Psalm 136: some notes

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

22 October 2010

The first thing that needs to be said about Psalm 136 is that F. C. Fensham was my professor at Stellenbosch University and I happened to be one of his last MA students. He published an article touching on aspects of Psalm 136 in the Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 9 (1981): 35-51, "Neh 9 and Pss. 105, 106, 135 and 136. Post-exilic Historical Traditions in Poetic Form". What puzzled Fensham about these chapters is that it is difficult to determine at times why the Davidic traditions, which were important to the Chronicler, were omitted. It was also "difficult to pinpoint the historical setting of these post-exilic credos, because of the gaps in our knowledge of the history concerned".

These two points by Fensham are important for us especially as we are talking about historical context and secondly, of certain identifiers helping us towards a chronological setting. Methodologically it would have been better for Fensham not to identify these credos as post-exilic since he is makes an self-exposing weakness regarding time context known to us. And this is what we will do with Psalm 136. It is not post-Exilic but is based on very old credos that developed during Israel's exodus from Egypt and journey to Canaan. When you see the word yom-suf in Nehemia 9:9 and the belief in the creating God (verse 6b where it says God made the heavens) and the maintenance God (verse 6f where it says that God is life keeper to all) one must not make a superficial link to Psalm 136 as if they are common good belonging together.

Psalm 105-106

If one looks at the article of Fensham in which he wish to see Psalm 105 and 106 as post-Exilic, it calls for some rethinking. Psalms 103-106 are based upon very old strata. They appear to be recasting hymns from the time of the journey through the wilderness between 1450-1410 BCE with Moses. Just like Exodus 15:4 we find the mention of the yom-suf in Psalm 106:7 and 9. We find the name of Moses and Aaron in Psalm 105:26. We see the comparison between Genesis 1:1, 2 with the word spoken by God in Psalm 105:31 (He spoke and there came a swarm of flies). We have the speaking creativity of God. There is also a Mosaic recasting in Psalm 103:1-2 where the soul is not something in you but all of you just like Moses explained in Genesis 1-2 with the creation of man where man became a living soul not get one.

Psalm 136

We do not know when the hymn was composed but it could very well also be one of the credos or hymns that originated in the Wilderness while Israel was on their way to Canaan. Is there any evidence for that? The Genesis 1-2 formulas in Psalm 136:1-9, written by Moses in Genesis during his sojourn in Midian hiding from Thutmosis III in 1460 BCE, is evidence of that.

Pair words in Psalm 136

Look at all the pair words:

Praise (verse 1), praise (verse 2), praise (verse 3)

God of gods (verse 2)

Lord of lords (verse 3)

to make (verse 4 = creative making), to make (verse 5 = creative making)

heavens (verse 5) and earth (verse 6)

spread out (verse 6 = creative spreading out) and to make (verse 7)

sun (verse 8) and moon (verse 9).

More pair connected words in Psalm 136

The whole Psalm is using pair words or a repetition of the same root in different verses.

A pair word is also in:

Egypt (verse 10) and Israel (verse 11)

Yom-suf (verse 13) and Yom-suf (verse 15)

kings (verse 17) and kings (verse 18)

king (verse 19) and king (verse 20)

inheritance (verse 21) and inheritance (verse 22).

Dating Psalm 136 on the basis of Psalm 137

Psalm 137 seems to be in the context of Daniel arriving in Babylon in 597 BCE. The context seems to be an event from the diary speaking of their humiliation in a foreign land in exile. This dating of the context of the content of Psalm 137 may have led Fensham to allocate Psalm 136 to the post-exilic period, but there is not reason to connect the content of Psalm 136 to that of Psalm 137. They are unrelated. Psalm 137 is using so-called Phoenicianisms with the shin-relative (3x) used in Psalm 137:7, 9. It may be just a citation from a well-known Phoenician poem or phrase in these verses 7-9. Not all cases of shin-relatives are necessarily Phoenician influence (see below where we argue against this form of glotto-chronology).

Should Psalm 136 be used for liturgy?

Psalm 136 was meant to be sung by a choir. It was as if a chanter for say the first part and the choir repeated the second. There is no need to built this Psalm into our liturgy and let the pastor or preacher chant the first part and the congregation the monotonous second part. The reason is that the Psalm may have fulfilled a kinetic pleasing role. This means that while the Israelites were walking in the Wilderness, moving in great numbers, they would chant this to take their minds off the trouble, tension and pain and suffering. It may have been also for the walking march of soldiers. If they have to move a long distance without encountering the enemy it would be a pleasant Psalm to chant. If the kinetic role was built into the function of this Psalm originally, then there is no need in our liturgy to bring this Psalm in as a part of the worship. The congregation is standing still and chanting this last part of each verse is displeasing to the brain which does not have a body moving simultaneously. The message that His lovingkindness endures forever, is not displeasing to the brain but encouraging. It is the repetition of a good thing in a senseless manner that is wrong.

Socalled Phoenicianism in Psalm 136: caution of glotto-chronology

There is a case of a Phoenician influence in Psalm 136 and that is in Psalm 136:23. The Phoenician relative pronoun shin is affixed to the preposition b  and in turn connected to the word falling  to come up with "Who, in our falling".

It is not correct to say that Phoenician influence is only linked to the post-exilic period since Phoenician was known from outside sources from the time of Solomon (974 BCE) to the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and even later to the time of the Punic inscriptions. I am saying the shin is a Phoenicianism but even that remark is tentative. There is a possibility that the shin-relative was used earlier in North-East Semitic. In ancient Akkadian shu or shi or sha was the common relative pronoun. The form sha is known to the Old Babylonian period dating prior to Hammurabi between 1980-1798 BCE (see further Sabatino Moscati, An Introduction to Comparative Grammar of Semitic Languages [Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1969], 113-114). This point about the so-called Phoenicianisms in a book of the Bible is very important since you often hear scholar want to date Job late for the appearance of a Phoenicianism in the book when in fact this linguistic element also appeared in Northeast Semitic must earlier than Phoenician.

The full picture is that in Old Akkadian of 2000 BCE shu was used and in Old Babylonian sha. In the time of Hammurabi, in Amorite (1750 BCE) shu/zu was used. In the Amarna corpus of 1410-1350 BCE asher is used and in Ugaritic of 1300-1180 BCE atr or d is used. In Old Aramaic of z' or zy or dy was used. In Moabite of the 9th century BCE asher was used and in Biblical Aramaic dy. In Phoenician of the 6th century BCE 'sh or sh was used and at Byblos in their dialect of Phoenician z was used. So much for the linguistic dating of a pericope of the Bible on the basis of a linguistic element that is not Hebrew. Caution is called for.