Day 106: Who Is the “Choirmaster,” and is That the Best Translation? (Psalm 140:1-3)

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.

140 Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men;
    preserve me from violent men,
² who plan evil things in their heart
    and stir up wars continually.
³ They make their tongue sharp as a serpent’s,
    and under their lips is the venom of asps. Selah

Through the Bible: Psalms 56, 120, 140-142

Of the one hundred and fifty Psalms, more than a third of them begin with “To the Choirmaster.” That’s how the ESV translates the Hebrew word nasach.

Nasach is apparently a difficult word to translate, because there are a lot of variations on it. Here are some variations, along with my grade for each:

• DECENT: “choirmaster” (ESV)
• LAME: “choir director” (CSB)
• LAMER: “music leader” (Modern English Version)
• LAMEST: Not translating it at all (KJV, CEB, GNT)

The word itself, according to the translation notes in the Blue Letter Bible app, is used elsewhere in Scripture to mean “to excel, to be bright, be preeminent or perpetual.”

With the idea of being pre-eminent in mind, I think the best translation is the Authorized Standad version, which translates nasach as “The Chief Musician.”

However, as I was scrolling through all the different ways English translations have rendered this word, one jumped out as completely different. The Jubilee Bible, which claims to be

“the only translation… that has made a serious attempt to mate each unique Hebrew word (and subsequently its Greek equivalent) with a unique English word (using the common English of William Tyndale and the extraordinary Hebrew scholarship of Casiodoro de Reina of the early Reformation) 

https://www.ransompressinternational.com/Books/jubilee/#:~:text=The%20Jubilee%20Bible%20is%20the,of%20the%20early%20Reformation)%20so

The Jubilee Bible translates nasach as “overcomer.”

“To the Overcomer, A Psalm of David.”

Nasach sometimes didn’t have anything to do with music. It could be translated “enduring.” The superscript of this Psalm could be read, “To the Enduring,” or “To the Enduring one.”

One article I found says,

A few centuries ago, a strong argument was made for the word “choirmaster” or “chief musician” to be translated more literally as “to the end.” Many of the Greek and Latin church fathers believed that this was a reference to the Messiah, “the great end.” In other words, there is a strong belief that those Psalms addressed “to the choirmaster” are really addressed “To the Messiah.”

Gregg Hunter, Christ the Choirmaster

It’s not a stretch to see messianic themes in the fifty-five “Chief Musician” psalms. It’s actually harder not to find them. As we’ve seen day after day in this reading plan, the Messiah is everywhere in the Old Testament.

When I first published this post In 2022, today’s reading fell on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter. Throughout church history, this day has been called Holy Saturday. Great Saturday. or The Great Sabbath. I especially love that one. It signifies the ultimate day of rest, when the Messiah rested from the finished work on the cross.

In 2022, this Great Sabbath was a dreary and dull day in Alabama. The sun didn’t come out all day. I was still reeling from my viewing of The Passion of the Christ the day before. I decided to call the day Silent Saturday.

This was the day after Jesus died on the cross; the day when, despite the prayer of Psalm 140:1, the Messiah was not delivered from evil men. He was delivered to them.

If the Messiah is the Chief Musician, Good Friday is the day the music died.

But as any musician knows, sometimes the most powerful part of a composition is the rest. When the entire symphony hall is waiting, on the edge of their seats, for the conductor to raise the baton again. To bring the orchestra to a thundering crescendo.

Today, I sit silently, in the dark of the concert hall. Eyes puffy from the emotional weight of the penultimate movement. Waiting for the chorus of ten thousand times ten thousand angel voices.

Because there’s still that tantalizing, glorious alternate translation of “To the Chief Musician.”

To the end. To the Enduring.

To The Enduring One.

To the Overcomer.

So I wait for the finale of this symphony. It comes with the dawn of the morning.

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