Tuesday, July 5, 2022

We Must Accept What Is / ᎢᏧᎳ ᎠᏎ ᏗᏓᏁᎸᎢᏍᏗ Ꮎ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ

The Missing Verse of Psalm 145 (Again)

I have been on the Chabad mailing list for many years. I'm always telling myself that I'm going to unsubscribe, but somehow I never do. The truth is that they sometimes send me some pretty interesting things. So it was recently, when they sent me "14 Facts About the Book of Psalms." I couldn't resist this, since the Psalms (Tehillim) are an interest of mine. #10 on their list is the "Fun Fact" that Psalm 145, which is an alphabetic acrostic, is missing the verse that should begin with the Hebrew letter "nun."

I had been aware of this, and in fact I had even written about it before, but this article got me thinking about it again. As mentioned in an endnote to the Chabad article, this problem is mentioned in the Talmud (Berachot 4:b), where a solution is put into the lips of Rabbi Yohanan, who lived in the late third century CE. The explanation given there was that the omission was intentional, since "nun" is the first letter of "nawflah" (fallen) in Amos 5:2, where it says "The virgin of Yisra'el is fallen, she shall no more rise..." But this strikes me as a silly explanation, since there are many Hebrew words that begin with "nun," and many of them are suitable for glorifying God.

But the "nun" verse is not present in the Aleppo Codex, nor the Leningrad Codex, the best and oldest codices we have of the Masoretic Text. It is, however, present in the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation used by the Jews of Alexandria around 150 BCE, which is almost a thousand years older than the Masoretic Text. It is also in the Latin of the Vulgate, which dates to the late fourth century, and in the Syriac of the Peshitta, which dates to the fifth century CE. But until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-twentieth century, we had no ancient example of the missing verse in Hebrew. Now we do.

The above is a photograph of the main Dead Sea Psalms Scroll (11QPs-a). I have underlined the previously missing verse. Transcribed into more modern Hebrew letters, it says:

נאמן אלוהים בדבריו וחסיד בכל מעשיו

Faithful is the Lord in his words, and pious in all his works.

As can be seen, the word "faithful," נאמן, begins with "nun."

The verse in the Vulgate, which is based on the LXX, is as follows:

fidelis Dominus in omnibus verbis suis

et sanctus in omnibus operibus suis.

Faithful is the Lord in all his words,

and holy in all his works.

And the New English Translation of the Septuagint has:

The Lord is faithful in all his words,

and devout in all his deeds.

It is interesting that all of the oldest texts have the verse, while it is missing from all but one (medieval) manuscript of the later Masoretic Text. The evidence, especially that of the DSS, tells us that the verse once belonged there. If it did, why is it not in the Masoretic Text? We are left with two possibilities: 1) It "fell out" of the text, due to a copyist's error, or 2) it was intentionally deleted by some copyist or school of copyists, in an attempt to "punish" God for the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. I used to believe the latter, but I am now less inclined to believe it. For one thing, Psalm 145 is not just any Psalm. It is recited by Jews three times a day, known as the "Ashrei" because introduced by a verse from Psalm 84.5 that begins with that word. It would be difficult to intentionally delete anything, without the change being noticed. Also, no pious Jew would do it. So let's put the "missing verse back in. In view of the evidence of the DSS, many modern translations are doing just that.

A further thought: The first words of Psalm 145 in Hebrew ascribe it to David. But the prophet Amos lived some 250 years AFTER David, so the explanation offered in the Talmud (Berachot 4:b) involves a serious anachronism.