All translations of Ps 24:5 that I know of (including commentaries) treat v. 5
as starting a new clause: "He will receive ... ." Andersen-Forbes, however,
analyse this differently. They see vv. 4-5a as being one sentence, with the
whole of v. 4 being the subject of the verb yissa' in v. 5. This would render
the translation: "One clean of hands ... who has not lifted ... will receive."

My question is: What makes this a better reading then the typical one?

Here are the pros and cons of A-F's suggestion that I can think of:

Cons:

- The question in v. 3 is only indirectly answered (Having said that, the answer
is clarified once more in v. 6, so perhaps this is intentional ... . The
indirectness of the answer may relate to the function of the section within the
context of the whole Psalm.

- Though subject and verb are part of one clause, poetically they cross a
strophe boundary (vv. 3-4//5-6), which may be unusual.

Pros:

These become particularly clear when we compare the Psalm to Psalm 15, its close
relative:

- Ps 15 also has noun-phrases followed by qatal verbs in the section describing
qualifications for temple entrance (vv. 2-5). The difference is, the qatals in
Ps 24 are preceded by 'asher, which A-F consider to be a "nominalizer." That
means that the following two qatal clauses, in contrast to Ps 15, "function
[syntactically] as a noun." (I have to say, however, that this is an odd concept
for me ... I don't see, for example, how Deut 13.7 is "nominalized." Hay anyone
heard of this concept?).

- Ps 15:5c, like Ps 24:5, is a promise of the benefits such a righteous person
would receive. The difference is that in Ps 15 an extra subject is added
beforehand: 'oseh 'eleh. In Psalm 24, there is no extra subject before the verb.
Admittedly, this happens elsewhere in the Bible (cf. Isa 3:7), but not only is
the entire preceding verse nominalized (unlike in Isa 3:7), the subject of the
verb is repeated afterwards in v. 6, as if one wanted to clarify the answer to
the question in v. 3.

- V. 4 as subject is syntactically possible (i.e. noun-phrase+relative clause).
It occurs 4 times in poetic books: Pss 24:4-5; 35:8; 41:10; 86:9 and c. 67 times
in the rest of the Bible. A good example of a very similar construction with a
long subject is Deut 28:56. The first noun-phrase consists of two elements and
the relative clause consists of two further subclauses (and this isn't even
poetry, so there's no parallelism!). Cf. also Num 9:13; Josh 1:18; and Ezra 6:5
(in Aramaic), which have especially similar structures.


Philip Sumpter

http://narrativeandontology.blogspot.com/

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