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.
in some of the texts quoted, but, as we shall see, his approach does not help us much with the troublesome 2bb, y#$pn yl( lmgk.
The ancient versions are at one in taking the first lmg to mean a weaned child, and I think we should follow them. 2ba will surely mean "like a weaned child on its mother". That toddlers were carried on a parents shoulders is attested by b. Hag 5b-6a (cf ANEP 49). It is true that l( with a person seldom means "on"; it tends to carry a connotation of the burdensome or the oppressive 29. But we have a close parallel to the situation envisaged in our text at Isa 49,22, "they will bring your sons in their bosom, and your daughters will be carried on (l() their shoulders". But why does the Psalmist specify a weaned child rather than a baby? Children were weaned late (as late as three years, in 2 Macc 7,27); the idea may therefore be, as Anderson supposes, that before weaning they got increasingly restless as their mothers found it more and more difficult to satisfy their appetites. A newly weaned child is, therefore, likely to have recently ceased to be raucous, and thus provides the writer with an apt image for his own attainment of quiet contentment 30. The image of the weaned child thus follows well upon the claim that the Psalmist has calmed and silenced his wpn.
Is there any suggestion here of a maternal side to the deity? Does the Psalmist imagine himself as snuggling up to God? The mention here of the mother rather than the father of the child may have been suggested simply by the idea of weaning. On the other hand, maternal affection (or, to speak more accurately, an affection that is more than maternal) is certainly ascribed to God on occasion in the Old Testament31, so it may well be implied here too.
V. 2bb. y#$pn yl( lmgk. These words have been the despair of translators and commentators. Most of them fail to translate the article, but this is defensible if it is taken as referring back to the first lmg 32. The Peshitta renders them, "and like a weaned child, so