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 Psalm 9 cover the first half of the 22-letter Hebrew alphabet, and those in Psalm 10 cover the second half of the alphabet, beginning with lamed (l). Whether, as in a Renaissance sonnet, such acrostics were written as an aid to memory or simply as a framework for the poem, the acrostic format was commonly used in ancient Hebrew poetry.
In the Septuagint, the earliest translation of the Hebrew Bible (into Greek), Psalms 9 and 10 of the Hebrew psalter are, indeed, presented as one piece. In the Hebrew Bible, Psalm 9042 has a separate title—“a psalm of David”—along with some enigmatic directions, while Psalm 10 has no titulus (to use the technical term). This too suggests that in both the Septuagint and the Hebrew (Masoretic) text the two psalms were really one long poem.
There are a few omissions, doublets and transpositions of letters in the acrostica composed of Psalms 9–10, but these simply suggest that our text may be corrupt and old. For example, in Psalm 9 there is no stanza beginning with the letter dalet (d); dalet has simply been omitted. And in Psalm 10, several letters are transposed from their usual alphabetical order.
But if the two poems were once really one, there is another more fundamental problem. The pieces seem to stand back to back, reversed thematically. From the standpoint of literary flow and the regular forms of the Book of Psalms, Psalm 9 should follow 10. Psalm 10 is a psalm of complaint. It movingly recites past oppression with a wish for future deliverance; it is a prayer for divine intervention against the wicked. In contrast, Psalm 9 is a psalm of deliverance and thanksgiving; it praises God the deliverer.
Psalm 10 begins with a direct address:
1Why, O Lord, do you stand aloof, Heedless in times of trouble? 2The wicked in his arrogance hounds the lowly […] 5[The wicked man’s] ways prosper at all times; Your judgments are far beyond him; He snorts at all his foes […] 7His mouth is full of oaths, deceit and fraud; Mischief and evil are under his tongue. 8He lurks in outlying places; From a covert he slays the innocent […] 12Lift your hand, O God. Do not forget the lowly. 13Why should the wicked man scorn God, Thinking you do not call to account? […] 15O break the power of the wicked and evil man, So that when you look for his wickedness You will find it no more.b
In Psalm 9, this petition has been answered:
2I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell all your wonders […] 4When my enemies retreat, They stumble to their doom at your presence. 5For you uphold my right and claim, Enthroned as righteous judge. 6You blast the nations; You destroy the wicked; You blot out their name forever […] 8The Lord abides forever; He has set up his throne for judgment; 9It is he who judges the world with righteousness […] 11Those who know your name trust you, For you do not abandon those who turn to you, O Lord […] 16The nations sink in the pit they have made; Their own foot is caught in the net they have hidden. 17The Lord has made himself known as He works judgment; The wicked man is snared by his own devices […]
For all this to make good sense as a single psalm, the order of its two parts should be reversed, so that Psalm 10 (lamed to tav) would precede Psalm 9 (aleph to kaf), as set forth above. But is this not contradicted by the fact that the two psalms together form a complete alphabetic acrostic, proceeding from aleph to kaf and 044lamed to tav? In short, the procrustean bed of the alphabetical acrostic seems to disallow the otherwise desirable reversal of the order of the two psalms.
But the order of the letters of the alphabet that we use today was not the only one used in ancient times. Although often forgotten or ignored, traces of differing “alphabets” have been found at a number of ancient sites, including Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. In several cases, the alphabet is clearly bisected into two halves, one from aleph to kaf and the other from lamed to tav. Was the order of these two halves ever reversed? Did the lamed to tav section ever precede the aleph to kaf section? If so, then perhaps Psalm 10 could well have originally preceded Psalm 9.
In a perceptive article published more than 25 years ago, Michael Coogan noted that in Latin sources, the word elementa is sometimes used to refer to the letters of the alphabet.1 This is an alternative to the designation abecedarium used in later Latin. (Abecedary—from the letters a, b, c, d—is in fact a latinized or English word that refers to the series of letters arranged in their alphabetical order.) Why were the letters of the alphabet also referred to as elementa? Most dictionaries, as Coogan points out, state that the etymology of elementum (singular) is uncertain. Coogan, following others, suggests that this word is derived from the first three letters of what we normally regard as the second half of the alphabet (l, m, n), just as “abecedary” is formed from the first four letters of what we regard as the first half of the Latin alphabet (or as Greek alphabeton is formed from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet).
Coogan draws our attention to what appears to be a student’s exercise on an ostracon (an inscribed potsherd), from Qumran, that indicates that the alphabet was taught in two halves.2 The student seems to have started with a line beginning l (lamed), m (mem) and
n (nun), finishing this line with the last letters of the first division (lamed to tav) of this early alphabet. Next follows a line with the aleph to kaf division, and at the end the conclusion of that division.
Coogan cites several other examples from such diverse languages as Greek, Latin and Etruscan (to which we may add Aramaic in an instance from Elephantine) in which the alphabet was apparently divided into two parts. He concludes: “There was a practice of writing the alphabet in two parts, the second part of which began with the letters, l, m and n…, the second half of the alphabet being called elementum. The entire alphabet then could be called the elementa.”
Were the two parts of the alphabet ever reversed? In an earlier scholarly presentation of the ideas in this article, we had to admit that we had no example of such a reversal, although we speculated that they must have existed.3 Since that earlier publication, however, Esther Eshel has re-examined and commented on Coogan’s Qumran ostracon.4 Her conclusions are similar to his: We have on this ostracon the two parts of the alphabet with the half beginning with lamed (line 2) written before the half beginning with aleph (line 3).
Thus, we now have stronger evidence that at an early time the alphabet could be written in Hebrew with the lamed to tav half first, not just with the aleph to kaf half first. It could well be that when the acrostic poem consisting of Psalms 10 and 9 was composed, its author used an alphabet in which the lamed to tav half came first. In the course of transmission, as often occurs, a scribe would have replaced the rare form of the alphabet with the more common one. The present misplaced order of Psalms 9 and 10 should therefore now be reversed, thereby restoring another acceptable order for the alphabet, and especially another coherent thematic structure to the two psalms.
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 […]
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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.
