Bernard P. Robinson, «Form and Meaning in Psalm 131», Vol. 79 (1998) 180-197
Psalm 131 displays a subtle play on words. The psalmist has silenced and calmed down his soul/breast (he has put an end to its loud complaints). The two verbs used express or suggest the idea of assimilation (I have transformed it into something silent and something calm), which leads up to the material image which follows. In 2b gamul means a child that has been weaned or is happy (and has stopped crying loudly); instead of kaggamul one should read tiggmol, you have been nice to me. Although the psalm has an unusual form, it has the same structure as Psalm 130. It probably constitutes a literary unit. It may by royal psalm.
V. 1c. twldgb ytklh. The Psalmist could easily here have continued the synecdoche by saying that his feet have not stood on high ground; what he has written is, however, perhaps more elegant. If 131 is a Royal Psalm, the implication may be that it belongs more to a king to serve than to seek self-aggrandizement and glory. Greatness and the marvellous pertain more to God than mankind: God is lwdg and works tw)lpn, Ps 86,10; he alone works twldg tw)lpn, Ps 136,4; it is for the Psalmist to meditate on and recount Gods t)lpn, Pss 9,2 [EVV 9,1]; 26,7; 105,2; 145,5 and his twldg, Ps 145,6. (See also Job 5,9: Gods tldg are unsearchable, his t)lpn innumerable.) Probably, therefore, whether one is a king or not, "to go about (b Klh) these normally divine activities is to arrogate divine attributes to oneself" 13. In course of time the great matters came to be interpreted as the problems of Greek philosophy (Sir 3,21-24); Keet, indeed, who believes the Psalm to be post-exilic, supposes this to be quite probably the original meaning 14. Quell, for whom the speaker is a woman, takes the sense to be that she has forsworn theological or cultic reflection, being an unlearned person 15.
V. 2a. )l-M). This is normally here (as in e.g. 2 Kgs 9,26; Job 1,11) taken to mean "verily, truly, indeed": GKC 149b. (Originally, when used in this sense, the words were supposedly followed by an imprecation.) So, for example, apart from the majority of modern commentators, David Kimhi 16. G.R. Driver, however, argued for it here meaning "but" (cf the Peshitta and the Syrohexaplar), like the Aram. )l), Syriac ella 17 (cf Ezek 3,6). I favour, however, the usual interpretation. The idiom was no doubt chosen because the )l