Psalm 3 Macrosyntax
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Psalm 3/Macrosyntax
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Victory is YHWH's!
Psalm 3
Macrosyntax
Macrosyntax Diagram
| Macrosyntax legend | |
|---|---|
| Vocatives | Vocatives are indicated by purple text. |
| Discourse marker | Discourse markers (such as כִּי, הִנֵּה, לָכֵן) are indicated by orange text. |
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The scope governed by the discourse marker is indicated by a dashed orange bracket connecting the discourse marker to its scope. |
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The preceding discourse grounding the discourse marker is indicated by a solid orange bracket encompassing the relevant clauses. |
| Subordinating conjunction | The subordinating conjunction is indicated by teal text. |
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Subordination is indicated by a solid teal bracket connecting the subordinating conjunction with the clause to which it is subordinate. |
| Coordinating conjunction | The coordinating conjunction is indicated by blue text. |
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Coordination is indicated by a solid blue line connecting the coordinating clauses. |
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Coordination without an explicit conjunction is indicated by a dashed blue line connecting the coordinated clauses. |
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Marked topic is indicated by a black dashed rounded rectangle around the marked words. |
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The scope of the activated topic is indicated by a black dashed bracket encompassing the relevant clauses. |
| Marked focus or thetic sentence | Marked focus (if one constituent) or thetic sentences[1] are indicated by bold text. |
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Frame setters[2] are indicated by a solid gray rounded rectangle around the marked words. |
| [blank line] | Discourse discontinuity is indicated by a blank line. |
| [indentation] | Syntactic subordination is indicated by indentation. |
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Direct speech is indicated by a solid black rectangle surrounding all relevant clauses. |
| (text to elucidate the meaning of the macrosyntactic structures) | Within the CBC, any text elucidating the meaning of macrosyntax is indicated in gray text inside parentheses. |
If an emendation or revocalization is preferred, that emendation or revocalization will be marked in the Hebrew text of all the visuals.
| Emendations/Revocalizations legend | |
|---|---|
| *Emended text* | Emended text, text in which the consonants differ from the consonants of the Masoretic text, is indicated by blue asterisks on either side of the emendation. |
| *Revocalized text* | Revocalized text, text in which only the vowels differ from the vowels of the Masoretic text, is indicated by purple asterisks on either side of the revocalization. |
(Click diagram to enlarge)
- The discourse can be divided based on the recurrence of selah at the ends of sections (vv. 3b, 5b, 7b) and vocatives at the beginnings of sections (vv. 2a, 4a, 8a).
- vv. 2b, 3a. Although רַבִּים could be read as the unmarked topic of a verbless predication in these two clauses, we have preferred to interpret the topic of these clauses as קָמִ֥ים עָלָֽי, (since צָרָ֑י "my adversaries" has already been discourse-activated in v. 2a), such that the comment, רַבִּים, is clause-initial. Thus, the initial placement of this comment seems to function as scalar/confirming focus (see the grammar notes for further details).
- v. 5a. The first constituent of the clause is the noun phrase קוֹלִי ("aloud," lit.: "my voice"). The pre-verbal position of this constituent might not be related to information structure but to some unique usage of the phrase קוֹלִי.[3] It also results in the poetic juxtaposition of "my voice" at the beginning of v. 5 and "my head" at the end of v. 4. The fronting of the prepositional phrase "to YHWH" is probably related to information structure, marking this prepositional phrase as focal.
- v. 6a. The previous clause describes YHWH's action, while this section (vv. 6-7, following the selah of v. 5b) is now about the psalmist and his actions. The independent pronoun אֲנִי marks this transition and activates "I" as the topic of the following clauses.[4] The presence of the personal pronoun also contributes to the division of these poetic sections (see poetic structure).[5]
- v. 6b. The כִּי clause at the end of v. 6 has subject-verb word order, marking the clause as a thetic, which grounds the previous propositional content.
- v. 7b. The adverb סָבִיב ("all around") is fronted, probably for marked focus. The enemies do not just take position against him on one side (which would allow him an escape route), but on every side, all around him.
- v. 8c. The fronting of the object "wicked people's teeth" (שִׁנֵּי רְשָׁעִים) results in a symmetrical structure with the previous line: A. you have struck B. my enemies C. on the jaw // C. the teeth B. of wicked people A. you have broken.
- v. 9a. The prepositional phrase לַיהוָה is fronted for exclusive focus. Victory belongs to no one else but YHWH; he alone determines who wins and who loses.
- v. 9b. The phrase "on your people" is fronted for exclusive focus. YHWH's blessing is not on the enemy "people" (see v. 7), but on his own "people."
- v. 2. The opening vocative is clause-initial, as often at the beginning of psalms (cf. Pss 6; 7; 8; 15; 21; 109; etc.; but see e.g., Pss 4; 5; 10; 13; 16; 17; 18; etc., though in several of these examples [e.g., Pss 4; 5; 10; 13] there are poetic and/or pragmatic explanations for the non-initial position of the vocative). The initial position of the vocative at the beginning of a psalm might reflect the discourse function of the clause-initial vocative to signal the beginning of a conversational turn.[6]
- v. 4. The vocative "YHWH" is placed after וְאַתָּה to allow for adversative waw and create the intensive focus reading of the pronouns (אַתָּה), as claimed by Miller.[7]
- v. 8. The fact that the imperatives in v. 8 ("rise... save") occur before the vocatives ("YHWH... my God") might increase the urgency of the imperatives.
There are no notes on Discourse Markers for this psalm.
- v. 6. The כִּי in v. 6 is causal, explaining how it is that the psalmist was able to wake up safely, without having been killed in his sleep.
- v. 8. The כִּי in v. 8 is a speech-act causal כִּי.[8] The psalmist grounds his request for YHWH to save (v. 8a) in the recollection of YHWH's past acts of salvation (v. 8bc). See The Verbal Semantics of Psalm 3:8b–c for details.
- ↑ When the entire utterance is new/unexpected, it is a thetic sentence (often called "sentence focus"). See our Creator Guidelines for more information on topic and focus.
- ↑ Frame setters are any orientational constituent – typically, but not limited to, spatio-temporal adverbials – function to "limit the applicability of the main predication to a certain restricted domain" and "indicate the general type of information that can be given" in the clause nucleus (Krifka & Musan 2012: 31-32). In previous scholarship, they have been referred to as contextualizing constituents (see, e.g., Buth (1994), “Contextualizing Constituents as Topic, Non-Sequential Background and Dramatic Pause: Hebrew and Aramaic evidence,” in E. Engberg-Pedersen, L. Falster Jakobsen and L. Schack Rasmussen (eds.) Function and expression in Functional Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 215-231; Buth (2023), “Functional Grammar and the Pragmatics of Information Structure for Biblical Languages,” in W. A. Ross & E. Robar (eds.) Linguistic Theory and the Biblical Text. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 67-116), but this has been conflated with the function of topic. In brief: sentence topics, belonging to the clause nucleus, are the entity or event about which the clause provides a new predication; frame setters do not belong in the clause nucleus and rather provide a contextual orientation by which to understand the following clause.
- ↑ See e.g., Ps 27:7; 142:2; cf. Ps 66:17, with פִּי; cf. GKC §144l-m.
- ↑ Though we would typically expect וַאֲנִי for such a topic shift, Kennicott 206 (see VTH: vol. IV, 308) indeed reads such.
- ↑ Alternatively, the sentence beginning אֲנִ֥י שָׁכַ֗בְתִּי could be read as thetic, but there appear to be too many verbal predicates to accommodate such a construal.
- ↑ Cf. Kim 2023, 213-217.
- ↑ Miller 2010, 357.
- ↑ See Locatell 2017, 162; cf. Locatell 2019.