Biblica_1_Layout 1 20/01/12 11:43 Pagina 481 The Interpretation of Ps 144,14: Applying a Pluralistic Approach to a Manifold Difficulty Three of the traditionally held characteristics of Hebrew poetry — terseness, elevated imagery, and parallelism — not ordinarily impedi- ments to interpretation, prove to be major obstacles when it comes to i'u translating Ps 144,14: Wnyteboxor>Bi hx'wc. !yaew> taceAy !yaew> #r,P,-!yae ~ylBsm. WnypeWLa;. For instance, the brevity of the expressions #rp-!ya and tacwy !ya when combined with the poetic imagination extend almost endlessly the se- mantic possibilities for these terms. Even when the meanings have been narrowed down through the exercise of disciplined semantics, they violate the thematic continuity required by verse fourteen’s demonstrable parallels to the previous colon. This in turn has resulted in alternative proposals, which preserve the thematic unity but at the expense of forcing poorly documented or novel meanings upon al- most every term in the verse. Recognizing the difficulties, in 1973 J. Ziegler attempted to break new ground 1. After copiously documenting previous solutions and finding none of them to be totally persuasive, he offered his own translation (see below), which did succeed in easing the tensions, but only through what some may consider to be an artificial manipula- tion of the text. And although his article became the platform for fu- ture discussions of this verse, his personal contribution has not been greeted with enthusiasm and has failed to achieve a paradigm shift. The lack of consensus continues to the present day. Therefore, the following article will conduct a fresh analysis of the competing positions and advance a new, pluralistic solution, which attempts to integrate the various schemes by exploiting their strengths and abandoning their weaknesses. The hope is that the in- troduction of a context thus far overlooked will achieve this syn- thesis and result in an interpretation that is cogent, both through its simplicity and its ability to overcome many of the philological dif- ficulties. 1 J. ZIEGLER, “Ps 144, 14”, Wort und Geschichte. Festschrift für Karl El- liger zum 70. Geburtstag (eds. H. GESE — H.P. RÜGER) (AOAT; Kevelaer 1973) 191-197.