With Ps 83 the circle of the Asaphic songs is closed (twelve Psalms, viz., one in the Second Book and eleven in the Third), and with Psa 84:1-12 begins the other half of the Korahitic circle of songs, opened by the last of the Korahitic Elohim-Psalms. True, Hengstenberg (transl. vol. iii. Appendix. p. xlv) says that no one would, with my Symbolae, p. 22, regard this Psa 84:1-12 as an Elohimic Psalm; but the marks of the Elohimic style are obvious. Not only that the poet uses Elohim twice, and that in Psa 84:8, where a non-Elohimic Psalm ought to have said Jahve; it also delights in compound names of God, which are so heaped up that Jahve Tsebaoth occurs three times, and the specifically Elohimic Jahve Elohim Tsebaoth once. The origin of this Psalm has been treated of already in connection with its counterpart, Psa 42:1. It is a thoroughly heartfelt and intelligent expression of the love to the sanctuary of Jahve which years towards it out of the distance, and calls all those happy who have the like good fortune to have their home there. The prayer takes the form of an intercession for God's anointed; for the poet is among the followers of David, the banished one.[1]
He does not pray, as it were, out of his
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