It’s Elementary - The BAS Library
Login
Home > Magazines > Bible Review > June 2001

It’s Elementary

Psalms 9 and 10 and the order of the alphabet

By John Strugnell, Hanan Eshel

Psalms 9 and 10 have always been somewhat of a puzzle. The first question is whether they are actually two parts of one long psalm or whether they are two separate psalms. What suggests that they were originally really one piece is that together they form an acrostic poem built with the Hebrew alphabet from aleph (a), the first letter (in Psalm 9:2), to tav (t), the last letter (at Psalm 10:18). That is, in each psalm subsequent verses (sometimes two, three or four lines apart) begin with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The initial letters in […]

Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.

Join the BAS Library!

Already a library member? Log in here.

Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username

Footnotes

1.

For more on acrostics in the Bible, see Harvey Minkoff, “As Simple as ABC,” BR 13:02.

2.

Translations are from the Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia/New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1985).

Endnotes

1.

Michael Coogan, “Alphabets and Elements,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 216 (1974), p. 61.

2.

For previous discussion, see Roland P. de Vaux, “Fouilles au Khirbet Qumrän: Rapport préliminaire sur la deuxième campagne,” Revue Biblique 61 (1954), p. 229, plate Xa.

3.

See Hanan Eshel and John Strugnell, “Alphabetical Acrostics in Pre-Tannaitic Hebrew,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 62:3 (2000), p. 441.

4.

For a detailed re-edition of the Qumran ostracon, see Esther Eshel, “KhQOstracon 3, ” in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, vol. 36, Qumran Cave 4.XXVI, by Philip S. Alexander et al. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), pp. 509–512.