Polyphonie des Elends

Dirk Sager sees Psalm 9/10 as a defining text which puts the existing expressions of prayer into a dialectical concept and interprets them as the voices of the 'poor and the wretched'. In these however the authors refer to older psalms in which the persons at prayer do not call themselves 'wretched and poor'. As a result, the conventional line of tradition which was known as the 'piety of the poor' turns out to be an integral part of Israel's religious history. The author compares the double Psalm with the drafts of psalms, prophecy and wisdom which originated at about the same time and had similar concepts and shows that it was written during the transition from the Persian to the Hellenistic epoch of post-exilic Judah.