Language Studies

Aramaic Thoughts

Digging into the Peshitta! - Part 4

Verse 4 in Hebrew reads, "YHWH has sworn and will not change his mind, you are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek." The Septuagint translation is strictly literal. The Peshitta gives an interesting variation in a couple of ways. First, it reads, "The Lord has sworn and shall not lie." While both the Hebrew nacham and the Greek metamelomai have a variety of uses, "lie" is not in the range of meaning of either word. In fact, for both the Greek and the Hebrew the primary sense is that of regretting or changing one’s mind. In addition, the Peshitta does not use this same verb in Hebrews 7:21, where the Psalm is quoted by the writer of Hebrews, but rather another verb (gadal) that also means to lie.

The second interesting difference in the Peshitta is that it says "you are a priest forever in the likeness of Melchizedek." The word "likeness" in Syriac is cognate to the Hebrew word used in Genesis 1:26 "let us make man in our image, according to our likeness." Again, this differs from both the Hebrew dibrah and the Greek taxis. These words both have the idea of order, kind, or sort. In fact, the Greek word is the root for the English word taxonomy, which is the scientific word used to indicate the classification of kinds.

Verse 5 in Hebrew reads, "The Lord at your right hand strikes kings in the day of his wrath." There is no significant difference from that statement in the renderings adopted by both the Septuagint and the Peshitta.

Verse 6 is more difficult to render from Hebrew into English. In a fairly literal fashion, it says, "He will judge the nations. He will fill the corpses. He will strike the head over many lands (or: much land)." The Septuagint renders it, "He shall judge among the nations. He will fill up corpses. He will crush the heads of many on the earth." In both the Hebrew and in the Septuagint, the verb rendered "strike" or "crush" is the same as the verb so rendered in verse 5. This is not so with the Peshitta. Instead it reads, "He will judge the nations and he will fill up corpses, and he will cut off the head of many in the earth."

Verse 7 in Hebrew reads, "From the brook in the way he will drink. Therefore, he will lift up the head." The Septuagint renders it quite literally. The Peshitta makes two small changes in the last clause by rendering it, "on this account his head shall be lifted up." It makes the verb passive (it is active in both the Greek and the Hebrew), and he adds the possessive pronoun to "head" where none such exists in either the Hebrew or the Greek. It represents, therefore, an attempt to render the verse more comprehensible to the reader.

This psalm includes just about all of the possible difficulties for the interpreter of Hebrew poetry. For one thing, Hebrew poetry is terse. In Hebrew prose, there is a small word, never translated, that is put before the object of the verb to indicate that the object follows. The word almost never appears in poetry, sometimes making it ambiguous as to which is the subject and which is the object. We will continue with this next time.

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