An Easter Egg hidden in Psalm 119
Wineskins in frost or smoke? Psalm 119:81-84
If I live long enough, I intend to write a book in defense of the Greek LXX Psalter. In short, my view is that the text of the psalms in Greek is generally more “original” than that of the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT). Just look at my blog titles and you will see several examples. I have a stack of another dozen situations where when faced with a major text variant, the Greek seems to reflect the intent of the author better than what we have in the Hebrew MT. When I write this book, I will include statistics. If I had to guess now, I would guess that 80% of the variants favor the Greek. But there are definitely situations where the Hebrew of the MT makes more sense. And this Easter/Pascha weekend, I present one such case in the heart of Psalm 119.
In my view, Psalm 119 is an amazing piece of Hebrew poetry. Sadly, in English nearly all of this gets lost in translation. Because of this, it can seem needlessly repetitive and without much skill. The opposite is the case in the Hebrew. Aside from being the longest psalm and the longest chapter in the Bible, Psalm 119 is a 176 verse chiastic acrostic. The 176 verses are in groups of 8 verses for each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet (8x22=176). So verses 1-8 begin with the letter A (aleph). 9-16 all begin with the letter B (bet). Etcetera. This makes the psalm easier to memorize. Instead of a single 176 verse psalm, you are now dealing with 22 small psalms. The chiasm within the psalm (A-B-C-D-E-F-E-D-C-B-A structure) is on a massive scale. The crossing point is right in the middle where you would expect it (verses 81 -96 - letters caph and lamed). It is in this middle section where the speaker pours out his heart to the Lord for salvation. Our focus today is on the first 4 verses of this section (vss 81-84):
My soul faints for your salvation;
For your word I have waited expectantly.
My eyes fail in looking for your word,
saying “When will you comfort me?”
For I was like a wineskin in smoke (frost?);
Your statutes I did not forget.
How many days does your servant have?
When will you execute judgement on my persecutors?
So which is it? Smoke or frost? These nouns are about as opposite as fire and ice. Check that: they are opposite as fire and ice. Pull out your protestant Bible and you will see this word probably translated as “smoke”. But if you look at any translation from the Greek, you will see that the word is translated as frost or ice. That’s because the Greek word πάχνῃ very clearly is “frost” and nothing else.
But which of these words fits the context? Hands-down: “smoke”. The speaker likens himself to being hung - literally strung-up - over a smoldering fire as if he were an animal skin in the process of being tanned. Smoke tanning is an effective way to condition leather, especially for smaller animals whose hide make perfect containers for a “skin of wine”. New wineskins tanned over smoke are soft and expandable, perfect for fermenting new wine (cf. Jesus parable of the wineskins in Luke chapter 5). Here is a great YouTube video of the smoke tanning process:
While there is a common, everyday situation where a wineskin or leather bag would be hung over smoke, the case for frost is not as compelling. If we picture the speaker hanging in the frost, we would expect the surrounding verses to relate to being cold. But the context does not indicate frost. It does indicate the opposite: smoke and heat. The speaker is on the verge of fainting and his eyes are having problems working correctly. Both are conditions induced by smoke, not so much by frost. Anyway, why would the leather bag or wineskin be hanging out in the cold? What is the situation we are to imagine?
Before I get to the Easter egg (i.e., hidden gem), I would like to speculate on what happened here. I think that at some point in the Hebrew transmission of this Psalm (not the Greek), the Hebrew word for smoke (key-TOR קטר) was confused with the Hebrew word for cool/cold (ka-RAR קרר). You can see yourself that they share 2 Hebrew root letters. So I speculate that the individual(s) who translated this psalm from Hebrew, did a perfectly error-free translation, but using a scroll with an error. I will further speculate that the translators were men living in Alexandria Egypt. They were probably upper-class, urban, learned Jews who knew little about lower-class women’s work. Yes, just like in the YouTube video, this tanning work was probably done by women. Hence, they did not catch (or correct) the contextual problem with “frost”.
Psalm 119 (118 in the LXX) is central to Holy Friday worship in the Orthodox Church, particularly the Lamentations Service. The Church sees all sorts of Christological elements in this psalm, too many to cover here. But I would like to add to the inventory of messianic references, using the verses above. The image of a righteous victim being tortured by being hung-up is reminiscent of the crucifixion of Christ. It takes place in this long psalm right, smack in the middle - the X point of the poem. Its apex. But it goes beyond this. According to ancient sources, the Romans would sometimes build fires at the foot of the crucifixion, in order to compound the torture of the victim. There is no evidence of fire being started at the foot of Jesus’s cross; that’s not what I am arguing. I merely find it interesting that crucifixion victims were sometimes subject to the added pain of smoke to the eyes and lungs, which are already under tremendous pressure to function. It reminds me of the pious suppliant in Psalm 119 who is on the verge of fainting and can hardly see. Something to ponder for those of us meditating on Psalm 119 this Great and Holy Friday, A.D. 2025.
