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.
to take the denial of hybris as a rejection of the arrogance attributed to foreign kings in Isaiah and Ezekiel 43. Even if it was not originally a Royal Psalm, it can be argued that Ps 131 became one when dwdl was added (if it was) to the superscription. The Psalm in its final form serves as a warning that kings should not be proud but should place all their trust in their divine Master and call upon their subjects to do likewise 44.
But is our Psalm early enough to be a Royal Psalm? Many commentators admittedly suppose it to be post-exilic, but this is little more than surmise45. Some of the Psalms of Ascent (but not this one) have unusual lexical features, such as the use of -#e$, which may be late; on the other hand, they may be archaisms or survivals. (-#$e is found in one of the very earliest passages of the Hebrew Bible, the Song of Deborah: Judg 5,7 [bis] 46.) Beyerlin and Crow both treat the Psalm as post-exilic. Beyerlin 47 posits a connection with the Wisdom movement, seeing a significant parallel with Job 42,2-6, where Job says that he has learnt his lesson and will henceforth forswear speaking of tw)lpn. Not only is the thinking comparable,