Acrostic – Psalm 111
Psalm 111
1 Praise the Lord!
I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart,
in the company of the upright, in the congregation.
2 Great are the works of the Lord,
studied by all who delight in them.
3 Full of splendor and majesty is his work,
and his righteousness endures forever.
4 He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered;
the Lord is gracious and merciful.
5 He provides food for those who fear him;
he remembers his covenant forever.
6 He has shown his people the power of his works,
in giving them the inheritance of the nations.
7 The works of his hands are faithful and just;
all his precepts are trustworthy;
8 they are established forever and ever,
to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness.
9 He sent redemption to his people;
he has commanded his covenant forever.
Holy and awesome is his name!
10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
all those who practice it have a good understanding.
His praise endures forever!
NOTE: Today’s commentary is by Dr. Kevin Watson, who is coming to Tulsa to become the Director of Academic Growth and Formation at the Tulsa Extension Site for Asbury Theological Seminary, as well as joining our staff at Asbury Church as Scholar-in-Residence. I wrote a post announcing and explaining this I wrote a post announcing and explaining this move.-Andrew
There are times when even the best translations of a poem lose some of the beauty and elegance of the original language.
Psalm 111 is an excellent example of this.
If you went line by line and wrote down the first letter of each line of Psalm 111 from the ESV, you would not get anything meaningful. It would be something like:
I
I
G
S
F
A
H
T
H
H
H
I
You get the point… The first letters of the English translation have no meaning or significance.
Psalm 111, however, is an alphabetic acrostic. An acrostic is a poem that uses the first letter to spell out a word or the alphabet. Here is an example of an acrostic:
Kevin’s
Election
Victory
Is
Next
This was used on campaign posters when I ran for student council President in Middle School, thanks to my dad’s creativity. (The above is not an example of prophecy. Despite my dad’s creativity, I lost the election.)
After the opening “Praise the Lord!” the first letter of each line is a letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
The English translation faithfully passes on the meaning of Psalm 111. It is a beautiful summary of God’s deliverance of his chosen people.
But acrostics are just about impossible to translate and so that lovely poetical detail is lost in all English translations of this Psalm.
This is one reason it is important for leaders in the church to study the languages the Scriptures were originally written in and use commentaries written by those who are experts in the original languages in their preparation to teach and preach the Scriptures.