From the Desk of Jeff King

Timely word?

The National Museum of Ireland scrambled Thursday to clarify the wording of an ancient Psalter discovered July 20. A construction worker found the manuscript buried in a bog, opened to Psalm 83. The museum said the passage refers to the "vale of tears" rather than the wiping out of Israel as originally announced. The text is from the Latin Vulgate, which numbers psalms differently than modern Bible translations. Psalm 83 in the Vulgate is actually Psalm 84.

Many commentators initially linked the Psalm 83 discovery to the growing crisis in the Middle East. When you read Psalm 83 in today's translations, Israel is petitioning God for protection against a militant Arab confederacy. With rockets raining on Haifa and Israeli army casualties climbing in southern Lebanon, some speculated that God had preserved the book, written about 800 AD, to be a timely word for today.

Perhaps it still is. The text visible on the manuscript refers to the valley of Baka, where Israelites would refresh themselves while traveling to Jerusalem for a pilgrim feast. The root Baka means to "weep by reason of joy or sorrow, the latter including lament, complaint, remorse or repentance," according to the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. The location could be the present-day Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold and suspected hiding place for Iraqi WMD. Israel launched a military offensive today near Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley.

Psalms 83 and 84 seem to be in harmony, and possibly point to God's end-day plans for Israel: the destruction of Edom (the terrorist confederacy trying to destroy the Jewish state) and establishment of Ezekiel's temple, which will draw pilgrims to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles during the millennial reign of Messiah (Zechariah 14:16). Perhaps the Lord arranged the manuscript confusion to call attention to both Psalms.

Archaeologists are heralding the find as Ireland's equivalent to the Dead Sea Scrolls. The worker spotted the book, written on vellum, just beyond the bucket of his bulldozer. The document survived because a quick-thinking land owner covered it in damp soil to prevent deterioration from exposure. "There's two sets of odds that make this discovery really way out," museum director Pat Wallace said in an Associated Press report. "First of all, it's unlikely that something this fragile could survive buried in a bog at all, and then for it to be unearthed and spotted before it was destroyed is incalculably more amazing."

Addendum – An Israeli air raid on Baalbek damaged the ancient Roman temple of Bacchus, the god of wine and licentiousness. In 168 BC, Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes defiled the Jerusalem Temple and forced Jews to worship Bacchus, among other deities. That sparked the Maccabean revolt that led to Judah's liberation and rededication of the Temple.

Posted by Jeff King at August 1, 2006 06:14 PM