4. Acrostic Psalms
An acrostic psalm is one where the first letters of
consecutive verses (in Hebrew) make up a word, or the alphabet.
The Hebrew alphabet consists of 22 letters, which may be found
listed as headings in Psalm 119.
Psalms 9, 10: These psalms form a broken
acrostic of which 7 letters are missing.
Psalms 25, 34: Of the Hebrew texts, the
Companion Bible says: “The letter Waw is omitted and the
letter Pe is duplicated (in vv. 16 and 22 of each psalm). The last
verse is thus, in each case, made to stand out prominently by itself.”
Possibly these two psalms were originally complete alphabetical
acrostics.
Psalms 37, 111, 112, 119: These are complete
acrostic psalms (the last being an eight-fold acrostic).
Psalm 145: The letter Nun is
missing in the Hebrew text. Many of the ancient translations, a text from
Qumran, one Hebrew manuscript, and the Greek and Syriac texts insert an
additional verse between 13 and 14 which begins with this letter. It reads
“Faithful is the Lord in all His words and holy in all His works”
(RSV, NEB, LXX).
Quite probably subsequent editing has destroyed the perfect
acrostic arrangement of several of the above psalms. Other acrostics are to be
found in Proverbs 31:10-31 and Lamentations 1, 2, 3, and 4 (chapters 2, 3, and 4
have two letters transposed).
The purpose of these alphabetical psalms was that they might
be an aid to memory, in an age when written copies of the psalms (or any other
Bible portions) were few and far between, and when quite a number of ordinary
people were not able to read. (See Booker and Haltom, The Lamentations of
Jeremiah, pp. 30,31.)