Psalm 145:13b: A Case Study in Old Testament Textual Criticism (Part 2)

Read Part 1.

Let us note the remarks of a few older commentators (all of whom wrote before the Dead Sea evidence was discovered) who have additional information on our Psalm at this point (and as always, I checked commentaries last, after exhausting other sources of information, discovering in the process that they had trod this path of investigation before me). The first is John Gill (1697-1771), British Baptist pastor and expert in rabbinic literature. Regularly, when there is any light to be shed on a Biblical text from ancient Jewish sources, Gill will do so, and this is his primary merit as a Bible commentator. His remarks in part on the omission in Psalm 145:13 are as follows (my clarifications in brackets)—

This psalm is written alphabetically, as is observed on the title of it; but the letter nun is here wanting, the reason of which [David] Kimchi [Medieval Jewish commentator, 1160-1235] professes his ignorance of, but Jarchi [i.e., Rabbi Shlomo bar Yitzak, Medieval Bible commentator, 1040-1105] gives a reason for it, such an one as it is, which he has from the Talmud [tractate Berachot folio 4.2]; because David, by a spirit of prophecy, foresaw the grievous fall of the people of Israel, the prophecy of which begins with this letter, Amos 5:2. Nor is the order always strictly observed in alphabetical psalms; in Psalm 37 the letter ain is wanting, and three [letters] in Psalm 25 [sic; it is only two]. The Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions, supply this defect here, by inserting these words, the Lord is faithful in all his words, and holy in all his works, as if they were begun with the word n’mn, but they seem to be taken from ver. 17, with a little alteration.

And then let us consider the remarks of Methodist scholar Adam Clarke (1762-1832; let me note that on technical points, Adam Clarke impresses me with the breadth of his scholarship—unexcelled in his day—and the good judgment he usually displays. Consider as one great case his detailed discussion of I John 5:7, a still valuable treatment, even after 200 years’ passage). Clarke addresses the variant at Psalm 145: 13—

As the above verse begins with the letter mem, the next in the order of the alphabet should begin with nun: but that verse is totally wanting. To say it was never in, is false, because the alphabet is not complete without it; and it is an unanswerable argument to prove the careless manner in which the Jews have preserved the Divine records. Though the Syriac, Septuagint, Vulgate, Aethiopic, Arabic and Anglo-Saxon have a verse, not in the Hebrew text, that answers to the nun, which is found in no printed copy of the Hebrew Bible; yet one MS., now in Trinity College, Dublin, has it thus, I suppose by correction, in the bottom of the page:—

Clarke then quotes the words in Hebrew as found in this manuscript, followed by the Greek of the Septuagint, the Latin of the Vulgate and even the Anglo-Saxon. He alone of all sources consulted to this point gave any information about the one Hebrew manuscript reported to contain the words, namely, its present location (Trinity College), and the fact that the inserted clause is a marginal correction, not part of the original text.

A couple of mid-19^th century commentaries add a bit more to our information on this text. First, Carl Moll’s commentary on Psalms in the set edited by J. P. Lange, after noting the presence of the nun clause in Septuagint, counters by saying,

But neither Aquila nor Symmachus gives it, and neither Origen nor Jerome has it in his Heb. Text. Only a single Heb. manuscript has it (Cod. Kennicott 142) and that on the lower margin, at the bottom of the page. The Chaldee [i.e., Targum] and the Jewish interpreters reject it, and a scholium of the Cod. Vat[icanus] of the Sept. characterizes it as spurious.

Aquila and Symmachus were 2^nd century A.D. Jewish translations of the Hebrew Scriptures (made as alternatives to the Septuagint, which had been universally adopted by Greek-speaking Christians as their Old Testament), while Origen’s Hebrew text was that which he included in his massive Old Testament Hexapla, made around 200 A.D., which presented the Hebrew text in the first column, then that text transliterated into Greek letters, followed by four Greek translations of it, namely Aquila, Symmachus, the Septuagint and Theodotion. Jerome’s Hebrew text was that current around 400 A.D. All these, taken collectively, indicate that the nun verse had dropped out of the text shortly after 70 A.D., certainly by the mid-2^nd century.

Moll also informs us of the specific identity of the one Hebrew manuscript that does contain the verse: “Kennicott 142,” no doubt one of the 615 Hebrew manuscripts that were collated by Benjamin Kennicott (1718-1783) and his co-laborers for Kennicott’s 2-volume Hebrew Bible (1776-1780). Moll provides another morsel of information we have not found elsewhere—reference to a note in the Vaticanus manuscript of the Septuagint that claims the verse is spurious.

And then briefly, a glance at Franz Delitzsch’s (1813-1890) commentary on Psalms. Besides confirming information already gleaned elsewhere by us, he informs us that besides Symmachus and Aquila, the 2^nd century A.D. Jewish Greek version of Theodotion also lacks the verse at issue.

The accidental deletion of the nun verse by Hebrew copyists can be dated to the events at or shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., in as much all the 2^nd century and later Hebrew-based Jewish versions of Psalms as well as the somewhat later Hebrew texts used by Origen and Jerome, as well as the Targumist all sport the deletion.

What use have modern English versions made of this information? The NASB in neither its original form nor the up-dated edition from the 1990s has anything relevant at Psalm 145:13. The NIV (1984 edition) inserts the clause without parentheses or brackets at the end of verse 13: “the Lord is faithful in all his promises, and loving toward all he has made.” This is footnoted, where we read:

One manuscript of the Masoretic Text, Dead Sea Scrolls and Syriac (see also Septuagint): most manuscripts of the Masoretic Text do not have the last two lines of verse 13.

The NIV is here indicating the authorities for their departure from the Masoretic text.

The Holman Christian Standard Bible (2003) inserts into the text at verse 13 without brackets or parentheses, “The LORD is faithful in all his words, and gracious in all His actions.” This is footnoted,

One Hb ms, DSS, LXX, Syr; most Hb mss omit The LORD is faithful in all His word and gracious in all His actions.

The revised and renamed Christian Standard Bible (2017) reads the same in both text and footnote as the 2003 edition, except it says “some Hb mss.” rather than the more accurate “most Hb mss” of the earlier edition.

Finally, the ESV has in the text, in brackets,

[The LORD is faithful in all his words
and kind in all his works.]

The footnote reads: “These two lines are supplied by one Hebrew manuscript, Septuagint, Syriac (compare Dead Sea Scrolls).” I am not sure why they merely said “compare Dead Sea Scrolls” instead of listing it as one of the witnesses.

Let us hear the conclusion of the matter: based on solid evidence from ancient translations, and one Hebrew manuscript that pre-dates the next earliest by about 1,000 years, we can confidently affirm that these recent English translations—NIV, HCSB and ESV—were correct and fully justified in restoring the nun clause to its proper, original place in Psalm 145. Though accidently omitted by Hebrew scribes sometime after 70 A.D., the true original reading was not “lost,” but was providentially preserved in the Greek Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate and the Peshitta Syriac versions, which were used directly or in daughter translations by virtually the whole of professing Christendom from the first century to the Reformation. When the then-current form of the Hebrew text of Psalms was published (first printing: 1477) and then used by various translators to produce their versions in German, English, Spanish, etc., they followed the printed Hebrew authority at Psalm 145, and thereby reproduced its inadvertent omission of an original verse of that Psalm. Now these contemporary versions have restored the verse to its proper, original place.

One necessary deduction: it would be rationally impossible to claim that any version which lacks this verse could somehow nevertheless be a perfectly preserved, perfectly translated modern representation of the inspired original. I have specifically the KJV in mind, though the same would also apply to Luther’s Bible or the Reina-Valera 1602. Through no direct fault of their own, the KJV translators, like other translators before them, followed a defective form of the Hebrew text, and so at this particular spot, they cannot and do not fully and faithfully represent what must have been the reading of the original manuscript of Psalm 145, and therefore are neither inspired nor infallible.