Mitchell Dahood (1922–1982)

My husband bought me this set of Psalms commentaries (this is the first volume of three) for my birthday this year and I was so excited to receive them. I had added them to my book wish-list after having listened to a series of Old and New Testament lectures Yale offers for free on their YouTube channel. I wanted to read a commentary that was written from a more scholarly and historical point of view rather than primarily theological.

This series includes both a new translation of the psalms as well as commentary on the text. Professor Dahood used the Ugaritic texts to inform the translation by working with said texts to help bring context for certain words and phrases that translators have disagreed about or not had much information on in past translations. The result is an interesting, fresh (though still familiar for the avid Psalms reader) translation that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

The commentary sections were insightful, though a bit over my head at times. Multiple languages were used throughout the notes. With this in mind, I think that the commentary sections would be best appreciated by someone who knows the various biblical languages, has done translation work, and will thus be able to understand the full context of the notes. There is much of value for the lay reader as well, but you might, as I did, feel a bit lost at times and have to pick through the more scholarly language to find the parts that make the most sense to you.

All in all, I thought it was a worthy work and I look forward to reading the next two volumes.… (mais)