Thursday, May 14, 2026

Robert Alter on Psalm 139:21

  

those against you. Some scholars, with an eye to the symmetry of expression, prefer to read—instead of the Masoretic tequmemekha—a noun cognate with the verb, mitqotetekha, “those who despise You.” (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:319)