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deriving from the world of human experience.” 201

19. A. A. Anderson, Psalms, New Century Bible Commentary, vol. II. “Shaddai possesses not only a protective character but also a fearsome aspect. It is very likely an early Canaanite divine epithet usually rendered ‘the one of the mountains;’” 656.

20. Note: The Septuagint, or LXX, (the term Septuagint meaning seventy) is the first Greek translation of the text of the Hebrew Bible. Tradition says it was the product of seventy-two Jewish scholars convened sometime in the third century BCE in Alexandria. According to an ancient document, the Letter of Aristeas, legend states how seventy-two Jewish scholars were commissioned during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt to carry out the task of translating the Hebrew Bible into Greek. Widely used among Hellenistic Jews, this Greek version of the Hebrew Bible was called forth as many Jews who were dispersed throughout the far-flung Roman world were beginning to lose contact with their Hebrew roots and language. One of the fascinating results of translating the Hebrew Bible into Greek is that it gave non-Jews a window into viewing Judaism and its ancient traditions. The LXX had an enormous influence on the early church, most particularly among the first century CE writers of what would become the Christian scriptures. The LXX WAS the “Old Testament” for the early church.

21. Wallace, The Narrative Effect of Book IV of the Hebrew Psalter. “The faithful in Ps 91 will also find protection of Yahweh’s ‘pinions’ (v. 4). This word is also used in Dt. 32:11. When the divine does speak in Ps. 91, in the oracle, Yahweh states in 14b that ‘I will protect those who know my name.’ The phrase is conspicuous when read with Dt. 32:3 ‘I will call on the name of Yhwh’.” 23.

      Note: There are various similarities between the Song of Moses (Deut 32) and Psalm 91. cf. Andre Caquot, “Le Psaume XCI” Semitica 8 (21–37).

22. Ps 91:1, 2. יהוה (Yahweh) occurs in the Psalms close to 700 times, of which the abbreviated form yah occurs 43 times; elohim, 365 times; El, 79 times; Adonai, 54 times; Elyon, 22 times; Elohay, 4 times; and Shaddai, twice, in Ps 68 and Ps 91.

23. Note: The fact that there remains a very close linkage between our psalms (Pss 90, 91, 92) and the seventh-sixth century BCE deuteronomistic historians—editors, tells us even more about the very long process of time that passed in bringing the Psalter to its present form, approximately in the second century CE. cf. M. Segal, “El, Elohim, and YHWH in the Bible,” in Jewish Quarterly Review 46 (89–115).

24. Vriezen, The Religion of Ancient Israel. It is an extraordinary thing because it is also a “clear case of a personal relationship with the Most High God, with Israel’s only God in person. [He] is directly accessible. Not only kings (like David, in 1 Sam. 30:6) may call upon [him], but all who are in distress (Pss. 25, 35, 69, 71, 84, 86, 143, passim); . . . In other words, there is in Israel an absolute immediacy about the relationship between God [himself], in the highest sense of that term, and the individual human being.” 27.

25. Freedman, “The Real Formal Full Name of the God of Israel” In Sacred History, Sacred Literature, “If the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, is a verb in the earliest biblical tradition, then it has a pronominal subject that is expressed, and behind it a subject-noun. From the passages of Exod 3:6; 6:2–3, and 34:6 -7, it seems clear that Yahweh was originally a verb for which the subject was El” 119. cf. Albertz, Israelite Religion. “Attempts have been made time and time again to learn something about the nature of Yahweh from the explanation of [his] name. The divine name appears in different forms, in the Old Testament mostly in the long form (tetragrammaton) YHWH; because of the reluctance to utter the divine name which began in the Hellenistic period, its pronunciation is not completely certain. When the Massoretes laid down the pronunciation of the Hebrew consonantal text in the early Middle Ages, they vocalized the tetragrammaton by the words which were read in its place, ‘adonay (‘Lord’) or ‘elohim (God); this gave rise to the false reading ‘Jehovah’ which was popularized by the nineteenth century.” 49, 50.

26. VanGemeren, Psalm 131:2, 153.

27. Meek, Hebrew Origins. 109–110. cf. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion, “So the god Yahweh is older than Israel; [ he] was a southern Palestinian god before [ he] became the god of liberation for the Moses group. It was important here that [ he] was a god who came from outside, an alien god who had not yet been incorporated into the structure of the Egyptian pantheon and was thus in a position to break up this religious system which gave political stability to society.” 52.

28. Wurthwein, The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica. 122–124. Note: The inscribed Bowl from Lachish was discovered in 1935 and a date has been proposed to the second quarter of the fourteenth century BCE. The inscription consists of eleven signs or letters. Seven of these are well preserved. Most scholars agree that the identity of the first five signs are the Hebrew letters b, s, l, s, t (i.e. a form of the number “three” with the prepositional prefix, b). The sixth symbol is probably a division mark and the seventh, the beginning of another word, is now illegible. The Moab Stele was discovered in 1868 by a missionary, F. A. Klein, in Dhibon, Jordan. It is a victory inscription on black basalt consisting of thirty-four lines in Phoenician-Old Hebrew script with twenty-seven lines preserved entirely. They celebrate the victory of Mesha, King of Moab, over Israel after a period of Moabite submission (cf. 2 Kgs 3: 4—27) and are a record of a program of city building. The stele is of great importance as it is the sole historical monument of the Moabite kingdom and a record of historical relations between Moab and Israel, which are glossed over or omitted from the “Old Testament.” It dates from the ninth century BCE.

29. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion, 61. cf. For an excellent discussion of the long process toward monotheism in ancient Israel, please see James A. Sanders, The Monotheizing Process: Its Origins and Development, 2014.

30. Note: The findings of the psalms scroll at Qumran have reinvigorated and renewed confidence in the reliability and accuracy of the Hebrew of the ninth century CE Masoretic text (MT). This is one of the greatest contributions of the Dead Sea Scrolls for research and study of the Psalter.

31. Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700) In The Christian Tradition, Vol. 3. 208.

32. cf. Cook, The Social Roots of Biblical Yahwism, Society of Biblical Literature. 2004.

      Note: Cook cites often the connection that exists between the Psalms of Asaph (50, 73–83) and the Sinai theology tradition which is the monotheistic Yahwist belief and which becomes the subsequent confession of ancient Israel.

33. cf. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, 44.

34. Muilenburg, Psalm 4:7, 44.

      cf. Rendtorff, Canon and Theology, “. . . the historical experiences of Israel are reflected in the Psalms in various ways. The personal religion that finds its expression here is rooted in God’s action in the past; but it

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