Psa 53 | KD | STEP | The well-grounded asyndeton השׁהיתוּ התעיבוּ is here dismissed; and the expression is rendered more bombastic by the use of עול instead of עלילה. עול (the masculine to עולה), pravitas , is the accusative of the object (cf. ) to both verbs, which give it a twofold superlative attributive notion. Moreover, here השׁחיתו is accented with Mugrash in our printed texts instead of Tarcha . One Mugrash after another is contrary to all rule.

‏ Psalms 53

The well-grounded asyndeton השׁהיתוּ התעיבוּ is here dismissed; and the expression is rendered more bombastic by the use of עול instead of עלילה. עול (the masculine to עולה), pravitas, is the accusative of the object (cf. Eze 16:52) to both verbs, which give it a twofold superlative attributive notion. Moreover, here השׁחיתו is accented with Mugrash in our printed texts instead of Tarcha. One Mugrash after another is contrary to all rule. Psa 53:2

In both recensions of the Psalm the name of God occurs seven times. In Psa 14:1-7 it reads three times Elohim and four times Jahve; in the Psalm before us it is all seven times Elohim, which in this instance is a proper name of equal dignity with the name Jahve. Since the mingling of the two names in Psa 14:1-7 is perfectly intentional, inasmuch as Elohim in Psa 53:1, Psa 53:2 describes God as a Being most highly exalted and to be reverentially acknowledged, and in Psa 52:5 as the Being who is present among men in the righteous generation and who is mighty in their weakness, it becomes clear that David himself cannot be the author of this levelling change, which is carried out more rigidly than the Elohimic character of the Psalm really demands. Psa 53:3

Instead of הכּל, the totality, we have כּלּו, which denotes each individual of the whole, to which the suffix, that has almost vanished (Psa 29:9) from the genius of the language, refers. And instead of סר, the more elegant סג, without any distinction in the meaning. Psa 53:4

Here in the first line the word כּל־, which, as in Psa 5:6; Psa 6:9, is in its right place, is wanting. In Psa 14:1-7 there then follow, instead of two tristichs, two distichs, which are perhaps each mutilated by the loss of a line. The writer who has retouched the Psalm has restored the tristichic symmetry that had been lost sight of, but he has adopted rather violent means: inasmuch as he has fused down the two distichs into a single tristich, which is as closely as possible adapted to the sound of their letters. Psa 53:5

The last two lines of this tristich are in letters so similar to the two distichs of Psa 14:1-7, that they look like an attempt at the restoration of some faded manuscript. Nevertheless, such a close following of the sound of the letters of the original, and such a changing of the same by means of an interchange of letters, is also to be found elsewhere (more especially in Jeremiah, and e.g., also in the relation of the Second Epistle of Peter to Jude). And the two lines sound so complete in themselves and full of life, that this way of accounting for their origin takes too low an estimate of them. A later poet, perhaps belonging to the time of Jehoshaphat or Hezekiah, has here adapted the Davidic Psalm to some terrible catastrophe that has just taken place, and given a special character to the universal announcement of judgment. The addition of לא־היה פּחד (supply אשׁר = אשׁר שׁם, Psa 84:4) is meant to imply that fear of judgment had seized upon the enemies of the people of God, when no fear, i.e., no outward ground for fear, existed; it was therefore חרדּת אלהים (1Sa 14:15), a God-wrought panic. Such as the case with the host of the confederates in the days of Jehoshaphat (2Ch 20:22-24); such also with the army of Sennacherib before Jerusalem (Isa 37:36). כּי gives the proof in support of this fright from the working of the divine power. The words are addressed to the people of God: Elohim hath scattered the bones (so that unburied they lie like dirt upon the plain a prey to wild beasts, Psa 141:7; Eze 6:5) of thy besieger, i.e., of him who had encamped against thee. חנך .eeht tsniaga instead of חנך = חנה עליך. ^{▼▼So it has been explained by Menachem; whereas Dunash wrongly takes the ך of חנך as part of the root, overlooking the fact that with the suffix it ought rather to have been חנך instead of חנך. It is true that within the province of the verb âch does occur as a pausal masculine suffix instead of écha, with the preterite (Deu 6:17; Isa 30:19; Isa 55:5, and even out of pause in Jer 23:37), and with the infinitive (Deu 28:24; Eze 28:15), but only in the passage before us with the participle. Attached to the participle this masculine suffix closely approximates to the Aramaic; with proper substantives there are no examples of it found in Hebrew. Simson ha-Nakdan, in his חבור הקונים (a MS in Leipzig University Library, fol. 29 b), correctly observes that forms like שׁמך, עמּך, are not biblical Hebrew, but Aramaic, and are only found in the language of the Talmud, formed by a mingling of the Hebrew and Aramaic.}

By the might of his God, who has overthrown them, the enemies of His people, Israel has put them to shame, i.e., brought to nought in a way most shameful to them, the project of those who were so sure of victory, who imagined they could devour Israel as easily and comfortably as bread. It is clear that in this connection even Psa 53:5 receives a reference to the foreign foes of Israel originally alien to the Psalm, so that consequently Mic 3:3 is no longer a parallel passage, but passages like Num 14:9, our bread are they (the inhabitants of Canaan); and Jer 30:16, all they that devour thee shall be devoured. Psa 53:6

The two texts now again coincide. Instead of ישׁוּעת, we here have ישׁעות; the expression is strengthened, the plural signifies entire, full, and final salvation. Consolation in the Presence of Bloodthirsty Adversaries (In the Hebrew, Psa 54:1-2 comprise the designation 'To the leader, with the accompaniment of stringed instruments, a Maskil of David...'; from then on Psa 54:1-7 in English translation corresponds to vv. 3-9 in the Hebrew)

Here again we have one of the eight Psalms dates from the time of Saul’s persecution - a Maskı̂l, like the two preceding Psalms, and having points of close contact both with Psa 53:1-6 (cf. Psa 54:5 with Psa 53:3) and with Psa 52:1-9 (cf. the resemblance in the closing words of. v. 8 and Ps 52:11): To the Precentor, with the accompaniment of stringed instruments (vid., on Psa 4:1), a meditation, by David, when the Ziphites came and said to Saul: Is not David hidden among us? Abiathar, the son of Ahimelech, had escaped to David, who with six hundred men was then in the fortified town of Keïla (Keilah), but received through Abiathar the divine answer, that the inhabitants would give him up if Saul should lay siege to the town. Thereupon we find him in the wilderness of Zîph; the Ziphites betray him and pledge themselves to capture him, and thereby he is in the greatest straits, out of which he was only rescued by an invasion of the Philistines, which compelled Saul to retreat (1Sa 23:19.). The same history which the earlier narrator of the Books of Samuel relates here, we meet with once more in 1 Sam. 26, related with fuller colouring. The form of the inscription of the Psalm is word for word the same as both in 1Sa 23:19 and in 1Sa 26:1; the annals are in all three passages the ultimate source of the inscription.