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Imagine for a moment the importance and the weight of responsibility involved in composing a hymn for use in the Temple of Ancient Israel. Imagine further that the hymn you make is released to the nation, accepted and ultimately scheduled to be included in the Bible. It is an exciting, life-transforming moment, until your stomach suddenly begins to churn uncontrollably as you realise you have made a dreadful and glaring mistake!

Psalm 145 is an “acrostic” psalm, which simply means that each new line begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. While this is a common feature used in several passages of the Bible, in this Psalm it actually misses a letter in the sequence. It would be the equivalent of us singing the kindergarten “ABC song” and omitting a letter in the song, an obvious and embarrassing mistake to make!

Bible critics might rush to celebrate this apparent mistake, but could it be that this was actually no mistake, and that it rather contains a deeper meaning sent by God Himself?

Acrostic Passages in the Bible

Before we look into the issue of the ‘typo’ of Psalm 145, let’s first gain a better understanding of how acrostic texts work by looking at some other well-known portions of Scripture.

Proverbs 31:10-31 starts each line with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet as it describes the ‘virtuous’ woman. It uses the complete Hebrew alphabet – from beginning to end – to describe this perfect and complete woman.

While many are familiar with the Proverbs 31 passage, few realise that Psalm 112 is a parallel passage describing the blessed and perfect man. It similarly uses the whole alphabet acrostically to describe this complete and perfect man.

The book of Lamentations is also acrostic as it describes the complete judgment and fullness of sorrow surrounding Jerusalem’s destruction in the days of Jeremiah the prophet.

Psalm 119 is the most famous acrostic text in the Bible, dedicating 8 verses to each new letter of the alphabet. This is no mean feat – compare this to the effort required to write a song in English having 8 lines beginning with each letter, including the letters x and y! Psalm 119 uses the whole Hebrew alphabet as it describes the complete perfection of God’s law and ways.

In summary, we can see that acrostic passages are a literary tool used to describe a complete and whole situation or person, like an “a-z” description of something.

Solving the Psalm 145 Mystery

Having looked at these texts, let us turn our attention back to Psalm 145.

This Psalm acrostically describes God’s mercies and compassion until we encounter verse 14 where it skips one letter – the letter nun. Nun (the equivalent of our English letter ‘n’) is the first letter of the common Hebrew word ‘nafal’ – meaning ‘to fall’. (Note the Biblical word ‘nephilim’ – the fallen ones – comes from the same word ‘nafal’).

Instead of starting with the letter ‘nun’, verse 14 begins with a word meaning “to support or lift up” using the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The full text is “The Lord supports and lifts up those who fall (nafal)”. The letter nun is used after all, but only after describing how God is the one who mercifully lifts and supports us in the moment of our fall.

We all have times in our lives when we have fallen short of God’s ways, shameful times symbolised by the letter nun. As we look back over our mistakes, we can feel shame, guilt and regret, wishing we had never made those bad choices. Thankfully, we serve a merciful God, who promises forgiveness as we turn to Him and confess our sins (1 John 1:9). Furthermore, He promises to throw our sins into the sea (Mic. 7:19). As the late Corrie Ten Boom famously said, God then erects a sign saying “No fishing”!

Having been cleansed from our sins, in God’s eyes, it is as if we were perfect all along.

I believe that the skipping of the letter nun in this Psalm is no accident – and that the author is cleverly using the Hebrew language to bring home to us the fact that through God’s mercy, our nun is taken away, as He lifts  us up from our fall. Praise God for His mercy!

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