May 21, 2017: Day 141 – Psalm 141

Wow, I have a lot of making up to do.  I guess this is what happens when you go away for a week with study leave.  But I kept up with things while I was in San Antonio, it was only when I got back that things slacked off.  Okay, back to Psalm 141.

This Psalm has to be paired with James 3 and especially those parts that talk about the tongue and the instrument that it can be for both good and evil.  Look at vs.3 in Psalm 141 and you will hear vestiges of James 3.  Well, actually, that should be vice-versa.  If you read James 3 you will hear Psalm 141:3 sounding loud and clear.  There will be a series of psalms coming up, including this one, where we can imagine David in a cave as a he is hiding out from Saul and calling out to the Lord to deliver him.  

We also find in this psalm, specifically verses 5-7 a part of the manuscript that is uncertain.  The oldest manuscripts that we have do not contain very legible portions of these verses.  As a result the scribes, and even us today, have to come up with a best guess for what is written because the actual characters are hard to distinguish.  I hope it doesn’t put anyone in crisis to know that we do not have the original text as King David wrote it.  Our earliest manuscripts were written in the middle ages, so probably 1,500 years or more after David wrote them.  Even if we take the Dead Sea Scrolls and say they were 1st century manuscripts then the writings are still not the original but at least 6 or 7 hundred years old by then.  The Word of God has been passed down from generation to generation.  I’m okay with that.  In fact, I think it is my responsibility, read our responsibility, to continue to pass it down.