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The acrostic psalms do not hold because of their perfect structure. Nor do our lives.
Among the psalms, there are some that sing with a set order. Rare among the 150, a few are built as acrostics – each verse beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. From aleph to tav, the acrostic psalms unfold like a supporting spine of prayer.
In the acrostic psalms, we glimpse a reflection of his fullness: a hymn that begins and ends in God, echoing his eternal Word, our Lord and Savior.
As in other poetic traditions, this ordered structure does not stifle. Instead, it channels into a form simultaneously disciplined and free. The psalmist’s voice does not strain against the alphabet; it resonates through it. A finite sequence of letters carries the infinite Word. aleph to tav in Hebrew stands in parallel with Alpha and Omega in Greek – the beginning and the end. Christ calls himself the Alpha and the Omega (Rev. 22:13). In the acrostic psalms, we glimpse a reflection of his fullness: a hymn that begins and ends in God, echoing his eternal Word, our Lord and Savior.
But what happens when a letter is missing? What happens when the carefully constructed acrostic skips over a piece of its spine? What happens when the structure falters – and yet the song still holds?
What do we learn about Christ?
In several acrostic psalms, a verse is absent. Not just a word, not just a sound, but the entire verse that should be connected to a particular letter. Most often it is the letter vav. Of itself, vav is a small, connective letter that often means simply “and.” It joins what comes before with what comes after. If we allow a poetic-theological resonance in the psalmic setting, vav can be seen as the hinge on which sections swing, the thread that binds a narrative together.
And yet in some psalms, the vav is gone.
Psalm 25, a prayer of confession and trust, lacks it. Psalm 34, a song of praise moving from fear into faith, also skips over it. Psalms 9 and 10, a fragmented acrostic stretched across two compositions, bear its absence as well. We do not know why. Was it lost in transmission, smudged on a scroll, or intentionally unwritten? Scripture and history give no explanation.
But what if the point is not to solve the absence, but to hear how God speaks into it?
Psalm 25: Between Guidance and Mercy
Take Psalm 25 as an example. If the acrostic were complete, the vav verse would fall between verse 5, “Lead me in your truth and teach me,” and verse 6, “Remember your mercy, O Lord.” Between the cry for guidance and the cry for compassion, a connective word should stand. And yet, there is silence. The very hinge is missing.
Still the psalm does not collapse. Because the absence is more than a literary anomaly; it is a proclamation. Even when our prayers falter, God’s promise does not. His Word receives our unfinished cries, and his Spirit intercedes with groans too deep for words (Rom. 8:26). The psalm still sings because God still speaks. Grace holds through his action, not ours. What seems like a fracture in the text becomes fullness in God’s hands, silence that makes room for something greater to be revealed.
The fractured psalms mirror the life of faith. Our words falter, our songs break, our prayers remain unfinished; all of our works fall short and trail into silence. But Christ enters the silence.
And in that gap we meet Christ.
Christ is the eternal vav. The true “And.” The And between God and humanity. The And between justice and mercy. The And between Spirit and flesh. In the missing verse, he stands as the connector we could not – and cannot – write for ourselves. The psalm holds together not because of flawless human craft, but because Christ binds it.
The fractured psalms mirror the life of faith. Our words falter, our songs break, our prayers remain unfinished; all of our works fall short and trail into silence. But Christ enters the silence. He makes whole what is broken, and in him even incomplete psalms sing a complete gospel.
And as we see, the gospel – the death and resurrection of Christ, his completed work – is embedded in a kind of resurrection in another psalm, Psalm 145. In that psalm, what was once missing is found – and in that restoration the gospel emerges with astonishing meaning.
Psalm 145: From Falling to Rising
Psalm 145 is an acrostic radiant with praise. Each verse a letter, each letter a crown. But here too, a letter is missing: nun. Not a conjunction this time, but still an expected verse. For centuries the Psalm bore this silence, until fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed the missing line. Most modern Bibles now restore it in brackets: “The Lord is faithful in all his words, and kind in all his works” (Ps. 145:13).
Faithful. Kind.
This restored verse reveals the very heart of Christ.
And what follows immediately in the next verse – already present before this restoration, and now burning with new light – cannot be coincidence: “The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down” (Ps. 145:14). nun, in Judaic tradition, is associated with falling, frailty, and descent. Here the restored nun verse, proclaiming Christ’s faithfulness and kindness, meets the reality of our fall – and carries us straight into the promise of rising.
This is the rhythm of resurrection. A fall received by love, an absence answered by faithfulness, a descent answered by restoration.
Christ is not only the vav, the connector between. He is also the nun, the restorer of the fallen. He is the one who lifts the bowed down, who fills what is empty, who – by virtue of his person and completed work – raises what is fallen.
Christ ensures the covenant.
Christ in Every Gap
The acrostic psalms do not hold because of their perfect structure. Nor do our lives.
They hold because God breathes into every silence, and Christ stands in every gap.
The psalms themselves bear missing letters so that we might see the fullness of Christ. He is the missing verse, the unspoken word, the silent line between “Lead me” and “Remember me.” He is the connector we could not compose, the resurrection we could not create, the grace we could not earn.
And in him, even fractured songs rise whole. Even broken alphabets are being made new. Through the church, these psalms are prayed aloud as God’s living Word, proclaiming that in Christ, every missing letter has been found.
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