---
title: Psalms 18:5 (JPS 1917) — The cords of Death compassed me, and the floods of Belial assailed me. · tree and pragmatics
description: The cords of Death compassed me, and the floods of Belial assailed me. Who acts: cords, floods, Belial. Psalms 18:5 in JPS 1917 with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Psalms 18:5 · JPS 1917

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The cords of Death compassed me, and the floods of Belial assailed me.

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**Who acts:** cords, floods, Belial · **What happens:** compass, assail, flood · **To what, where:** me

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This is Psalms 18:5 · JPS 1917 in the English of the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 translation, from Mova's open Bible corpus. The page gives the sentence's syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies, parsed by Mova and checked by a teacher model — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cords, floods, Belial), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it. The original of the verse links back to its own tree and to the Targum.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = jps:PSA:215
# text = The cords of Death compassed me, and the floods of Belial assailed me.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	cords	cord	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	Death	Death	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
5	compassed	compass	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	floods	flood	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	Belial	Belial	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	_
13	assailed	assail	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
14	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: narrate
- voice: character
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed voice=character

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **compass** | past | the cords of Death | me |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **assail** | past | the floods of Belial | me |  |  |  |  | vn attack-60.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Patient |
| 3 | **flood** |  | Belial |  |  |  |  |  | nom flood «phenomenon intransitive»: of=agent |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

## The Hebrew of this verse {#hebrew}

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אֲפָפ֥וּנִי חֶבְלֵי־מָ֑וֶת וְֽנַחֲלֵ֖י בְלִיַּ֣עַל יְבַֽעֲתֽוּנִי׃

[Psalms 18:5: the Hebrew tree, its pragmatics and the Targum →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/ketuvim/PSA.18.5/)

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**Source.** The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text, Jewish Publication Society, 1917, from eBible.org: public domain. Sentence `jps:PSA:215` of Mova's parse database.

**The tree and the speech act** come from Mova's cycle: the small model's draft, read by a large model as teacher, passed by Mova's gates (Elamur Cosmic License). **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the chapter read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence of the chapter.

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