monument, is brought prominently forward, by being either specially introduced or repeated as a refrain.
The strophe-schema is 5. 5. 6. 7. The last strophe, which has grown to seven lines, is an expression of joyous hopes in the face of death, which extend onward even into eternity.
Verses 1-3
The Psalm begins with a prayer that is based upon faith, the special meaning of which becomes clear from Psa 16:10 : May God preserve him (which He is able to do as being אל, the Almighty, able to do all things), who has no other refuge in which he has hidden and will hide but Him. This short introit is excepted from the parallelism; so far therefore it is monostichic, - a sigh expressing everything in few words. And the emphatic pronunciation שׁמרני shāmereni harmonises with it; for it is to be read thus, just as in Psa 86:2; Psa 119:167 shāmerah (cf. on Isa 38:14 עשׁקה), according to the express testimony of the Masora.[1]
The text of the next two verses (so it appears) needs to be improved in two respects. The reading אמרתּ as addressed to the soul (Targ.), cf. Lam 3:24., is opposed by the absence of any mention of the thing addressed. It rests upon a misconception of the defective form of writing, אמרתּ (Ges. §44, rem. 4). Hitzig and Ewald (§190, d) suppose that in such cases a rejection of the final vowel, which really occurs in the language of the people, after the manner of the Aramaic (אמרת or אמרת), lies at the bottom of the form. And it does really seem as though the frequent occurrence of this defective form (ידעת = ידעתי Psa 140:13; Job 42:2, בנית = בניתי 1Ki 8:48, עשׂית = עשׂיתי Eze 16:59, cf. 2Ki 18:20, אמרת now pointed אמרת, with Isa 36:5) has its occasion at least in some such cutting away of the i, peculiar to the language of the common people; although,
- ↑ The Masora observes גרשין בספרא ב, i.e., twice in the Psalter שׁמרה is in the imperative, the o being displaced by Gaja (Metheg) and changed into aa, vid., Baer, Torath Emeth p. 22f. In spite of this the grammarians are not agreed as to the pronunciation of the imperative and infinitive forms when so pointed. Luzzatto, like Lonzano, reads it shŏmereni.
