How to Gain Wisdom of Heart: The Meaning of the Rhetorical Structure of Psalm 90

Abstract

The request for wisdom of heart that can be found in Psalm 90:12 conveys in a certain sense the essence of the spiritual search on which that the authors of the Old Testament Wisdom Books embarked. In the end, they arrived at the conclusion that true knowledge can be attained only as a gift from the Creator. The question that remains, however, is: how man can receive this knowledge? The analysis of Psalm 90 presented below is an attempt to respond to this question. This analysis focuses particularly on the literary structure of Psalm 90 because, by coming to a better understanding of the way in which the sections and respective elements of the poem relate to each other, one arrives at the psalm’s deeper meaning. In this regard, the psychologist Hubert Hermans’ valuation theory is particularly helpful.