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.
the parallelismus membrorum that he detects throughout vv. 1-2. He further 38 finds a formal parallel to Ugaritic usage, as in the tricolon As is the heart of the cow to its calf/ As is the heart of the ewe to its lamb/ So [literally, As] is the heart of Anat after Baal (KTU 1.6 II 28-30). Loretz takes the Psalmist to be using repetition for emphasis, in conformity to long established linguistic usage. He may be right, but if so the Masoretes were presumably in error in pointing the second lmgk in the way that they did. Moreover, Loretz interpretation entails taking l( in a different sense in the two cola.
Dahood re-points yla(f as yl'(f which, he says, "parses as the Phoenician third-person suffix" (in Isa 52,14, he similarly amends the text, from Kyl( to yk yl() and translates "Like an infant with him is my soul". This seems somewhat contrived.
Some of the ancient versions take the verb lmg in 2bb to mean, as it often does, "to recompense": LXX w(j a)ntapo/disij [al. e3wj a)ntapodw/seij] e)pi th\n yuxh/n mou; Symmachus ou3twj a)ntapodoqei/h th=| yuxh=| mou; Vulgate ita retributio in anima mea; Syrohexaplar "so you did recompense me". Unfortunately, they do not manage to get a satisfactory sense out of the Hebrew text, partly because they take )l-M) to mean "if not." Thus LXX and Vulgate take the Psalmist to say, "If I have not been humble but have exalted [ytmmr] my soul, then, just as a weaned child is to its mother [i.e. a nuisance?], so let retribution come upon my soul" 39. This is unconvincing, not least because it depends on the reading ytmmr, which would have been less likely to suffer corruption than the better attested ytmmd, and it would require emendation to lmg Nk. It does, though, point us in the right direction, namely to taking l( closely with lmg. I suggest that we need to make a minimal textual emendation and read y#$pn yl( lmgt yk (which may well be what the Syrohexaplar is translating) in the sense "surely you have dealt kindly with me" 40. The Psalmist is deliberately using the verb lmg