Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear George,
     I do not really have any commentaries on Ps 39:7 LXX and so advise you
to check them. I know that Delitzsch called the Septuagint's translation
"generalizing." In BHS there is no LXX alternative at the MT phrase in
question "ears You have dug for me." Thus I assume that the BHS editors did
not see the LXX's "a body You have prepared for Me" as offering any
suggestion of a competing Vorlage. In other words, they do not seem to
suppose that the LXX text may be due to a missing or added Hebrew letter in
its Hebrew Vorlage, or some such thing. But the LXX translators may have
regarded "ears" as a synecdoche for the whole body, with an emphasis on the
faculty of hearing for the purpose of obedience. If God created the ears,
then He created the whole body, and the whole body would be needed to do
God's will (Ps 39:8 LXX). In other words, the LXX translators would have
seen the contrast between the sacrificial animals' bodies given to the
Lord, and the psalmist's giving of His body to the Lord to do His will.
Perhaps the translators felt that "ears You have dug" was a thought that
would not be meaningful in Greek. That is, Greek readers might not
associate "dig" with divine creation. Rather than import a foreign, odd
sounding phrase, the translators may have decided to convey the general
idea.
     This is the suggestion that I receive from what I have, but you should
check commentaries that have studied the matter in detail.

                                Yours,
                                Harold Holmyard