Tyndale House ink

This edition of TH ink has a rather fun article on Psalm 37. Peter Williams says of acrostics: "This is a feature which can aid memorisation but which is missing in translation." Let's say it is missing in most translations. It does not need to be missing.

These acrostics, as I have pointed out before, are significant pillars within the Psalter, each one celebrating the psalm that precedes it. These are four key Psalms in Book 1: psalms 8, 24, 33, and 36 in book 1 and three, 110, 118, and 144 in book 5. Psalms 8, 24, and 144 played a part in the creation program that I was just working up.

(How can 8 acrostics in 9 psalms follow and celebrate only 7 psalms?)

We have been reading with the children, Once upon an Alphabet by Oliver Jeffers, an alphabet book that tells a story about each letter and repeats that letter frequently in the story.

Ancient authors played the same children's games. Psalm 37 is one of the 8 acrostic poems in the Psalms. Hear the letter played with, resh ר = R. (Note how resh is the mirror image of lower case r. There's more than one of these letters. See Alef through the Looking Glass by Jonathan Orr-Stav.)

TH ink points out the presence and absence of resh (R) and its significance in the article on Psalms 37. It is no doubt a game with letters. And the magazine is worth a read.

Playing games? Surely the Scriptures are serious stuff, Bob? Of course they are. But can't you play games with serious stuff? Who would bother with the trivial stuff?

Oh, and by the way, the second volume of my translation, volume 1 of the series, The Hebrew Bible and its Music, The Torah, is now available as an e-book. (The first volume available was volume 6 - I recommend not starting with the beginning. Before you read the text that is locked, you need a key. So we began the series with volume 6, The Scrolls.)

It's worth a read. It's worth a study. It's worth commenting on and giving feedback. Serious it is but also fun. (Did you think G-d only wants you to be miserable?)

This is the only published Bible with its music all available. You can sing through every chapter. See the resource pages here.

This is the whole series

1. The Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (released)
2. The Former Prophets, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings (March 29, 2019)
3. The Major Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel (April 12, 2019)
4. The Twelve, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi (April 24, 2019)
5. The Books of Truth, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, (May 10, 2019)
6. The Five Scrolls, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Qohelet, Esther (released)
7. The Remaining Writings, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles (May 24, 2019)
8. A Biblical Hebrew to English Concordance (June 7, 2019)
9. A is for Abandon, An English to Biblical Hebrew Alphabet Book (June 21, 2019)