Psalm 145 - The "Missing Verse"

The "Missing Verse"

Psalm 145 is an alphabetic acrostic, the initial letter of each verse being the Hebrew alphabet in sequence. (For this purpose, the usual Hebrew numbering of verse 1, which begins with the title, "A Psalm of David", is ignored in favor of the non-Hebrew numbering which treats verse 1 as beginning ארוממך (Aromimkhaw, "I will exalt You"). But there is no verse beginning with the letter nun (נ), which would come between verses 13 and 14. A very common supposition is that there had been such a verse but it was omitted by a copyist's error. If so, that error must have occurred very early. By the 3rd century of the Christian era, Rabbi Johanan Ha-Nappah is quoted in the Talmud (b. Berachot 4b) as asking why is there no verse in Psalm 145 beginning with nun, and the explanation is given (presumably by the same Rabbi Johanan) that the word "fallen" (נפלה, nawflaw) begins with nun, as in the verse of Amos 5:2 ("Fallen is the Maiden of Israel, she shall arise nevermore"), and thus it is incompatible with the uplifting and universal theme of the Psalm. The explanation may not satisfy modern readers (it did not satisfy Rabbi David Kimhi of the 13th century ), but it demonstrates that the absence of a verse beginning with that letter was noticed and was undisputed even in antiquity.

However, the Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate (which is largely based on the Septuagint), the Syriac Peshitta, and the Dead Sea Scrolls (11QPs-ɑ)(which shows some affinity with the Septuagint, e.g., the inclusion of a 151st Psalm) all provide a verse at this point which commences (in Hebrew) with nun—נֶאֱמָן "Faithful is YHVH in all His ways, and merciful in all His works" (Hebrew: "נאמן אלוהים בדבריו וחסיד בכל מעשיו"). This verse is now inserted in the appropriate line (sometimes numbered "verse 13b") in several Christian versions of the Bible including the New Revised Standard, the New American, the Today's English Version, the Moffat, and others. However, not everyone is convinced that this nun verse is authentic. It is, except for the first word, identical to verse 17 (צ) ("Righteous is YHVH in all His ways...."). These ancient versions all have other departures from the traditional Hebrew text which make them imperfect evidence of the original text; for example, the Dead Sea Scrolls version ends every verse in Psalm 145 with "Blessed be YHVH and blessed is His name forever and ever." And no such nun verse is found in other important ancient translations from the Hebrew - the Aramaic Targum, the Greek versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion - nor is such a verse quoted anywhere in the Talmud. Additionally, there are other alphabetic acrostics in the Book of Psalms - specifically Psalms 25 and 34—that also imperfectly follow the alphabet. It is plausible that a nun verse was not part of the original text or if it was then it was completely lost many centuries before any of these other sources originated, and that this nun verse was independently arrived at, by various copyists and translators, who, when they noticed the absence of such a verse in their Hebrew manuscript, assumed it was the result of an error by a previous copyist, and each set about to contrive a replacement verse in the simplest and least objectionable way, coincidentally arriving at the same result.