Old Testament

The Servant of Yahweh

Behold The Man

The Lenten liturgy for Holy Week proposes for meditation the figure of the Servant of Yahweh, an OT character that appears in Isaiah's Book of Consolation (Isaiah 40-55).  The relevant passages as defined by B. Duhm1 are:

Todah in Psalm 50: Thanksgiving or Confession of Sin?

Todah hdwt from the root hdy is most often translated as "thanksgiving". It is a noun formed from the Hiphil of hdy ydh which can have two meanings. The more frequent meaning is "to give thanks, lauds and praise"; the less frequent meaning is to confess, either the name of God or one's sin:

My sins I made known to you
my iniquity I did not hide.
I said: "I will confess (hdwa 'odeh) to Yahweh"
and you took away the guilt of my sin (Psalm 32:5)

He who conceals his sins prospers not
but he who confesses and forsakes them
obtains mercy (Prov. 28:13)

As a noun, "todah" appears some 29 times.

Why The Discrepancy In The Numbering of the Psalms?

Question
Why is it that some psalms in the Jerusalem Bible have two sets of number: one that is normally printed and another that is in the margins? E.g., "Psalm 74" in bold and then right in the margins, "V 73".

Answer
What you find printed "normally" in the Jerusalem Bible is the numbering of the psalm as it appears in the Massoretic text of the Hebrew. What you find in the margins as "V 73" means "In the Vulgate (the official Bible of the Catholic Church), this is Psalm 73."