Psalm 45 Exegetical Issues

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Psalm 45/Exegetical Issues
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Exegetical Issues Video

Introduction to Exegetical Issues

Presented here are the top three Exegetical Issues that any interpreter of the psalm—whether they’re reading the text in Hebrew or looking at a number of translations—are likely to encounter. These issues usually involve textual criticism, grammar, lexical semantics, verbal semantics, and/or phrase-level semantics, though they sometimes involve higher-level layers as well.

Exegetical Issues for Psalm 45

The primary difficulty in this verse lies in the final prepositional phrase of the third line, "in the heart of the enemies of the king (בְּ֝לֵ֗ב אוֹיְבֵ֥י הַמֶּֽלֶךְ),." Some have suggested that the MT's יִפְּל֑וּ בְּ֝לֵ֗ב should be emended to read יִפֹּל לְבַב. Others argue that v. 6a is in apposition to the "awesome deeds" of v. 5c, so that v. 6c is not dependent on v. 6a. A simple reading of the MT results in the third line syntactically modifying the first line, with the second line as a parenthetical.
Since the king is the most probable addressee in v. 7, many have considered it a theological difficulty to refer to the king as "God," so scholars and translators have sought alternate textual reconstructions or alternate grammatical construals to understand a remarkable reference to a human king.
There are a number of ways to understand the syntax of v. 13, some dependent on how one reads the final clause of v. 12 (וְהִשְׁתַּחֲוִי־לוֹ), whether as apposition, adding an elided verb, as a vocative, or emending the text.