328 JERRY A. GLADSON If the sequence of verbs alternating between perfects and imperatives in 3,55-66 be taken in this manner, the movement toward hope becomes dramatically evident. It concludes with an imperative for YHWH to bring judgment upon the poet’s enemies, a specific form of deliverance, as in many lament Psalms. The entire poem may thus be read as one of falling and rising, then falling and rising once more to hope. It is thus not entirely a poem of despair. Like many laments in the Psalms, it alternates between despair and hope. The poet awaits a divine intervention still eluding his grasp. It is possible to read the verbal aspects in 3,55-57 in yet another manner, as experience (or fientive) perfectives 32. I call on your name, O YHWH, from the lowest pit. My voice you hear. You do not cover your ear to my outcry, to my cry. You approach on a day when I call you. You say, “Do not fear”. Understood in this way, the action in 3,55-57 would be in process, occurring at the moment or in the immediate present. Such progressive action is often found with verba dicendi, “verbs of speaking ” 33. The poet is now speaking of deliverance somehow taking place in the present 34. The q strophe thus would be regarded as an experiencing of the divine relief the poet has so anxiously awaited in the previous strophes. This strophe heightens intensity up until the final divine word. “I call on your name, O YHWH” (v. 55), which is triply emphasized by “my cry you hear, you do not hide your ear” (v. 56), and “you approach in the day I call you” (v. 57). The arytAla (v. 57) may be representative of a climatic divine breaking of silence. An experience perfective is fientive, often used with imprecations, and 32 expresses a state of mind. This latter category would apply especially to Tbrq, : ˆ ": “ you approach,” and Tbrm;,, “you say” in 3,57. See R. WILLIAMS, Williams’ : ˆ ˆ" a Hebrew Syntax, § 162, 163; GKC § 106abi. B. WALTKE – M. O’CONNOR, Hebrew Syntax, § 30.5.1d. 33 Comparative evidence from the Psalms (e.g., 17,6; 88,10; 119,145-47; 34 130,1; 141,1) suggests the perfectives in vv. 55-57. be understood as present action, “I cry”, etc. Appeals to YHWH in such poems must sometimes be translated as present tenses. Cf. B. ALBREKTSON, Studies in the Text and Theology of the Book of Lamentations with a Critical Edition of the Peshitta Text (Studia Theologica Lundensia 21; Lund 1963) 163.