U-Turn
But You, Lord, remain forever, and Your name remains to all generations. Psalm 102:12 NASB
But – The lowly conjunction. Not spectacular, as words go. Relegated to expressing relations between other words, we hardly think of them as crucial connectors until someone uses them incorrectly. There’s a big difference between “law came through Moses but grace through Jesus Christ” and “law came through Moses and grace through Jesus Christ.” Unfortunately, Hebrew’s sparse vocabulary means that conjunctions often do multiple duties when it comes to proper translations. A preposition like וְ (wĕ) can cover a lot of ground. [Remember the transliteration is from German so it’s wĕ even though it’s pronounced like vĕ]
וְ is used very freely and widely in Hebrew, but also with much delicacy, to express relations and shades of meaning which Western languages would usually indicate by distinct particles. But in Hebrew particles such as אוֹ,אָז, אַךְ, אָכֵן, אוּלָם, בַּעֲבוּר, לְמַעַן, לָכֵן, etc., were reserved for cases in which special emphasis or distinctness was desired: their frequent use was felt instinctively to be inconsistent with the lightness and grace of movement which the Hebrew ear loved; and thus in AV, RV, words like or, then, but, notwithstanding, howbeit, so, thus, therefore, that, constantly appear, where the Hebrew has simply וְ (wā).[1]
וְ connects contrasted ideas, where in our idiom the contrast would be expressed explicitly by but; in such cases prominence is usually given to the contrasted idea by its being placed immediately after the conjunction.[2]
It’s also important to notice that several different vowels can be used with this conjunction. So we have: וָ (wā), וְ (wĕ), וּ(û). [3] Just so you don’t miss the difference, let me enlarge these:
וָ (wā), וְ (wĕ), וּ (û)
Notice that the middle version has a sheva under it (looks like a colon). This pointing tells the reader that this letter does not have a vowel. It is sounded as if the letter stood alone. So, in this verse the text reads:
וְאַתָּה יְהֹוָה לְעוֹלָם תֵּשֵב וְזִכְרְךָ לְדֹר וָדֹר׃
I put the conjunction in red so you can clearly see that it has the sheva under it. This means the first word in the Hebrew text is ve-a-ta, not (for example), va-ta. There is no vowel for the Vav here, but obviously, there is still a sound, the “v” sound. Now notice that the sheva means that this letter stands alone as a sound. It is not absorbed into the following pronoun (“You”). So we have a strong separation.[4] Now, what does it mean?
Well, it means we have a lot of choices: “or, then, but, notwithstanding, howbeit, so, thus, therefore, that” are a few. Context must determine the proper one. And in this case, it is contrast that matters, so we choose “but.” “I am almost dead, but You live forever” is the idea.
However, this conjunction means something else is happening here, something not linguistically obvious. The poet has changed directions. For the first time, his words begin to magnify God instead of describing his condition. He starts looking beyond himself. Something greater than his complaint, greater than his struggle, is breaking on the horizon. Do you remember Heschel’s comment:
“To be able to pray, one must alter the course of consciousness, one must go through moments of disengagement, one must enter another course of thinking, one must face in a different direction. The course one must take in order to arrive at prayer is on the way to God. For the focus of prayer in not the self. . . Feeling becomes prayer in the moment in which one forgets oneself and becomes aware of God.”[5]
Would we get the same turnaround if we translated this Vav as “and” or “so”? Probably not. Therefore, the translators, feeling the sense of this U-turn, choose an English word of contrast rather than continuation or explanation. And just in time, too. Until this point, the author’s lyrics are absorbed in ego. It’s “I, me, me, mine.” Now, at the bottom of the well, he looks beyond himself to God, and he sees not a genie who will somehow fix all his problems but rather the one steadfast truth of the creator—God remains. As we shall see, the faithfulness of God becomes the center of his thoughts, focused not on himself but on God’s people and God’s purpose.
I wonder if we all don’t need a וְ (wĕ), in our lives, a sound that stops and turns us around. We have probably traveled the same path as this poet in the first eleven verses. We want God to listen to us and fix things. After we’ve expressed all our complaints, told Him how horrible we feel, then we come to this silent place, the place of the sheva. Two things can happen here. We hang around; stuck in the silence, demanding that God rescue us (we deserve it, right?), or, we look up from the bottom of our well and see that God’s faithfulness isn’t our personal guarantee. Life belongs to Him, not us. His purposes prevail, not ours.
That doesn’t sound very comforting, does it? We’re still hurting. We still want to be rescued. But now we can recognize that there is a much bigger drama going on around us. It’s not that God doesn’t care about us; it’s that God’s care involves us in the bigger picture. We have a part to play, and in this case, that part is the movement from ego to acceptance. And hope!
Topical Index: vav, sheva, but, Psalm 102:12
[1] Brown, F., Driver, S. R., & Briggs, C. A. (1977). Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (p. 252). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Weber, C. P. (1999). 519 וָ. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 229). Chicago: Moody Press.
[4] If you want to understand the rules regarding the sheva, look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz0F-7_AdPA
[5] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets: Two Volumes in One (Hendrickson Publishers, 1962), Vol. 2, p. 221.
