Royally Enticing, Royally Forgetting: The Contribution of Psalm 45 within Its Canonical Context

Abstract

What is the contribution of Psalm 45 within its canonical context? What is Psalm 45 doing in, and what is it doing for, the First Korahite Collection (Pss. 42–49)? These are the questions this article engages. In common with scholarship on the “shape and shaping” of the Psalter, the article seeks a form of coherency across the First Korahite Collection. But instead of framing such coherency in terms of a unified drama or running characters, the article takes a rhetorical approach; it attends to imperative verbs as well as to each psalm’s metareferences (i.e., self-descriptions). On the basis of these features as well as the psalm superscriptions, this article suggests that the First Korahite Collection exhibits a sustained pedagogical interest and summons its readers to practice memory-work. Psalm 45 encourages the receipt of instruction through its desirable kingly persona and, uniquely in the Collection, it calls for the negative counterpart of remembering, that is, forgetting.