Companion to the Bible

by E. P. Barrows

7. Chapters and Verses. The division of the poetical books and passages of the Old Testament into separate lines, Hebrew, pesukim, (answering in general to our half-verses, sometimes to the third of a verse,) is very ancient, if not primitive. It is found in the poetical passages of the Law and the historical books, (Exod., ch. 15; Deut., ch. 32; Judges, ch. 5; 2 Sam. ch. 22,) and belonged originally to the three books of Job, Psalms, and Proverbs, which alone the Hebrews reckon as poetical. See below, Ch. 21, No. 1. The division of the whole Old Testament into verses, (likewise called by the Hebrews pesukim,) is also the work of Jewish scholars. It existed in its completeness in the ninth century, and must have had its origin much earlier in the necessity that grew out of the public reading and interpretation of the sacred books in the synagogue service.

In the Hebrew text the verses are distinguished by two points called soph-pasuk (:), except in the synagogue rolls, where, according to ancient usage, this mark of distinction is omitted.

The present division into chapters is much later, and is the work of Christian scholars. By some it is ascribed to Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1227; by others to Cardinal Hugo de St. Cher of the same century. The Jews transferred it from the Latin Vulgate to the Hebrew text. There are, however, some discrepancies between the chapters of the Hebrew text and those of the Vulgate and our English version.

The division of the sacred text into chapters and verses is indispensable for convenience of reference. But the student should remember that these distinctions are wholly of human origin, and sometimes separate passages closely connected in meaning. The first verse, for example, of Isaiah, ch. 4, is immediately connected in sense with the threatenings against "the daughters of Zion" contained in the close of the preceding chapter In the beginning of ch. 11 of the same book, the words: "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots," contrast the Branch of the Messiah with the Assyrian bough, the lopping off of which has just been foretold; chap. 10:33, 34. The last three verses, again, of Isaiah, ch. 52, evidently belong to the following chapter. The connections of the sacred text, therefore, must be determined independently of these human distinctions.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE ORIGINAL TEXT AND ITS HISTORY.

1. The original language of the Old Testament is Hebrew, with the exception of certain portions of Ezra and Daniel and a single verse of Jeremiah, (Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26; Dan. 2:4, from the middle of the verse to end of chap. 7; Jer. 10:11,) which are written in the cognate Chaldee language. The Hebrew belongs to a stock of related languages commonly called Shemitic, because spoken mainly by the descendants of Shem. Its main divisions are: (1,) the Arabic, having its original seat in the southeastern part of the Shemitic territory, and of which the Æthiopic is a branch; (2,) the Aramæan in the north and northeast, comprising the eastern Aramæan or Chaldee, and the western or Syriac; (3,) the Hebrew, occupying a middle place between the two. The Samaritan is essentially Aramæan, but with an intermixture of Hebrew forms; the Phoenician, or Punic, on the other hand, is most closely allied to the Hebrew. All these languages, with the exception of the Æthiopic, are written from right to left, and exhibit many peculiarities of orthography and grammatical forms and structure.

2. The Hebrew characters in present use, called the Assyrian, or square writing, are not those originally employed. The earlier form is undoubtedly represented by the inscriptions on the coins struck by the Maccabees, of which the letters bear a strong resemblance to the Samaritan and Phoenician characters. The Jewish tradition is that the present square character was introduced by Ezra, and that it was of Assyrian origin. The question of the correctness of this tradition has been much discussed. Some wholly reject it, and hold that the present square writing came by a gradual process of change from a more ancient type. See Davidson's Bib. Crit., vol. I, ch. 3.