Insights from Reading the Psalms in Hebrew
Introduction
“Let us, then, foster the learning
of languages as zealously as we love the Gospel. For not for nothing did God
have His Scripture written down in these two languages alone: the Old Testament
in Hebrew, the New in Greek. The languages, therefore, which God did not
despise but chose above all others for His Word we, too, ought to honor above
all others.
“And let us be sure of this: we shall not long preserve the Gospel without languages. Languages are the sheath in which this sword of the Spirit is contained. They are the case in which we carry this jewel. They are the vessel in which we hold this wine. They are the larder in which this food is stored. And, as the Gospel itself says, they are the baskets in which we bear these loaves and fishes and fragments.”[1]
To that end, I have been studying biblical (or, Koinē)
Greek since my first class back in 2011 and have been teaching it since 2014, with
only a few years off; while I am by no means an expert in Greek, I have gained
much knowledge which has helped me greatly in my study and teaching of the New
Testament. In my endeavor to further my knowledge of the original languages, I
also took 3 years of Hebrew courses spanning my undergraduate and graduate
degrees for the purpose of better understanding the Old Testament. This, too,
has greatly aided my study and teaching.
And yet, I understand that in this study one faces twin
dangers (a veritable Scylla and Charybdis): that of studying the languages as a
purely intellectual pursuit on the one side, and that of mistaking knowledge of
the languages for spiritual knowledge on the other. There is no academic study
of Scripture, we are either seeking to know God and be transformed by his Word
as we read it, or we are not truly studying it. Spurgeon’s cautions to young
preachers are apropos here.
“Again, avoid all pedantry. As a general rule, it may be observed that those gentlemen who know the least Greek are the most sure to air their rags of learning in the pulpit; they miss no chance of saying ‘The Greek is so-and-so.’ It makes a man an inch and a half taller by a ‘foolometer’ if he everlastingly lets fall bits of Greek and Hebrew, and even tells the people the tense of the verb and the case of the noun, as I have known some to do. Those who have no learning usually make a point of displaying the page on which learning ought to hang.”[2]
With all of this and more in mind, I have tried to turn my
studies in the last several years toward improving my Hebrew, and in this last
year I took it upon myself to read through the Psalms in Hebrew for the first
time. The rest of this post contains some of my insights that I have gleaned
from this process.
The Nature of God
If the truth be told, most of my observations in this post could
be made with no knowledge of the original languages, and that is as it should
be. The languages are not a window into secret revelation one cannot obtain
from vernacular translations; rather, the insights I have seen in consulting
the original languages stem more from the use of similar words and phrases that
establish links from one part of Scripture to another. Such is the case with my
main observation regarding the nature of God himself.
Though I have been aware of the phenomenon for several
years, it startled me a little in this last year each time I came across the phrase
rahum wehannun (רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן), the first two attributes of God listed
in his self-revelation to Moses in Exodus 34:6-7.
“The LORD passed before him and
proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping
steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but
who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on
the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth
generation.’”
Interestingly, while much is made of the exalted place of
the Shema (Deut. 6:4-5) in Jewish tradition, mostly because of its
presence in their historical prayer liturgies and Christ’s references to it in
the New Testament (Mark 12:29-30; cf. Matt. 22:36-37; Luke 10:27), it is
not the fact that “Yahweh is one” but that “Yahweh is merciful and gracious” which
the Old Testament repeatedly draws upon to declare the character of God (Num.
14:18; 2 Chr. 30:9; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 86:15; 103:8; 111:4; 112:4; 116:5; 145:8;
Joel 2:13). This combination of words pointing back to Exodus 34 is a new
emphasis in my speaking on the Psalms as well as God’s nature. He is merciful and
gracious.
Flowing from that first insight, the second is that I
noticed how often God’s mercy and grace are expressed in concrete pictures.
Again and again I found myself noticing the Hebrew words for “shield” (Ps. 3:3; 7:10; 18:2, 30, 35; 28:7; 33:20; 59:11; 84:9, 11; 115:9-11; 119:114; 144:2) and
“fortress” (Ps. 18:2; 31:2-3; 71:3; 91:2; 144:2) used over and over to describe
God (mostly because I had to keep looking them up…). This repetition caused me
to slow down end meditate upon the pictures more often than I usually do. This
observation has only furthered my use of a rule of thumb I have made in
studying biblical poetry: poetry is not written to give you new information; it
is written to make you think about what you already know. I have resolved to
spend more time chewing on the word pictures the psalmists use to describe
God’s love, as well as his other attributes.
The Works of God
The most significant insight I made this year was new to me
in the sense that I had never noticed it as a theme before; but instead of
dealing with God’s character directly, this one has to do with his works.
Specifically, there is one Hebrew word – niphlaoth (נִפְלָאֹות)
– which I noticed repeatedly through the Psalms (Ps. 9:1; 26:7; 40:5; 71:17; 72:18;
75:1; 78:4, 11, 32; 86:10; 96:3; 98:1; 105:2, 5; 106:7, 22; 107:8, 15, 21, 24,
31; 111:4; 119:27; 136:4; 145:5), usually translated as “wondrous works” or
“wondrous deeds” in the ESV. Over and over, the “wondrous works of God” are set
forth as the basis for thanksgiving, praise, and confidence in God’s future love
and faithfulness. The exact identity of these wonders varies from creation to
the Exodus to God’s faithfulness in past generations – basically, anything God
has done which is great! This was a reminder to me that I must, like the
psalmists, remind myself of God’s works in both Scripture and church history,
as well as in my own life; and further, that I need to speak of these “wondrous
works” to others and so lead them to praise, thank, and trust in God for
themselves.
“You have multiplied, O LORD my God,
In addition to God’s “wondrous works” in general, I also noticed the number of times creation is mentioned specifically as one of God’s works. It is a well-established fact that the Psalms refer often to the Exodus as the pivotal redemption moment in the Old Testament, parallel to the New Testament perspective on the cross of Christ. Yet, I was surprised at how many times the Psalms went beyond the Exodus and even the Patriarchs to declare God’s status as creator (Ps. 8:3-8; 24:1-2; 33:6-9; 65:5-6; 74:16-17; 78:69; 89:11-12; 90:2; 95:4-5; 102:25-27; 104:5-9; 115:15-16; 119:90; 121:1-2; 124:8; 134:3; 136:5-9; 146:5-6). Here is a brief sampling:
“Let all the earth fear the LORD;
you and your children!
May you be blessed by the LORD,
who made heaven and earth!” (Ps. 115:14-15)
“I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.” (Ps. 121:1-2)
“Our help is in the name of the LORD,
This refrain of God as creator should not be surprising
since this is how the Old Testament opens (Gen. 1:1), and it is how both the Old
Testament prophet Jonah (Jonah 1:9) and the New Testament Apostle Paul (14:15;
17:24) describe God to other nations. Further, it is listed as the defining
trait of the Father in both the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. And yet, it
strikes me that I do not enough meditate upon God’s greatness and power in
creation as a comfort that he is able to help me in any situation; I will
endeavor to do so more often and point others to do so as well.
The Artistry of God
My next insight has to do with the simple fact that the
Psalms are artistic poetry. In recent years, I have become more aware of the
creativity of God in the world he had made, from colors and sounds to shapes
and textures, and how God combines them together with beauty and wonder. He
could have made the world all gray, but he chose a full spectrum of light. He
could have made no color at all and formed us blind, missing one of the amazing
senses he has given us to enjoy the incredible world he made. God could have
written His inspired Scriptures as a soulless list of theological truths, but
he chose to write a significant portion of it as poetry, in addition to other
genres – narrative, law, and prophecy – that express these truths in striking
imagery.
There are so many figures of speech, patterns of sounds, and
acrostic forms in the Psalms, many of which one simply cannot see in translation
as they are bound to the Hebrew language. Nowhere else in my journey through
the Hebrew Psalms was this fact highlighted more than when I worked through
Psalm 119. The Psalm is an acrostic made up of twenty-two stanzas, each
consisting of eight lines all starting with the same letter of the Hebrew
alphabet, with each stanza adopting the next letter in the sequence. This kind
of poetic structure is actually somewhat common in the Psalms (9-10, 25, 34,
37, 111-112, 145) and it displays great attention to detail and beauty.
Combined with the overall structure, the use of near synonyms in the various ways
the psalmist refers to God’s Word gives a full-orbed perspective of what
Scripture is: law, testimonies, commandments, statutes, rules, precepts, words,
decrees – all of these communicate various aspects of how Scripture guides one
in life. All in all, Psalm 119 highlights the poetic artistry of God in writing
Scripture, which leads me to greater appreciate his attention to beauty and
detail, which has not only led me to more comfort in his sovereign providence,
but has also challenged me to show such care myself as God’s image as well as
appreciate when others do so, thanking and praising him for placing such
ability within humanity.
The Need for the Languages
My final insight has more to do with the languages
themselves than any before. As I worked through the psalms in Hebrew, I
frequently referenced the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old
Testament, completed during the 400 “silent years” between the end of the Old
Testament and the beginning of the New) as well as the Vulgate (the
Latin translation of the Bible begun by Jerome in the 4th century). Each
these historic translations has been viewed, in turn, as “the Bible” at certain
times in church history. While many are familiar with the fact that the Vulgate
was the official and only permitted Catholic Bible until fairly recently, fewer
are aware that the Septuagint was so beloved by the early church that
Jerome caused quite a stir by choosing to translate the Old Testament of the Vulgate
from the original Hebrew instead of from the Greek Septuagint. Nevertheless,
time-honored though they be, these (like all translations) contain mistranslations,
textual variants, and obscurities – in short, all the tell-tale signs of human
finitude.
As I worked through these variants between the Hebrew,
Greek, and Latin versions of the Psalms, I was struck in my memory by statements
of the Reformers which I have read over the years on the need for not only an
update to the Vulgate (as was the intention of Desiderius Erasmus, the compiler
of what became known in a later edition as the Textus Receptus) but also
for vernacular translations based upon this recovered original text (so, Martin
Luther, the translators of the Geneva Bible as well as the King James Version, and
more). This study opened my eyes anew to the danger of assuming that any
translation can be held up as the official standard against which all others
should be compared, since all translation involves interpretation to an extent
and no translation is perfect.
These are just some thoughts I have been meditating on for the last year in my study, and I thought they might be beneficial to others as we together thank God for revealing, preserving, and illuminating his Word to us, and as we seek again to make it the basis for our lives in the year to come.
[1] Martin
Luther, To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany, 1524.
[2] Charles
Haddon Spurgeon, Commenting and Commentaries, 1876.
All Scripture verses come from the ESV.
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