A number of passages in Psalms employ the figure of speech,
or perhaps more precisely, the figure of thought, that when the psalmist is in
need or in trouble, he is in a tight place, and his salvation consists in being
brought out into the open. The article reviews this motif and makes use of
methodological approaches from cognitive linguistics, such as the “Conceptual
Metaphor Theory” associated with George Lakoff and Mark Johnson,
and the “Conceptual Integration Networks” approach or “Blending Theory”
introduced by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, to analyse in more detail
the use of this motif in Psalm 18. In conclusion, it is brought up for consideration
whether the “cognitive turn” in Biblical scholarship can be fruitfully
utilized for the benefit of the sub-discipline of Old Testament Theology, and
whether this might imply a re-evaluation of previously discarded ideas about
the interrelatedness of language and thought.