Psalm 138:2

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S_Walch
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Psalm 138:2

Post by S_Walch »

Psalm 138:2c Mas:
כִּי־הִגְדַּלְתָּ עַל־כָּל־שִׁמְךָ אִמְרָתֶךָ

DSS (11QPsaa):
כי הגדלתה על כול שמכה אמרתכה

LXX (137:2):
ὅτι ἐμεγάλυνας ἐπὶ πᾶν ὄνομα τὸ ἅγιόν σου.

The meaning of the LXX is quite clear (because You have magnified Your holy name over all), but the Hebrew I think, is somewhat obscure.

If it was written כִּי־הִגְדַּלְתָּ עַל־כָּל שִׁמְךָ, then that's quite clear, and more or less coincides with the LXX (because You have magnified Your name above all); but that extra אִמְרָתֶךָ obscures it somewhat.

It's as if we're missing a ו between the two (which is how many English bibles have it: (your name and your word), or I'm expecting to see שְׁמוֹתךָ to give and You have glorified Your word above all Your names.

My current understanding of it is something akin to the above, as and You have glorified Your word above Your every name, but I'm not sure that this is what the Psalmist was going for. Unless there's a different understanding to על that I'm missing? I guess something like and You have glorified Your word according to Your every name is possible, but I'm not sure on that either.
Ste Walch
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SteveMiller
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Re: Psalm 138:2

Post by SteveMiller »

This looks like the only occurrence of כָּל־שִׁ֜מְךָ֗
That is a strange expression if "all" modifies "name".

I prefer: because you have magnified above all Your name, Your word.
Your name and your word are so inseparable that they are not 2 things but one.

Better English would be: because You have magnified Your name, Your word above all.
Sincerely yours,
Steve Miller
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Honesty is the best policy. - George Washington (1732-99)
kwrandolph
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Re: Psalm 138:2

Post by kwrandolph »

We should get at least the whole verse:

אשתחוה אל-היכל קדשך    ואודה את-שמך— על-חסדך    ועל-אמתך כי-הגדלת על-כל-שמך    אמרתך

Questions I have (which is why I didn’t answer earlier):

Is הגדלת a verb? Or is a noun with a prefixed definite article? If a noun, does it indicate a status of what follows?

Does כל modify שמך or does על-כל-שמך mean “your name above all”?

Is אמרתך the subject of this clause?

Putting this all together, do we have “for your saying the greatness is your name over all”? Or something similar? Or better English “…for you say ‘your name is great over all’.”?

As I have often done before, this is thinking through my keyboard. I can be wrong, and have had to retract what I wrote before, so what do you all think?

My 2¢ for this time.

Karl W. Randolph.
S_Walch
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Re: Psalm 138:2

Post by S_Walch »

I like that idea there, Karl.

Taking אמרתך more like 'Your message' as opposed to 'Your word', we may have, as I would translate it, ..for Your message is 'Your name is the greatest over all.' (with two elipted is').
Ste Walch
Michael W Abernathy
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Re: Psalm 138:2

Post by Michael W Abernathy »

Psalm 138:2 אֶשְׁתַּחֲוֶ֨ה אֶל־הֵיכַ֪ל קָדְשְׁךָ֡ וְאֹ֘ודֶ֤ה אֶת־שְׁמֶ֗ךָ עַל־חַסְדְּךָ֥ וְעַל־אֲמִתֶּ֑ךָ כִּֽי־הִגְדַּ֥לְתָּ עַל־כָּל־שִׁ֝מְךָ֗ אִמְרָתֶֽךָ׃
I was curious about the meaning of this passage so I took a little time to research it. The phrase כִּֽי־הִגְדַּ֥לְתָּ עַל־כָּל־שִׁ֝מְךָ֗ אִמְרָתֶֽךָ is apparently a bit awkward. The New JPS Translation notes that the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain and translates it as “because you have exalted Your name, Your word above all.”
Dahood took עַל־כָּל to refer back to אֱלֹהִ֣ים in verse 1. Note the Net Bible translates this as, “for you have exalted your promise above the entire sky,” assuming that some copyist left out a yod.
Personally, I think I lean toward the JPS translation but I’m not sure there is enough information to resolve the issue.
Sincerely,
Michael Abernathy
Schubert
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Re: Psalm 138:2

Post by Schubert »

I've had a look in Leslie Allen's commentary on this passage (volume 3 of the Word Biblical Commentary on the Psalms, p. 311). Consistent with the gist of Michael Abernethy's comments, Allen notes that the "MT reads rather clumsily..... Various attempts have been made to improve the text, none of which has a range of certainty." He then sets out some of the attempts to amend the MT or to produce an acceptable English translation.

Like Michael, my guess is that there is no clear resolution of how to read this verse.
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Kirk Lowery
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Re: Psalm 138:2

Post by Kirk Lowery »

Gentlemen,

A couple of administrative notes:

Schubert, our forum rules include a request that posts be signed with first and last name. You can put it in your signature, as I have done below. Anything beyond your name is entirely optional. Then you don't have to think about it.

Michael (and everyone), rendering cantillated Hebrew by web servers is these days no real problem -- as long as one has a proper font installed on your local machine. Many Hebrew fonts don't include the diacritics. On my screen, using my default web font, your citation of Ps 138:2 shows accents as square boxes.

אֶשְׁתַּחֲוֶ֨ה אֶל־הֵיכַ֪ל קָדְשְׁךָ֡ וְאֹ֘ודֶ֤ה אֶת־שְׁמֶ֗ךָ עַל־חַסְדְּךָ֥ וְעַל־אֲמִתֶּ֑ךָ כִּֽי־הִגְדַּ֥לְתָּ עַל־כָּל־שִׁ֝מְךָ֗ אִמְרָתֶֽךָ׃

We have tried to solve this problem by offering the BBCode

Code: Select all

[heb]
which tells the web server to render the text using the SBL Hebrew font. Of course, one needs to have this free font installed on your machine. If you enclose the text with the start and close tags, like this:

Code: Select all

[heb]אֶשְׁתַּחֲוֶ֨ה אֶל־הֵיכַ֪ל קָדְשְׁךָ֡ וְאֹ֘ודֶ֤ה אֶת־שְׁמֶ֗ךָ עַל־חַסְדְּךָ֥ וְעַל־אֲמִתֶּ֑ךָ כִּֽי־הִגְדַּ֥לְתָּ עַל־כָּל־שִׁ֝מְךָ֗ אִמְרָתֶֽךָ׃[/heb]
you get the following rendering:

אֶשְׁתַּחֲוֶ֨ה אֶל־הֵיכַ֪ל קָדְשְׁךָ֡ וְאֹ֘ודֶ֤ה אֶת־שְׁמֶ֗ךָ עַל־חַסְדְּךָ֥ וְעַל־אֲמִתֶּ֑ךָ כִּֽי־הִגְדַּ֥לְתָּ עַל־כָּל־שִׁ֝מְךָ֗ אִמְרָתֶֽךָ׃.

There are lots of other formatting options available with BBCode. In the editor there are a selection of the commonly used codes at the top as buttons. Simply write your text, select it and click the desired button. The codes will automatically be placed at the beginning and end of the selected text. Check it out.

Hope you find this helpful. :twisted:
Kirk E. Lowery, PhD
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blog: https://blogs.emdros.org/eh
kwrandolph
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Re: Psalm 138:2

Post by kwrandolph »

Kirk Lowery wrote:Michael (and everyone), rendering cantillated Hebrew by web servers is these days no real problem -- as long as one has a proper font installed on your local machine. Many Hebrew fonts don't include the diacritics. On my screen, using my default web font, your citation of Ps 138:2 shows accents as square boxes.
Depends on the OS. On my little Dell Netbook, with Mac OS X.6, all I saw of your example was the correct diacritics, no little boxes.

However, for those who are new on this forum, my omission of those dots is deliberate, because I have found them wrong all too often. My answer earlier was based on the consonantal text only, completely ignoring the Masoretic points and other such clutter.
Michael W Abernathy wrote:… The phrase כִּֽי־הִגְדַּ֥לְתָּ עַל־כָּל־שִׁ֝מְךָ֗ אִמְרָתֶֽךָ is apparently a bit awkward.
This is an example of what I mean when I say that the Masoretic points often make verses harder to read. The Masoretes had at least two strikes against them before they even opened the text:

1) the Hebrew language that they studied, was a different language than Biblical Hebrew: it had a different grammar and many words had different meanings.

2) There’s evidence that much Biblical Hebrew had been forgotten already before the LXX was written, how much more was forgotten by the time of the Masoretes?

A final point connected with language use is that Biblical Hebrew sentences were often structured with the most important element first, least important last, so that the subject can come last in a sentence, or first, depending on how important the speaker considers the subject. The same is true of the verb and object. Then in poetry word order can become jumbled for poetic effect.

Taking these all together, we get the picture that the Masoretic points were often guesswork based on faulty premises, which is why I recommend not to put too much importance to them.
Michael W Abernathy wrote:… but I’m not sure there is enough information to resolve the issue.
Or is there too much information, some of it false, noise?
Schubert wrote:I've had a look in Leslie Allen's commentary … [he] notes that the "MT reads rather clumsily..... Various attempts have been made to improve the text, none of which has a range of certainty." He then sets out some of the attempts to amend the MT or to produce an acceptable English translation.
How many of those attempts to amend the MT included not changing some of the Masoretic points that lead astray?

It looks like Ste has the best rendering into English without having to change anything in the consonantal text.

Is this message 4¢ or even 6¢?

Karl W. Randolph.
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