At the beginning of the twenty-first century, scholarship on the Psalms is faced with the fundamental methodological challenge of combining a synchronic and a diachronic textual reading. In this light, the author has integrated valid exegetical methods with the objective to determine Psalm 69's structure, its developmental layers as well as its compositional function within the Psalter. This analysis of the literary microcosmos of Psalm 69, within its macrocosmos, has led to new results as well as a new understanding of the text of this psalm. The Psalms have always been of central importance in the scholarly study of the Old Testament. Following in this tradition, the author has both challenged and confirmed some of the results of earlier scholarship.
Alphonso Groenewald (* 1969) is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Old Testament Studies at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He worked as a researcher at the University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands) for three and a half years.
