Notes on Psalm 139:1

What follows are notes from Dr. Gary Staats on Psalm 139:1 which I am transcribing from an audio tape.

Psalm 139 is a great psalm concerning God’s great omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence. He knows us. He knows all about us. He’s always with us, and He is all powerful. This is a text of reassurance of the Lord’s constant knowledge of us including our every thought and word. It is an intimate, personal relationship that we see from this psalm.

It begins,לַמְנַצֵּחַ לְדָוִד מִזְמוֹר for the leader by David a Psalm. לַ is a preposition. Notice the patha under it showing the definite article “For the” and then מְנַצֵּחַ is a piel participle meaning “leader” or “preeminent one.” Notice we have a shewa followed by a patha and then the doubling of the middle radical in the tsade with a furtive patha under the chet. We would render it, “For the preeminent one, or leader, to David, or belonging to David, - a Psalm.”
The lamed here is probably a lamed autholis, a lamed of authorship. It shows that David is the author of the Psalm. דָוִד is just David, a proper name. מִזְמוֹר is a noun that means “song.”

יְהוָה חֲקַרְתַּנִי וַתֵּדָע
Oh, Lord, you have searched me and you have known me.

יְהוָה is the tetragammaton meaning “the eternal covenant God,” or “Yahweh,” and חֲקַרְתַּנִי is a Qal perfect 2nd masculine singular with the fist person singular pronominal suffix נִי meaning “me.”
וַתֵּדָע “and you know me.” The waw is a conjunction, “and,” followed by the verb תֵּדָע which is a Qal imperfect 2nd masculine singular with a waw conversive from the root ידע “he knows.” Notice the yod has dropped out here or elided and we have compensatory lengthening from what was historically a pe waw verb, תִודָע becoming תֵּדָע when the waw dropped out.

Psalm 139:1

לַמְנַצֵּחַ לְדָוִד מִזְמוֹר יְהוָה חֲקַרְתַנִי וַתֵדָע׃

Rough Word-by-word:
To the director by David a song LORD you have searched me and you have known.

Smooth Translation:
To the director a song by David. Lord you have searched me and known.

לַמְנַצֵּחַ preposition with piel participle masculine singular "To the overseer, or To the director"

לְדָוִד preposition with proper noun "for David, or by David"

מִזְמוֹר noun "[a] song"

יְהוָה Tetragrammaton "Adoni, or Lord"

חֲקַרְתַנִי Qal perfect 2ms from חקר (he searched) "you searched" 1cs suffix "me"

וַתֵדָע conversive conjunction "and" Qal imperfect 2ms from ידע (he knows) "you know"

Good Morning

I'm back, but I'm sick. I picked up some kind of bug in Israel.
10 days in Israel and I spoke with almost no Jews. Evidently the group I went with had strong Palestinian leanings, so we spent almost all our time in Palestinian areas.

I did hear one Jewish woman say "Good Morning."

בקֶר תוֹב

Headed to Israel

I am heading to Israel tomorrow and will not return until 11-22 -2010.
I plan (at this point) to begin the transcription of Psalm 139 on the blog when I return.
Dr. Staats is working on the audio for me to transcribe. Once complete, it will go up on Google Books with the rest of his works.

To quote Numbers 6:24 -

יְבָרֶכְךָ יְהוָה וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ

Give

נָתַן

Lift up

נָשָׂא

Principal Parts:

נִשָּׂא

נִשֵּׂא

הִשִּׂיא

הִתְנַשֵׂא

הִנַּשֵּׂא

Step back

Last night I took Harper's "Elements of Hebrew by an Inductive Method" to bed and noticed in his discussion of verbs on page 68 that he lists the Qal perfect 3ms for the root I used yesterday. The root actually is in the form of the infinitive construct.

Sooooo.....

I have corrected yesterday's post. I'll try to be more careful in the future.

To Die

מוּת

Principal Parts:

מוּת (Infinitive Construct)To die (Note: This is a Biliteral Root using the vowel of the infinitive construct. The Qal Perfect 3ms is מֵת "he died")

מוֹתֵת (Polel)

הֵמִית

הוּמַת