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.
"I" to be the King. It is commonly believed, however, e.g. by Anderson 5, that the "I" in this Psalm is a private individual. Some think that v. 3 was added later. The original Sitz im Leben is controverted. Vv. 1-2 are regarded by Michel6 as written in imitation of the sort of moral interrogation that we find at the beginning of an entrance liturgy (e.g. in Psalms 15 and 24). Quell accepts this for 1-2a, but 2b he thinks had a separate origin, being a sentiment to be sung by a female worshipper. The two poems may, in his view, have been deposited (as Mowinckel had suggested that texts may sometimes have been) in the Temple. The two brief poems were subsequently joined together, and v. 3 added, to make the Ascent Psalm that we now have 7. Seybold also strikes a feminist note, arguing that vv. 1-2, if not v. 3 too, are "a personal expression of piety made at the gates of the temple by a woman pilgrim carrying her child" 8. H.Seidels, however, takes the Psalm to be a professional pilgrimage song emanating from the circle of the Levites 9.
I. Exegesis
V.1a. It has been observed by several commentators that it is remarkable that a Psalm so apparently individual as 131 should have the expression
dwdl in its superscription, whereas the following Psalm, which is very much concerned with the Davidic king and his dynasty, should lack it. It seems conceivable that it has wandered through scribal inadvertence from the one Psalm to the other,