"The Book of Psalms" by Robert Alter: First Impressions

Robert Alter. The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary. New York: Norton, 2007.

Robert Alter is well-known among biblical scholars. A number of his books and essays are valued for their attention to the artistry of biblical poetry and narrative. A select bibliography with students of ancient Hebrew poetry in mind is offered below.

Alter’s previous translation and commentary of 1-2 Samuel, Genesis, and the entire Torah showcase his gifts as a translator and exegete. His translation and commentary on the Psalms follows suit. One can hardly read a page of Alter’s translation work without noting that at this and that point the rendering he offers surpasses all previous in fidelity to the sense and poetic shape of the original.

This review has two parts. In this post I discuss aspects of Alter’s introduction to his translation and commentary. In a following post, I go on to demonstrate by way of example that no translation, not even Alter’s, should be seen as the final word on the subject. There is always more to learn.

Alter’s introduction to his translation is cursory in its first two sections (Historical Contexts and Assembling the Book). His comments nevertheless situate his work in the mainstream of historical-critical scholarship. He is careful to note that Davidic authorship of the some of the psalms cannot be ruled out, but cannot be affirmed with confidence either.

The next section, The Poetry of the Psalms, summarizes the formal system of biblical poetry. Alter, and Benjamin Harshav on whom he depends, describe, I’m convinced, a fundamentally solid working model of how ancient Hebrew poetry works.

There are prosodic issues that Alter does not adequately address. In particular, the parts or “versets” of his lines contain from two to four beats, such that his division of lines into parts sometimes seems arbitrary. Why posit a two-beat verset in one case, and a four-beat verset in another? Alter does not explain.

I argue elsewhere that enjambment is more common in ancient Hebrew poetry than usually thought.[1] Verse Alter scans as a single 4+4 line I construe as two 2+2 lines, and I posit two part lines of 3+3 at the longest. A third verset of 2 or 3 beats may be joined to a core structure of 2+2, 3+2, 2+3, or 3+3.

When that is done, an interesting thing happens. Ancient Hebrew poetry can be shown to adhere to a length rule whereby poems and subcomponents of poems contain, as a rule, 12, 18, 22, 28, or 36 lines. If this is true, the phenomenon Alter calls interlinear parallelism turns out to be more common than usually thought.

I don’t expect my text model to catch on any time soon. I would be happy if the Harshav-Alter approach was more widely accepted. A number of other text models of ancient Hebrew poetry are well-entrenched, and those who follow them are not likely to switch horses. A majority of scholars refuse to touch the topic. More precisely, they approach the topic from a strictly intuitive point of view.

Alter goes on to comment on the Psalms’ use of figurative language. He notes that the figures the psalmists employ are traditional enough to create a sense of familiarity among its first intended users, but fresh enough to surprise and hold the attention.

In The Challenge of Translating the Psalms, Alter notes that “The various modern English versions are only occasionally eloquent and sometimes altogether flat-footed and, more often than not, arythmic” (xxix). Alter sets out to do better. He seeks to capture in some way the “terrific rhythmic compactness” of the original. This is a laudable goal. My own attempts to do likewise are in evidence on this blog. 

He also chooses to reproduce examples of syntactic inversion from source to target language. This is problematic, because in ancient Hebrew poetry, inversion occurs for two distinct reasons. Sometimes, as in ancient Hebrew prose, inversion serves to front an element of a clause or other construction in order to mark the element as the topic-in-context. Other elements of the construction are simultaneously downranked to the status of background information. On other occasions, inversion has another function. It is a poetic trope known as chiasm, whose function is to more tightly knit together two adjacent versets, lines, or larger prosodic units. In the latter case, a change in topic is not being signaled.[2]

Alter fails to take into account the complexity of ancient Hebrew poetry’s texture in this respect. The result is that he treats all cases of inversion as if they were examples of topic-fronting. Syntactic inversion is one way of signaling topic-fronting in English, so when syntactic inversion signals that in Hebrew, it is appropriate to duplicate it in English. Not so in the case of chiasm. Admittedly, sometimes chiasm can be mimicked in English without giving mixed signals to the reader. But often, the use of syntactic inversion in mimickry of an underlying chiasm gives precisely the wrong signal to the reader. It suggests a contrast in focus when there is none.

Alter strives to exclude inappropriate theological language, no matter how traditional, from his translation of the Psalms. This is absolutely necessary if the psalms are to be read on their own terms. He also seeks to maintain the concreteness of the figures in the original. Once again, this is a laudable goal, and Alter succeeds where others have failed.

In the final section of the introduction, he treats The Text of the Psalms. Here Alter is delightfully contrarian in his willingness to translate based on small-scale emendations where these seem both reasonable and necessary. But an incomprehensible text is not emended if a text-critically plausible emendation thereof does not come to mind.[3]

In my next post, I go over an example of Alter’s translation efforts with a fine-toothed comb. But I wish to reiterate what I said at the beginning of this post: Alter’s translation surpasses all previous in terms of faithfulness to the original on many individual points. For that reason alone, the volume deserves to be on the shelf of every discerning Bible reader.

Select Bibliography of Robert Alter

The Art of Biblical Poetry"> (New York: Basic Books, 1985; Fr. trans. L'art de la poésie biblique [tr. Christine Leroy and Jean-Pierre Sonnet; Le livre et le rouleau; Bruxelles: Lessius, 2003]); “The Characteristics of Ancient Hebrew Poetry,” in The Literary Guide to the Bible (ed. Robert Alter and Frank Kermode; Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1987; Fr. trans. Encyclopédie littéraire de la Bible [tr. Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat; Paris: Bayard, 2003]) 611-624; “Psalms,” in idem, 244-62; The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel (New York: Norton, 1999); The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (New York: Norton, 2004); The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (New York: Norton, 2007).

---

[1] For discussion and bibliography, see my programmatic essay here, due to be published in ZAW next year in condensed form.

[2] The formulation of the problem is my own. Nonetheless, I wish to thank Robert Holmstedt for supplying me with forthcoming work that relates to this and related issues, in particular: “Word Order and Information Structure in Ruth and Jonah: A Generative-Typological Analysis,” Journal of Semitic Studies (forthcoming).

[3] I discuss these matters at length in my review entitled “Taking Stock of Biblia Hebraica Quinta” (accepted for publication, due out next year).

Comments

[Frank]

Alter avoids the word "sin" in his translation. I don't know that I'd categorize that as a sin, but I do think it is a mistake, at least :-) Here's why. In Psm. 51, for example, David thinks that his error or crime or wrong-doing is first and foremost an issue between him and the Almighty.

Now, when we turn on the television and hear that someone has committed a crime, we think of that as being a legal and perhaps political thing. But those words have no inherent theological meaning. By eliminating the word "sin," Alter's translations fail to use one of the few words we have left to describe what wrong-doing, from the Bible's point of view, actually is.

[JohnFH]

Frank,

you have a wonderful blog. Thanks for commenting here.

I agree with you that we should continue to salvage the word "sin" in English. But it's worth thinking about the fact that words for "sin" and "transgression" in Hebrew are used in familial, legal and political settings, not just in the context of human behavior vis-a-vis God.

That's true in the NT as well. Take the famous passage in Luke 15:18. Different prepositions are used in Greek - "towards" and "before" - but REB, NAB, and NJB are right, I think, to translate:

Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.

Except that I don't talk that way. In biblical terms, I sin against my wife and children often enough, but I am more likely to say that my behavior is offensive to them, or that I offend them on occasion, or that I am guilty of cruelty.

The goal is to find language for sin in translation that resonates
in all spheres of life, One way to do that is to re-import words like "sin" and "transgression" into non-religious spheres, but that is easier said than done.

[Frank Bellizzi]

John, thanks for your response and for your kind words. Points taken.

Does Alter use "sin" anywhere in his translation? By the way, I am much more in sympathy with his omission of "soul."

[JohnFH]

I think he might have avoided "sin" entirely. Personally, I wouldn't go that far.

[Martin Jacobs]

John,

I picked up Alter's "Psalms" to read on holiday recently, and I'm most of the way through. I have to say that it's addictive, to such an extent that I'm now scouring the web for commentaries on commentaries. Having a very rudimentary knowledge of Biblical Hebrew, I find it fascinating to read Alter's translation and commentary and comparing it with my limited knowledge of other translations (principally the NIV), whilst noting the obvious shortcomings of any translation.

One idea that's scratching away on the inside of my head is the way that language is not just the vehicle that transports our thoughts to others, but it actually shapes our perceptions of reality. For example, Alter notes that it is perfectly acceptable to switch from first to third person (Psalm 91:1-2) without causing any panic in the self-identity department. I also get the feeling that tenses we're familiar with (past, present, future) might not be as fixed in Biblical Hebrew as we suppose, but I could be drawing a long bow.

This leads to a bigger, theological question that Alter strenuously avoids - how do the perceptions that the Biblical Authors had of God agree or vary with ours?

Kind regards, Martin

[JohnFH]

Hi Martin,

If you like translations that try harder than most to be faithful to the diction of the original, you might try some of my own work:

http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2007/10/psalm-5110-21-a.html (work back from there for the whole psalm)

http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2007/08/a-psalm-to-lear.html

Finally, what a fine blog you have. Since you have an interest in the history of monotheism, you might enjoy this post and the discussion following:

http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2009/11/the-ten-commandments-a-history-of-monotheism-in-miniature.html

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