FROM THE WATER PERMANENCE OF THE TREE TO THE ONTOLOGICAL DISSOLUTION OF STRAW : TOWARD A METAPHYSICS OF FAITHFULNESS IN PSALM 1 ACCORDING TO SCHLOMO SORIN ROSEN
FROM THE WATER PERMANENCE OF THE TREE TO THE ONTOLOGICAL DISSOLUTION OF STRAW : TOWARD A METAPHYSICS OF FAITHFULNESS IN PSALM 1 ACCORDING TO SCHLOMO SORIN ROSEN

Summary/Abstract: This article offers a dense hermeneutical and stylistic reading of Psalm 1 as rendered in the Romanian version attributed to Schlomo Sorin Rosen, with particular attention to its internal symbolic architecture and its implicit metaphysical anthropology. Far from treating the text as a mere sapiential prelude to the Psalter, the study argues that Psalm 1 functions as a foundational threshold discourse, establishing from its opening verse a polarity that governs the entire spiritual economy of the biblical imagination: the opposition between rootedness and dispersion, continuity and pulverization, cultivated interiority and existential dissipation. The analysis proceeds by examining the progressive structure of the psalm’s initial negations—walking, standing, sitting—as a phenomenology of moral and ontological sedimentation. These verbs are interpreted not as rhetorical ornamentation but as stages in a gradual process of incorporation into environments of ethical instability, where movement paradoxically becomes immobilization and agency devolves into habituation. Against this trajectory of gradual enclosure within the “counsel of the wicked,” the psalm articulates a counter-movement defined by sustained immersion in the “Învățătura Domnului,” understood not as juridical codification but as a living pedagogical milieu of existence.A central interpretive axis of the article concerns the vegetal metaphor of the “tree planted by streams of water,” which is read as a condensed cosmological figure of ontological continuity. The tree functions as an axis of mediation between visible and invisible orders, while its dependence on water signifies a fundamental heteronomy of life: vitality is not self-generated but continuously received. Fruitfulness “in its season” is thereby interpreted as kairological temporality, in which fulfillment arises not from chronological accumulation but from structural attunement to an underlying rhythm of being. In sharp contrast, the wicked are likened to chaff dispersed by the wind, an image that the article interprets as an ontology of inconsistency rather than a merely moral condemnation. Dispersion is not punitive excess but structural consequence: what lacks rootedness is defined by its susceptibility to external forces, its inability to retain form, memory, or density. The wind, in this reading, functions less as agent than as revelatory medium, disclosing the intrinsic fragility of what has no interior cohesion. The study further situates its interpretation within a constellation of philosophical and theological references, including dialogical ontology, symbolic hermeneutics, and theories of biblical poetics, in order to articulate a broader conceptual framework in which Psalm 1 appears as a paradigmatic articulation of what may be termed a metaphysics of dwelling. In this framework, human existence is understood not primarily as action or cognition, but as situatedness within symbolic spaces that determine modes of stability or disintegration. Special attention is given to the stylistic dimension of Schlomo Sorin Rosen’s Romanian rendering, which is characterized by a controlled archaism, syntactic gravitas, and a deliberate resistance to semantic flattening. The article argues that this stylistic posture is not merely aesthetic but hermeneutically operative: it preserves the striated density of the biblical text by maintaining a productive tension between transparency and opacity, thereby inducing a slowed, contemplative mode of reading in which meaning emerges as resonance rather than immediate equivalence. Ultimately, the article contends that Psalm 1 constructs a comprehensive symbolic anthropology in which felicity is redefined as ontological coherence with a sustaining source, while wickedness is reinterpreted as structural dispersal of being. Between the image of the irrigated tree and that of windblown chaff, the psalm delineates two irreconcilable regimes of existence, thereby inviting a sustained reflection on the conditions under which human life may either cohere into enduring form or dissolve into existential fragmentation.

• Details
• Contents