Devotional Short Note to Psalm 52: “Doeg was an important official in Saul’s household and wielded much influence. To gain the king’s favour for his own advantage he played the role of informer and committed many brutal murders.” This is what one commentator said about Doeg. A billionaire that cared more for his pocket than for people or the spiritual side of his soul. His tweets “devised destruction, like a sharp razor, working deceitfully” (52:4a-b).

David called him a “mighty man” (52:3a). He did not care to boast about his achievements like Nebuchadnezzar later would do too: “did not I built these towers and gardens?” He spoke with extra independent personal pronouns in his speeches like Nebuchadnezzar did in Daniel 4:27 “that I, I built it” and also Sennacherib when he reported of the Third Campaign against Hezekiah in the cuneiform records, an extra emphasis on the self-achievement. The Egyptian pharaohs could not stay away from the uplifted “I”. In one case, in the black obelisk of Shalmanezer III when he came to year 30 he said “I did” but the scribe made an error and wrote in year 31 “he did”. In the following years he continued again with “I did”. We still do not learn. We are all Doegs.

Shakespear was a reader of the Bible as well and many times plagiarized biblical ideas without giving credit and he said similarly “’Tis slander, whose edge is sharper than the sword.” James knew about it: “no one can tame the tongue, restless evil full of deadly poison” (James 3:8).

Chuck Swindoll in a very good lecture on “Boars in God’s vineyard” on Youtube, tells about critical Mildrid who liked to gossip and one day she saw a newly convert’s car parked in front of the bar and she said at church to him: “I know exactly what you were doing last night. I saw your car parked in front of the bar”. That night, said Swindoll, convert John parked his car in front of Mildrid’s home and walked to his house.

“You love evil more than good, falsehood rather than speaking righteousness. You love all devouring words. The deceitful tongue”. A word out of place can kill many people.

David then embarked upon a midrash of his own eschatological Psalm: Psalm 1. The prophecy tells him that in the End of Times the wicked and Doeg included will be uprooted (52:7) “He will take you up and pluck you out of your tent”.

An uprooted tree is in mind here for the evil and in Psalm 1 it was like chaff which the wind carries away (1:4). The righteous however after resurrection and going into the air, will probably have chance to look over the shoulder to those below staying behind, Doeg included, and “shall laugh at him” (52:8b). They shall also “fear” or have respect for God’s might and glory (52:8a).

What was Doeg’s problem? Self was his stronghold, “I have so much money, I am so rich” and he strengthened himself in his wickedness (52:9). This Doeg syndrome is still with us today.

But as for David, “I am like a leafy olive-tree in the house of God”. David said this about 1050 BCE. In Hosea 14:6 the Lord promises to be as dew to spiritual Israel. “He shall grow as a lily. And he shall cast forth his root like the Lebanon”. “His branches shall spread and his beauty shall be as an olive tree and a smell to him like the Lebanon” (Hosea 14:7). Inhabitants can dwell in its shade and grow all kinds of good agriculture (Hosea 14:8).

When Israelites fled and lived in Egypt due to the exile, in 650 BCE, assumingly, a Jewish young scribe who learnt Egyptian, probably copied the Wisdom Literature of Amenmope and full of the wisdom of Solomon and biblical sayings in his mental lexicon or dictionary, he wrote about a similar image of the wise as a tree planted near waters.

There are differences since the water systems of Palestine and Egypt are different. In lines 96-101 and lines 102-109 are two units that portrays the life and end-result of the bad and the good in a well-known old Ancient Near Eastern metaphor of a fruitbearing tree.

Moses already used this metaphor in 1460 BCE composing Job 21:18 referring to the agricultural phenomenon of chaff in the wind. The classical pre-text for Amenmope in Egypt is Psalm 1 and Psalm 52. Psalm 1 is more complicated than Amenmope and thus have seniority over Amenmope. Whereas the righteous as tree in Psalm 52 is planted in the house of God (52:10) in Amenmope what is planted in the house of god (m-ḥt-nṯr) is the hotheaded man (p3-šmm).

As in Psalm 92:13 the hotheaded man comes to an end and his unripe fruit drops off and is of no use. He is thrown into the watercourse, cast in, carried away to the place to be used for firewood (Amenmope line 101). The righteous man or wise man is the Ger Maā and is like a large leafy tree planted not in the courtyard but in “shining ground” m-thnt (Amenmope line 103).

Whereas the hotheaded temple burocrat “comes to an end” (kmt [Budge] p3jf-ḫ3`) the mobile school next to the road “blossoms” (3ḫ3ḫ Amenmope line 104). It doubles its yield of fruit in Summer. The Ger Maā has his place before the owner or lord. His foliage or fruit is sweet, his shadow is pleasant. Here the scribe of Amenmope used the Psalms as pretext. At its end it is carried into the parks of the god. The god is not explicit as elsewhere but an ideogram added inside (m-mnw).

It appears that what is in separate parts in Job, Psalm 1:3-4 and Psalm 52:10, Hosea 14:6-8, is thrown together by the Hebrew minded scribe of Egypt in the Wisdom of Amenmope for his Egyptian overseers or teachers.

The scribe who wrote this wisdom in Egypt on the papyrus, turned it suddenly around at Column 6.4-6, smudged the word and rewrote or corrected it in coarser writing with the black ink. Why would the scribe do that? Why was he busy working on something and then turn the page around? Did he read other literature like Job, Psalms, Proverbs of Solomon and then corrected it? Why this correction?

The faithful Israelite was hoping for a certain quality of water but the Egyptian was hoping for a certain quality of ground.