PSALM 76:10 AND THE EBLA TABLETS

In 1964, Italian archeologists began excavating at a tell that turned out to be the site of ancient Ebla, a long-sought city conquered by the Babylonians around 2250 C.C. In 1975, they uncovered the archive room in the royal palace of Ebla containing a number of cuneiform tablets dating from about 2580-2250 B.C. Syrian officials have continued to deny any reports that these tablets have a bearing on biblical accounts, no doubt for political reasons.

Among other things, the tablets contained:

    most of the names of the biblical patriarchs, demonstrating that they were of ancient origin,

    a story similar to that of the Garden of Eden,

    a list of five cities in the Dead Sea area (including Sodom and Gomorrah) given in exactly the same order as in Genesis 14,

    and the use of ya(h) as a prefix or suffix of many personal names, suggesting that the name of their god was Yahweh.

But perhaps the greatest future contribution to biblical scholarship will come from a consideration of the close similarity between the language in which the tablets were written and the early Hebrew language. Mitchell Dahood, the Jesuit scholar and world expert on Ebla felt that this similarity might be utilized to give us a better understanding of some obscure and ancient Hebrew words found in the Old Testament whose meaning may have been misunderstood by later Jews. Using his findings, he published a three-volume commentary on the Psalms complete with a brand new translation based on similarities between the two languages.

Undoubtedly, most of these insights will not pass the test of time, and to date no major Bible translation has adopted any but a few of them. Nonetheless, it is good to keep an open mind on the subject. After all, it took a while after the Dead Sea scrolls were published before their OT texts were even considered as valuable evidence for variant readings in the Hebrew text.

I will highlight just one of Dahood's proposals, this one in regard to Psalms 76:10. But first, let's review a few standard English translations of this verse:

    Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain. (KJV)

    Surely the wrath of men shall praise thee; the residue of wrath thou wilt gird upon thee. (RSV)

    Human wrath serves only to praise you, when you bind the last bit of your wrath around you. (NRSV)

    Surely the wrath of man shall praise you; the remnant of wrath you will put on like a belt. (ESV)

    Man's wrath only adds to your glory; the survivors of your wrath you will draw like a girdle around you. (Jerusalem Bible)

    Surely your wrath against mankind brings you praise and the survivors of your wrath are restrained. (NIV) An alternative reading is given in a footnote: “Surely the wrath of mankind brings you praise, and with the reminder of wrath you arm yourself.”

    For all her fury Edom shall confess thee, and the remnant left in Hamath shall dance in worship. (NEB)

The translators' footnote to TEV states that “verse 10 in Hebrew is unclear.” And Kselman says that this verse “is very difficult.” Tanner agrees with this statement in saying, “Unfortunately, the [text of the] verse is either corrupt or has an ancient meaning that is lost to the modern reader...Verse 10, one of the most striking sayings in the Psalter, creates some problems of detail by its very boldness. But most of our translations agree on the first line.” That last fact can be seen in the translations listed above.

The one exception appears to be the New English Bible. What these translators have done is is to emend the Hebrew word 'adam (“men”) to 'edom (“Edom”) instead. Tanner's comment on this move is: “The change is logical but hard to substantiate from the text of the MT [i.e. the standard Hebrew text].” Therefore we would probably be wise to ignore it.

The problem with this verse is basically twofold: (1) The first half of the verse can be translated in a fairly straightforward manner, but its meaning is not really clear, and (2) the Hebrew of the second part of the verse is rather hard to translate to start with. Since the understanding of the second part is really quite dependent on the meaning of the first line in the verse, it is the first line on which one should concentrate.

Here are a few attempts to explain how human wrath can, in fact, lead to praise of God:

    A.A. Anderson suggests two possible ways in which this can be accomplished: “even the hostility of men can be made to serve the purposes of God (cf. Rom. 8:28), or...the enmity of men calls forth the punishment of God and this in turn becomes the reason for praising God.” Most commentators I have read appear to side with one or the other of these two possibilities.

    Dentan: “God turns even men's evil intentions to his own good purposes.”

    Allen: “Rebels against God will be forced to acknowledge his authority. He will use their very rebellion to enhance His glory.”

    Kidner: “This statement of God's providential control (to have its supreme demonstration at Calvary, cf. Acts 2:23) is the main thrust of the verse.”

    Or we could just follow Tanner's lead: “It is probably best to assume that the verse contributes to the theme of sovereignty of God without understanding the exact metaphors used.”

Into all of this confusion, Dahood stepped with his proposed solution. He began by saying that the first part of v. 10 makes no sense as it is generally translated because man's wrath cannot possibly praise God. (Of course, the comments above show that others have had little trouble making sense of it.) Therefore he turned to his knowledge of the Eblaite language to look for possible clarification. Thus, even though the Hebrew consonants hmt are always translated as “wrath,” he realized that in the vocabulary of Ebla, those same three letters can mean “women.” Therefore, he came up with the more understandable reading: “Indeed, women and men will praise you. The offspring of women will surround you.”

It will be interesting to see if any major translations in the future give serious consideration to Dahood's proposal. If even some of Dahood's many re-translations of the Hebrew text of Psalm based on the language of Ebla prove to be correct, the effect would be three-fold:

    It would demonstrate that the Psalms are much older than liberal scholars have stated.

    It would show the the text is not corrupt after all, but was accurately transmitted over the ages.

    We would be able to understanding the meaning much more clearly.

Only time will tell.