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Psalms of Solomon

About this book

The Righteous and the Sinner

Psalm 3

1 Why are you sleeping, my soul, and not blessing the Lord? Sing a new song to God who is worthy to be praised.⁠ 2 Sing and stay awake to watch for His awakening, for a psalm (sung) to God from a joyful heart is good.

3 The righteous remember the Lord at all times, with thanksgiving and by declaring that the Lord’s judgments are righteous. 4 The righteous person does not despise the Lord’s discipline; His desire is always in the Lord’s presence.

5 The righteous person stumbles and acknowledges that the Lord is righteous: He falls and watches for what God will do to him; He searches for where his rescue will come from. 6 The firm resolve of the righteous is from God their deliverer; Sin does not pile up in the righteous person’s house. 7 The righteous person continually searches his house, to remove completely (all) wrongdoing (done) by him unintentionally.⁠ 8 He makes atonement for (sins of) ignorance by fasting and humbling himself, and the Lord counts every faithful man and his household as free from guilt.⁠

9 The sinner stumbles and curses his life, the day he was born, and his mother's labor pains. 10 He adds sin to sin while he lives (?); He falls, his fall is truly terrible, and he never rises again. 11 The destruction of the sinner is forever, and he will not be remembered when God attends to the righteous person.

12 This is the fate of sinners forever. But those who fear the Lord shall rise to eternal life,⁠ And their life (shall be) in the light of the Lord, and will never end.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare LXX Psalm 143:9 and Psalms of Solomon 3:1

Septuagint · Pseudepigrapha, Wisdom and Poetry

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Summary

Psalms of Solomon 3 echoes the Greek Septuagint translation of Psalm 143, drawing on the image of singing a new song to God in response to deliverance. Both texts combine personal praise with national themes of rescue from foreign threats.

Passages

LXX Psalm 143:9

Septuagint
7 Send forth your hand from on high; rescue me, and deliver me out of great waters, out of the hand of strange children; 8 whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity. 9 God, I will sing a new song to you: I will play to you on a lute of ten strings. 10 Even to him who gives salvation to kings: who redeems his servant David from the hurtful sword. 11 Deliver me, and rescue me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity;
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Psalms

Psalms of Solomon 3:1

Pseudepigrapha, Wisdom and Poetry
1 Why are you sleeping, my soul, and not blessing the Lord? Sing a new song to God who is worthy to be praised. 2 Sing and stay awake to watch for His awakening, for a psalm (sung) to God from a joyful heart is good. 3 The righteous remember the Lord at all times, with thanksgiving and by declaring that the Lord’s judgments are righteous.
65–30 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Psalms of Solomon

References

"... The singing of psalms was a prominent part of worship at the Second Temple, in relation to the daily and Sabbath cult and especially festival pilgrimage (Falk 1998: 194–9; e.g. 1 Chronicles 23:30–31; 2 Chronicles 30:21; Sirach 47:9–10; 50:18; 1 Maccabees 4:52–59; 2 Maccabees 1:30; 10:6–8; Philo, Special Laws 1.193–5). This involves formal performance by the Temple singers, but the use of refrains points to participation of pilgrims, and there are also references to popular singing by pilgrims, both at the Temple and on the way home. Other settings in which the singing of songs is attested include victory celebrations (e.g. 1 Maccabees 4:24; Josephus, Antiquities 12:349) and festival celebrations at home (especially Passover seder: Philo, Laws 2:148; Josephus, Antiquities 2:346; compare Jubilees 49:6; Wisdom 18:9; Mark 14:26; see Bokser 1984). It is difficult to know whether the celebration of the Alexandrian community with singing of hymns on the beach at the news of the arrest of Flaccus (Philo, Flaccus 116–25) is to be understood as an eruption of spontaneous victory songs or as also reflective of festival celebration which normally would have taken place in their synagogue. There is also perhaps an allusion to psalms in Sabbath assembly (Psalms-Philo 11:8; but compare McKay 1994: 13), and to private songs in the morning (Psalms of Solomon 3:1–3; 6:4–5) ..."
Daniel K. Falk, “The Contribution of the Qumran Scrolls to the Study of Ancient Jewish Liturgy,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. John J. Collins and Timothy H. Lim (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 1–25.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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LXX Psalm 143:9 and Psalms of Solomon 3:1

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