Psalm 40: I Waited Patiently

"I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD." "Waited patiently" is qavvoh qivviti, "I waited, waited."

"Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart."

"I have preached righteousness in the great congregation… I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart." Then the mood breaks: "For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me… they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me."

"Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me: O LORD, make haste to help me. Let them be ashamed and confounded together that seek after my soul… But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me: thou art my help and my deliverer; make no tarrying, O my God."

The pit and the clay

Bor sha'on, "pit of tumult" or "roaring pit," and tit hayyaven, "miry clay," picture a cistern like the one Jeremiah was thrown into (Jeremiah 38:6, "in the mire"). The pit is also an image of death.

Obedience over sacrifice

40:6–8 belongs to a prophetic theme (1 Samuel 15:22; Hosea 6:6; Psalm 51:16–17): God desires an obedient heart more than offerings. "Mine ears hast thou opened" is literally "ears you have dug for me": God has made the speaker able to hear and obey.

The heading

Hebrew: "To the chief musician, of David, a psalm" (word order reversed from the usual). Psalm 70, which repeats 40:13–17, has its own heading, "to bring to remembrance." Lamnatseah, "to the chief musician" (or "for the director"), heads 55 psalms and appears again in Habakkuk 3:19; its meaning is uncertain. The Greek understood it as eis to telos, "to the end" (the library's Vulgate: "In finem").

"Ears" or "a body"

Hebrews 10:5–7 quotes 40:6–8 as "a body hast thou prepared me" and applies it to Christ. The Hebrew has "ears you have dug for me." The Greek tradition is divided. The three great Greek codices, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus (4th–5th century), read sōma, "body." "Ears" (ōtia) is supported by the Old Latin, Jerome's Gallican Psalter ("aures autem perfecisti mihi") and the Syriac Peshitta; the Roman Psalter and Augustine have corpus, "body." Rahlfs' critical edition prints ōtia as the Old Greek and lists sōma as a variant. The leading explanation is that the Old Greek had "ears" and the Christian codices were brought into line with Hebrews; others propose a copying slip in Greek capitals or a deliberate interpretive rendering. The library's Greek, in Giguet's French, reads "oreilles" (ears). See the passage page.

Psalm 40 and Psalm 70

40:13–17 reappears as Psalm 70 with small changes; notably, Psalm 70 often has Elohim ("God") where Psalm 40 has YHWH, typical of the "Elohistic Psalter" (Psalms 42–83). Like Psalms 14 and 53, it shows that psalm material circulated and was reused in more than one collection.

"The scroll of the book"

Megillat sefer, "the scroll of a book," may refer to the Torah, to a written record of the speaker's vow, or to a heavenly book. The Greek translated "at the head of the book" (Giguet "en tête du livre"; Vulgate "in capite libri").