{"id":80309,"date":"2020-09-23T13:47:01","date_gmt":"2020-09-23T10:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=80309"},"modified":"2020-09-23T13:47:01","modified_gmt":"2020-09-23T10:47:01","slug":"broken-acrostic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/broken-acrostic\/","title":{"rendered":"Broken Acrostic"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"80309","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":54356,"related_cahpter":"576","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Textual archaeology reveals a scrambled composition\r\n\r\n","content":"

\u201cFor the lead player, <\/span>\u2018almut laben<\/span><\/em>, a David psalm.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This psalm and the next one are a striking testimony to the scrambling in textual transmission that, unfortunately, a good many of the psalms have suffered. The Septuagint presents Psalms 9 and 10 as a single psalm, and there is formal evidence for the fact that it was originally one poem.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Psalm 9 in the Hebrew begins as an alphabetical acrostic: verses 2 and 3, <\/span>aleph<\/span><\/em> (four times); verse 4, <\/span>bet<\/span><\/em>; verse 6, <\/span>gimmel<\/span> [<\/span>dalet<\/span><\/em>,<\/em> the next letter, is missing]; verse 7, <\/span>heh<\/span><\/em>; verses 8-11, <\/span>waw<\/span><\/em>; verse 12, <\/span>zayin<\/span><\/em>; verse 14, <\/span>\u1e25et<\/span><\/em>; verse 16, <\/span>tet<\/span><\/em>; verse 18, <\/span>yod<\/span><\/em>; verse 19,<\/span> kaf<\/span><\/em>. It is notable that some lines of poetry have been interspersed between the acrostic lines, unlike other acrostic psalms in which the sequential letters of the alphabet occur in consecutive lines.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then Psalm 10 begins with the next letters of the alphabet,<\/span> lamed<\/span><\/em>, after which the acrostic disappears, to surface near the end of the psalm with the last four letters of the alphabet–verse 12 (<\/span>qof<\/span><\/em>), verse 14 (<\/span>resh<\/span><\/em>), verse 15 (<\/span>shin<\/span><\/em>), and verse 17 (<\/span>taw<\/span><\/em>). Now, what accompanies this confusion is a whole series of points, especially in the second half of the psalm, at which the text is not intelligible and in all likelihood defective.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Something along the following lines seems to have happened to our psalm: At some early moment in the long history of transmission, a single authoritative copy was damaged (by decay, moisture, fire, or whatever). Lines of verse may have been patched into the text from other sources in an attempt to fill in lacunae. Quite a few phrases or lines were simply transcribed in their mangled form or perhaps poorly reconstructed. When the chapter divisions of the Bible were introduced in the late Middle Ages, the editors, struggling with this imperfect text, no longer realized it was an acrostic and broke it into two separate psalms.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The result of this whole process, alas, is that we are left with a rather imperfect notion of what some of the text means.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From: Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible<\/em>, vol. 3: Writings, W. W. Norton & Co., 2019, ad loc. By permission of the author.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":54890,"id":54890,"title":"Alter-Cover","filename":"Alter-Cover.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/welcome-to-the-book-of-judges-unbridled-lust-implacable-hostility-mutual-mayhem\/alter-cover\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"alter-cover","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":54889,"date":"2019-05-05 07:18:18","modified":"2022-01-31 16:15:48","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1200,"height":693,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover-150x150.jpg","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover-300x173.jpg","medium-width":300,"medium-height":173,"medium_large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover-768x444.jpg","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":444,"large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover-1024x591.jpg","large-width":1024,"large-height":591,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover.jpg","1536x1536-width":1200,"1536x1536-height":693,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover.jpg","2048x2048-width":1200,"2048x2048-height":693,"post_full_size":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover-1200x693.jpg","post_full_size-width":1200,"post_full_size-height":693,"home_baner":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover-727x420.jpg","home_baner-width":727,"home_baner-height":420}},"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"From 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