"Come, Children, Listen to Me!" Psalm 34 in the Hebrew Bible and in Early Christian Writings (review)

Abstract

Hebrew Studies 36 (1995) 196 Reviews "COME, CHILDREN, LISTEN TO ME!" PSALM 34 IN THE HEBREW BIBLE AND IN EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITINGS. By LarsOlov Eriksson. CBOTS 32. pp. 216. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1991. Paper. For much of this century, research on the psalms has been dominated by a methodological consensus centered on the form-critical work of Hermann Gunkel and his successors. Recently, however, form criticism has begun to lose its monopoly on the scholarly discussion, as attention has shifted away from questions about genre to other issues, such as the shape of the Psalter as a whole. The present book is very much a part of this movement to push beyond the usual form-critical questions, as its author makes clear from the start. This work attempts to break new ground in two somewhat different ways. First of all, the focus here is on an individual psalm, rather than on a psalm genre. According to Eriksson, the standard form-critical emphasis on the psalms' common traits has resulted in a comparative neglect of the more distinctive aspects of individual psalms. The present study attempts to remedy this by pursuing an in-depth analysis of Psalm 34, a psalm which most modem critics have had difficulty in classifying according to genre and to which, perhaps as a result, they have not attached much significance. This in-depth study of Psalm 34 begins with a detailed analysis of its language, style, and structure. With regard to language, the author pays particular attention to the words and phrases used to describe God, the psalmist, and "the others" (especially the righteous and the wicked who are contrasted throughout the psalm). Much of the language in these areas is similar to that found in the rest of the Psalter. There are, however, some links to the wisdom books and, to a lesser extent, the prophetic literature. The author also sees both a certain originality in the psalm's usage of this language and a strong emphasis on teaching and exhortation throughout. With regard to style, the author pays particular attention to the way certain words, phrases, synonymous expressions. and syntactic patterns are repeated in the psalm. He also finds evidence of other poetic devices. such as parallelism, chiasm, alliteration, and the rhetorical question. All of this points to a poem written with skill and artistry, a judgment underscored by the psalm's acrostic structure. With regard to the latter, the author shows how certain apparent deficiencies in the alphabetic pattern (such as the missing waw line and the additional pe line) are actually intentional and in keeping with the psalm's instructional purposes. Hebrew Studies 36 (1995) 197 Reviews Only after explicating the unique aspects of Psalm 34 does the author consider the psalm's fonn. Here he notes the critical disagreement between those who classify the psalm as a thanksgiving psalm and those who instead see it as a wisdom psalm. While there are elements in the first part of the psalm which are at home in the psalm of thanksgiving, the author finds it hard to accept this designation in view of some important deviations from the standard fonn. These include the lack of any direct address to God, the absence of the nonnal thanksgiving verb ydh, the brevity of the account of the psalmist's fate (and its unusual address to the listener), and the absence of any reference to the thank offering. The author is much more in sympathy with those who see the psalm as a wisdom psalm of some sort. This judgment is based first of all on the fact that the psalm's content includes such central wisdom themes as the contrast between the righteous and the wicked, the fear of the Lord, God's protection of the righteous, and the problem of the suffering of the righteous. The style of the psalm also has a number of affinities to fonnal devices found in the wisdom books. Among these are the pivotal admonition to the "sons" in v. 12, the ·a~re fonnula in v. 9, and the question in v. 13. The vocabulary of the psalm, especially in its second half, has many connections to the...