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Hebrew Roots · letter 14 of 22

Nun

The disputed sign, and the letter with a verse missing.

How the shape travelled: three historical stages

How sure we are of this ancient picture

Scholars split

Original sign

A serpent, or a fish, the field is genuinely split.

Paleo-Hebrew

A tight curve at the top running out into a long stroke.

final form

Modern square

The letter as every printed Hebrew Bible sets it.

On the picture: The sign's shape has also been read as a serpent.

Stage 1 has no Unicode encoding, so it stays a drawing, simplified from the copies published by the scholars who studied the inscriptions themselves: Gardiner, Cross, Naveh, Hamilton. Ancient scribes varied, and no two carvings cut a letter exactly alike. Stages 2 and 3 are real Unicode text.

Sounds like

N, as in English. At the end of a word it straightens into a long descending stroke: ן.

Written n in scholarly books.

Its number

50

letters carried number values from the Hellenistic era on

Its name means

fish

Final form

ן

the shape it takes at the end of a word

Nun is the alphabet's honest argument. Two serious readings of its origin, a serpent and a fish, have both been defended by working scholars, and neither has won. That is worth saying out loud on a subject where most of the internet sounds certain.

But nun's real fame is a hole in a psalm. Psalm 145 walks the alphabet one verse per letter, and in the Hebrew text used by every English Bible on this site, the nun verse is not there. Verse 13 is mem's; verse 14 is samek's. Something is missing in between, and you can see it with your finger.

Nun is also the letter Israel's scribes marked up most. Nine of them are printed backwards in the standard Hebrew Bible. One of them is raised above the line in Judges to hide, and preserve, an embarrassment. These are not theories; they are marks in the manuscripts that copyists carried forward for two thousand years rather than quietly fixing.

Where Scripture itself plays with this letter

The missing nun of Psalm 145

Between "Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom" (verse 13, mem's verse) and "The LORD upholds all who fall" (verse 14, samek's verse), the alphabet skips nun. The traditional Hebrew text has no nun verse, and the KJV and the ASV follow it and leave the gap. Three ancient witnesses supply one: the Dead Sea Scrolls copy of the Psalms, the Greek Old Testament, and the Syriac all read "Faithful is the LORD in all his words, and gracious in all his works," and the Berean Standard Bible prints that line inside verse 13 rather than as a verse of its own. The Talmud already knew the verse was missing and offered a reason: nun begins naphla, "fallen," the first word of Amos's lament that the virgin of Israel is fallen, and David would not put a downfall into a psalm of praise. The case for the traditional text is just as checkable: the supplied verse is nearly a duplicate of verse 17, which is exactly what a copyist filling a gap would produce. This is the best text-critical lesson in the Bible, and it fits in one finger-trace down a page.

The nine backwards nuns

Nine nun characters in the Hebrew Bible are printed reversed, and most of them come in a pair, one before and one after the two verses about the ark setting out: "Rise up, O LORD! May Your enemies be scattered." The scribes were flagging a passage as, in effect, out of its place: brackets in a text that had no brackets. More of them are scattered in Psalm 107. Whatever the reason was, the Masoretes did not remove the marks; they preserved them, and printed Hebrew Bibles still carry them today.

The raised nun that changed a grandfather's name

Judges ends with a shrine at Dan and a hired priest, and the text names him: Jonathan, son of Gershom, son of Manasseh. Except that in the manuscripts the nun of Manasseh is written suspended: raised above the line, out of the row. Take it out and the name is Moses. The scribes could not bring themselves to write plainly that the priest of an idol shrine was Moses's own grandson, so they lifted one letter above the line, and by lifting it rather than replacing it, they left both readings visible for anyone who looked. It is the most human mark in the Hebrew Bible.

Words that begin here

נֶפֶשׁ

nephesh — soul, life, appetite, person

Not a ghost inside a body: the whole living creature, throat and hunger and self together.

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נָחָשׁ

nachash — serpent

The word in Genesis 3, and one of the two candidates for what nun's sign was a picture of.

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נֵר

ner — lamp

Nun's stanza in Psalm 119 opens with it: "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet" (verse 105).

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נָחַם

nacham — to comfort, to be moved to pity

"Comfort ye, comfort ye my people" — the first word of Isaiah 40, doubled.

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The eight verses that are Nun’s own

Psalm 119 is the alphabet walking down the longest chapter in the Bible. Every letter gets eight verses, and every one of those eight verses begins with it. Verses 105–112 are the Nun stanza — eight lines that all open on נ. Every line stands open below, with one preacher’s comment on it directly underneath.

  1. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

    Psalm 119:105→

    “"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet." We are walkers through the city of this world, and we are often called to go out into its darkness; let us never venture there without the light giving word, lest we slip with our feet. Each man should use the word of God personally, practically, and habitually, that he may see his way and see what lies in it. When darkness settles down upon all around me, the word of the Lord, like a flaming torch, reveals my way.”

    Charles SpurgeonThe Treasury of David, Vol. 6 (1882)on Psalm 119:105→

  5. “I constantly take my life in my hands, yet I do not forget Your law.”

    Psalm 119:109→

    “My soul is continually in my hand - נפשי naphshi, my life; that is, it is in constant danger, every hour I am on the confines of death. The expression signifies to be in continual danger. So Xenarchus in Athenaeus, lib. xiii., c. 4: Εν τῃ χειρι την ψυχην εχοντα, “having the life in the hand;” which signifies continual danger and jeopardy. There is some thing like this in the speech of Achilles to Ulysses, Hom. Il. ix., ver. 322: - Αιει εμην ψυχην παραβαλλομενος πολεμιζειν· “Always presenting my life to the dangers of the fight.” My soul is in thy hand, is the reading of the Syriac, Septuagint, Ethiopic, and Arabic; but this is a conjectural and useless emendation.”

    Adam ClarkeCommentary on the Bible (1832)on Psalm 119:109→

  7. “Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.”

    Psalm 119:111→

    “Thy testimonies - Thy law; thy revealed will; the revelation which thou hast given considered as thy solemn “testimony” as to what is true and right. Have I taken as an heritage for ever - As my inheritance; as my property; as that which I consider to be of real and permanent value. The Hebrew word used here - נחל nachal - means to receive as a possession; to acquire; to possess as wealth; and then, to inherit. It is usually applied to the possession of the promised land as an inheritance. Here it means that the law of God was to him as such a possession. He regarded it as one does a rich inheritance. He chose it as his portion above all things else. For they are the rejoicing of my heart - My happiness is in them. I find constant comfort in them. See Psa 119:77, Psa 119:92. Compare the notes at Psa 1:2.”

    Albert BarnesNotes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)on Psalm 119:111→

  8. “I have inclined my heart to perform Your statutes, even to the very end.”

    Psalm 119:112→

    “I have inclined mine heart - The Hebrew word means properly “to stretch out”; “to extend” - as the hand. Exo 8:6, Exo 8:17. Then it means to incline, to bow, to depress. Here the idea is, that he had “given” that “direction” to the inclinations of his heart; he had resolved or purposed. He refers to an act of choice on his part, meaning that he had preferred this course, or that he had made this a solemn intention. Though every right inclination of the human heart is to be traced to the divine agency, yet it is also true that man is active in religion - or that his own mind resolves, chooses, and prefers - and that true religion is the actual choice or preference of all who serve God aright. See the notes at Psa 119:59. To perform thy statutes alway - Margin, as in Hebrew, “to do.” He meant to do the will of God. He intended to do this constantly; even forever. No man can be a truly pious man who has any disposition, or any purpose, “ever” to turn away from the service of God. Even unto the end - See Psa 119:33. To the end of life; to the end of all things.”

    Albert BarnesNotes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)on Psalm 119:112→

More voices on these same eight verses2

  • “, NUN.--The Fourteenth Part. NUN. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet,.... The same Solomon says of the law and commandment, the preceptive part of the word, Pro 6:23; and the Septuagint and Arabic versions render it "law" here.”

    John GillExposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763)on Psalm 119:105→

  • “My soul is continually in my hand - The Septuagint renders this, “My soul is always in thy hands,” but the Hebrew will not admit of this construction. The idea in the original is that his soul - his life - was always in jeopardy. The expression seems to be proverbial. Anything taken in the hand is liable to be rudely snatched away. Thus a casket of jewels, or a purse of gold in the hand, may at any moment be seized by robbers. See the notes at Job 13:14. Compare 1Sa 19:5; Jdg 12:3. The meaning here is, that his life was constantly in danger. Yet do I not forget thy law - Notwithstanding the danger to which I am exposed, and the care necessary to defend my life, I do not allow my mind to be turned from meditating on thy law, nor do I suffer any danger to deter me from obeying it. Compare the notes at Psa 119:61.”

    Albert BarnesNotes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)on Psalm 119:109→

How readers have meditated on this letter

✧The fallen, and the God who upholds thema devotional reading

The Talmud's own explanation of the missing verse ends where the psalm goes next. Nun would have begun the word "fallen," and David would not write a fall into a praise psalm; but, the passage continues, he supported the fallen anyway in the very next line: "The LORD upholds all who fall." That is verse 14, samek's verse, standing exactly where the gap is. Preachers Jewish and Christian have found that ordering irresistible, and it is worth being clear about what is fact and what is reading: the adjacency is a fact of the Hebrew text; the meaning drawn from it is a homily, and an ancient one.

Read this way by: b. Berakhot 4b (English: Rodkinson tr., 1903, public domain), read in Jewish and Christian preaching on Psalm 145

✧Fish, seed, and continuationa devotional reading

The devotional word-picture stream reads nun as a fish or a seed, and so as life, offspring, and what keeps going. The difficulty here is sharper than usual: this is the one letter where the sign itself is disputed, so a reading built on the fish is a reading built on the losing half of an unsettled argument, and it would have to be rebuilt from scratch if the serpent reading is right. Carried because it is widely taught, and labeled because that is what integrity requires.

Read this way by: The modern "Hebrew word pictures" devotional stream (Frank Seekins; Jeff A. Benner) — named, not endorsed