A literary analysis of imprecations within the psalter

Abstract

Studies in the psalter have generally been done using form-critical and historical-critical methodologies. In studying imprecations within the psalms, most scholars have focused on addressing the issues from Christian ethical perspectives. With the recent surge of newer and more reader-centred methodologies, this thesis deviates from the usual form-critical and Christian ethical approaches to the study of the imprecations in the psalms and rather uses a literary-critical method. With this method of exegesis, which relates with the interaction of the reader with the literary elements in the selected psalms, the thesis focused on revealing how literary elements of parallelism, intensification, and imagery are used to communicate imprecations and how they help the reader identify the nature and characteristics of the imprecations within the psalms. To achieve this, five representative psalms that contain imprecations were purposively selected for this study, namely, Psalms 35, 58, 69, 109, and 137. The study concludes that the psalmists makes adequate use of parallelism, intensification, and imagery to present the imprecations. These are used to achieve various purposes including emphasis, adding to a request, contrast actions, offer further explanation, etc. In addition, the imprecations are normally uttered as an address to God instead of just being wishes. Also, they normally take a “type/deeds of the enemy-imprecation” structure, where imprecations are uttered vis a vis the type/deeds of the enemy. In addition, the imprecations are usually uttered together with a declaration of innocence on the part of the lamenter or allusions of innocence. Finally, it was revealed in the study that imprecations generally have an annihilation motif in them, both directly and indirectly. These conclusions are deemed relevant for the Ghanaian Christian community who make use of the psalms as well as the imprecations in their prayers. There are lots of implications that the conclusions have on Christian view of prayers and imprecations. These implications have a major impact on the way Ghanaian Christians need to view their enemies and the prayers they offer against them.