Bible Discussion Thread

Why does Psalm 96:12 end where it does? Most verses end with punctuation, but verse 12 and another verse in Psalms seem to be about the only exception to this. I was curious as to why.

That's a good question. However, we would need to ask, "who or what caused these apparent anomalies to occur?" We know that the Scriptures were never written in chapter & verse form as we have it now; they were just a single writing (or, letter) with the usual breaks afforded by the language in which they were written.

Then various folk involved in dealing with these various writings applied there own 'break ups' over the centuries, so there was no consistency in this & with punctuation over the myriad of translations produced. As history would show, the Hebrew Old Testament into verses were done by a Jewish Rabbi, Nathan, in AD 1448 & a Robert Estiennne did a similar work in the New Testament in AD 1555. Therefore, once a passage of writing is so broken up into chapters & verses, we can only conclude the same folk also applied their punctuation as they deemed necessary.

The English Bible we have now that first used chapters & verses, was the Geneva Bible in AD 1560, though the dividing of the Books into chapters & verses went on much earlier than this. Though I do admit, Psalm 96:12,13 does look peculiar as given to us, though, looking at the other verses in the Psalm which are quite short in length, Nathan may have given this strange separation in the verses to maintain the style he applied to the other verses. Just my thoughts.