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These verses have been a stumbling block to successive generations of editors. One of the latest of these, for example, Dr. W. 0. E. Oesterley, has courageously faced the difficulties but, for reasons which will be stated in the course of this note, got himself tied up rather badly. He saw clearly enough that 
must refer to God's attitude to the Psalmist's enemy. But the difficulties began for him when he took 
to refer to the wicked man. In the first place Oesterley did not sufficiently reahze that the possibility of the wicked man repenting of his evil ways rarely occupied the mind of the Psalmist. It is in the Prophets that we get constant appeals to the wicked to repent, not in the Psalms. By the time of the Psalmists society had largely become stratified. The cleavage between the 
and the 
was complete. To the 
or 
the 
was irretrievably lost. God's clemency was only sought on behalf of the 
straying from the path of righteousness. I would therefore suggest that 
referred to God, at the same time altering 
to 
. The rendering would then be: “God is wroth every day; yea, he will not turn back.”
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References
page 81 note 1 The Psalms, London, 1939, vol. i, p. 138.
page 81 note 2 The 
and 
are sometimes confused. A reverse example, where 
should be read 
, is given by Graetz, , Kritischer Kommentar zu den Psalmen, p. 129Google Scholar. He cleverly emends 
in Neh. v, 8, to 
.
page 82 note 1 Graetz, op. cit., pp. 171 f., gave this Hebrew rendering of the additional words in LXX, but did not otherwise develop the argument on the lines adumbrated above.
page 82 note 2 From the similarity of phrasing in Ps. viii, 13, and xi, 2, it is possible that both these psalms were composed by the same author. Another explanation would be conscious imitation of one by the other.
page 82 note 3 It is true that in Lam. ii, 4, and iii, 12, God is spoken of as “bending the bow”, but the circumstances are different there.