1 A Song of Degrees.
Many a time have they warred against me from my youth, let Israel now say: 2 Many a time have they warred against me from my youth: and yet they prevailed not against me. 3 The sinners wrought upon my back: they prolonged their 1iniquity. 4 The righteous Lord has cut asunder the necks of sinners.
5 Let all that hate Sion be put to shame and turned back. 6 Let them be as the grass of the house-tops, which withers before it is plucked up. 7 Wherewith the reaper fills not his hand, nor he that makes up the sheaves, his bosom. 8 Neither do they that go by say, The blessing of the Lord be upon you: we have blessed you in the name of the Lord.
- 1 v. 3 שיך iniquity, easily read for שוכה a furrow.
About this text. This is Sir Lancelot Brenton’s 1851 translation of the Septuagint — the Greek Old Testament the Orthodox Church reads, rather than the Hebrew text behind most English Bibles. It is in the public domain. Words in italics are ones Brenton supplied that the Greek does not have; he marked them so that a reader could tell the difference, and they are kept that way here. The numbered notes are his own. Its English is Victorian, and does not match the modern English of the New Testament pages on this site.
On the numbering. The Psalms are numbered here as the Septuagint numbers them, which is how Orthodox service books cite them. From Psalm 10 onward that is one behind a Hebrew-numbered Bible: Psalm 50 here is the Psalm 51 of most English Bibles. The Septuagint also carries a hundred and fifty-first Psalm, which those Bibles do not.