Removing the Mystery

My soul waits in silence for God alone; from Him comes my salvation.  Psalm 62:1  NASB

Waits in/ comes – Because I typically place the text under investigation in italics, you are not able to see that “waits in” and “comes” are actually in italics in the NASB translation.  This indicates that these words are not in the original.  They have been added for either grammatical or exegetical purposes to help the English reader.  But adding them changes a few things.  The NASB1995 has a different reading: “My soul waits in silence for God only; from Him is my salvation.”  Chabad translates the verse as, “Only to God does my soul hope for silently; from Him is my salvation.”  NASB1995 and Chabad agree on the second part of the verse, but the first part is quite different.  Part of this difference has to do with vocabulary.  The Hebrew word for “hope” can also be the word for “wait,” but this word isn’t in this verse.  The closest parallel is in verse 5 (“My soul, wait in silence for God only, . .”).  There the word is dôm’mî, (from dāmam, i.e. to be silent, still, wait).  NASB and Chabad use this verse as the justification for adding the word in verse 1.  But that still leaves us with the added verb in the second part of the verse.

Here’s the original Hebrew text:

אַ֣ךְ אֶל־אֱ֖לֹהִים דֽוּמִיָּ֣ה נַפְשִׁ֑י מִ֜מֶּ֗נּוּ יְשֽׁוּעָתִֽי

Literally the verse reads, “Only for God in silence my ‘soul’ (nepeš), from Him my salvation.”  As you can see, both critical verbs are missing.  When translators add the verbs in order to  create grammatically proper sentences, they choose verbs from similar thoughts in the psalm.  This is probably legitimate, but it glosses the actual wording of the author.  The second part of the verse may be clear enough, allowing us to provide the verb, but the first part of the verse is quite ambiguous without a verb.  As you will recall, Paul does the same thing in that infamous verse about wives submitting to husbands (Ephesians 5:22), but in that case the necessary verb comes first and is added to a following text.  Not so here.

If the original author had “wait” and “come” in mind, as indicated in verse 5, why not write them in verse 1?  Do we really have to wait until verse 5 to understand what he had in mind in verse 1?  Or are we making too much of this, and we should just rack it up as poetic license?  Here’s a suggestion: if the poet wants his readers to anticipate the thoughts, then leaving out the verbs creates a void that the reader will naturally fill.  What verb would you choose?

“My soul yearns for God in silence,” “My soul listens in silence for God,” “My soul in silence hopes for God.”  You could add more.  And the second part: “from Him arrives my salvation,” “from Him promises my salvation,” “from Him appears my salvation.”  You see what happens when I leave out the verbs.  The reader provides all kinds of alternatives, and then, in verse five the author reveals what he really had in mind.  Poetic excellence, communicating something to the reader without writing anything at all.  This sentence (if you could call it that) says more about us than about the author. Perfect.  Adding italicized words removes the mystery.

Topical Index: wait, come, Psalm 62:1, Psalm 62:5