This is a longer than usual psalm. Holladay states that “the very length of Psalm 69 is striking...” Therefore I will confine my comments here to those which apply to the psalm as a whole rather than attempt to address each individual verse.
Place in the Psalter
This Davidic psalm occurs in the second of the five books in the Psalter, where it is symmetrically located in parallel with the other Davidic psalms in that book.
Figure 1: Structure of Psalms 42-72
A. Sons of Korah (Ps. 42-49)
B. Bridge (Ps. 50)
C. Psalms of David (Ps. 51-65)
D. Anonymous Praises (Ps. 66-67)
C'. Psalms of David (Ps. 68-70)
B'. Bridge (Ps. 71)
A'. Psalm of Solomon (Ps. 72)
Superscription, Author and Date
The note in the text before verse 1 reads, “To the leader: according to Lilies, Of David.” This raises several questions. Kselman speaks for most Bible scholars in feeling that the reference to Lilies “probably refers to a melody.” Similar references are found before psalms 60 (“Lily of the Covenant”) and 80 (“Lilies, a Covenant”).
Concerning Davidic authorship, it is interesting that Holladay notes that a papal commission of 1910 “stated that it is not necessary to maintain that David was the sole author of the Psalms, but one must maintain that David was the principal author, and in particular that he was the author of Psalms 2, 16, 18, 32, 69, and 110.” But with time even that requirement was dropped. Even conservative Protestant scholars are hesitant in ascribing authorship of this psalm to King David. The reasons are explained below.
Anderson: “If the concluding verses (35-6) are authentic, then the setting of the Psalm may be the period of reconstruction., soon after 537 B.C., and the author may have been one of the Jews anxious for the rebuilding of the Temple. On the other hand, the Psalmist may have advocated certain changes in the Temple ritual, or he may have been critical of certain aspects of the worship of the day.”
Kselman: “If this psalm is a royal lament, zeal for your house [v. 9] could refer to the king's responsibility for the construction and provisioning of the Temple. If in its final form it dates from the exile the zeal would be directed toward the rebuilding the Temple.”
Rather than taking the above as an anachronistic reference to David, Jacobson translates ledawid as “Davidic” instead of “Of David.” He explains: “We believe that it is likely that the superscription ledawid did not originally indicate authorship – particularly, it did not originally indicate authorship by King David...In Old Testament Hebrew, the name David itself does not always refer to the founder of the Judean dynasty, but can refer to the Judean people (Isa. 55:3), the Davidic dynasty (Jer. 23:5), Ezek. 37:25), or the expected future ideal Davidic king (Jer. 30:9; Hos. 3:5). The Hebrew phrase ledawid is translated most literally 'to David' (the preposition ['l'] in its most generic sense means 'to'). If the lamed is understood as indicating possession ('belonging to'), it is plausible to interpret it as indicating authorship. But a more likely construal of the lamed of possession would be as indicating that the psalm in question belonged to a group of psalms that belonged to the royal temple in Jerusalem...Alternatively, the preposition may indicate that a psalm was composed 'in honor of,' 'dedicated to,' or 'inspired by' the king.”
Theme
Scholars like to classify each of the psalms into categories so that Holladay, for example, calls Psalm 69 “a lament of the individual” along with psalms 6-7, 22, 31, 35, 38, 42-43, 51, 55, 63-64, 86, 88, and 140-141. But in the case of Ps. 69, the situation is not that clear.
As Tanner says, “Its petitions are complex, covering multiple themes.” These include descriptions of the Psalmist's troubles, confession of his sin, complaint concerning God's apparent inaction, suffering that appears to be due to God, and suffering because of following God. “In and of themselves, none of these motifs are unusual in prayers for help. What is unusual is that all appear in one prayer. This psalm shows just how complicated life can be...”
Organization
Since several subjects appear to be addressed by the Psalmist, it is helpful to appropriately identify those individual paragraphs or section divisions. But in this particular case, it turns out to not be an easy thing to do. Just witness how a number of modern English translations and scholarly commentators disagree with one another on this subject:
RSV, NRSV – 1-3, 4-5, 6-8, 9-12, 13-15, 16-18, 19-21, 22-29, 30-33, 34-36
NEB – 1-18, 19-28, 29-31, 32-35
Living Bible – 1-4, 5-15, 16-19, 20-28, 29-33, 34-36
TEV – 1-3, 4-8, 9-12, 13-15, 16-18, 19-21, 22-28, 29, 30-33, 34-36
NIV – 1-4, 5, 6-12, 13-18, 19-21, 22-28, 29, 30-33, 34-36
JB – 1-5, 6-18, 19-28, 29-31, 32-36
Tanner – 1, 2-4, 5-6, 7-12, 13-18, 19-21, 22-28, 29, 30-33, 34-36
Anderson – 1-4, 5, 6, 7-12, 13-18, 19-21, 22-28, 29, 30-36
M'Caw and Motyer – 1-12, 13-21, 22-28, 29-36
Baigent – 1-29, 30-33, 34-36
If we count the RSV and NRSV together as just one opinion, that leaves the following summary of the verses where the above sources see major breaks in thought:
vv. 3 (2), 4 (3), 5 (2), 6 (2), 12 (6), 15 (3), 18 (4), 21 (5), 28 (8), 29 (5), 31(2), 33 (6)
The only half-way agreements, besides the obvious break after the last verse, are found following vv. 12, 21, 28 and 33. Since this approach based on perceived changes in subject matter is far short of an overwhelming consensus, it is best to supplement it with a study of the specifically repeated language in the psalm. When one does that, the following exact verbal parallels can be seen:
O God (1a)
I sink in deep mire (2a)
deep waters and flood (2b)
my God (3)
my enemies (4)
O God (5a)
hidden (5b)
shame (6a)
O Lord God of hosts (6b)
dishonored (6c)
O God of Israel (6d)
shame (7)
children (8)
insult-3x (9-10)
----
O LORD (13a)
O God (13b)
answer me (13c)
sinking in the mire (14a)
my enemies (14b)
deep waters, flood (14c-15)
answer me (16a)
O LORD (16b)
hide (17a)
answer me (17c)
my enemies (18)
insults (19a)
shame (19b)
insults (20)
-------
curses (22-25)
reason (26)
curses (27-28)
-------
O God (29)
the name of God (30b)
LORD (31)
God (32)
LORD (33)
----
God (35a)
live (35)
children (36a)
his name (36b)
live (36c)
One interesting observation that can be gained from this outline is that there are exactly14 mentions of God overall. This is an indication that great care was taken in composing this psalm since the number 14 is twice “seven,” a number symbolizing in biblical usage completion or perfection.
As a first stab at combining the subject matter of the individual section together with the linguistic data, here are the respective titles given by M'Caw and Motyer for units which take the Psalmist through various stages of his experience. I chose their divisions since they most closely approximate the majority view:
Figure 2: Organization of Psalm 69
A. Despair under Affliction (vv. 1-12)
B. Dependence upon God (vv. 13-21)
A'. Denunciation of Foes (vv. 22-28)
B'. Dedication to the Lord (vv. 29-36)
Note how these sections alternate between negative and positive reflections. In agreement with the above view I have omitted a division after 33 in view of the overall verbal pattern in v. 29-36:
God
name
praise
LORD
God
praise
LORD
God
name
One can also note that there is a very close verbal correspondence between the Psalmist's complaints in A and his turning those same complaints over to God in Section B (see Figure 2).
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