Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/660

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u/659]]== 9 Mine is Gilead and mine Manasseh, And Ephraim is the helm of my head, Judah is my sceptre,

10 Moab is my wash-pot, Upon Edom I cast my shoe.

Cry out concerning me, O Philistial

11 "Who will conduct me to the fortified city? Who will bring me to Edom ?!

12 Hast not Thou, Elohim, cast us off,

And goest not forth, Elohim, with our armies f—

13 Grant us deliverance from the oppressor; Yea, vain is the help of man.

14 In Elohim shall we obtain the victory, And He will tread down our oppressors.


This last of the Elohimic Michtammı̂m of David is dated from the time of the Syro-Ammonitish war: When he (David) waged war (Hiph. of נצה, to pull, to seize by the hair) with (את like על in Num 26:9; according to Ben-Asher, with Segol instead of Makkeph here, as in Psa 47:5, Pro 3:12, three passages which are noted by the Masora) Aram of the two rivers (the people of the land of the twin streams, Mesopotami'a) and with Aram Zobah (probably between the Euphrates and Orontes north-east of Damascus), and Joab returned (ויּשׁב, transition from the infinitive to the finite verb, Ges. §132, rem. 2) and smote Edom in the Valley of Salt (the Edomitish Ghor, i.e., the salt plain, some ten miles wide, at the southern extremity of the Dead Sea) with twelve thousand men. This historical inscription comes from an historical work which gave the Psalm in this connection. It is not take out of any of the histories that have been preserved to us. For both in 2Sa 8:13 and in 1Ch 18:12 we find the number eighteen thousand instead of twelve. In the former passage, in which עשׂה שׁם is substantially equivalent to the Roman triumphum agere, we have to read את־עדם after the inscription of our Psalm instead of את־ארם. It is, however, still more probable that the words ויּך את־עדם (lxx ἐπάταξε τὴν Ἰδουμαίαν) have accidentally fallen out. The fact that here in the Psalm the victory over the Edomites is ascribed to Joab, in the Chronicles to Abshai (