Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/506

him ears in order to hear that disclosure concerning the true will of God (Hupfeld), but, in general, to hear the word of God, and to obey that which is heard. God desires not sacrifices but hearing ears, and consequently the submission of the person himself in willing obedience. To interpret it “Thou hast appropriated me to Thyself לעבד עולם,” after Exo 21:6; Deu 15:17, would not be out of harmony with the context; but it is at once shut out by the fact that the word is not אזן, but אזנים. Concerning the generalizing rendering of the lxx, σῶμα δὲ κατηρτίσω μου, following which Apollinaris renders it αὐτὰρ ἐμοί Βροτέης τεκτήναο σάρκα γενέθλης, and the Italic (which is also retained in the Psalterium Romanum), corpus autem perfecisti mihi; vide on Heb 10:5, Commentary, S. 460f. transl. vol. ii. p. 153.
The אז אמרתּי, which follows, now introduces the expression of the obedience, with which he placed himself at the service of God, when he became conscious of what God's special will concerning him was. With reference to the fact that obedience and not sacrifice has become known to him as the will and requirement of God, he has said: “Lo, I come,” etc. By the words “Lo, I come,” the servant places himself at the call of his master, Num 22:38; 2Sa 19:21. It is not likely that the words בּמגלּת ספר כּתוּב עלי then form a parenthesis, since Psa 40:9 is not a continuation of that “Lo, I come,” but a new sentence. We take the Beth, as in Psa 66:13, as the Beth of the accompaniment; the roll of the book is the Tôra, and more especially Deuteronomy, written upon skins and rolled up together, which according to the law touching the king (Deu 17:14-20) was to be the vade-mecum of the king of Israel. And עלי cannot, as synonymous with the following בּמעי, signify as much as “written upon my heart,” as De Wette and Thenius render it-a meaning which, as Maurer has already correctly replied, עלי obtains elsewhere by means of a conception that is altogether inadmissible in this instance. On the contrary, this preposition here, as in 2Ki 22:13, denotes the object of the contents; for כּתב על signifies to write anything concerning any one, so that he is the subject one has specially in view (e.g.,