to Middoth ii. 5, Succa 15 b , a semi-circular staircase with fifteen steps led out of the court of the Israelitish men (עזרת ישראל) down into the court of the women (עזרת נשׁים), and upon these fifteen steps, which correspond to the fifteen gradual Psalms, the Levites played musical instruments on the evening of the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles in connection with the joyful celebration of the water-drawing, and above them in the portal (upon the threshold of the Nicanor-gate or Agrippa-gate) stood two priests with trumpets. It has been said that this is a Talmudic fable invented on behalf of the inscription שׁיר המעלות, and that the fifteen steps are not out of , by reading the two verses together. This aspersion is founded on ignorance. For the Talmud does not say in that passage that the fifteen Psalms have taken their name from the fifteen steps; it does not once say that these Psalms in particular were read aloud upon the fifteen steps, but it only places the fifteen steps on a parallel with the fifteen Psalms; and, moreover, interprets the name שׁיר המעלות quite differently, viz., from a legend concerning David and Ahithophel, Succa 53a, Maccoth 11a (differently rendered in the section Chelek of the tractate Sanhedrin in the Jerusalem Talmud). This legend to which the Targum inscription relates (vid., Buxtorf, Lex. Talmud. s.v. קפא) is absurd enough, but it has nothing to do with the fifteen steps. It is not until a later period that Jewish expositors say that the fifteen Psalms had their name from the fifteen steps. Even Hippolytus must have heard something similar when he says (p. 190, ed. Lagarde ): πάλιν τε αὐτοῦ εἰσί τινες τῶν ἀναβαθμῶν ᾠδαί, τὸν ἀριθμὸν πεντεκαίδεκα, ὅσοι καὶ οἱ ἀναβαθμοὶ τοῦ ναοῦ, τάχα δελοῦσαι τάς ἀναβάσεις περιέχεσθαι ἐν τῷ ἑβδόμῳ καὶ ὀγδόῳ ἀριθμῷ, upon which Hilary relies: esse autem in templo gradus quindecim historia nobis locuta est ; viz., 15 (7 + 8) steps leading out of the court of the priests into the Holy of holies. In this, then, the allegory in which the interpretation of the church delighted for a long time seemed naturally at hand, viz., as Otmar Nachtgal explains, “Song of the steps or ascents, which indicate the spirit of those who ascend from earthly things to God.” The furtmaier Codex in Maihingen accordingly inscribes them “Psalm of the first step” ( Psalm der ersten staffeln ), and so on. If we leave this sensus anagogicus to itself, then the title, referred to the fifteen steps, would indeed not be inappropriate in itself (cf. Graduale or Gradale in the service of the Romish Church), but is of an external character such as we find nowhere else. Gesenius has the merit of having first discerned the true meaning of the questioned inscription, inasmuch as first in 1812 ( Hallische Lit. Zeitschrift , 1812, Nr. 205), and frequently since that time, he has taught that the fifteen songs have their name from their step-like progressive rhythm of the thoughts, and that consequently the name, like the triolet (roundelay) in Western poetry, does not refer to the liturgical usage, but to the technical structure. The correctness of this view has been duly appraised more particularly by De Wette, who adduces this rhythm of steps or degrees, too, among the more artificial rhythms. The songs are called Songs of degrees or Gradual Psalms as being songs that move onward towards a climax, and that by means of plokee' epiplokee'), i.e., a taking up again of the immediately preceding word by way of giving intensity to the expression; and they are placed together on account of this common characteristic, just like the Michtammim , which bear that name from a similar characteristic. The fact, as Liebusch objects, that there is no trace of מעלות in this figurative signification elsewhere, is of no consequence, since in the inscriptions of the Psalms in general we become acquainted with a technical language which (apart from a few echoes in the Chronicles) is without example elsewhere, in relation to poetical and musical technology. Neither are we refuted by the fact that this as it were climbing movement of the thoughts which plants upon a preceding word, and thus carried itself forward, is not without example even outside the range of these fifteen songs in the Psalter itself (e.g., , ), as also elsewhere (Isa 17:12., Psa 26:5., and more particularly in the song of Deborah, Jdg 5:3, Jdg 5:5-6, etc.), and that it is not always carried out in the same manner in the fifteen Psalms. It is quite sufficient that the parallelism retires into the background here as nowhere else in fifteen songs that are linked together (even in , , , Ps 132); ); and the onward course is represented with decided preference as a gradation or advance step by step, that which follows being based upon what goes before, and from that point advancing and ascending still higher. This first song of degrees attaches itself to Psa 119:176. The writer of Ps 119, surrounded on all sides by apostasy and persecution, compares himself to a sheep that is easily lost, which the shepherd has to seek and bring home if it is not to perish; and the writer of is also “as a sheep in the midst of wolves.” The period at which he lived is uncertain, and it is consequently also uncertain whether he had to endure such endless malignant attacks from foreign barbarians or from his own worldly-minded fellow-countrymen. E. Tilling has sought to establish a third possible occasion in his Disquisitio de ratione inscript. XV Pss. grad. (1765). He derives this and the following songs of degrees from the time immediately succeeding the Return from the Exile, when the secret and open hostility of the Samaritans and other neighbouring peoples ( , ; , ) sought to keep down the rise of the young colony.

‏ Psalms 120

The Fifteen Songs of Degrees, or Gradual Psalm - Ps. 120-134

These songs are all inscribed שׁיר המּעלות. The lxx, according to the most natural signification of the word, renders: ᾠδὴ τῶν ἀναβαθμων; the Italic and Vulgate, canticum graduum (whence the liturgical term “gradual Psalms”). The meaning at the same time remains obscure. When, however, Theodotion renders ᾆσμα τῶν ἀναβάσεων, Aquila and Symmachus ᾠδὴ εἰς τάς ἀναβάσεις (as though it were absolutely למּעלות, as in Psa 121:1), it looks even like an explanation. The fathers, more particularly Theodoret, and in general the Syria church, associate with it the idea of ἡ ἀπὸ Βαβυλῶνος ἐπάνοδος. Ewald has long advocated this view. In his Introduction to Die poetischen Bücher des Alten Bundes (1839), and elsewhere, he translated it “Songs of the Pilgrim caravans” or “of the homeward marches,” and explained these fifteen Psalms as old and new travelling songs of those returning from the Exile. The verb עלה certainly is the usual word for journeying to Palestine out of the Babylonian low country, as out of the country of the Egyptian Nile Valley. And the fact that the Return from the Exile is called המּעלה מבּבל in Ezr 7:9 is enticing. Some of these Psalms, as Psa 121:1-8, Psa 123:1, Psa 129:1-8, Psa 130:1-8, Ps 132, Psa 133:1-3, are also suited to this situation, or can at least be adapted to it. But Psa 120:1-7, if it is to be referred to the Exile, is a song that comes out of the midst of it; Psa 126:1-6 might, so far as its first half is concerned, be a travelling song of those returning, but according to its second half it is a prayer of those who have returned for the restoration of the whole of Israel, based upon thanksgiving; and Psa 122:1-9 assumes the existence and frequenting of the Temple and of the holy city, and Psa 134:1-3 the full exercise of the Temple-service. It is also inconvenient that מעלה, which in itself only expresses a journey up, not a journey homewards, is without any closer definition; and more particularly since, in connection with this form of the word, the signification of a something (a step, a sun-dial, rising thoughts. Eze 11:5) is at least just as natural as that of an action. שׁיר העלים would have been at once palpable. And what is meant by the plural? The interpretation of the plural of the different caravans or companies in which the exiles returned, assumes a usus loquendi with which we are altogether unacquainted.

Relatively more probable is the reference to the pilgrimage-journeyings at the three great feasts - according to a later Hebrew expression, the שׁלשׁ רגלים. This going up to Jerusalem required by the Law is also usually called עלה. So Agellius (1606), Herder, Eichhorn, Maurer, Hengstenberg, Keil, and others, and so now even Ewald in the second edition (1866) of the Introduction to Die Dichter des Alten Bundes, so Kamphausen, and Reuss in his treatise Chants de Pèlerinage ou petit Psautier des Pèlerins du second temple (in the Nouvelle Revue de Théologie, i. 273-311), and Liebusch in the Quedlinburg Easter Programm, 1866: “The pilgrim songs in the Fifth Book of the Psalter.” But מעלה in this signification is without precedent; and when Hupfeld says in opposition to this, “the fact that a noun accidentally does not occur in the Old Testament does not matter, since here at any rate it is a question of the interpretation of a later usage of the language,” we may reply that neither does the whole range of the post-biblical Hebrew exhibit any trace of this usage. Thenius accordingly tries another way of doing justice to the word. He understands מעלות of the different stations, i.e., stages of the journey up, that are to be found in connection with the festive journeys to high-lying Jerusalem. But the right name for “stations” would be מסּעות or מעמדות; and besides, the notion borrowed from the processions to Mount Calvary is without historical support in the religious observances of Israel. Thus, then, the needful ground in language and custom for referring this title of the Psalms to the journeyings up to the feasts is taken from under us; and the consideration that the first three and the last three songs are suited to the hymn-book of a festal pilgrimage, and that they all bear in them, as Liebusch has demonstrated, the characteristic features of the spiritual national song, is not able to decide the doubtful meaning of מעלות.

We will now put the later Jewish interpretation to the proof. According to Middoth ii. 5, Succa 15 b, a semi-circular staircase with fifteen steps led out of the court of the Israelitish men (עזרת ישראל) down into the court of the women (עזרת נשׁים), and upon these fifteen steps, which correspond to the fifteen gradual Psalms, the Levites played musical instruments on the evening of the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles in connection with the joyful celebration of the water-drawing, ^{▼▼Vid., my Geschichte der jüdischen Poesie, S. 193f.} and above them in the portal (upon the threshold of the Nicanor-gate or Agrippa-gate) ^{▼▼It was called the Nicanor-gate in the Temple of Zerubbabel, and the Agrippa-gate in the Temple of Herod: in both of them they ascended to its threshold by fifteen steps; vid., Unruh, Das alte Jerusalem und seine Bauwerke (1861), S. 137, cf. 194.} stood two priests with trumpets. It has been said that this is a Talmudic fable invented on behalf of the inscription שׁיר המעלות, and that the fifteen steps are not out of Eze 40:26, Eze 40:31 by reading the two verses together. This aspersion is founded on ignorance. For the Talmud does not say in that passage that the fifteen Psalms have taken their name from the fifteen steps; it does not once say that these Psalms in particular were read aloud upon the fifteen steps, but it only places the fifteen steps on a parallel with the fifteen Psalms; and, moreover, interprets the name שׁיר המעלות quite differently, viz., from a legend concerning David and Ahithophel, Succa 53a, Maccoth 11a (differently rendered in the section Chelek of the tractate Sanhedrin in the Jerusalem Talmud). This legend to which the Targum inscription relates (vid., Buxtorf, Lex. Talmud. s.v. קפא) is absurd enough, but it has nothing to do with the fifteen steps. It is not until a later period that Jewish expositors say that the fifteen Psalms had their name from the fifteen steps. ^{▼▼Lyra in his Postillae, and Jacob Leonitius in his Hebrew Libellus effigiei templi Salomonis (Amsterdam 1650, 4to), even say that the Levites sang one of the fifteen songs of degrees on each step. Luther has again generalized this view; for his rendering “a song in the higher choir” is intended to say, cantores harum odarum stetisse in loco eminentiori (Bakius).}

Even Hippolytus must have heard something similar when he says (p. 190, ed. Lagarde): πάλιν τε αὐτοῦ εἰσί τινες τῶν ἀναβαθμῶν ᾠδαί, τὸν ἀριθμὸν πεντεκαίδεκα, ὅσοι καὶ οἱ ἀναβαθμοὶ τοῦ ναοῦ, τάχα δελοῦσαι τάς ἀναβάσεις περιέχεσθαι ἐν τῷ ἑβδόμῳ καὶ ὀγδόῳ ἀριθμῷ, upon which Hilary relies: esse autem in templo gradus quindecim historia nobis locuta est; viz., 15 (7 + 8) steps leading out of the court of the priests into the Holy of holies. In this, then, the allegory in which the interpretation of the church delighted for a long time seemed naturally at hand, viz., as Otmar Nachtgal explains, “Song of the steps or ascents, which indicate the spirit of those who ascend from earthly things to God.” The furtmaier Codex in Maihingen accordingly inscribes them “Psalm of the first step” (Psalm der ersten staffeln), and so on. If we leave this sensus anagogicus to itself, then the title, referred to the fifteen steps, would indeed not be inappropriate in itself (cf. Graduale or Gradale in the service of the Romish Church), but is of an external character such as we find nowhere else. ^{▼▼Hitzig, in his Commentary (1865), has attempted a new combination of these Psalms, in regard to the number of verses of 120 and 121 (7 + 8) and their total number, with the steps of the temple.}

Gesenius has the merit of having first discerned the true meaning of the questioned inscription, inasmuch as first in 1812 (Hallische Lit. Zeitschrift, 1812, Nr. 205), and frequently since that time, he has taught that the fifteen songs have their name from their step-like progressive rhythm of the thoughts, and that consequently the name, like the triolet (roundelay) in Western poetry, does not refer to the liturgical usage, but to the technical structure. The correctness of this view has been duly appraised more particularly by De Wette, who adduces this rhythm of steps or degrees, too, among the more artificial rhythms. The songs are called Songs of degrees or Gradual Psalms as being songs that move onward towards a climax, and that by means of plokee' epiplokee'), i.e., a taking up again of the immediately preceding word by way of giving intensity to the expression; and they are placed together on account of this common characteristic, just like the Michtammim, which bear that name from a similar characteristic. The fact, as Liebusch objects, that there is no trace of מעלות in this figurative signification elsewhere, is of no consequence, since in the inscriptions of the Psalms in general we become acquainted with a technical language which (apart from a few echoes in the Chronicles) is without example elsewhere, in relation to poetical and musical technology. Neither are we refuted by the fact that this as it were climbing movement of the thoughts which plants upon a preceding word, and thus carried itself forward, is not without example even outside the range of these fifteen songs in the Psalter itself (e.g., Psa 93:1-5, Psa 96:1-13), as also elsewhere (Isa 17:12., Psa 26:5., and more particularly in the song of Deborah, Jdg 5:3, Jdg 5:5-6, etc.), and that it is not always carried out in the same manner in the fifteen Psalms. It is quite sufficient that the parallelism retires into the background here as nowhere else in fifteen songs that are linked together (even in Psa 125:1-5, Psa 127:1-5, Psa 128:1-6, Ps 132); ); and the onward course is represented with decided preference as a gradation or advance step by step, that which follows being based upon what goes before, and from that point advancing and ascending still higher.

Cry of Distress When Surrounded by Contentious Men

This first song of degrees attaches itself to Psa 119:176. The writer of Ps 119, surrounded on all sides by apostasy and persecution, compares himself to a sheep that is easily lost, which the shepherd has to seek and bring home if it is not to perish; and the writer of Psa 120:1-7 is also “as a sheep in the midst of wolves.” The period at which he lived is uncertain, and it is consequently also uncertain whether he had to endure such endless malignant attacks from foreign barbarians or from his own worldly-minded fellow-countrymen. E. Tilling has sought to establish a third possible occasion in his Disquisitio de ratione inscript. XV Pss. grad. (1765). He derives this and the following songs of degrees from the time immediately succeeding the Return from the Exile, when the secret and open hostility of the Samaritans and other neighbouring peoples (Neh 2:10, Neh 2:19; Neh 4:17, Neh 6:1) sought to keep down the rise of the young colony. Psa 120:1-4

According to the pointing ויּענני, the poet appears to base his present petition, which from Psa 120:2 onwards is the substance of the whole Psalm, upon the fact of a previous answering of his prayers. For the petition in Psa 120:2 manifestly arises out of his deplorable situation, which is described in Psa 120:5. Nevertheless there are also other instances in which ויענני might have been expected, where the pointing is ויּענני (Psa 3:5; Jon 2:3), so that consequently ויּענני may, without any prejudice to the pointing, be taken as a believing expression of the result (cf. the future of the consequence in Job 9:16) of the present cry for help. צרתה, according to the original signification, is a form of the definition of a state or condition, as in Psa 3:3; 44:27; Psa 63:8, Jon 2:10, Hos 8:7, and בּצּרתה לּי = בּצּר־לּי, Psa 18:7, is based upon the customary expression צר לּי. In Psa 120:2 follows the petition which the poet sends up to Jahve in the certainty of being answered. רמיּה beside לשׁון, although there is no masc. רמי (cf. however the Aramaic רמּי, רמּאי), is taken as an adjective after the form טריּה, עניּה, which it is also perhaps in Mic 6:12. The parallelism would make לשׁון natural, like לשׁון מרמה in Psa 52:6; the pointing, which nevertheless disregarded this, will therefore rest upon tradition. The apostrophe in Psa 120:3 is addressed to the crafty tongue. לשׁון is certainly feminine as a rule; but whilst the tongue as such is feminine, the לשׁון רמיה of the address, as in Psa 52:6, refers to him who has such a kind of tongue (cf. Hitzig on Pro 12:27), and thereby the לך is justified; whereas the rendering, “what does it bring to thee, and what does it profit thee?” or, “of what use to thee and what advancement to thee is the crafty tongue?” is indeed possible so far as concerns the syntax (Ges. §147, e), but is unlikely as being ambiguous and confusing in expression. It is also to be inferred from the correspondence between מה־יּתּן לך וּמה־יּסיף לך and the formula of an oath כּה יעשׂה־לּך אלהים לכה יוסיף, 1Sa 3:17; 1Sa 20:13; 1Sa 25:22; 2Sa 3:35; Rth 1:17, that God is to be thought of as the subject of יתן and יסיף: “what will,” or rather, in accordance with the otherwise precative use of the formula and with the petition that here precedes: “what shall He (is He to) give to thee (נתן as in Hos 9:14), and what shall He add to thee, thou crafty tongue?” The reciprocal relation of Psa 120:4 to מה־יתן, and of. Psa 120:4 with the superadding עם to מה־יסיף, shows that Psa 120:4 is not now a characterizing of the tongue that continues the apostrophe to it, as Ewald supposes. Consequently Psa 120:4 gives the answer to Psa 120:3 with the twofold punishment which Jahve will cause the false tongue to feel. The question which the poet, sure of the answering of his cry for help, puts to the false tongue is designed to let the person addressed hear by a flight of sarcasm what he has to expect. The evil tongue is a sharp sword (Psa 57:5), a pointed arrow (Jer 9:7), and it is like a fire kindled of hell (Jam 3:6). The punishment, too, corresponds to this its nature and conduct (Psa 64:4). The “mighty one” (lxx δυνατός) is God Himself, as it is observed in B. Erachin 15 b with a reference to Isa 42:13 : “There is none mighty by the Holy One, blessed is He.” He requites the evil tongue like with like. Arrows and coals (Psa 140:11) appear also in other instances among His means of punishment. It, which shot piercing arrows, is pierced by the sharpened arrows of an irresistibly mighty One; it, which set its neighbour in a fever of anguish, must endure the lasting, sure, and torturingly consuming heat of broom-coals. The lxx renders it in a general sense, σὺν τοῖς ἄνθραξι τοῖς ἐρημικοῖς; Aquila, following Jewish tradition, ἀρκευθίναις; but רתם, Arabic ratam , ratem , is the broom-shrub (e.g., uncommonly frequent in the Belkâ). Psa 120:5-7

Since arrows and broom-fire, with which the evil tongue is requited, even now proceed from the tongue itself, the poet goes on with the deep heaving אויה (only found here). גּוּר with the accusative of that beside which one sojourns, as in Psa 5:5; Isa 33:14; Jdg 5:17. The Moschi (משׁך, the name of which the lxx takes as an appellative in the signification of long continuance; cf. the reverse instance in Isa 66:19 lxx) dwelt between the Black and the Caspian Seas, and it is impossible to dwell among them and the inhabitants of Kedar (vid., Psa 83:7) at one and the same time. Accordingly both these names of peoples are to be understood emblematically, with Saadia, Calvin, Amyraldus, and others, of homines similes ejusmodi barbaris et truculentis nationibus. ^{▼▼If the Psalm were a Maccabaean Psalm, one might think משׁך, from משׁך, σύρειν, alluded to the Syrians or even to the Jewish apostates with reference to משׁך ערלה, ἐπισπᾶσθαι τὴν ἀκροβυστίαν (1Co 7:18).}

Meshech is reckoned to Magog in Eze 38:2, and the Kedarites are possessed by the lust of possession (Gen 16:12) of the bellum omnium contra omnes. These rough and quarrelsome characters have surrounded the poet (and his fellow-countrymen, with whom he perhaps comprehends himself) too long already. רבּת, abundantly (vid., Psa 65:10), appears, more particularly in 2Ch 30:17., as a later prose word. The להּ, which throws the action back upon the subject, gives a pleasant, lively colouring to the declaration, as in Psa 122:3; Psa 123:4. He on his part is peace (cf. Mic 5:5, Psa 119:4; Psa 110:3), inasmuch as the love of peace, willingness to be at peace, and a desire for peace fill his σου; but if he only opens his mouth, they are for war, they are abroad intent on war, their mood and their behaviour become forthwith hostile. Ewald (§362, b) construes it (following Saadia): and I - although I speak peace; but if כּי (like עד, Psa 141:10) might even have this position in the clause, yet וכי cannot. שׁלום is not on any account to be supplied in thought to אדבּר, as Hitzig suggests (after Psa 122:8; Psa 28:3; Psa 35:20). With the shrill dissonance of שׁלום and מלחמה the Psalm closes; and the cry for help with which it opens hovers over it, earnestly desiring its removal.