Psa 6:3 | KD | STEP | The morning prayer, , is followed by a “Psalm of David,” which, even if not composed in the morning, looks back upon a sleepless, tearful night. It consists of three strophes. In the middle one, which is a third longer than the other two, the poet, by means of a calmer outpouring of his heart, struggles on from the cry of distress in the first strophe to the believing confidence of the last. The hostility of men seems to him as a punishment of divine wrath, and consequently (but this is not so clearly expressed as in Ps 38, which is its counterpart) as the result of his sin; and this persecution, which to him has God’s wrath behind it and sin as the sting of its bitterness, makes him sorrowful and sick even unto death. Because the Psalm contains no confession of sin, one might be inclined to think that the church has wrongly reckoned it as the first of the seven (probably selected with reference to the seven days of the week) Psalmi paenitentiales ( , , , , , , ). A. H. Francke in his Introductio in Psalterium says, it is rather Psalmus precatorius hominis gravissimi tentati a paenitente probe distinguendi . But this is a mistake. The man who is tempted is distinguished from a penitent man by this, that the feeling of wrath is with the one perfectly groundless and with the other well-grounded. Job was one who was tempted thus. Our psalmist, however, is a penitent, who accordingly seeks that the punitive chastisement of God, as the just God, may for him be changed into the loving chastisement of God, as the merciful One. We recognise here the language of penitently believing prayer, which has been coined by David. Compare with ; with ; with ; with ; with ; with ; with , Psa 35:26. The language of Heman’s Psalm is perceptibly different, comp. with ; with Psa 88:10. And the corresponding strains in Jeremiah (comp. , with ; and with ; with ) are echoes, which to us prove that the Psalm belongs to an earlier age, not that it was composed by the prophet (Hitzig). It is at once probable, from the almost anthological relationship in which Jeremiah stands to the earlier literature, that in the present instance also he is the reproducer. And this idea is confirmed by the fact that in , after language resembling the Psalm before us, he continues in words taken from Psa 79:6. When Hitzig maintains that David could no more have composed this disconcertedly despondent Psalm than Isaiah could the words in , we refer, in answer to him, to and to the many attestations that David did weep, ; ; ; ; 2Sa 19:1. The accompanying musical direction runs: To the Precentor, with accompaniment of stringed instruments, upon the Octave. The lxx translates ὑπὲρ τῆς ὀγδόης, and the Fathers associate with it the thought of the octave of eternal happiness, ἡ ὀγδόη ἐκείνη, as Gregory of Nyssa says, ἥτίς ἐστιν ὁ ἐφεξῆς αἰών. But there is no doubt whatever that על־השּׁמינית has reference to music. It is also found by , and besides in 1Ch 15:21. From this latter passage it is at least clear that it is not the name of an instrument. An instrument with eight strings could not have been called an octave instead of an octachord . In that passage they played upon nablas על־עלמות, and with citherns על־השּׁמינית. If עלמות denotes maidens = maidens’ voices i.e., soprano , then, as it seems, השּׁמינית is a designation of the bass, and על־השׁמינית equivalent to all' ottava bassa . The fact that , which is accompanied by the direction על־עלמות, is a joyous song, whereas is a plaintive one and not less gloomy and sad, accords with this. These two were to be played in the lower octave, that one in the higher. (Hebrew_Bible_6:2-4) There is a chastisement which proceeds from God’s love to the man as being pardoned and which is designed to purify or to prove him, and a chastisement which proceeds from God’s wrath against the man as striving obstinately against, or as fallen away from, favour, and which satisfies divine justice. ; ; Pro 3:11. speak of this loving chastisement. The man who should decline it, would act against his own salvation. Accordingly David, like Jeremiah ( ), does not pray for the removal of the chastisement but of the chastisement in wrath, or what is the same thing, of the judgment proceeding from wrath [ Zorngericht ]. בּאפּך and בּחמתך stand in the middle, between אל and the verbs, for the sake of emphasis. Hengstenberg indeed finds a different antithesis here. He says: “The contrast is not that of chastisement in love with chastisement in wrath , but that of loving rescue in contrast with chastisement, which always proceeds from the principle of wrath.” If what is here meant is, that always when God chastens a man his wrath is the true and proper motive, it is an error, for the refutation of which one whole book of the Bible, viz., the Book of Job, has been written. For there the friends think that God is angry with Job; but we know from the prologue that, so far from being angry with him, he on the contrary glories in him. Here, in this Psalm, assuming David to be its author, and his adultery the occasion of it, it is certainly quite otherwise. The chastisement under which David is brought low, has God’s wrath as its motive: it is punitive chastisement and remains such, so long as David remains fallen from favour. But if in sincere penitence he again struggles through to favour, then the punitive becomes a loving chastisement: God’s relationship to him becomes an essentially different relationship. The evil, which is the result of his sin and as such indeed originates in the principle of wrath, becomes the means of discipline and purifying which love employs, and this it is that he here implores for himself. And thus Dante Alighieri correctly and beautifully paraphrases the verse: Signor, non mi riprender con furore, E non voler correggermi con ira, Ma con dolcezza e con perfetto amore . In חנּני David prays God to let him experience His loving-kindness and tender mercy in place of the punishment He has a right to inflict; for anguish of soul has already reduced him to the extreme even of bodily sickness: he is withered up and weary. אמלל has Pathach , and consequently seems to be the 3 pers. Pul . as in ; ; but this cannot be according to the rules of grammar. It is an adjective, like רענן, שׁאנן, with the passive pointing. The formation אמלל (from אמל Arab. aml , with the primary meaning to stretch out lengthwise) is analogous to the IX and XI forms of the Arabic verb which serve especially to express colours and defects (Caspari §59). The two words אני אמלל have the double accent Mercha-Mahpach together, and according to the exact mode of writing (vid., Baer in my Psalter ii. 492) the Mahpach , (the sign resembling Mahpach or rather Jethib ), ought to stand between the two words, since it at the same time represents the Makkeph . The principal tone of the united pair, therefore, lies on aani ; and accordingly the adj. אמלל is shortened to אמלל (cf. אדמדּם, הפכפּך, מרמס, and the like) - a contraction which proves that אמלל is not treated as part. Pul . (= מאמלל), for its characteristic a4 is unchangeable. The prayer for healing is based upon the plea that his bones ( ; ) are affrighted. We have no German word exactly corresponding to this נבהל which (from the radical notion “to let go,” cogn. בּלהּ) expresses a condition of outward overthrow and inward consternation, and is therefore the effect of fright which disconcerts one and of excitement that deprives one of self-control. His soul is still more shaken than his body. The affliction is therefore not a merely bodily ailment in which only a timorous man loses heart. God’s love is hidden from him. God’s wrath seems as though it would wear him completely away. It is an affliction beyond all other afflictions. Hence he enquires: And Thou, O Jahve, how long?! Instead of אתה it is written את, which the Kerî says is to be read אתּה, while in three passages (Num 11:15; ; ) אתּ is admitted as masc .

‏ Psalms 6:3

A Cry for Mercy under Judgement

The morning prayer, Psa 5:1-12, is followed by a “Psalm of David,” which, even if not composed in the morning, looks back upon a sleepless, tearful night. It consists of three strophes. In the middle one, which is a third longer than the other two, the poet, by means of a calmer outpouring of his heart, struggles on from the cry of distress in the first strophe to the believing confidence of the last. The hostility of men seems to him as a punishment of divine wrath, and consequently (but this is not so clearly expressed as in Ps 38, which is its counterpart) as the result of his sin; and this persecution, which to him has God’s wrath behind it and sin as the sting of its bitterness, makes him sorrowful and sick even unto death. Because the Psalm contains no confession of sin, one might be inclined to think that the church has wrongly reckoned it as the first of the seven (probably selected with reference to the seven days of the week) Psalmi paenitentiales (Psa 6:1, Psa 32:1, Psa 38:1, Psa 51:1, Psa 102:1, Psa 130:1, Psa 143:1). A. H. Francke in his Introductio in Psalterium says, it is rather Psalmus precatorius hominis gravissimi tentati a paenitente probe distinguendi. But this is a mistake. The man who is tempted is distinguished from a penitent man by this, that the feeling of wrath is with the one perfectly groundless and with the other well-grounded. Job was one who was tempted thus. Our psalmist, however, is a penitent, who accordingly seeks that the punitive chastisement of God, as the just God, may for him be changed into the loving chastisement of God, as the merciful One.

We recognise here the language of penitently believing prayer, which has been coined by David. Compare Psa 6:2 with Psa 38:2; Psa 6:3 with Psa 41:5; Psa 6:5 with Psa 109:26; Psa 6:6 with Psa 30:10; Psa 6:7 with Psa 69:4; Psa 6:8 with Psa 31:10; Psa 6:10 with Psa 35:4, Psa 35:26. The language of Heman’s Psalm is perceptibly different, comp. Psa 6:6 with Psa 88:11-13; Psa 6:8 with Psa 88:10. And the corresponding strains in Jeremiah (comp. Psa 6:2, Psa 38:2 with Jer 10:24; Psa 6:3 and Psa 6:5 with Jer 17:14; Psa 6:7 with Jer 45:3) are echoes, which to us prove that the Psalm belongs to an earlier age, not that it was composed by the prophet (Hitzig). It is at once probable, from the almost anthological relationship in which Jeremiah stands to the earlier literature, that in the present instance also he is the reproducer. And this idea is confirmed by the fact that in Jer 10:25, after language resembling the Psalm before us, he continues in words taken from Psa 79:6. When Hitzig maintains that David could no more have composed this disconcertedly despondent Psalm than Isaiah could the words in Isa 21:3-4, we refer, in answer to him, to Isa 22:4 and to the many attestations that David did weep, 2Sa 1:12; 2Sa 3:32; 2Sa 12:21; 2Sa 15:30; 2Sa 19:1.

The accompanying musical direction runs: To the Precentor, with accompaniment of stringed instruments, upon the Octave. The lxx translates ὑπὲρ τῆς ὀγδόης, and the Fathers associate with it the thought of the octave of eternal happiness, ἡ ὀγδόη ἐκείνη, as Gregory of Nyssa says, ἥτίς ἐστιν ὁ ἐφεξῆς αἰών. But there is no doubt whatever that על־השּׁמינית has reference to music. It is also found by Psa 12:1-8, and besides in 1Ch 15:21. From this latter passage it is at least clear that it is not the name of an instrument. An instrument with eight strings could not have been called an octave instead of an octachord. In that passage they played upon nablas על־עלמות, and with citherns על־השּׁמינית. If עלמות denotes maidens = maidens’ voices i.e., soprano, then, as it seems, השּׁמינית is a designation of the bass, and על־השׁמינית equivalent to all' ottava bassa. The fact that Psa 46:1-11, which is accompanied by the direction על־עלמות, is a joyous song, whereas Psa 6:1-10 is a plaintive one and Psa 12:1-8 not less gloomy and sad, accords with this. These two were to be played in the lower octave, that one in the higher.

Psa 6:1-3 (Hebrew_Bible_6:2-4) There is a chastisement which proceeds from God’s love to the man as being pardoned and which is designed to purify or to prove him, and a chastisement which proceeds from God’s wrath against the man as striving obstinately against, or as fallen away from, favour, and which satisfies divine justice. Psa 94:12; Psa 118:17; Pro 3:11. speak of this loving chastisement. The man who should decline it, would act against his own salvation. Accordingly David, like Jeremiah (Jer 10:24), does not pray for the removal of the chastisement but of the chastisement in wrath, or what is the same thing, of the judgment proceeding from wrath [Zorngericht]. בּאפּך and בּחמתך stand in the middle, between אל and the verbs, for the sake of emphasis. Hengstenberg indeed finds a different antithesis here. He says: “The contrast is not that of chastisement in love with chastisement in wrath, but that of loving rescue in contrast with chastisement, which always proceeds from the principle of wrath.” If what is here meant is, that always when God chastens a man his wrath is the true and proper motive, it is an error, for the refutation of which one whole book of the Bible, viz., the Book of Job, has been written. For there the friends think that God is angry with Job; but we know from the prologue that, so far from being angry with him, he on the contrary glories in him. Here, in this Psalm, assuming David to be its author, and his adultery the occasion of it, it is certainly quite otherwise. The chastisement under which David is brought low, has God’s wrath as its motive: it is punitive chastisement and remains such, so long as David remains fallen from favour. But if in sincere penitence he again struggles through to favour, then the punitive becomes a loving chastisement: God’s relationship to him becomes an essentially different relationship. The evil, which is the result of his sin and as such indeed originates in the principle of wrath, becomes the means of discipline and purifying which love employs, and this it is that he here implores for himself. And thus Dante Alighieri ^{▼▼Provided he is the author of I sêtte Salmi Penitenziali trasportati alla volgar poesia, vid., Dante Alighieri’s Lyric poems, translated and annotated by Kannegiesser and Witte (1842) i. 203f., ii. 208f.} correctly and beautifully paraphrases the verse:Signor, non mi riprender con furore, E non voler correggermi con ira, Ma con dolcezza e con perfetto amore.

In חנּני David prays God to let him experience His loving-kindness and tender mercy in place of the punishment He has a right to inflict; for anguish of soul has already reduced him to the extreme even of bodily sickness: he is withered up and weary. אמלל has Pathach, and consequently seems to be the 3 pers. Pul. as in Joe 1:10; Nah 1:4; but this cannot be according to the rules of grammar. It is an adjective, like רענן, שׁאנן, with the passive pointing. The formation אמלל (from אמל Arab. aml, with the primary meaning to stretch out lengthwise) is analogous to the IX and XI forms of the Arabic verb which serve especially to express colours and defects (Caspari §59). The two words אני אמלל have the double accent Mercha-Mahpach together, and according to the exact mode of writing (vid., Baer in my Psalter ii. 492) the Mahpach, (the sign resembling Mahpach or rather Jethib), ought to stand between the two words, since it at the same time represents the Makkeph. The principal tone of the united pair, therefore, lies on aani; and accordingly the adj. אמלל is shortened to אמלל (cf. אדמדּם, הפכפּך, מרמס, and the like) - a contraction which proves that אמלל is not treated as part. Pul. (= מאמלל), for its characteristic a4 is unchangeable. The prayer for healing is based upon the plea that his bones (Job 4:14; Isa 38:13) are affrighted. We have no German word exactly corresponding to this נבהל which (from the radical notion “to let go,” cogn. בּלהּ) expresses a condition of outward overthrow and inward consternation, and is therefore the effect of fright which disconcerts one and of excitement that deprives one of self-control. ^{▼▼We have translated Dr. Delitzsch’s word erschrecht literally - the vexed of the Authorized Version seems hardly equal to the meaning.}

His soul is still more shaken than his body. The affliction is therefore not a merely bodily ailment in which only a timorous man loses heart. God’s love is hidden from him. God’s wrath seems as though it would wear him completely away. It is an affliction beyond all other afflictions. Hence he enquires: And Thou, O Jahve, how long?! Instead of אתה it is written את, which the Kerî says is to be read אתּה, while in three passages (Num 11:15; Deu 5:24; Eze 28:14) אתּ is admitted as masc.