David’s Last Words

Poems containing a person’s last words are also attributed to Jacob (Genesis 49) and to Moses (Deuteronomy 33). This poem mentions David’s anointing as king and the promise of a dynasty. In addition, it presents him as a prophet (a person through whom the spirit of the Lord spoke)—an idea absent elsewhere in the Bible but found in later Jewish tradition—and perhaps as a singer of psalms, as in late biblical tradition; see the difficult phrase in verse 1, “The favorite of the songs of Israel,” or, as more commonly rendered, “The sweet singer of Israel.”