Ps 44,15; 57,10; 108,4; 149,7: בלאמים or בל אמים?

In Ps 149,7, the Leningrad Codex (L), which is reproduced faithfully in BHS, offers the strange reading בל אמים instead of the expected בלאמים attested at Qumran and in the Aleppo Codex (A), which is followed by ancient versions and modern translations. This is not a case of a scribal error because the same reading occurs in Ps 44,15; 57,10; 108,4 L. According to the present contribution, a phonetic explanation of this phenomenon seems somewhat improbable. Probably what we have here Is a semantic game, a kind of midrash on the consonants בלאמים, in which the authors of Codex L suggest the possibility of an alternative reading: «among the peoples» could be read also as «(among) the non-peoples». This second reading receives support from Deut 32,21 בלא עם.