Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/668

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The Davidic Michtammı̂m are now ended, and there follows a short Davidic song על־נגינת. Does this expression mean “with the accompaniment of stringed instruments?” Not strictly, for this is expressed by the inscription בּנגינות (Psa 4:1, cf. Isa 30:29, Isa 30:32). But the formula may signify “upon the music of stringed instruments,” i.e., upon stringed instruments. And this is more probable than that נגינת is the beginning of a standard song. The termination ath is not necessarily the construct state. It was the original feminine termination; and the prevailing one in Phoenician.
Some expositors, like Köster, Ewald, Hitzig, and Olshausen, feel themselves here also bound, by reason of the לדוד of the inscription, to seek a place for this Psalm as far down as the Babylonian exile and the times of the Ptolemies and the Seleucidae.