The Art Of Hebrew Thinking

To the chief musician, a psalm of David Psalm 41:1 (Hebrew text)

Musician – In most of our English Bibles, this address is not counted as a verse.  That’s unfortunate because ignoring it sweeps aside a very important point about Hebrew thought.  David’s praise is directed to the chief musician (natsah).   We are confronted immediately by a particularly Hebraic point-of-view.  Natsah isn’t a noun.  It’s a verb that means “to lead, direct or oversee.”  In other words, this psalm (like so many others) is directed to someone whose purpose is his action.  His leading, directing and overseeing is the same as his existence.  What he does is who he is.  While the English translation suggests that this is a man who happens to be the chief musician or choir director, that isn’t the way the Hebrew expresses this thought.  In Hebrew, there is no difference at all between the leading, directing and overseeing and the one who leads, directs and oversees.  He is what he does.

Of course, this changes the way we understand “chief musician.”  All we really know is that this directing person leads.  But this implies something else, something that helps us recognize how different Hebrew thought is.  It implies that David’s words are much more like a musical score than they are like meditations.  You probably always recognized that most psalms are really hymns of praise.  We have the words today, but we no longer have the notes.  Nevertheless, we need to reflect for a moment on the fact that these were intended to be set to music.  Why is this important?  Because it tells us something about the way Hebrew works.

Greek thinking is like architecture.  Greek thought proceeds from one foundational proposition to another, building one step of an argument or examination on top of a previous step.  The aim of Greek thinking is to produce a well-ordered edifice of logical development, a construction that moves from point to point until an inevitable conclusion is reached.  The paradigm of Greek thought is geometry, a system that moves from a few basic but indubitable axioms toward a plethora of proofs based solely on logical deductions from those axioms.  Greeks build thought-buildings.  To do so, they spend an enormous amount of energy securing the foundations.

Hebrew thought isn’t about construction techniques.  Hebrew thought is like a great symphony where the simple theme is repeated again and again in artistic and creative variations.  Hebrew thought proceeds along the lines of emotional involvement, psychic development and artistic flair.  Hebrew thought is more like hearing the 1812 Overture than it is like examining Cantor’s theorem.  While Greek thought is about the abstract and eternal, Hebrew thought is about the realities of the present life-world.  Hebrew thought transports us into the midst of the orchestra where we are confronted, overwhelmed, bathed in the sheer beauty of the musicians’ movements.  The reason that David’s praises are to be set to music is that music is essential and integral to the Hebrew view of reality.  In Hebrew, you and I are players in this great symphony of God.  We are not sitting in the audience observing, measuring and critiquing the performance.  We are the performance.

The Gospels attempt to capture this present existential involvement as well.  When we read the words in English, the translators routinely convert present tense Greek verbs into past tense.  Why?  Because in English it isn’t proper grammar to say, “And Jesus saying.”  We convert this Greek present tense to “And Jesus said.”  But the writers of the Gospels used present tense in order to involve the reader as if the reader were actually there at the moment of the event.  When we convert the tense to the past, we make ourselves observers, not participants.  We make the text more Greek than it already is, and in the process, we remove one more layer of its Hebraic worldview.

What would happen if you began to read Scripture as if it were music?  What would you hear if the words were like the lyrics of a song, repeating the familiar chorus over and over in a thousand variations?  Who would you hear singing?  What would happen if you listened instead of simply converting the linguistic characters on the page into mental constructions?

“Hear, O Israel” is the opening onslaught of the world’s greatest musical score.

Topical Index:  musician, natsah, direct, lead, oversee, Hebrew thinking, Psalm 41:1