2025/07/22 by Collin Cornell · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Biblical Studies and Interpretation #Development, Ethics, and Society
paper · doi:10.30965/25890468-06902006
openalex publication_date 2025/07/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract The present article observes that Psalm 50 foregrounds mouth activities of speaking and eating. More than that, logics of proximity and possession drive the psalm’s rhetoric, and the mouth is the center of both. Speech closes a spatial gap, and the mouth is the arterial. God is up high, and his speech moves downward to humans; rightful human speech moves upward to God. But animals are already proximate to God on the heights, so the divine mouth is closed to them. The mouth is the arterial for possession as well: God possesses both humans and animals, and on that basis, God speaks to the former, and God declines to consume the latter. Wicked humans are illicit possessors bonded by common eating. The article explores the psalm’s mouthiness specifically in the context of translation. It toggles between MT Ps 50 and LXX Ps 49 to test the significance of verbal form to the poetics of the psalm.