Need education in the Septuagint - chapters and verses don't seem to match

Richard L Dickson

Ok, I have the ESV and the LLXXI open with the interlinear feature turned on, and am looking at Psalm 82.  After "A Psalm of Asaph" I can't even tell that it's the same psalm.  Obviously, I'm missing something.  Can anyone help educate me?

Thanks. 

MJ. Smith

Yes, for much of the psalms the Masoretic and LXX are off one on psalm numbers - Masoretic 8-9 are a single psalm 8 in the LXX which puts the numbering off.   Complete list of differences (I think)

Here is a table of the differences:

Greek (LXX) Numbering and Latin Vulgate (V) Numbering	Hebrew Numbering most English Numbering
1-8	1-8
9	9 and 10
10-112	11-113
113	114 and 115
114	116:1-9
115	116:10-19
116-145	117-146
146	147:1-11
147	147:12-20
148-150	148-150

 

Ken McGuire

It isn't the same Psalm.. There are, indeed, multiple ways of dividing the Psalms into 150. The Masoretic Text in Hebrew is the way that the ESV - and just about all English Translations now - numbers them. But there is another ancient way of numbering them, followed by the LXX and Vulgate.

Faithlife years ago spent a fair amount of time on various Bible versification databases, and because of this, I am able to make a Link Set between the ESV and the LXX Interlinear so I don't have to know this - instead the software moves them together automatically. From this, I can see that ESV Ps 82:1 is the same as LXX Ps 81:2 - the title is verse 1 in LXX...

DMB

Richard L Dickson said:

Ok, I have the ESV and the LLXXI open with the interlinear feature turned on

Just adding, I usually just try to pick 'one' as the leader (usually my english translation). Quite often I forget, using the MT (hebrew). However, I think just today, life was going haywire, where the Tanakh (english) was 3 verses behind the NRSV, which in-turn was matching the MT. Turned out to be 10-commandment versifying. It's interesting.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1168259#Comment_1168259

Jeremiah has some interesting discrepancies as well.

Richard L Dickson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1168252#Comment_1168252

Thanks so much for everyone's input.  This is a great nugget of information to know.  I had checked a few other psalm chapters and they matched up, so I figured it must be something that an original language scholar would know that I didn't.  So I guess you guys qualify as language scholars!!!

David Thomas

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1168252#Comment_1168252

MJ. Smith said:

Here is a table of the differences:

Greek (LXX) Numbering and Latin Vulgate (V) Numbering	Hebrew Numbering most English Numbering
1-8	1-8
9	9 and 10
10-112	11-113
113	114 and 115
114	116:1-9
115	116:10-19
116-145	117-146
146	147:1-11
147	147:12-20
148-150	148-150

Also may be helpful in discussions with those who speak/read other languages. I (an English speaker) used to teach a Sunday School class in Russian (via an interpreter). When I cut and pasted from Русский Синодальный Перевод (Russian Synodal Translation) (RST) | Logos Bible Software to make my PPT visuals I had to often mark the difference in chapter numbers because RST uses LXX numbering.