Customer Reviews

The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary

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Update: Jan. 2010
I wrote to Prof. Alter to inquire about any other biblical translations because, quite frankly, his translation (and, Prof. Everett Fox' translation) are some of the most exciting and intriguing books to be published in any genre. Here is Prof. Alter's response:

Dear Mr. Lawrence,

Many thanks for your enthusiastic response. The next installment of my Bible translations, The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes: A Translation with Commentary will be published in October [2010].

All best,

Robert Alter
***** ***** *****

I've come to expect excellence from Professor Alter, especially after first reading The NY Times review of his "The Five Books of Moses" (Sept. 2004). It was a wonderful translation. I then purchased his translations of Genesis and The David Story based on (I & II Samuel), both books read like a novel. The David Story, in particular, I found to be an exceptionally vivid portrait of David, although I don't agree with Prof. Alter's conservative supposition of David's relationship with Michal and Jonathan. Minor point, but usually Alter, the intellectual, in his annotations is known to challenge orthodoxy. The Book of Psalms, although not a biographical sketch, is written in the typical Alter style.

Take for instance a troubling Psalm for translation. Psalm 2: A declaration of God's dominion.

KJV
Serve The Lord with fear/ and rejoice with trembling/Kiss The Son, lest he be angry...

Artscroll, Tehillim (2006)
Serve The Lord with awe/That you may rejoice, When there is trembling...

Alter's Trns
Worship the Lord in fear/ and exult in trembling/ With purity be armed...


The strength of Alter's writings is, indeed, by his willingness to employ by etymology and analytical reasoning (and not by tradition) to find some satisfactory conclusion. This is what separates Alter from the bunch. All of this comes to focus when Alter stops to talk about the root meaning of words and then transposes them in familiar territory.

Psalm 27:1

REB
The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear?

JPS (1917,85)
Adonai, is my light and my life. Whom shall I fear?

Alter's
The Lord is my light and my rescue. Whom should I fear?

It is in these moments, that Alter's vision provokes deep thought when considering historical usage of words. Take for instance, the meaning of the word, "salvation." Here's Alter's comments:

"Salvation is the term that the translators in 1611 chose to represent the Hebrew yeshu'ah, and it has shown more than a little persistence in the various modern versions...[and] comes to designate a global process of messianic redemption. But in Psalms, this noun and its cognate verb hoshi'a are strictly directed to the here and now. Hoshi'a means to get someone out of a tight fix, to rescue him. When the tight fix involves the threat of enemies on the battlefield, yeshu'ah can mean `victory.' More commonly, both the noun and the verb indicate `rescue.'

In Hebrew, there are two words for the familiar English equivalent, "salvation." As Rabbi Avi Weiss of South Florida once commented, there is a distinct difference between what is commonly held as an understanding of the term and it's true meaning as both relates to being `saved:' Hatzalah and yeshu'ah. "Hatzalah requires no action on the part of the person being saved. Yeshu'ah, on the other hand, is the process whereby the recipient of the salvation participates in helping him or herself."

I love this book already. The book is noticeably light for a book about 500 pages. The text is black (about 14pt) with the annotations (about 12pt.) on cream colored paper and has a red placeholder that Professor Alter should have insisted on when WW Norton published "The Five Books." Anyway, differences in opinion is always a good thing: it forces you to re-think and verify what you hold to be true. This translation will definitely challenge you.

I've been going through a patch of bad health lately. To help ease my way, some friends were kind enough to give me Robert Alter's translations of the Psalms. They didn't know that I'm a fan of Alter's earlier Five Books of Moses translation. I was delighted to receive their gift.

I've been reading the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) translations of the psalms for so long that they've become second nature to me. But Alter's renderings have an immediacy that really does bring a sense of vitality, of expectancy, of being-there-in-the-moment, that awakens both the senses and the heart.

Take the well known Quemadimodum, Psalm 42. The BCP's translation of the beginning is this:

As the deer longs for the water brooks,
so longs my soul for you, O God.

My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God;
when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?

Here's Alter's translation:

As a deer yearns for streams of water,
so I yearn for You, O God.

My whole being thirsts for God,
for the living God.

When shall I come and see
the presence of God?

The BCP version has a lovely, contemplative rhythm. But Alter's version has an edge that expresses not just longing but almost a demand. It's an interesting change of pace, and one that invites a different set of responses and prayers.

Alter's commentary to his translations is graceful and informative, and not--thank God!--heavy-handed and pedantic. I generally distrust commentary attached to translated poetry. But Alter's usually enhances rather than distracts.

This translation is a wonderful gift that Alter has given us all. And my copy of his translation is a wonderful gift from my friends. Thank you!

Robert Alter the great master- critic of understanding the Bible as literary text here puts his considerable knowledge of Biblical poetics and translation techniques to use in an effort to capture the compactness, and rhythm of the Hebrew original. Alter's aim is to give us a translation closer to the source than any done before.
In doing so he faced many problems one of them of course being the canonical place the 'King James Version' has in the hearts of many lovers of the Bible. Alter handles this in varying ways. In Psalm 23 he leaves the famous opening "The Lord is my Shepherd' in part because he could find no way of compacting the Hebrew original which is three words only. Later on in the other most well- known line of the poem he translates in place of "Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." ,"Though I walk in the vale of death's shadow/I fear no harm." Though Alter's translation may be here more accurate, it is difficult not to feel the impossibility of improving upon a 'line' which has in itself become part of the English tradition in Literature, and which is so deep in the hearts and minds of many readers.
Alter is knowledgeable, skillful and his work has true literary power. It is a translation which definitely adds to the tradition of translations of what is arguably the greatest and most meaningful personal religious poetry ever written.
His commentary is in itself a small masterwork which will deeply enrich the understanding of all who read ,love, and our strengthened by 'Tehillim'.

Robert Alter's Book of Psalms is an exeptionally rich read into the history and life of each of the Psalms. I have been using it as a comparative study with my more favorite and familiar, Grail translation. The Grail is far and away better for singing and prayer, but the insights Dr. Alter provides, almost line by line, enrich my understanding of other possible meanings, hidden meanings, and the historical background for the Psalms.This is not LIGHT reading. Even the size of the hardcover book does not allow you to tuck it into your pocket or bag for easy use. But it is a most welcome scholarly addition to Biblical study and literature.
His is an enjoyable work of mature scholarship.

Not being a scholar, I cannot review this book appropriately. But I can tell you why I am enjoying it and why I recommend that you read it and use it for reference (or reverence)

Alter writes, "What I have aimed at in this translation - inevitably, with imperfect success - is to represent Psalms in a kind of English verse that is readable as poetry yet sounds something like the Hebrew - emulating its rhythms wherever feasible, reproducing many of the effects of its expressive poetic syntax, seeking equivalents for the combination of homespun directness and archaizing in the original, hewing to the lexical concreteness of the Hebrew, and making more palpable the force of parallelism that is at the heart of biblical poetry."

Now ... with regard to two Psalms you may know by heart...:

Psalm 23: "The Lord is my shepherd...", in this translation is rendered:
The Lord is my shepherd / I shall not want. / In grass meadows He makes me lie down, / By quiet waters guide me. / My life He brings back. / He leads me on pathways of justice / For His name's sake. /
Though I walk in the vale of death's shadow, / I fear no harm. /For you are with me.

But what i truly enjoy are Alter's commentaries. Alter's commentary states, "Although the likening of God or a ruler to a shepherd is a commonplace in this pastoral culture, this psalm is justly famous for the affecting simplicity and concreteness with which it realizes the metaphor. Thus, in the next line the shepherd leads his sheep to meadows where there is abundant grass and riverbanks and where quiet waters run that the sheep can drink... [he makes me lie down] The verb used here, HIRBITS, is a specialized one for making animals lie down...... [My life he brings back] Though "he restoreth my soul" is time-honored, the Hebrew NEFESH does not mean "soul" but "life breath" or "life." The image is of someone who has almost stopped breathing and is revived, brought back to life... ...[in the vale of death's shadow] The intent of the translation is not to avoid the proverbial "in the shadow of the valley of death" but rather to cut through the proliferation of syllables in the King James Version, however eloquent, and better approximate the compactness of the Hebrew - BEGEY TSALMAWET. Though philologists assume that the Masoretic TSALMAWET is actually a misleading vocalization of TSALMUT - probably a poetic word for "darkness" with the UT ending simply a suffix of abstraction - the traditional vocalization reflects something like an orthographic pun or a folk etymology (TSEL means "shadow" MAWET means "DEATH"), so there is justification in retaining the death component... ... ... [You moisten my head with oil] The verb here, DISHEN, is not the one that is used for anointment, and its associations are sensual rather than sacramental...

And so.. you get a more in-depth understanding of the Psalm and its intentions in the original Hebrew. Or, take Psalm 137, you may recall it as, "By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion."

In the Alter translation, we get:
By Babylon's streams /
there we sat, oh we wept, /
when we recalled Zion. /
On the poplars there / we hung up our lyres. / For there our captors has asked of us / words of song, / and our plunderers - rejoicing / "Sing us from Zion's songs."

But it is in the commentary that the esteemed Alter shines, when he writes, "This psalm was almost certainly composed shortly after the deportation of the Judeans by the Babylonians in 586 BCE - the experience of exile is fresh and acutely painful... The first Hebrew noun, NEHAROT, generally means "rivers," but because the more probable reference is to the network of canals that connected the Tigris and the Euphrates, "streams" is a preferable translation here. It should be noted that in keeping with the evolution of Hebrew poetry in the later biblical period, semantic parallelism within the lines in this poem is weak, an absence occasionally compensated for by interlinear parallelism."

Alter goes on to explain how the Hebrew use of the word SHAM (there), twice, in the next line is used poetically to express the alienation of the collective speakers from the place they find themselves, and how "hung up our lyres" can refer to the hiding of their lyres in the foliage, or a gesture of renunciation of their use.

Robert Alter has achieved well-earned fame for unpacking the Hebrew Bible as literature, with the same unsentimental eye we would dedicate to Thomas Hardy or Lady Murasaki. And this new translation of the book of Psalms is no exception. Whether you are interested in the Psalms as literary works or theological statements, Professor Alter's work will help you better understand the many levels at which these poems exist.

The translations build on the poetic principles Professor Alter expounded in his The Art Of Biblical Poetry, the highlights of which are covered in the introduction. To summarize: it's a mistake to look for English linguistic conventions in Hebrew poetry, which is built on different concepts. Hebrew is a very compact language, and the poetry is built around the rhythm of ideas rather than the rhythm of sounds.

This may lead to some confusion in certain translations. For instance, many scholars debate whether the term "valley of the shadow of death" is an accurate translation in Psalm 23:4. In a lengthy note, Dr. Alter explains that the solution to that debate is "maybe." The Hebrew term "begey tsalmawet" is so packed with ideas that English can only approximate its poetic beauty--though I'll leave it to Dr. Alter to tell you why.

To give you an idea of how this all works, consider one of the most widely quoted lines from the Psalms, 121:1. The King James (Authorised) Version renders it in this way:

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help."

This seems straightforward, until you consider the differences found in another popular translation, the New International Version:

"I lift up my eyes to the hills--
where does my help come from?"

The change in the first half, from future to present tense, appears subtle, but the issue of whether the second half is a statement or a question can have important ramifications for literary or religious study. And that's to say nothing of the issue of the poetic line division. Which is correct? Dr. Alter goes back to the original for the answer:

"I lift up my eyes to the mountains:
from where will my help come?"

The pleading tone is made all the more powerful by the inclusion of the explanatory note about the debate over whether these mountains are the highlands around Jerusalem. Professor Alter not only makes his translation useful and explanatory, he also restores the rough-hewn emotion of the poetry which is often smoothed over by more pious and lily-white exigetical translators.

Like Dr. Alter's other translations of the Hebrew Bible, his Psalms is not just for scholars; it is eminently readable, engaging, and educational. No matter the reason you have chosen to study the Psalms, this translation may very well be as close as you can get to the original without learning Hebrew on your own.

With his translation of the Five Books of Moses, Robert Alter created what might count as a battle royal in literary circles when John Updike roundly attacked the work in the New Yorker as "unnecessary" given what Updike saw as the great power of the King James Bible which he amusingly referred to as "our languages lone masterpiece produced by committee." Updike complained that Alter's translation lacked the "majesty" and was hardly as evocative as the King James. Of course what he did not adequately consider is that the Berkley Professor of Literature and one of our foremost experts on Biblical Hebrew as also far more accurate that the those celebrated men struggling to please both their church and their King.

I mention Alter's previous - and truly fascinating - translation because if that raised a bit of pique among those who long to believe that the King James is an accurate representation of the first Five Books, then this new translation of Psalms is sure to provoke downright indignation. For centuries readers in the English have taken for granted that the KJV translated the original with fidelity; indeed, a quick scan of Jewish translations demonstrates how effectively its reading has become normative through the culture. However, Alter aptly demonstrates that this not the case and that many of the concepts found in the Psalms which might strike one as deeply Christian - especially with regard to ideas such as "salvation" and the "soul" - are in fact attempts to project backwards a later theology into an earlier text. No doubt Updike among others will find this troubling, but that does not mean one should dismiss the meaning of the original Hebrew.

In addition to a beautiful translation, rendered with considerable effort to remain true to the rhythm Hebrew, Alter does the reader a great favor by providing copious notes detailing the uniqueness of the original language and the limitations of his final work. His introduction likewise offers an interesting analysis of the differences between Hebrew and English and why translations will always loose the structure of the original because of Hebrew's unique compactness.

To be sure, Church's will not be running out to replace their Psalters with this dense, deeply academic work. But for those who take the Bible seriously and strive to transcend the limits placed on us by language and time, Alter has provided an invaluable resource and a truly sublime poetic work.

Alter's translations and commentary are, not surprisingly, fascinating and artistically engaging. In this review, however, I just want to focus on the format of the Kindle edition.

The Kindle format is problematic. First, the (translated) texts of the psalms themselves are reproduced as images rather than type. What this means is that you can't use the Kindle's type-size option to make the texts of the psalms any larger or smaller (although I can't imagine anyone wanting to make them smaller, since they're quite small as it is). Second, the comments on each psalm break up the psalm itself, so that you'll have, say, four lines of a particular psalm, followed by several Kindle "pages" of comments, followed by four more lines of the same psalm, followed by more pages of comments, and so on. This probably reflects the fact that the comments (I imagine) appear as footnotes on the printed page. But it really doesn't work on the Kindle, unless you're using the book purely for study purposes and not with the goal of appreciating the psalms as poetry.

Third, the typeface used for the comments and introductory matter is not the standard blunt-serifed face used in Kindle books. Instead, they used a face that becomes so thin on the curves that it disappears in places, making a lot of letters (especially the lower-case "e") look like they were printed with broken type. Finally (and most bothersome, in my opinion), the free sample that is available for the Kindle doesn't contain any of the actual psalms; all it contains is the introductory essay. This is not good, since a primary benefit of getting samples is that you can see whether the book has any glaring formatting quirks before you order it.

That being said, this is a terrific work, and I'm glad that it's available as a Kindle ebook, however imperfect.

This review relates specifically to the Kindle version:

This book is a perfect example of a 'kindleization' gone horribly, horribly wrong.

1. The type size of the Psalm text is set in stone. It completely ignores the type size settings on the Kindle. It completely breaks the expected behavior on the Kindle.

2. The Psalms can't be read in a single page. Only a few lines of a Psalm are on each page. They are interrupted by the commentary - often several pages of commentary before the next few lines are presented. This might be fine for people who know the Psalms. But if you're unfamiliar with the text it's impossible to read an entire Psalm uninterrupted.

This is an example of a horribly formatted Kindle book. Clearly the publisher didn't want to spend time reformatting the book - and considering the price tag for the digital version of this book I expected a far more polished experience. This is the first Kindle book I'm going to try and return.

I read this over the course of almost a year, one psalm a night just before bed. I found it illuminating and inspiring. Much has already been written about how Alter's translation of the Hebrew word "nefesh" or "nafesh" as "life's force" instead of the traditional "soul" changes the whole perspective. Ditto for "l'Hoshua" -- to rescue instead of to "save or redeem." Simply by doing this, Alter reorientates us away from a later Christian world view back to the original. The writers of these poems did not have a concept of an immortal soul. As the Psalms themselves repeatedly say, the dead cannot praise God. That is the job of the livimg.
I also am fascinated by his insights into Temple worship -- the musical instruments we can no longer identify -- the "ayalet hashachar" or morning star. What kind of music did that make? The "almut laben" -- another lost instrument. When Alter doesn't know what something means he says so. When the text was jumbled through scribal mistakes many centuries ago, he unjumbles it and points out the mistake.
This is an intellectual and spiritual feast, good for the mind and the soul. Take your time, savor it and appreciate anew the genius that went into creating it.
For more on me and my bookThe Nazi Hunter: A Novel go to www.alanelsner.com.