February 26th, 2025

121. Why Does the EHV Have So Many Headings in Psalms?

In the translation of Psalms you have added a lot of headings that divide the individual psalms into thought units. I like to read the psalms with few headings to disrupt the flow of the reading. Why do you have headings?

You have raised an issue for which there is no single solution that everyone likes. That larger issue is “How should translators format the biblical text, particularly for a study Bible which is designed to help readers understand the flow of the text.”

The earliest Hebrew and Greek texts were, for the most part, unformatted as far as margins, indentation, headings, punctuation, capitalization, and so on. The older the manuscripts, the less formatting there was. There were no chapter and verse numbers until relatively recently (500 years ago). In some manuscripts there was not even any division between the words. All of these formatting features were added to the text in the process of centuries of copying and translation. Virtually all aspects of formatting in our present Bibles, including chapter and verse numbers, are editorial additions to help readers follow the flow of the text, to locate specific passages, and to review books. None of these helps were features of the earliest manuscripts. The addition of headings is simply the latest step of an editorial process that has been going on for thousands of years.

Use of all these features is a matter of editorial and reader preference. Very few readers are calling for the elimination of chapter and verse numbers or the removal of punctuation. There are differences of opinion about many other features of formatting. Some readers like the two-column-per-page format that has been used in many Bibles. A significant majority of our readers like the one-column-per-page format that was used in the EHV. Most readers like the formatting of the poetry of the Bible according to poetic lines, even though this was not part of the oldest manuscripts. Some readers like a lot of headings and notes. Some like fewer.

In regard to the specific issue of your question, the headings of the psalms, there are two, or perhaps three, issues.

The first issue is that some (seemingly a significant majority) of our readers like the topical headings in psalms, just as they like the headings in the other biblical books regardless of genre. These headings not only help the readers outline the text, but they help them locate specific passages. Some readers, however, like few or no headings.

The headings in psalms are perhaps more conspicuous than the headings in historical books, because many of the psalms are quite short, so the headings in psalms that mark divisions in the text are often closer together than the headings in historical books. Another factor in the need for more headings in the psalms is that each psalm is an individual work that stands on its own. As independent works, each psalm can benefit from its own heading and outline. Each psalm, however, is also a chapter in an organized composition made up of 150 poems. Our psalms headings must help the reader understand both of these aspects of each psalm.

Formatting psalms is of course a special problem because we have a dual goal—to help students understand each psalm as an individual work that stands on its own and to help them follow the interconnection and unity of Psalms as a whole. That readers are interested in these connections is indicated by the fact that our EHV chart of psalms which does this, is one of the more downloaded and read files on our websites.

In trying to balance these competing factors we have approached the question, “How many headings should we include?” in a way similar to the decision about how many clothes an athlete should take to a spring sports event in Wisconsin. If you take too many clothes, you do not have wear them all. If you did not take enough clothes with you, you can't wear them when the cold, driving rain arrives. We have worked with this approach, because readers who do not like headings can skip them, but the headings are there for those readers who want them. It is relatively easy to bypass the headings. In my numerous passes through Psalms, I sometimes read the psalms with the headings, sometimes without. Readers can easily exercise their preference.

The second issue is that there are two or three different kinds of “headings” in each psalm. (Some of these do not appear in the pew Bible, but are present in the study Bible, at least in electronic editions. The formatting in the pew Bible was set up in a way that would transfer easily into an in-depth study Bible.)

The first type of heading consists of the captions that are part of the Hebrew text. They are given verse numbers in the Hebrew text. In these cases, all the EHV does is translate the Hebrew text.

The second type of heading is the type you have asked about. These are the section headings that divide the text into topical units. These headings actually are a space-saver for the Study Bible, since they make it unnecessary to comment on the outline of the psalm in the footnotes or in the introductions to the individual psalms, since this information is already indicated by the headings. These headings were not part of the Hebrew text, and this is indicated by printing them in italics or a different font than the text.

In the Study Bible, there is a third type of “heading.” These are the short introductions to each psalm, which are not part of the original Hebrew text, but are a feature of the study Bible.

Here is a sample of a psalm with blue comments inserted to explain the type of “heading.”

[View Psalm 6 in our online reader]

The situation is even more complicated in Song of Songs where additional headings are needed to identify when the man is speaking and when the woman is speaking. The gender of the speaker is often indicated by the Hebrew forms, but this differentiation is not carried over into English, so the headings are needed to help the English reader recognize who is speaking.

The situation is different in prose narration. A short psalm may have four or five different themes. A long chapter of prose may tell only one story. Genesis 23 has 20 verses but only one heading, The Death of Sarah. Genesis 24 has 67 verses but it has only one heading, A Wife for Isaac. Genesis 29 has 35 verses but only one heading which also covers much of chapter 30. The same pattern of few headings is present in the stories of Jacob in chapters 30-33. The story of Joseph and his brothers in Genesis 42-45 has only one heading. Perhaps there should be more. The number of headings in each section was determined by genre and the editors’ feeling of what would be most useful.

In all cases the best number of headings is debatable, but we have in every case tried to provide the number of headings that we believe will serve the reader best. (The same problem exists in the practice of breaking the text into paragraphs. It is often debatable where one should place a paragraph break.)

It is clear that there is no one formatting solution that everyone prefers, because the preferences and purposes of readers are so dramatically different. For that reason, as we created the EHV, we produced a fuller set of reader helps, such as special formatting, headings, etc., so that the EHV could serve all kinds of readers.

In the future it would be easy enough to produce some editions of the EHV with minimal or no headings or notes (and even with no chapter or verse numbers) and to keep producing some editions with a lot of headings. Readers could choose their preferred style. It would be easy enough to remove captions and notes in order to produce a more vanilla edition. It would be much more difficult to revisit a text without headings and to create more headings after the fact. In the meantime, readers can use the helps they like and skip those they do not.

Producing editions without headings or chapter and verse numbers would of course be feasible only if there was sufficient demand for such editions to make producing them cost-effective. Before publication every book of the EHV was read by at least ten reviewers, and I do not recall any requests for fewer headings. So far, after five years of EHV use, we have received only a handful of requests for editions with fewer headings.

Addendum:
How to Use the Headings

A side issue which we can take note of here is that the necessity or usefulness of headings and other special formatting depends on why a person is reading a specific section of Scripture at a specific time. If one is reading and meditating on favorite passages, one really does not need headings, because the reader probably has marked the passages in their favorite Bible.

The headings are most valuable for three functions: connecting, finding, and reviewing.

The headings, which seem at first glance to be dividers, are actually connectors. The headings provide an outline of each book or chapter. As one reads, he or she could of course review the line of thought of the book by flipping back and forth to the outline in the introduction to the book, but this is time-consuming, and it is more disruptive than simply glancing at the heading of the section. To understand the significance of historical events one needs to understand their connection to the events that come before and after them. If you are reading a particular historical account, glancing at the headings on the pages before and after that account helps you put the event that you are studying into its context.

The headings are also finders. They help the reader locate a particular story. Much of the same function can of course be served by a computer search, but if you are aware of the general location of the story you are looking for, skimming the headings is usually faster.

The headings added to the text by the editors and your own markings which you have added to your Bible help you quickly preview a book before you read it and review it after you have read it.  Of course, something similar can be done with your own underlining. The book, The Story of God's Love, [available for purchase from NPH]  also serves the same purpose of providing an overview of the Bible.

In general, it can be said that the headings are most useful for new readers of the Bible. The headings do not provide you with any information that you could not figure out for yourself if you read the Bible for enough years. But the headings provide you with a road map to the book until you have time to develop your own.

Except for the purpose of rapid review, the headings are least necessary for people who have a lot of experience reading the Bible. The best way to master the content of the Bible is to start with notes provided by experienced readers, and to build on them with your own notes over the years.

On the day that I received this question about headings, my daily reading assignment consisted of several psalms and several chapters of Genesis in the computer EHV study Bible. After reading the day’s assignment, I pick up my “disposable” copy of the EHV print Bible. It is a Bible in which I am marking the headings and key passages. It is a mess because I also have my own reminders of the topics and theme of each psalm written in the upper and side margins. (I also have EHV copies with no markings.)

This month I am reading Psalms for the first of the two times I read it each year. The first time, I read several psalms a day. The second time, I read only one psalm each day. Whenever I finish a section of psalms, and finally, when I finish the whole book, I ask myself “What is the subject of each psalm?”  Even in the computer age when searches are easy, this is still a useful exercise. Both the headings and my own markings are a great aid in doing this.

The EHV is intended to be a textbook for students of every level, for the first-time reader and for the reader who has read a given book over one hundred times. Textbooks tend to have headings. The original EHV was created with the intention that it would become a study Bible as soon as possible, so it provided headings that would be useful for every type of reader.

Thinking your way through every chapter of all the books of the Bible is not so necessary nowadays with computer searchability, but it is still a good way to have the flow of biblical history and thought embedded in your mind.

The biblical book that I was studying just before I took up Genesis was Matthew. Each day as I read the computer edition, I noted some sections where our EHV headings covered only part of the section’s topic. In these cases another heading could be added in the future. The Gospels also have a special type of heading. Under some section headings a note lists the places in other Gospels where the same topic occurs. This is useful to the reader who wants to see how the different accounts of the same event complement each other. These headings also highlight which events are recorded only in one Gospel. In my marked-up print copy I highlight this feature further by writing a big L in the margin by the heading of an account that occurs only in Luke.

The headings in this way serve as a valuable tool both for a first time reader who is trying to develop his or her feeling for the flow of the Bible as well as for a reader who has been doing this for fifty or sixty years and is now trying to hang on to as much as possible for as long as possible.

Students of course could do this entirely by making their own underlinings or headings in their Bible, but many do not have the time or inclination to do so.  My first Bible was a red-letter edition of the King James that I won in second grade. I think its formatting helps were largely limited to the chapter and verse numbers. My subsequent Bibles, which all had headings of some sort, all helped me develop and remember a feeling for the flow of the Bible.