The Septuagint Psalter and the Numbering
The Orthodox Psalter is the Septuagint (LXX) Psalter, and its numbering differs from that of the Hebrew (Masoretic) text used by most Western Bibles. The two agree for Psalms 1–8 and 148–150, but between them the Greek runs one number behind because of two places where the Hebrew splits a psalm the Greek keeps whole and two places where the Greek splits a psalm the Hebrew keeps whole. This file sets out the concordance precisely and explains why the Church follows the Greek.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox
The Church’s Psalter Is the Septuagint
The Old Testament of the Orthodox Church is the Septuagint, the Greek translation made by Jewish scholars in Alexandria from the third century B.C. onward, and the Psalter is no exception. The Septuagint was the Bible of the apostolic Church: the great majority of the New Testament’s Old Testament citations follow the Greek, and the Fathers, the councils, and the liturgical books all read and quote the psalms in their Septuagint form (see The Orthodox Scriptures; Pentiuc, The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Oxford, 2014). For the Psalter this is not a matter of textual preference only but of the liturgy’s very words: every psalm-verse embedded in the services — the prokeimena, the refrains, the antiphons, the versicles — is Septuagint, and the numbering by which the Typikon appoints psalms is Septuagint. An Orthodox service book that read “Psalm 51” for the Miserere would be unintelligible against the rubrics, which appoint “Psalm 50.”
The repository convention accordingly follows the Septuagint numbering throughout, giving the Hebrew/Masoretic number in parentheses where the two differ (as the hub essay does: “Psalm 103 (104),” “Psalm 50 (51)”; see Orthodoxy: The Daily Cycle). Understanding the office requires understanding the relationship between the two numbering systems, which is exact and mappable.
Why the Numbers Differ
The Greek and Hebrew Psalters contain the same 150 psalms (the Greek adds a 151st; see below) and the same total body of text, but they divide that text at four points differently. The difference is not random: it comes from four editorial decisions, two on each side, about where one psalm ends and the next begins.
- The Hebrew joins as one psalm what the Greek divides into two, in two places (near the end of the book).
- The Greek joins as one psalm what the Hebrew divides into two, in two places (nearer the beginning).
Because the first divergence — the Greek’s joining of Hebrew 9 and 10 into a single Psalm 9 — comes early, the Greek runs one number behind the Hebrew through most of the Psalter, and the later divergences bring the two back into alignment by the end, so that both close with Psalm 150.
The Concordance in Full
The mapping is as follows (LXX = Septuagint/Orthodox number; MT = Hebrew/Masoretic number):
| LXX (Orthodox) | MT (Hebrew) | Relationship |
|---|---|---|
| 1–8 | 1–8 | Identical |
| 9 | 9 + 10 | LXX joins two Hebrew psalms into one |
| 10–112 | 11–113 | LXX is one behind the Hebrew |
| 113 | 114 + 115 | LXX joins two Hebrew psalms into one |
| 114 | 116:1–9 | LXX splits one Hebrew psalm… |
| 115 | 116:10–19 | …into two |
| 116–145 | 117–146 | LXX is one behind the Hebrew |
| 146 | 147:1–11 | LXX splits one Hebrew psalm… |
| 147 | 147:12–20 | …into two |
| 148–150 | 148–150 | Identical |
Read as a narrative: the two agree through Psalm 8. At Psalm 9 the Greek treats as a single acrostic poem the two psalms the Hebrew numbers 9 and 10 (the Hebrew 9–10 do in fact form a single alphabetic acrostic, which supports the Greek division), and from that point the Greek is one behind. Near the book’s end the Greek “catches up”: it joins Hebrew 114 and 115 into its Psalm 113, which would put it two behind, but it then re-splits Hebrew 116 into its Psalms 114 and 115, restoring the difference to one; and finally it splits Hebrew 147 into its Psalms 146 and 147, closing the gap entirely, so that both traditions end at Psalm 150 (the standard concordance; see Pietersma, trans., A New English Translation of the Septuagint: Psalms, Oxford, 2007, introduction; Pentiuc, The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition, 2014, on the LXX Psalter). Individual verse numbers also differ throughout, chiefly because the Greek and Hebrew count the superscription (“A Psalm of David…”) differently — the Greek generally includes it in the verse count.
The Practical Rule
For nearly the whole Psalter — from Psalm 10 to Psalm 145 in the Greek — the working rule is simple: the Orthodox number is one less than the Western number. The famous psalms of the office illustrate it:
- The great penitential psalm, “Have mercy on me, O God,” is Ps 50 in Orthodox use, Ps 51 in Western.
- The Vespers opening, “Bless the Lord, O my soul,” is Ps 103 / Ps 104.
- The Matins psalm “The heavens declare the glory of God” is Ps 18 / Ps 19.
- The Good Shepherd psalm is Ps 22 / Ps 23.
- “By the rivers of Babylon” is Ps 136 / Ps 137.
Only outside the range 10–145 does the one-behind rule not apply: Psalms 1–8 and 148–150 carry the same number in both, and the four “seam” psalms (LXX 9, 113, 114–115, 146–147) require the table above.
Why the Church Keeps the Greek Numbering
The Church keeps the Septuagint numbering for the same reason she keeps the Septuagint text: it is the form in which she received the psalms from the apostles and the Fathers, the form in which her prayers are written, and the form her whole liturgical tradition presupposes. The question of the text — whether the Greek or the Hebrew better preserves the original, and how the Church weighs the two — is treated fully, and without polemic, in the Scriptures collection; the Orthodox position gives the Septuagint priority as the Church’s canonical text while acknowledging the value of the Hebrew (see The Orthodox Scriptures; METHODOLOGY §4.2). For the office, the point is practical and settled: when a rubric appoints “the Sixth Kathisma” or “Psalm 140 at ‘Lord, I have cried,’” it means the Septuagint psalms in the Septuagint numbering, and every Orthodox Psalter — Greek, Slavonic, or English — is numbered accordingly.
See Also
- The Kathismata, Psalm 151, and the Nine Odes — the further structure of the Orthodox Psalter
- Which Psalms Anchor Which Services — the numbering in liturgical use
- The Orthodox Scriptures — the Septuagint and the LXX/Masoretic question
- Orthodoxy: Holy Scripture — the canon and the Greek Old Testament
References
- Pietersma, Albert, trans. A New English Translation of the Septuagint: The Psalms. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. (Introduction on the numbering and text of the LXX Psalter.)
- Pentiuc, Eugen J. The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
- The Psalter According to the Seventy. Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1974; rev. ed. (The standard English Orthodox Psalter, translated from the Septuagint.)
- A Psalter for Prayer. Trans. David James. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2011.