Wednesday Bible Study: Flunking the vocabulary test

Psalms 7 through 9 contain a few words of uncertain meaning. This serves to remind us that, of course, everything we read is a translation from a language that was long dead at the time the translation was made. Note that modern Hebrew is an attempt to resurrect Biblical Hebrew and of course that means it is also a kind of translation -- what the words mean today cannot really be what they meant in the 5th Century BC because the context is entirely different, and of course many words had to be invented for things that didn ' t exist then. Conversely, many things that did exist then no longer exist, so the words have either been adapted to other meanings or are simply unused. Regarding Psalm 7, the meaning of " shiggaion " is disputed.One source very confidently maintains" from the verb shagah, " to reel about through drink, " occurs in the title ofPsalms 7 . The plural form, shigionoth, is found inHabakkuk 3:1 . The word denotes a lyrical poem composed under strong mental emotion; a song of impassioned imagination accompanied with suitable music; a dithyrambic ode. " However,others are not so sure and provide a variety of guesses, including entirely different etymology. In Psalm 8, the " gittith " is apparently a particular type of stringed instrument, but it ' s exact nature is unknown. In Psalm 9, in the title " muth-labben " is thought to refer to the death of a person named Labben, in other words this is a funeral lament. The word " higgaion, " which appears coupl...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs