On the Interpretation of Metaphors and Similes in the Psalms: subtilitas intelligendi – subtilitas explicandi – subtilitas applicandi

Abstract

Based on the example of sacred Psalter explanations, the article examines numerous metaphorical descriptions with the intention to reconstruct the procedures and operations for extracting the spiritual meaning from the veil of the literal. According to the authoritative explanations in question, metaphors and figurative comparisons (similes) used by the psalm singer differ in their inherent meaning despite the coincidence in the semantic mechanism of transposition and the need for their subsequent transformation in interpretation. Some of them, in a poetic way, reflect David’s state of mind; others are filled with a deeper spiritual meaning. As a consequence, instructions for their interpretation become different. In the figurative-symbolic interpretation, explaining conditions for the choice of an auxiliary object, it is the nearest linguistic context that becomes an explanatory instruction; and when there is no such context it is the presumption of similarity by which X can be linked to Y in expressions like “God, the horn of my salvation” that serves this function. In the symbolic-allegorical interpretation, designed to explain metaphorical expressions at a different level of understanding, it is the presumption of spiritual meaning that becomes the instruction explaining metaphorical expressions in accordance with the rules of the Christian exegesis as a prefiguration of the New Testament history (in the typological reading), as a norm of moral behavior (in the tropological reading), and as the fulfillment of promises (in the anagogic reading). The basics for hermeneutics are implemented in the following way: subtilitas intelligendi, subtilitas explicanda, and subtilitas applicandi.