The Semantic Field of ‘Remembering’ in the Psalms

Abstract

Remembering is both common and indeed central in the Psalms: God remembers his people, and vice versa; the people remember their ancestors, and their ongoing relationship with God, in prayer. Prayer and memory are integral to the identity of God's people, passed down through the generations in worship as exemplified in psalm texts. The language of ‘remembering’, while common in the Old Testament in general, is widely found in the Psalms. This article examines the semantic field of ‘remember’ in the Psalms by applying a method developed out of the work of James Barr and Samuel Balentine, thus continuing to reclaim hermeneutic methods informed by linguistics. This carefully tabulated semantic analysis demonstrates the potential of such methods to contribute to theological understandings of a text, and in particular highlights something of the complex and rich nexus of what it means to ‘remember’ in prayer in the Psalms.