Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/234

The preceding Psalm closed with the words לא ימּוט; this word of promise is repeated in Psa 16:8 as an utterance of faith in the mouth of David. We are here confronted by a pattern of the unchangeable believing confidence of a friend of God; for the writer of Psa 16:1-11 is in danger of death, as is to be inferred from the prayer expressed in Psa 16:1 and the expectation in Psa 16:10. But there is no trace of anything like bitter complaint, gloomy conflict, or hard struggle: the cry for help is immediately swallowed up by an overpowering and blessed consciousness and a bright hope. There reigns in the whole Psalm, a settled calm, an inward joy, and a joyous confidence, which is certain that everything that it can desire for the present and for the future it possesses in its God.
The Psalm is inscribed לדוד; and Hitzig also confesses that “David may be inferred from its language.” Whatever can mark a Psalm as Davidic we find combined in this Psalm: thoughts crowding together in compressed language, which becomes in Psa 16:4 bold even to harshness, but then becomes clear and moves more rapidly; an antiquated, peculiar, and highly poetic impress (אדני, my Lord, מנת, נחלת, שׁפר, תּומיך); and a well-devised grouping of the strophes. In addition to all these, there are manifold points of contact with indisputably genuine Davidic Psalms (comp. e.g., Psa 16:5 with Psa 11:6; Psa 16:10 with Psa 4:4; Psa 16:11 with Psa 17:15), and with indisputably ancient portions of the Pentateuch (Exo 23:13; Exo 19:6; Gen 49:6). Scarcely any other Psalm shows so clearly as this, what deep roots psalm-poetry