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and lowered to substantival clauses: Jahve is my Rock, etc., which form no proper beginning for a hymn. Instead of וּמפלּטי we have, as in Psa 144:2, ומפלטי־לי; and instead of אלי צוּרי we find אלהי צוּרי, which is contrary to the usual manner of arranging these emblematical names. The loss the strophe sustains is compensated by the addition: and my Refuge, my Saviour, who savest me from violence. In 2Sa 22:4 as in 2Sa 22:49 the non-assimilated מן (cf. 2Sa 22:14, Psa 30:4; Psa 73:19) is shortened into an assimilated one. May לּי perhaps be the remains of the obliterated אלי, and אלהי, as it were, the clothing of the צוּרי which was then left too bare?
2Sa 22:5-7
The connection of this strophe with the preceding by כּי accords with the sense, but is tame. On the other hand, the reading משׁבּרי instead of חבלי (even though the author of Psa 116:3 may have thus read it) is commended by the parallelism, and by the fact, that now the latter figure is not repeated in 2Sa 22:5, 2Sa 22:6. משׁברי are not necessarily waves that break upon the shore, but may also be such as break one upon another, and consequently אפפוּני is not inadmissible. The ו of ונחלי, which is not wanted, is omitted. Instead of the fuller toned from סבבוּני, which is also more commensurate with the closing cadence of the verse, we have here the usual syncopated סבּוּני (cf. Psa 118:11). The repetition of the אקרא (instead of אשׁוּע) is even more unpoetical than the repetition of חבלי would be. On the other hand, it might originally have been ויּשׁמע instead of ישׁמע; without ו it is an expression (intended retrospectively) of what takes place simultaneously, with ו it expresses the principal fact. The concluding line ושׁועתי בּאזניו is stunted: the brief substantival clause is not meaningless (cf. Job 15:21; Isa 5:9), but is only a fragment of the more copious, fuller toned conclusion of the strophe which we find in the Psalter.
2Sa 22:8-10
The Kerî here obliterates the significant alternation of the Kal and Hithpa. of גּעשׁ. Instead of וּמוסדי we have the feminine form of the plural מוסדות (as in both texts in 2Sa 22:16) without ו. Instead of the genitive הרים, by an extension of the figure, we have השׁמים (cf. the pillars, Job 26:11), which is not intended of the mountains as of Atlasses, as it were, supporting the heavens, but of the points