All three psalms express a life of piety centered on torah: God’s law or instruction. Psalms 1 and 19, which like Psalm 119 draw on several poetic forms, also resemble Psalm 119 in theme (compare Psalm 1:2 with Psalm 119:15 Psalm 19:7 with Psalm 119:129-130). Mays, The Lord Reigns: A Theological Handbook to the Psalms, 129). By deliberately drawing from and referring to a variety of sacred texts, the Psalmist aims to express “a more comprehensive knowledge of God” (James L. While some claim that mixing forms in this way showed a lack of fresh insight and creativity on the part of the Psalmist, James Luther Mays argued that the mixture of forms is part of the point the Psalmist wants to make. Indeed, aspects of nearly every type of psalm can be found in Psalm 119, from hymn to thanksgiving to prayer for help. Patrick Miller describes Psalm 119:137-144 as a hybrid poem, combining “Praise of God’s law and prayer for help against oppression” (see his note on this passage in the HarperCollins Study Bible, 832). Stress and strain have caught up with me, In Hebrew, each line of Sunday’s Psalm reading begins with the letter tsade: צ tsadeīecause my enemies have forgotten what you’ve said. In Psalm 119 the acrostic form is fully realized: the psalm consists of twenty-two stanzas, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, each stanza consisting of eight verses beginning with that letter. While the middle of the alphabet is missing, the beginning and end are represented, making it most likely that the original poem was damaged or altered in the course of its editing and transmission–as the division of this poem into two psalms in the Hebrew Bible, reflected in our Old Testament, already may indicate. This is apparent even in the partial acrostic in Pss 9-10 (a single psalm in the LXX and the Latin Vulgate). Sometimes, Hebrew poets play creatively with that order: for example, Psalm 34 skips waw and adds an additional pe at the end, so that while the twenty-two lines are preserved, the first, middle, and last letters of the acrostic spell out ‘aleph! But the point of the acrostic form remains completion. from the Judaean Shephelah.” BASOR 344 :5-46). Kyle McCarter, and Bruce Zuckerman, “An Abecedary of the Mid-Tenth Century b.c.e. The letters ‘ayin and pe switch places in Lam 2 3 4 and Ps 10–but that different sequence is also found in some ancient alphabet lists: for example, in the tenth-century BCE Tel Zayit Inscription discovered by my friend and colleague Ron Tappy (Ron Tappy, Marilyn Lundberg, P. The biblical acrostics may vary a bit from our expected alphabetical order. Sometimes, as in Psalm 119, successive sections or stanzas follow this alphabetical pattern (see also Ps 37 Lam 1 2 3 4). Sometimes this is done in successive lines, as in Psalms 9-10 25 34 111 112 145 and Proverbs 31:10-31. Unlike the acrostics with which we are familiar in English, where the first letters of successive lines spell out words or phrases, Hebrew acrostics use all twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet in order. However, this huge, sprawling text is also tightly structured. Those who have attempted to read through the entire psalm may also remember it as the dullest chapter in the Bible! There is no clear sense of development in the poem from beginning to end–indeed, as Carroll Stuhlmueller observed, “One can start at the end and read the verses backward, and it makes equally good sense”(“Psalms” in HarperCollins Bible Commentary, ed.
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Psalm 119 feels like the Psalm that doesn’t end! This is the longest chapter in the Bible–indeed, at a whopping 176 verses, it is longer than many biblical books: by comparison, Jonah has only 48 verses, and Ephesians only 155. Which brings us to the Psalm for this Sunday, Psalm 119:137-144. Repeat as long as you can stand it–which I warn you for a toddler can be a LONG time! Some people started singin’ it, not knowin’ what it was, and they’ll continue singin’ it forever just because it is the song that doesn’t end.
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This is the song that doesn’t end, yes it goes on and on, my friend.
PSALM 119:3 ARAMAIC BIBLE IN PLAIN ENGLISH PLUS
When our guys were small, a favorite television program was “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along,” which always ended with ventriloquist Sheri Lewis, joined by her puppets Lamb Chop, Charley Horse, and Hush Puppy plus a chorus of children, singing “The Song That Doesn’t End”: