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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 35:7 - 35:7
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Psa 35:7 also needs re-organising, just as in Psa 35:5. the original positions of דחה and רדפס are exchanged. שַׁחַת רִשְׁתָּם would be a pit deceptively covered over with a net concealed below; but, as even some of the older critics have felt, שׁחת is without doubt to be brought down from Psa 35:7 into Psa 35:7: without cause, i.e., without any provocation on my part, have they secretly laid their net for me (as in Psa 9:16; Psa 31:5), without cause have they digged a pit for my soul. In Psa 35:8 the foes are treated of collectively. לֹא יֵדַע is a negative circumstantial clause (Ew. §341, b): improviso, as in Pro 5:6; Isa 47:11 extrem. Instead of תִּלְכְּדֶנּוּ the expression is תִּלְכְּדוּ, as in Hos 8:3; the sharper form is better adapted to depict the suddenness and certainty of the capture. According to Hupfeld, the verb שָׁאָה signifies a wild, dreary, confused noise or crash, then devastation and destruction, a transition of meaning which - as follows from שֹׁואָה (cf. תֹּהוּ) as a name of the desolate steppe, from שָׁוְא, a waste, emptiness, and from other indications - is solely brought about by transferring the idea of a desolate confusion of tones to a desolate confusion of things, without any intermediate notion of the crashing in of ruins. But it may be asked whether the reverse is not rather the case, viz., that the signification of a waste, desert, emptiness or void is the primary one, and the meaning that has reference to sound (cf. Arab. hwâ, to gape, be empty; to drive along, fall down headlong, then also: to make a dull sound as of something falling, just like rumor from ruere, fragor (from frangi) the derived one. Both etymology (cf. תָּהָה, whence תֹּהוּ) and the preponderance of other meanings, favour this latter view. Here the two significations are found side by side, inasmuch as שֹׁואָה in the first instance means a waste = devastation, desolation, and in the second a waste = a heavy, dull sound, a rumbling (δουπεῖν). In the Syriac version it is rendered: “into the pit which he has digged let him fall,” as though it were שַׁחַת in the second instance instead of שֹׁואָה; and from his Hupfeld, with J. H. Michaelis, Stier, and others, is of opinion, that it must be rendered: “into the destruction which he himself has prepared let him fall.” But this quam ipse paravit is not found in the text, and to mould the text accordingly would be a very arbitrary proceeding.