“Mais doces do que o mel”: um estudo bíblico-teológico do Salmo 19

Abstract

Psalm 19 is an ancient religious poem. As part of the Book of Psalms, and thus of the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, the Judeo-Christian community accepts its text as Holy Scripture and/or the Word of God. As such, Psalm 19 is part of humanity's religious, spiritual, and cultural heritage. Therefore, an authentic understanding of its meaning is important for those who pray with its words and/or simply want to know what its verses convey in terms of socio-environmental and theological reflections. This monographic study presents a scientific and/or methodologically justified investigation of Psalm 19, studying the lyrical poem in the language in which it was originally written, that is, in ancient Hebrew. Thus, it describes the linguistic-poetic configuration of its sentences, lines, and stanzas. It also seeks to understand the historical-geographical and cultural context mentioned by the poem. In this case, the aim is to study honey and gold, materialities present in the text. That is, we seek to understand beekeeping and metallurgy in the ancient world. Along with this, and no less important, we invest in a more accurate description of the theological reflection in Psalm 19, in order to discover what is thought about God in this poem. In view of this, two interrelated results emerge: (a) contrary to what is still liturgically experienced by the Catholic Church, Psalm 19 is, literarily and thematically, a uniform text; (b) the socio-environmental and theological dimensions are intertwined. The environment, human beings, and God want to be understood together. Finally, embracing the internal logic favored by the ancient poem, the listener-reader is invited to think about the following: just as, when looking at the heavens and the earth, one discovers a certain behavior of the sun, the Torah wants to motivate a well-defined behavior of the faithful