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. 2ba. wm) yl( lmgk. lmg means, among other things (e.g. to ripen), something like "to deal fully or adequately with" (BDB). When babies are in question (as in Hos 1,8 and Isa 11,8 and 28,9) the procedure indicated is commonly taken to be weaning. P. de Boer, however, thinks it improbable that yl( here means "on": a local sense "occurs nearly always in connection with places, rivers and the like". When lmg is followed by li(, the sense is "to do something to another person, to deal with someone, to give him what is coming to him, in malam et bonam partem." He therefore translates 2b "just as one does with his mother, thus I have made myself content." He supposes that the Psalmist is referring to a proverb, and he notes a Sumerian saying: "Accept your lot, and make your mother happy; do it quickly and make your god happy"27. I find this distinctly unconvincing: not only, as de Boer acknowedges, is ones mother seldom in the OT a person to care for, but his translation would surely require emendation. Nevertheless, de Boer has, I suspect, put us on the track of the correct understanding of 2b (see below).
VanGemeren argues that "the word gamul can also mean contented...the essential picture is that of contentment regardless of the age". Thus in Isa 28,9 blxm ylwmg will mean "satisfied with milk", whether of sucklings who have just been satisfied with their mothers' milk or of children who have been weaned off it. In 1 Kgs 11,20 the meaning may be that Genubahs mother brought him up or adopted, rather than weaned, him in the house of the pharaoh (cf LXX e)ce/qreyen). In Isa 11,8 we read of the lwmg who puts his hand in the vipers nest, after reference to the suckling who plays near the hole of the cobra. It is not clear, VanGemeren says, whether the two words are virtually synonyms indicating very young children, or whether the lwmg is distinguished from the suckling as a slightly older child who has been weaned. The meaning "satisfied" or "contented" fits well, he argues, for Hebrew proper names such as Gamul, Gamaliel and Gemalli (and Accadian names such as Gamal-ilim and Gamal-Shamash). He therefore translates v.2 "Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul; like a contented/satisfied child (suckling or infant) upon (by) his mother"28. VanGemeren may or may not be right to be suspicious of taking lwmg to mean "weaned"