Monday, November 2, 2009

The Pruning of a Totally Spiritual Tattoo

Today's victim of the needle thought she was getting a great conversation piece, something special to celebrate, flaunt and force her spirituality on others. She was going to tattoo a bible verse on her foot, in genuine Hebrew. She chose Psalm 18:2...

What she got was this:


For those who don't know their verses by heart, here's Psalm 18:2, in English:

"The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold."

You're probably thinking there's no way such a long and complex verse can fit into just two words. If you thought that, you're correct!

What does it say? Random crap. The first word (on the right), doesn't mean anything at all. The second word can be read as "Zmira", which means "Pruning" in Hebrew.

This tattoo is so bad, it really should be pruned off!


Today's Hebrew lesson; This is what Psalm 18:2 looks like in Hebrew:


Word of advice, if you're going to tattoo a bible verse, compare it to a verified source.

I have no idea how today's victim managed to get it so wrong. There are websites where you can see Old Testament verses in Hebrew, or you can buy a Hebrew bible, but do try to get it right!

Posted by Typo Tat at 10:13 PM
Categories: ,

6 comments:

  1. I think I figured it out:
    The first word is yud, chet which is 18 numerically (yud=10, chet=8), then a bet which is 2 numerically. This makes the first word 18:2.

    The second word was probably supposed to be zemer, which I think means song.

    So, the tattoo artist probably meant to tattoo the words "Psalm 18:2" in hebrew
    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh my, you did figure it out, I totally missed that!

    The tattoo is still a wreck, though.
    The correct way to actually write "Psalm 18:2" in Hebrew would be:
    תהילים יח ג

    Strangely, it seems that this verse comes as number 3 instead of 2 in the Hebrew version of Psalms.
    ReplyDelete
  3. Explanation of Zmira and the 2 vs. 3 deal:

    1. You definitely talk in Hebrew about Zmira, although you'll more often hear the plural, Zmirot, and the meaning would be closer to 'hymns' than 'psalms'. Someone definitely messed up there, but I can sort of see the process.

    2. Most of the psalms begin with a little 'dedication' such as מזמור לדוד or למנצח שיר מזמור etc. etc. (according to researchers this was probably a sort of conductor's note - it indicated how the psalm was to be sung). In the English translations of the bible, these are not counted as verses, while in Hebrew they are. This is what happened here. Look up the English and Hebrew versions of the whole psalm and you'll see the English either completely drops the first verse, or more usually renders it as a little note, before the actual verse numbering.

    And Now You Know!
    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks, Anonymous. It's a great explanation, definitely something worthy of attention when getting name-of-a-verse tattoo.
    ReplyDelete
  5. What she wanted to write is
    מזמור יח ג
    Writing תהלים is also a possibility, but she wrote Zmira so she probably meant Mizmor (a psalm)
    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh that was defenitely the first thing I thought of. "Zmirah (as in singing zmirot) 18:2". Tried... and FAIL.
    ReplyDelete

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