Barrick, "Early Versions & Psalm 23"
ETS -- November 2005
© William D. Barrick 2005
3
Babylon." Such an interpretive heading is an obvious post-exilic addition replacing the traditional Hebrew heading, "A psalm of
David." It is possible that the scribe for the Latin Codex Amiatinus
9
created his heading for Psalm 23 on the instigation of the Syriac
psalm heading.
1b: LXX interprets the 1cs pronominal suffix as an object suffix rather than a possessive genitive. Charles and Emilie Briggs
argue that the parallelism requires just such a treatment.
10
It is followed in this by the Peshitta and both versions of the Vulgate. The
Gallican Psalter's reget means "he guides" as compared to the Hebrew Psalter's pascit, meaning "he pastures" or "he feeds." Such a
translation merely focuses on one particular aspect of shepherding--perhaps because verses 2 and 3 focus on the shepherd's task in
leading or guiding his sheep. The Peshitta's nr`yny is related to the Hebrew root
h[r
. The Greek, Syriac, and Latin all substitute an
equivalent of
ynwda
for
hwhy
as the divine title. Paraphrastic and interpretive elements arise in the Targum of the Psalms: "It is (
ty
)
YHWH who fed (
!zd
from
!wz
) his people in the wilderness."
11
One of the themes in the paraphrastic expansion of this psalm is that of
the wilderness experience of Israel. Note, also, the references to manna and quails in verse 3 and manna in verse 5. While we readily
acknowledge the paraphrastic and interpretive nature of the Targums, we sometimes ignore the reasons for such expansions. It is not
too much to grant the Targumists their desire to make the Hebrew Bible "as intelligible as possible to people with a social, cultural and
linguistic context different from that in which the Bible was written."
12
Therefore, the Targum on the Psalms tends to lean toward
interpreting the text for readers. Sometimes this method is consistent with the Jewish hermeneutic called drash. Psalm 23 in the
Targum reflects a translator's reflection on Israel's wilderness experience.
13
1c: MT negates the verb while LXX turns the negation into a substantival concept: "nothing" (ouvde,n), a translation decision
that the Vulgate chose to follow. Although the Syriac ties the negative to the verb, like the MT, the addition of
mdMw
indicates an
approach similar to that of LXX. The Targum exhibits this same rendering by its use of
alwk
. Continuing the interpretive application
to Israel's wilderness experience, the Targum reads, "they did not lack (
wrsx
, 3cpl) anything."
9
See Ernst Würthwein, Der Text des Alten Testaments: Eine Einführung in die Biblia Hebraica, 4th ed. (Stuttgart, Germany: Württembergische
Bibelanstalt, 1973), 204-5 (Plate 43): psalmus David vox ecclesiae post raptismum.
10
Charles Augustus Briggs and Emilie Grace Briggs, The Book of Psalms, 2 vols., International Critical Commentary (reprint; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark
Ltd., 1987), 1:211.
11
arbdmb hym[l
might mean "while his people were in the wilderness."
12
Josep Ribera, "The Targum: From Translation to Interpretation," in The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context, ed. by D. R. G. Beattie
and M. J. McNamara, JSOTSS 166 (Sheffield, Eng.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 218.
13
Moshe J. Bernstein, "A Jewish Reading of Psalms: Some Observations on the Method of the Aramaic Targum," in The Book of Psalms: Composition
and Reception, ed. by Peter W. Flint and Patrick D. Miller, Jr., Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 94 (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005), 495.