Nine Greek psalms with Solomon’s name in their titles, and in the last two, a king. Psalm 17 asks God to raise up for them their king, son of David, gives him a rod of iron, and calls him χριστὸς κυρίου — the Lord’s anointed, or in the reading Gray reports from the manuscripts, the anointed, the Lord. Psalm 18 is headed again, of the Lord’s anointed. This page measured those lines against all 7,927 verses of the Greek New Testament and the 30,348 screened units of the Greek Old Testament. In the Greek Old Testament held here the singular son of David stands eleven times, and ten of them say who the son is — Solomon six times, then Absalom, Amnon, Jerimoth, and once the Preacher of Ecclesiastes, a title rather than a name. Only 17:21 names no one. Yet word for word, the verses that call this king son of David or anointed, and the verses of his rod and vessels, share no more than three consecutive words with any New Testament verse. The deepest New Testament run in all nine psalms is six words of the psalm’s opening praise of God’s own kingship — and the kingdom of our God, 17:3, with Revelation 12:10, band 1 from both sides — and 17:3 is the only screened unit of the Greek Old Testament with βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ, the kingdom of God, in any case. These psalms are not Scripture for us; they are read here as a Second-Temple witness, and tested by the canon. See the method →
The Psalms of Solomon are eighteen Jewish psalms in Greek, every one but the first headed with Solomon’s name. Gray (1913) dates them to the middle of the first century BC and reads their foreign conqueror as Pompey; the earliest direct witness he names to them is the contents list of Codex Alexandrinus (fifth century), where they stand after the New Testament. They are among the CATSS Septuagint files this shelf measures against, which is why its pages have been meeting them since August 2026 — at Romans 14:17, 1 Corinthians 4:20, Revelation 12:10 and elsewhere. They are not Scripture for us, and they are not among the books this shelf files as Apocrypha. We read them as we read the other Second-Temple books — as a window on what some Jews were praying for in the century before Christ — critically, gratefully for the light they throw, and testing everything by the canon. Where Psalm 17 prays for a son of David, this page reports what the Greek says and measures it. It does not read the psalm as prophecy, and it makes no identification the psalm does not make; the church’s own confession is stated, and labelled, in Stage 6. For Psalms 1–9 see the companion study.
⚠️ What this page can and cannot measure — read this first.
HELD: the CATSS Greek of all eighteen psalms (PsSol.mlxx: 310 rows, 293 verses and 17 titles); Gray’s English of 1913, keyed row for row to it, with his bold-numbered text and the table between the three numbering schemes; a scan of Gray’s volume, from which every note of his quoted here was read off the page image; the Greek New Testament (7,927 verses); the Greek Old Testament (30,348 units screened of 30,637 held); the Masoretic text (for Psalm 2:9 only). Held only as OCR: Ryle & James’s edition of 1891 (its Greek OCR is unusable; one English line and one phrase of a note are reported from it, labelled). Held, unverified, never wired into the tooling: a transcription of Swete’s Greek Psalmi Salomonis, from which three readings are reported and nothing is measured.
NOT HELD: any Hebrew text of these psalms (Gray: a Hebrew original “has perished and no testimony to it even survives”); the Syriac version; von Gebhardt’s edition of 1895; any manuscript apparatus; any modern critical edition. The 1769 KJV Apocrypha does not contain the Psalms of Solomon, and neither does the Clementine Vulgate, so there is no KJV and no Latin column.
CONSEQUENCE: every screen on this page is Greek against Greek. The Hebrew-side screens cannot run. Every question about what the manuscripts read — and 17:32 is one — is reported from the printed editions and is not measured here.
Psalms of Solomon 10–18 — fourteen verses
Greek: CATSS (Rahlfs as digitised), verse by verse · English: G. Buchanan Gray, APOT 2 (Oxford 1913), public domain, the same CATSS verseFour words, two homes in the Greek Old Testament, two in the New. The sequence stands in 2 of the 30,348 screened Greek Old Testament units — Greek Psalm 106:3 (Hebrew and English 107:3) and here — and in 2 New Testament verses, Matthew 8:11 and Luke 13:29. From neither Gospel verse’s side is this psalm the nearest Greek Old Testament text (Stage 4). Baruch 5:5 also has Jerusalem stand on the height and see her children gathered; the two verses share 2 consecutive words.
Discipline as of a beloved son, a firstborn — the thought of Proverbs 3:11–12 and Hebrews 12:5–6. Measured, it shares 1 word with Proverbs 3:12 and 1 with Hebrews 12:6 (the same word, son), and no two consecutive words with either.
The mark of God — and no forehead is mentioned. τὸ σημεῖον τοῦ θεοῦ stands in 1 of the 30,348 units, this one, and in no New Testament verse. Against Ezekiel 9:4 (the mark on the foreheads of those who groan) this verse measures 2; against Revelation 7:3 (the servants sealed on their foreheads), 2.
The forehead is here — and it carries the mark of destruction, on the sinners. ἐπὶ τοῦ μετώπου stands in 2 Greek Old Testament units (Exodus 28:38, Aaron’s forehead, and here) and in 1 New Testament verse: Revelation 14:9, the mark of the beast. Run 3, tie band 1. See Stage 4 before reading anything into it.
The frame opens. These 8 consecutive words come back as the psalm’s last line, 17:46, and stand in no other unit of the 30,348 screened.
The deepest New Testament run in all nine psalms: 6 words with Revelation 12:10, tie band 1 — and from Revelation’s side band 1 too. βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ, in any case, stands in 1 of the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units: this one.
‘Son of David’ — and the one time in the Greek Old Testament held here it names no one. The singular stands 11 times in the screened units; in the other ten the word before it says who the son is (Stage 3). The Greek and the English do not have the same verb here. CATSS reads εἵλου, you chose; Gray has seest, and his note reports seest in R, J, L and the Syriac, knowest in H and V, and ‘chosest’ as von Gebhardt’s conjecture (Gray 1913, p. 649).
A potter’s vessels — the vessels plural. Greek Psalm 2:9 has the singular, ὡς σκεῦος κεραμέως, so this verse and Psalm 2:9 measure 1: they share words, not a sequence. Gray’s English has the singular, a potter’s vessel.
The rod of iron: 2 Greek Old Testament units, 3 New Testament verses. Psalm 2:9 and this verse; Revelation 2:27, 12:5 and 19:15. Here the rod is to shatter; in all four of the others it goes with a verb of shepherding (Stage 4).
The reading is the question, and this page cannot settle it. The CATSS row reads χριστὸς κυρίου, the Lord’s anointed. Gray translates the same, sets of in heavier type, and notes that the Syriac and the Greek read the anointed, the Lord (Stage 5).
The Lord himself is HIS king. κύριος αὐτὸς βασιλεὺς stands in 2 Greek Old Testament units: here, where the next word is his, and 17:46, where it is our. Gray’s English leaves a gap, ‘( )’, where the Greek has καὶ ἐλεήσει — and he will have mercy — which his note calls “probably due to some corruption” (p. 650).
The frame closes on the same 8 words as 17:1.
Psalm 17’s blessing again: 10 consecutive words with 17:44, in no other unit screened. 17:44 goes on of Israel; 18:6, of the Lord.
The other rod. The collection names a rod 2 times: the rod of iron at 17:24, and here the rod of discipline of the Lord’s anointed, over the generation to come.
On the numbers. The verse numbers are CATSS’s. Gray prints two other numberings: the bold numbers of Ryle & James (1891), which his own notes cite, and his own parenthesised numbers, which agree with CATSS at every verse start shown above except 17:46, where he prints none. The bold number is given on every English line. Italic English in the prose marked ‘our gloss’ is this page’s own literal rendering, not a quotation of any published translation.
Versification — stated, as on every page here, and here it is a third kind of state. There is no Masoretic text of this book, no KJV and no Vulgate, so the usual offsets do not exist; the page will not manufacture one. The offsets that do exist are between the Greek file and the printed English, and they are measured:
• CATSS, counted. Psalms 10–18 run to 131 verses (8·9·6·12·10·13·15·46·12) and 9 title rows. Every title is labelled 0:0 in the file and stands before the psalm it heads; this page calls each by its psalm (‘the title of Psalm 18’).
• Gray’s English, as held. Keyed to CATSS row for row: the same 310 rows in the same order, titles included. The keying moved verse starts by content in this range at 10:8 (a closing line Gray prints unnumbered), 17:19, and 17:44–46 (where Gray stops printing parenthesised numbers).
• Gray’s bold numbers (Ryle & James 1891) count 138 verses here (9·9·7·11·7·15·15·51·14). Bold minus CATSS, at the start of each CATSS verse, runs Ps 10: 0 to +1 · Ps 11: 0 to +1 · Ps 12: 0 to +1 · Ps 13: −2 to 0 · Ps 14: −3 to 0 · Ps 15: 0 to +2 · Ps 16: 0 · Ps 17: 0 to +6 · Ps 18: 0 to +2 — Psalm 16 is the only one in the range numbered alike throughout, and Psalm 17 runs up to six ahead. So 17:21 is bold 17:23; 17:24 is bold 17:26–27; 17:32 is bold 17:35–36; 17:44 is bold 17:50.
• A print slip, read off the page image by the transcriber: Gray’s parenthesised number for CATSS 14:3 is printed ‘(5)’ and is read (3).
• Gray’s gaps. He prints dots where he judged the text lost at 12:2–3 and 17:14–15, and empty brackets at 17:34. The Greek has words at all five verses.
Every reference on this page is CATSS’s; the bold number is added on every line the codex prints from Gray.
The Shape of the Passage
A sequence of nine psalms — three measured joints, and an inclusio round Psalm 17(1) Psalms 10, 11 and 12 end alike. Of the collection’s 293 verses, 4 open with the words τοῦ κυρίου, and all 4 are the last verse of a psalm: 9:11, 10:8, 11:9 and 12:6. 10:8 and 12:6 share their first 5 words. After Psalm 12 no psalm ends that way.
(2) Psalm 17 is framed. 17:1 and 17:46 share 8 consecutive words, αὐτὸς βασιλεὺς ἡμῶν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα καὶ ἔτι — himself our king for ever and ever — which stand in no other unit of the 30,348 screened. Between them, at 17:34, the three words κύριος αὐτὸς βασιλεὺς recur once, followed not by our but by his.
(3) Psalms 17 and 18 are joined by a blessing of 10 consecutive words (17:44, 18:6) found nowhere else screened, and by the word anointed: the collection uses χριστ- in 4 rows, and all 4 are in these two psalms.
The joints are measured; what they do is the page’s reading. It is not offered as a chiasm, and the middle of Psalm 17 is not marked as a pivot, because nothing in the text marks it. The indentation inside Psalm 17 shows the frame, not a claim of symmetry.
⚠️ Where this page sits. The Psalms of Solomon are filed here under Pseudepigrapha & Second Temple. They are not Scripture for us, they are not among the books this shelf files as Apocrypha / Deuterocanon, and nothing taught at Pleasant Springs rests on them.
Author
Anonymous, under Solomon’s name — but only in the titles. All 17 title rows name Solomon; the eighteen psalms themselves never do. Counted on the CATSS file: every Solomon in the book is in a title.
Gray (1913) reports as “the generally accepted theory” that the psalms are the work “if not of a single hand, yet of a single generation”, takes them to have been written in Hebrew in the middle of the first century BC, and identifies the foreign conqueror they describe with Pompey, who invaded in 63 BC and died in Egypt in 48 BC. He takes the charge that the ‘sinners’ set up a kingdom that was not David’s (17:6; he cites it by the bold numbers, xvii. 7, 8) to point to the later Hasmonaeans and their adherents, and sees in the ‘righteous’ the Pharisees. Those are Gray’s identifications (pp. 625–630), reported as his; nothing on this page tests them.
The voice. Psalm 16 is a single ‘I’; Psalm 17 says ‘we’ and speaks to God about ‘them’; Psalm 13 talks about ‘the righteous’ and ‘the sinner’ as two kinds of people.
Audience
People who had watched a throne fall. Psalm 17 remembers that God chose David and swore that his kingdom would not fail (17:4), and then tells of sinners who “laid waste the throne of David in tumultuous arrogance”, and of “a man that was alien to our race” (17:7). At 17:6 Gray’s English and the CATSS Greek differ: tumultuous follows the manuscript H, while the CATSS row ends ἐν ὑπερηφανίᾳ ἀλλάγματος, in pride of exchange (our gloss), nearer the reading of R, J and L, which Gray’s note renders ‘in pride of price’ and calls senseless (p. 648).
People sorting themselves into two camps. Six of the nine psalms call someone ὅσιος, pious, and six call someone ἁμαρτωλός, sinner (counted in the verses). And the sinners are not only foreigners: “The king was a transgressor, and the judge disobedient, and the people sinful.” (17:20).
And people who prayed for a king. The poems give him no name. They ask God to raise him up, describe his reign at length, and twice (17:44 and 18:6) pronounce a blessing, blessed are those who come to be in those days.
Orient on the collection, on its Greek and Syriac witnesses, and on the words son of David and anointed.
Search by topic: Psalms of Solomon; Messiah; Son of David; anointed; Pompey; Hasmonaeans; Pharisees; Pseudepigrapha.
Which articles are relevant?
- Anchor Bible Dictionary — entries on the Psalms of Solomon, Messiah, Son of David and the Pseudepigrapha.
- Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism — entries on the Psalms of Solomon and on messianism.
- Dictionary of New Testament Background (IVP) — entries on the Psalms of Solomon and on messianism. These are subjects to look up; the exact entry titles were not checked, and none of these works is held on this disk.
- On the numbering — any article citing these psalms by verse must be read with the scheme it uses. Gray’s own notes and Ryle & James cite the bold numbers, which run up to six ahead of CATSS in Psalm 17 (see the versification note).
Bibliography surfaced:
- G. Buchanan Gray, ‘The Psalms of Solomon’, in R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1913), pp. 625–652. Held: the English column, and every note quoted here.
- H. E. Ryle and M. R. James, Psalms of the Pharisees, commonly called the Psalms of Solomon (Cambridge, 1891). Held as OCR only.
- O. von Gebhardt, Die Psalmen Salomo’s (Leipzig, 1895) — the Greek edition Gray names as the most important for the Greek text (p. 630). Not held.
- J. Rendel Harris, The Odes and Psalms of Solomon (Cambridge, 1909) — the Syriac. Not held.
- R. B. Wright’s translation in J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2 (1985), and Kenneth Atkinson’s in the New English Translation of the Septuagint (2007). Neither held; named as the obvious next step for a reader, not consulted.
A Greek psalter in the manner of the canonical one, a city taken, and a king prayed for.
Each parallel below is named with what was measured. Where a scholar says one text draws on another, the page reports whose judgement that is; the run engine cannot say it.
Which texts shed light on these nine psalms?
- The Greek Psalter. The deepest contact outside the collection itself is 8 words, tie band 1 from both sides: 15:4 with Greek Psalm 14:5 (Hebrew and English 15:5), ὁ ποιῶν ταῦτα οὐ σαλευθήσεται εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, he who does these things shall not be shaken for ever (our gloss). 12:1 runs 6 with Greek Psalm 119:2 (Hebrew and English 120:2), and 18:1 runs 6 with Greek Psalm 8:7 (Hebrew 8:7, English 8:6), each band 1 from both sides.
- Isaiah 11. Gray’s note on bold 17:39 (CATSS 17:35), read off the page image: “Cp. Isa. xi. 4. Note also the influence of Isa. xi. 3 f. on the following lines.” That is Gray’s judgement. Measured: 17:35 and Isaiah 11:4 share 6 consecutive words, band 1 from both sides — καὶ πατάξει γῆν τῷ λόγῳ τοῦ στόματος αὐτοῦ in Isaiah; the run would be seven but for one word, since 17:35 has πατάξει γὰρ γῆν. The phrase τῷ λόγῳ τοῦ στόματος αὐτοῦ stands in 3 units: Isaiah 11:4, Judith 2:3 and 17:35.
- The house of David. 17:4 — David chosen and promised a kingdom — runs 6 words with 3 Kingdoms (1 Kings) 2:33, τοῦ σπέρματος αὐτοῦ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα; from the Kings verse’s side the band is 3, the other two being 2 Kingdoms 22:51 and Greek Psalm 17:51 (Hebrew 18:51, English 18:50), the last line of David’s song.
- Psalm 2. The phrase with a rod of iron stands in both 17:24 and Psalm 2:9, and the two verses share 3 words, band 1 from both sides: of all 30,348 units, each is the other’s nearest. The potter’s vessels of 17:23 measure 1 against the same verse. Stage 4 sets the three texts side by side.
- The law of the king (Deuteronomy 17:16–17). 17:33 — the king who will not trust in horse and rider or multiply gold and silver — has the same thought as that law (the page’s own observation; no commentary is cited), and measures 1 against Deuteronomy 17:16 and 1 against 17:17. Its deepest Greek Old Testament run is elsewhere: four words with Deuteronomy 20:1, ἵππον καὶ ἀναβάτην καὶ, a law for battle. Thought and wording part company in this pair.
- Baruch 4:36–5:9. Gray reports that Ryle & James accept, and Viteau rejects, the dependence of that poem on Psalm 11 (1913, p. 628, read off the page image). This page does not take a side; Stage 4 reproduces the measurement this shelf has already published.
Reported from Gray’s introduction (1913), read off the page images: the earliest direct testimony to the Psalms of Solomon is the catalogue at the beginning of Codex Alexandrinus (fifth century), where they stand after the books of the Old and New Testaments (p. 627); eight Greek manuscripts were known to him, from the tenth century to the fifteenth (p. 625); and the Syriac version, which he judges to be made from the Greek, survives chiefly in a manuscript published by Harris (he also names a small fragment containing xvi. 6–13 and one further manuscript) that breaks off at bold 17:38b (p. 626) — so in that manuscript there is nothing from the middle of CATSS 17:34 to the end of Psalm 18, which is where three of the four rows with χριστός stand.
Reported, not measured: that the psalms were composed in Hebrew. Gray calls it “practically certain”; no Hebrew text survives, and the page reports the judgement as his.
Son of David, anointed, kingdom, rod, mark, spirit — counted, not assumed.
Counts are over the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened here (of 30,637 held; the Odes excluded, as on every page of this shelf) and the 7,927 verses of the Greek New Testament, on normalised word forms (accents, breathings and case dropped; elision resolved). ‘Units’ and ‘verses’ are rows, not occurrences, unless the sentence says times. It is not a count over ‘the Septuagint’.
The singular, in that order, stands 11 times in 10 of the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened. In ten of the eleven the word before it says who the son is — by name 9 times (Solomon 6 times, then Absalom, Amnon and Jerimoth once each), and once by a title, at Ecclesiastes 1:1, Ἐκκλησιαστοῦ υἱοῦ Δαυιδ, the Preacher, son of David. The CATSS text capitalises that title like a name; a reader who counts only personal names has 9, not ten. The eleventh is 17:21, and it names no one: the word before is their, ἀνάστησον αὐτοῖς τὸν βασιλέα αὐτῶν υἱὸν Δαυιδ, raise up for them their king, son of David (our gloss). In the Greek New Testament the same two words stand in 14 verses, all in the first three Gospels: thirteen of Jesus or of ‘the Christ’, and one, Matthew 1:20, Ἰωσὴφ υἱὸς Δαυίδ, the angel addressing Joseph.
The collection uses χριστ- in 4 rows, all in Psalms 17–18: 17:32, the title of Psalm 18, 18:5 and 18:7. The nominative pair χριστὸς κυρίου stands in 4 Greek Old Testament units — 1 Kingdoms (1 Samuel) 24:7 and 24:11, Lamentations 4:20, and 17:32 — and in 0 New Testament verses. The pair χριστὸς κύριος stands in 0 Greek Old Testament units and 1 New Testament verse: Luke 2:11. Which of the two 17:32 should read is the question of Stage 5; the counts here are counts of the files as they stand.
In the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened, βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ in any case stands 1 time: 17:3. The nearest thing elsewhere is Wisdom 10:10, βασιλείαν θεοῦ, without the article. In the Greek New Testament the phrase in any case stands in 62 verses, the nominative with the article in 20. Psalm 17 has 14 of the collection’s 20 king words (its title’s included), and it opens and closes by giving the title to God.
2 Greek Old Testament units, 3 New Testament verses: Psalm 2:9 and 17:24; Revelation 2:27, 12:5 and 19:15. The collection has a rod 2 times, and they are two different rods: the rod of iron that shatters (17:24) and the ῥάβδον παιδείας, rod of discipline (our gloss), of the Lord’s anointed (18:7).
Two marks in one psalm. τὸ σημεῖον τοῦ θεοῦ ἐπὶ δικαίους — the mark of God on the righteous (our gloss) — and at 15:9 τὸ γὰρ σημεῖον τῆς ἀπωλείας ἐπὶ τοῦ μετώπου αὐτῶν, for the mark of destruction is on their forehead (our gloss), of the sinners. μέτωπ- stands in 8 New Testament verses, every one in Revelation; the singular ἐπὶ τοῦ μετώπου in 1 of them (14:9, the beast’s mark), the plural ἐπὶ τῶν μετώπων in 4 (7:3, 9:4, 14:1, 22:4: the seal and the name on God’s servants).
1 Greek Old Testament unit, 12 New Testament verses. 17:37 — God will make the king δυνατὸν ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ, mighty by holy spirit (our gloss). The shelf has met this verse before, from the other side: it is the deepest Greek Old Testament partner of Luke 3:16 and 1 Thessalonians 1:5 (both have studies here), and it is the same for Matthew 3:11 (Stage 4).
The eleven, listed (the singular son of David in the screened Greek Old Testament):
| where | the son |
|---|---|
| 1 Chronicles 29:22 | Solomon |
| 2 Chronicles 1:1 | Solomon |
| 2 Chronicles 11:18 | Jerimoth |
| 2 Chronicles 30:26 | Solomon |
| 2 Chronicles 35:3 | Solomon |
| 2 Kingdoms (2 Samuel) 13:1 | Absalom |
| 2 Kingdoms (2 Samuel) 13:1 | Amnon |
| 3 Kingdoms (1 Kings) 2:46l | Solomon |
| Proverbs 1:1 | Solomon |
| Ecclesiastes 1:1 | the Preacher |
| Psalm of Solomon 17:21 | no name |
2 Kingdoms 13:1 has two, Absalom and Amnon, in one verse. Not counted: the reversed order (David, son of Jesse, and the like) and the plural sons of David. The forms counted are υἱός, υἱοῦ, υἱῷ, υἱόν and υἱέ followed by Δαυιδ, with or without the article between.
Counted here, and used above:
- Psalms 10–18: 131 verses, 2,226 Greek words, and 9 titles of 47 words. Psalm 17 alone is 866 words, 39 per cent of the range.
- David is named 3 times in the whole collection, all in Psalm 17 (17:4, 17:6, 17:21).
- Discipline (παιδεία, παιδεύω): 12 times in Psalms 10–18, 4 of them in Psalm 13. The noun παῖς, servant, is not counted.
- χριστ- in the Greek Old Testament units screened: 48 times; in the Greek New Testament: 531.
Six words with Revelation 12:10 — and the king’s own lines measure three.
Every verse of Psalms 10–18 screened against all 7,927 verses of the Greek New Testament: contiguous runs of whole word forms, CATSS against SBLGNT, both sides normalised with the shelf’s cross-edition form (grk_seq_cmp, which also folds spellings the two editions merely write differently). The tie band — how many verses reach the same depth — is printed beside every run, and for every run discussed the band from the other side too (that New Testament verse against all 30,348 screened Greek Old Testament units). A zero from this screen means no word in common. English in this stage is the page’s own literal gloss.
The distribution, against the whole Greek New Testament:
Across the 131 verses: 129 reach two, 95 reach three, 22 reach four, 2 reach five, 1 reaches six, and nothing reaches seven. The median is 3. Psalm by psalm the deepest runs are 5·4·4·3·4·3·4·6·4 (Psalms 10 to 18). The 9 titles, screened on their own, reach 2 at most.
Depth is not rarity. Of the 22 rows that reach four, 9 tie with four or more New Testament verses: six on the formula εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα καὶ or αὐτοῦ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, two (17:44, 18:6) on ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις, one (17:28) on ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς καὶ. A run is read with its band, or not at all.
The deepest run is about God’s kingdom, not about the king:
17:3 → Revelation 12:10: a run of 6, tie band 1; and from Revelation’s side, against all 30,348 Greek Old Testament units, band 1 — the same verse. καὶ ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα ἐπὶ τὰ ἔθνη ἐν κρίσει — and the kingdom of our God is for ever over the nations in judgement (our gloss); and in the loud voice of Revelation 12:10, καὶ ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν καὶ ἡ ἐξουσία τοῦ χριστοῦ αὐτοῦ, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ (our gloss).
The six words stand in 1 Greek Old Testament unit and 1 New Testament verse. The four at their heart, ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ, explain why other pages of this shelf keep meeting 17:3: measured, it is the single deepest Greek Old Testament partner (those four words, band 1) of 1 Corinthians 4:20, Romans 14:17, Mark 10:14 and Luke 21:31, because no other screened unit has the phrase.
And the rest of Revelation’s line is in the next psalm. χριστοῦ αὐτοῦ, his anointed, stands at 18:5 — the two verses measure 2 — but it is not this collection’s alone: 6 Greek Old Testament units carry it, Psalm 2:2 among them, and 3 New Testament verses (Acts 4:26, which quotes Psalm 2:2, and Revelation 11:15 and 12:10). The page reports where the words stand. It does not say who read whom; nothing measured here can.
The king’s own lines measure three at most:
The verses that call him son of David or anointed, and the verses of the vessels and the rod, each against all 7,927 New Testament verses:
| verse | the line | deepest NT run | tie band |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17:21 | son of David | 3 | 6 |
| 17:23 | a potter’s vessels | 2 | 4 |
| 17:24 | rod of iron | 3 | 3 |
| 17:32 | the Lord’s anointed | 3 | 39 |
| 18:5 | his anointed | 2 | 251 |
| 18:7 | the Lord’s anointed | 3 | 1 |
None of the six runs is on the words son of David; one touches anointed. 18:5 reaches 2 words in a band of 251 New Testament verses; three of them — Acts 4:26, Revelation 11:15 and 12:10 — share χριστοῦ αὐτοῦ, his anointed, and the rest share other common pairs. 17:21’s three are ὁ θεός τοῦ and εἰς τὸν καιρόν, shared with six verses; 17:24’s band of three is the three Revelation verses with the rod of iron; 18:7’s band of one is 2 Corinthians 7:1, ἐν φόβῳ θεοῦ, in the fear of God — and from 2 Corinthians’ side that phrase ties 6 Greek Old Testament units, 5 of them in this collection. Across the whole portrait, 17:21–43, the deepest New Testament run is 4, reached twice: 17:28 on a formula (band 6) and 17:37 on ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ καὶ.
The named pairs measure the same. 17:21 against Matthew 1:1 (1) and Luke 1:32 (2); 17:32 against Luke 2:11 (1, on the CATSS reading) and Luke 2:26 (1).
The rod of iron, three ways — measured, and not ranked:
| text | the rod | the vessels |
|---|---|---|
| Greek Psalm 2:9 | ποιμανεῖς αὐτοὺς ἐν ῥάβδῳ σιδηρᾷ you will shepherd them with a rod of iron (our gloss) | ὡς σκεῦος κεραμέως συντρίψεις αὐτούς like a potter’s vessel you will shatter them (our gloss) |
| Hebrew Psalm 2:9 | תְּרֹעֵם בְּשֵׁבֶט בַּרְזֶל כִּכְלִי יוֹצֵר תְּנַפְּצֵם you will break them with a rod of iron; like a potter’s vessel you will dash them in pieces (our gloss) | |
| Psalm of Solomon 17:23–24 | ἐν ῥάβδῳ σιδηρᾷ συντρῖψαι πᾶσαν ὑπόστασιν αὐτῶν with a rod of iron to shatter all their substance (our gloss) | ἐκτρῖψαι ὑπερηφανίαν ἁμαρτωλοῦ ὡς σκεύη κεραμέως to rub out the sinner’s pride like a potter’s vessels (our gloss) |
| Revelation 2:27 | καὶ ποιμανεῖ αὐτοὺς ἐν ῥάβδῳ σιδηρᾷ and he will shepherd them with a rod of iron (our gloss) | ὡς τὰ σκεύη τὰ κεραμικὰ συντρίβεται as the clay vessels are shattered (our gloss) |
| Revelation 12:5 | ποιμαίνειν πάντα τὰ ἔθνη ἐν ῥάβδῳ σιδηρᾷ | — |
| Revelation 19:15 | ποιμανεῖ αὐτοὺς ἐν ῥάβδῳ σιδηρᾷ | — |
Measured: Greek Psalm 2:9 runs 5 with Revelation 2:27, 4 with 19:15 and 3 with 12:5. 17:24 runs 3 with each of the three (band 3: those three and no other verse). From Revelation’s side 17:24 is never the nearest Greek Old Testament text: Revelation 2:27’s deepest is Psalm 2:9 at 5, band 1; 12:5 reaches 4 on a formula, in a band of 12; 19:15 reaches 4 in a band of 8 that includes Psalm 2:9 and not 17:24. From Psalm 2:9’s side, the nearest of all 30,348 units is 17:24, at 3, band 1.
What the columns have, verb by verb. In Greek Psalm 2:9 and in all three Revelation verses the rod goes with a verb of shepherding (ποιμαίνω); in 17:24 it goes with shattering, συντρῖψαι. The vessels are shattered with συντρίβω in Greek Psalm 2:9 and in Revelation 2:27; in 17:23 they go with ἐκτρῖψαι. The Masoretic pointing of the Hebrew rod-verb, תְּרֹעֵם, is usually taken from a root meaning break; the same consonants read from the root for shepherd would give the Greek column’s sense — that explanation is the commentaries’, and is not measured here. And 17:40, sixteen verses later, has this king ποιμαίνων τὸ ποίμνιον κυρίου, shepherding the flock of the Lord. The page records which verb stands where. It does not say which text any other was reading.
⚠️ The page’s own counter-examples — runs that look like contact and are not:
- 10:7 → Hebrews 1:8 — 5 words, band 1. ὁ θεὸς εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα — a band of 1 from the psalm’s side. But Hebrews 1:8 is a quotation, introduced with πρὸς δὲ τὸν υἱόν, but to the Son, in a chain of them, and from its side the deepest Greek Old Testament run is 10 words with Greek Psalm 44:7 (Hebrew 45:7, English 45:6). The five words are a formula 10:7 shares with three Greek psalm verses.
- 13:2 → John 12:38 — 3 words, band 1. ὁ βραχίων κυρίου, the arm of the Lord. John 12:38 quotes Isaiah 53:1 with a fulfilment formula and runs 12 words with it; 13:2’s three words are Isaiah’s three. A band of 1 on a quotation of a third text.
- 11:2 → Matthew 8:11 and Luke 13:29 — 4 words, band 2. ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν καὶ δυσμῶν, from east and west. From the Gospels’ side this psalm is not the nearest: Luke 13:29’s deepest Greek Old Testament run is 5, band 1, with Greek Psalm 106:3, and Matthew 8:11’s is 6, band 1, with 4 Kingdoms 13:23 (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob).
- 17:37 → Matthew 3:11, Luke 3:16, 1 Thessalonians 1:5 — 4 words, band 3. From each New Testament verse’s side the band is 1 — 17:37 is the single deepest Greek Old Testament unit for all three — because the phrase stands in 1 Greek Old Testament unit and 12 New Testament verses. A phrase the Greek Old Testament held here has once and the New Testament has twelve times gives a band of 1 that proves nothing about either.
- 15:9 → Revelation 14:9 — 3 words, band 1. On the forehead: the sinners’ mark of destruction, and the mark of the beast, λαμβάνει χάραγμα ἐπὶ τοῦ μετώπου αὐτοῦ. From Revelation’s side the deepest Greek Old Testament run is 4, in a band of 3, and this verse is not among them. Three words of anatomy.
⚠️ Thematic pairs, measured — none above three:
- 13:9 → Proverbs 3:12 and Hebrews 12:6 — 1 and 1. The idea is the same — God disciplines as a father disciplines a son — and the shared word is son; μαστιγοῖ δὲ πάντα υἱὸν ὃν παραδέχεται is the line Hebrews quotes. 13:7 against Proverbs 3:11 is 0, and 10:2 against Hebrews 12:5 is 0: no word in common.
- 15:6 → Ezekiel 9:4 and Revelation 7:3 — 2 and 2. Ezekiel has δὸς τὸ σημεῖον ἐπὶ τὰ μέτωπα τῶν ἀνδρῶν; Revelation 7:3, ἐπὶ τῶν μετώπων αὐτῶν. In both, the mark on the forehead protects; in Psalm 15 the forehead mark is the sinners’, and the mark on the righteous is not said to be on a forehead. 15:6 runs 3 with Revelation 9:4, on τοῦ θεοῦ ἐπὶ.
- 17:21 → Matthew 1:1 — 1. The son of David of the psalm and the son of David of the genealogy share the word David, and nothing consecutive: the psalm has the accusative υἱόν, Matthew the genitive, υἱοῦ Δαυὶδ.
Against the Greek Old Testament:
Each of the 131 verses against the other screened units (CATSS against CATSS, normalised with grk_seq; the seventeen titles keyed one by one, for the reason given in Stage 5): 131 reach two, 121 reach three, 67 reach four, 33 reach five, 14 reach six, 5 reach eight, 2 reach ten. The median is 4. The two tens and two of the three eights are the collection matching itself: 17:44 with 18:6 (10) and 17:1 with 17:46 (8).
Leave the Psalms of Solomon out of the target and the median drops to 3; 8 verses reach six or more, one of them eight — 15:4 with Greek Psalm 14:5, in Stage 2. The seven sixes: 11:9 with 2 Chronicles 13:5, 12:1 with Greek Psalm 119:2 (Hebrew and English 120:2), 16:6 with Daniel 3:35 in both Greek texts (band 2, a contact the shelf’s Prayer of Azariah page has published from the other side), 17:4 with 3 Kingdoms 2:33, 17:35 with Isaiah 11:4, 18:1 with Greek Psalm 8:7 (English 8:6), and 18:10 with Exodus 13:10 — every one band 1 from this side except 16:6.
And the petition for the son of David, 17:21, reaches 3 at most, in a band of 83. Its nearest Greek Old Testament neighbours are formulas.
Psalm of Solomon 11 and Baruch 5 — reproducing what this shelf has published:
The Baruch study measured this pairing from Baruch’s side. From the psalm’s side, each of its 9 verses against the 11 Greek verses of Baruch 4:36–5:9:
| Psalm of Solomon 11 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| deepest run against Baruch 4:36–5:9 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3 |
The deepest run is 3 — and it is still 3 against the 42 verses of 4:5–5:9 the Baruch page used. 11:2 against 5:5 is 2; 11:4 against 5:7 is 2; 11:5 against 5:8 is 3; 11:7 against 5:1 is 3. Against everything screened, 11:5’s deepest run is 3 in a band of 16, 11:4’s is 2 in a band of 37, and 11:2’s deepest partner is not Baruch but Greek Psalm 106:3, at 4, band 1 from both sides. The rare words tell the other story: ὁμαλισμὸν stands in 3 units (Baruch 5:7, Micah 7:12, 11:4), ἐσκίασαν in 2 (Baruch 5:8, 11:5), ξύλον εὐωδίας in 2 (the same two), συνηγμένα in 3 (Baruch 5:5, Isaiah 60:4, 11:2). Every figure here matches the Baruch page. Which text is prior is not measurable and is not asserted.
It settles, on these files, that the son-of-David psalm meets the New Testament most deeply where it speaks of God’s kingdom — six words of 17:3 with Revelation 12:10, band 1 both ways — and that the verses which call the king son of David or anointed, with the verses of his rod and vessels, share at most three consecutive words with any New Testament verse; of his titles only 18:5’s two words his anointed fall in such a run, in three of the 251 verses tied with it at two.
It does not settle whether any New Testament writer knew these psalms. A screen for verbatim runs cannot see a shared hope, a shared image or a shared way of praying. The rod of iron, the son of David and the anointed are, on this screen, far from the New Testament in wording (whether they are close in idea is not something this screen can say); the run engine reports the wording and is silent about the idea.
The honest sentence is the narrow one: measured word for word, the king of these psalms is not where they touch the New Testament; the kingdom of their God is.
What this page could not check, a reading it cannot settle, and a loader fault measured on the way.
This is the section that makes the shelf trustworthy. It is long, because one line of these psalms turns on a reading the files on this disk cannot decide.
⚠️ 17:32 — χριστὸς κυρίου or χριστὸς κύριος? Reported from the editions, not measured:
The CATSS row (Rahlfs’s text as digitised) reads καὶ βασιλεὺς αὐτῶν χριστὸς κυρίου, and their king the Lord’s anointed (our gloss).
Gray (1913, p. 650), read off the page image, translates “their king the anointed of the Lord” — and sets of in heavier type. His note gives the Syriac and the Greek as “‘the anointed, the Lord’ (= Christ the Lord, Luke ii. 11)”; that Greek, Χριστὸς κύριος, he takes to stand for a Hebrew “the normal rendering of which would be Χριστὸς κυρίου”; and for the same nominative in the Greek he points to Lamentations 4:20.
Ryle & James (1891), reported from the OCR held here and not checked against an image: their English reads their king is the Lord Messiah, and their note calls the expression “perhaps the ‘crux’ of the whole book”. (Their Greek is unreadable in the OCR; this page does not report it.)
The Swete transcription in the corpus directory (unverified; never wired into the tooling) reads χριστὸς κύριος at its 17:36 — and χριστὸς Κύριος at Lamentations 4:20, where the CATSS row reads χριστὸς κυρίου. So the two Greek texts on this disk part company at both of the places Gray names.
Why it matters to the numbers. On the CATSS reading, χριστὸς κυρίου is one of 4 Greek Old Testament units with that pair and has 0 New Testament partners, and 17:32 measures 1 against Luke 2:11. The other pair, χριστὸς κύριος, stands in 0 Greek Old Testament units and 1 New Testament verse — Luke 2:11. With that one ending changed in the CATSS row, 17:32 would measure 2 against Luke 2:11, its deepest New Testament run would still be 3, and the two pair counts would become 3 and 1 Greek Old Testament units. Like the two Greek Tobits, the edition changes the counts — each here by one. The page does not choose between the readings. It cannot see the manuscripts, the Syriac or Rahlfs’s apparatus, and it is not its place to settle by preference a question its own sources call the crux.
A second, smaller case in the same psalm. At 17:21 the CATSS row has εἵλου, you chose; Gray’s note reports ‘chosest’ as von Gebhardt’s conjecture (the note prints no Greek, so that it stands for this word is the page’s inference); Gray’s manuscripts read seest or knowest, and the Swete transcription reads ἴδες, you saw.
⚠️ A loader fault, noted when these files were acquired and measured here — reported, not patched:
The shelf’s Greek Old Testament loader gives all 17 title rows of the Psalms of Solomon the same reference, PsSol 0:0. The run engine keys its results by reference, so any screen that touches those rows collapses them into one.
Measured, not inferred. Ask the engine, on the loader’s own references, for the nearest Greek Old Testament unit to the title of Psalm 18, and it answers a run of 7 in a band of 1 — the title matching itself, which a caller excluding by reference cannot remove without removing all seventeen. Keyed one by one, the answer is 3 words in a band of 5: ψαλμὸς τῷ Σαλωμων, the opening of 5 other titles. Every Greek Old Testament screen of this collection on this page keys the titles one by one; the New Testament screen confines itself to numbered verses; and none of the bands measured from the New Testament side includes a title row (checked). The fault is in shared tooling this page was built without editing, so it is reported for repair rather than fixed here.
⚠️ What this page could NOT check:
- Any manuscript. Gray names eight Greek manuscripts and a Syriac version; this disk holds none of them, no apparatus and no critical edition. Every statement about what the manuscripts read is Gray’s, or Ryle & James’s, reported.
- The Syriac. Not held. Gray reports that the manuscript Harris published breaks off at bold 17:38b, so that it lacks the end of Psalm 17 and all of Psalm 18; the page cannot check that either.
- A Hebrew original. Gray thought one lay behind the Greek; none survives. No Hebrew-side screen can run, and no statement here depends on what such a Hebrew may have said.
- The Swete transcription and the Ryle & James OCR. Each is quoted for a reading or two and labelled. Neither was checked against a page image, and neither was measured.
- Gray’s historical identifications — Pompey, the Hasmonaeans, the Pharisees — are his, reported from his introduction. Nothing here tests them.
- Allusion. The screen finds runs of identical word forms. It cannot see a shared idea, and a run of one is not evidence of independence any more than a run of six is evidence of copying.
⚠️ Where this page is weakest:
- The English column is quotation, not a parallel. Gray did not translate the Greek printed beside him: he weighed the Greek manuscripts and the Syriac, with a lost Hebrew as the basis of his translation, and he says so. At 17:21, 17:23 and 17:34 his English and this Greek visibly disagree, and the page marks each on the line; they do at 17:6 too, quoted and marked in Author & Audience. At 17:32 they agree with each other against the manuscripts Gray reports. A reader who wants an English of the CATSS row has only the page’s glosses.
- Three counts turn on the CATSS reading at 17:32. On the Swete transcription’s reading the pair would be the one Luke 2:11 has. The run would be two, not one; the two pair counts of Stage 3 would each move by one unit (4 to 3, and 0 to 1); and nothing else on the page would move — but the page states the dependence rather than hide it.
- The structure diagram claims only its joints. The frame of Psalm 17, the shared endings of Psalms 10–12 and the repeated blessing of 17:44 and 18:6 are counted. The grouping of Psalm 17 into frame, loss, plea and reign is a reading, and is drawn as a sequence, not as a chiasm.
- Dating is taken from Gray. The middle of the first century BC is his conclusion; nothing here depends on it.
Commentaries & studies:
- G. Buchanan Gray, ‘The Psalms of Solomon’, in R. H. Charles (ed.), APOT, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1913), pp. 625–652. Held and used: the English; the notes on bold 17:23, 17:36, 17:38 and 17:39; and the introduction — all read off the page images of the Toronto scan.
- H. E. Ryle & M. R. James, Psalms of the Pharisees (Cambridge, 1891). Held as OCR; used only at bold 17:36, labelled.
- O. von Gebhardt, Die Psalmen Salomo’s (Leipzig, 1895). Not held.
- J. Rendel Harris, The Odes and Psalms of Solomon (Cambridge, 1909). Not held.
- R. B. Wright (in Charlesworth, OTP 2, 1985) and K. Atkinson (NETS, 2007). Not held; not consulted.
A psalm that prays for a king with no name, and gives the kingdom to God.
Name what you learned, why it matters, and one concrete response.
What should we carry away — and do?
- Count before you connect. In the Greek Old Testament held here, son of David is said of Solomon, Absalom, Amnon, Jerimoth and the Preacher; 17:21 is the one place where it names no one. That is worth knowing exactly, rather than approximately.
- The deepest words are not always the expected ones. The rod of iron measures 3 with Revelation; the anointed measures 1 with Luke 2:11. The six-word contact is the kingdom of our God. Measure before you repeat.
- Which Greek? At 17:32 the two Greek texts on this disk differ by one ending, and the sense turns on it. When someone quotes an ancient text at you, it is fair to ask which copy.
- The church’s view, labelled as such. Pleasant Springs confesses Jesus as the son of David and the Christ because the New Testament says so (Matthew 1:1; Romans 1:3–4; Luke 2:11), not because Psalm of Solomon 17 does. We read these psalms as a Second-Temple witness to what some Jews were praying for in the century before Jesus, and we test them by the canon. This page does not identify the psalm’s king with anyone; the psalm does not, and the page makes no identification the text does not make.
- One concrete response. Jesus taught his disciples to pray your kingdom come (Matthew 6:10). Pray it daily this week, with Revelation 12:10 in view — the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ (our gloss).
Psalm of Solomon 17:21 · to share
CATSS Greek · Gray 1913Every Deep Research page traces its passage across the whole sweep — the Old Testament, the Second-Temple world between the testaments (historical witnesses, not Scripture), and the New Testament. Follow the thread:
Pleasant Springs Church — Deep Research
Research method after Michael S. Heiser’s Bible Research Method (examine dictionaries → ancient literature → important words → textual connections → academic publications → share), with the Pleasant Springs “Author & Audience” foundation. Scripture set in the Hebrew, the Greek editions named on each page and the ESV (Old Testament), and the Greek New Testament and the ESV (New Testament), per the practice of Pleasant Springs Church. ⚠️ Status: the Psalms of Solomon are not Scripture for Pleasant Springs and not among the Apocrypha / Deuterocanon; they are filed under Pseudepigrapha & Second Temple and read as a witness. Greek: the CATSS morphologically analysed Septuagint (PsSol.mlxx, Rahlfs’s text as digitised), quoted at verse level with attribution; every row, run, band and count re-derived from that file for this study. English: G. Buchanan Gray, ‘The Psalms of Solomon’, in R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1913), public domain; transcription base the Wesley Center Online e-text, reconciled line by line to the 1913 print through three scans; every English line printed here is checked character for character against that transcription, and every note of Gray’s quoted here was read off the page images of the Toronto scan. The English is quotation from a named public-domain translation, not a parallel measured against the Greek; italic English marked ‘our gloss’ is the page’s own. Greek New Testament: SBLGNT (via MorphGNT). Hebrew: the Masoretic text (Miqra according to the Masorah), for Psalm 2:9 only. No ESV verse is printed on this page. ⚠️ Not held: any Hebrew text of the psalms, the Syriac, von Gebhardt’s edition, any apparatus. Ryle & James (1891) are reported from OCR, and a transcription of Swete’s Greek for three readings, each labelled. Direction of influence is nowhere asserted. The works of Wright and Atkinson are listed for the reader; neither is held and neither was consulted.
Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2016. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license, and the ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language. www.esv.org
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