This Hebrew noun appears only once in the Bible, in the heading of Psm 7. A plural form of the noun, however, also appears in Hab 3:1. In both cases they probably denote the musical character of the psalm, though its meaning is a matter of debate. The word is derived from a root whose basic meaning is 'to go astray,' but neither of the poems in the OT is penitential nor a lament. Proposals by scholars such as A. F. Kirkpatrick that it has to do with the ecstatic and passionate character of the poem is pure guess work. At the moment we simply do not have the literary resources to resolve the matter.
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