Psalm 25 — Hebrew Acrostic and English Parallel Chart
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See Psalm 25’s Hebrew acrostic beside English, with highlighted initials, transliterations, Strong’s numbers, and annotations on its irregular pattern.
I created this chart to show Psalm 25’s Hebrew acrostic alongside its English translation. An alphabetic acrostic uses successive Hebrew letters to begin poetic units. Highlighted initials and matching word colors help readers follow the pattern even when the English word order differs.
The chart marks the omitted letters, repeated resh, and additional final pe. Transliterations, Strong’s numbers, and links embedded in the PDF provide starting points for word study.
Acrostic observations
Psalm 25 is one of several acrostic poems in the Bible (others include Psalms 9, 10, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119, and 145; Proverbs 31; and Lamentations).
In an alphabetic acrostic, successive Hebrew letters begin poetic units, which may be phrases, verses, or stanzas. The acrostic form is lost upon the reader when translated. Furthermore, the initial Hebrew word of each stanza is not necessarily the initial word when translated.
The author (David, as indicated in the opening stanza) of Psalm 25, as in Psalm 34, omits vav (presumably because there are only ten words in the Hebrew scriptures that begin with the letter vav), and adds an extra pe at the end. As John F. Brug proposes, this appears to be in order to form the Hebrew word אָלַף ‘alph from the first (aleph), middle (lamed) and last (pe) letters of the acrostic. אָלַף ‘alph translated into English means learn. Additionally, ק (qof) is replaced with ר (resh), resulting in two consecutive stanzas beginning with resh in verses 18 and 19.
Reading the chart
In order to more fully appreciate the original structure of the psalm, the original Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) is shown line by line alongside the English translation (World English Bible). On the Hebrew side of the graphic, each initial letter of the acrostic is highlighted in blue, and a transliteration of the Hebrew is shown above the initial word in red italics. On the English side of the graphic, the translated word that corresponds to the initial word in each stanza is highlighted in red (matching the transliterated word). The Strong’s Number is shown above the highlighted word in gray. The Hebrew letters forming אָלַף ‘alph are shown in green. The Personal Name of the Creator God in the original Hebrew is יְהֹוָה Yahweh, most often translated in modern English versions as LORD (all capitals), is highlighted in this graphic in purple. David also uses the Hebrew word for the Creator God אֱלֹהִים elohiym, most often translated in modern English versions as God, which is shown here in orange. Finally, the PDF version of the graphic contains hyperlinks to Hebrew root parser and Strong’s Numbers from Scholar’s Gateway and Blue Letter Bible, respectively, allowing the viewer to further study the meaning of each word of the acrostic.
References
Brug, John F. Near Eastern Acrostics and Biblical Acrostics: Biblical Acrostics and Their Relationship to Other Ancient Near Eastern Acrostics. NEH Seminar: The Bible And Near Eastern Literature, Yale 1987, 1997 edition.
Strong, James. The New Strong’s Expanded Dictionary of Bible Words. Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 2001.
Downloads
Psalm 25 parallel chart (PDF) 1 page, legal landscape (14 × 8.5 in), 2.2 MB
Psalm 25 parallel chart (PNG) 1920 × 1080 pixels, 0.8 MB
