Thursday, August 28, 2008

Structure - again

It seems to me that there are, besides the organization into books and the doxologies, two other supportable structural aspects to the Psalter:
  1. that the Psalms from 42 to 86 inclusive use Elohim more than YHWH and
  2. that Psalms 1-2 and 149 provide an opening and closing bracket to the whole Psalter.
The other relationships are more likely thematic than structural - at least that is what it looks like to my fuzzy vision at the moment. Yes there are a cluster of Davidic personal psalms at the beginning and at the end, and there are strategically placed themes like the human in creation, the royal psalms and the wisdom psalms, but it is too early for me to say if these groups are more than thematic in their positioning. And if these were real structural markers, I would expect more confirming clues.

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