Theological Hermeneutics and Historical Motifs in Pss 105-106

The analysis of the historical motifs present in Psalms 105 and 106 demands that it not be limited to the descriptive level alone. It is true that some of the final pages in Erik Haglund’s essay2, published in 1984, attempt an explanation of the meaning of the rehearsal of the historical motifs in the Psalms and of their Sitz im Leben. Fundamentally, however, he is interested in taking up and pointing out the traditions, that is the texts that stand as the basis for the reworking carried out in the Psalms. This is a route which is only apparently simple but rather frequently difficult because it tries to combine inner Biblical interpretation, with its need to set out refrains, allusions etc. – often conjectural – with a kind of historico-social analysis which undertakes to resolve the dates of composition of the text – an wavy operation, certainly necessary, to which the reader is referred, precisely for the descriptive level. This contribution is concerned, instead, with understanding the relecture of some segments of history carried out in Psalms 105-106 as something that reveals a hermeneutico-theological complex that emphasises a matter of principle in the history, the berît with the patriarchs which recalls and underlines the unilateral commitment of Yhwh to his people – a commitment whose unique attribute is !lw[ (Ps 105:10). To recall the commitment of God in praise, in the words of prayer, is, for Israel, to participate in the berît. The revisiting of history is thus a word/speech about God who is contemplated as involved in history in a role of solidarity, not of complicity (cf. Ps 106). This fundamental element throws light on and interprets the narrative routes of the two psalms, the one concerned with presenting, in almost elegiac terms, the action of God in history and his perennial fidelity, the other with underlining, with disarming frankness, the reality of the sin of Israel, its history of unfaithfulness, of non-reply to a rbD (cf. Ps 105:8) which knows neither limitations nor regrets and which is to become a “statute” and “law” to be kept (wytrwtw wyqj wrmvy: Ps 105:45).