Acrostics in the Old Testament

A significant structure technique in Old Testament poetry was to use an acrostic in the writing.  In this case, each phrase or concept would begin with a particular Hebrew letter. In the Old Testament, the letters would be in the alphabetical (or AlefBet) order of the alphabet.  Here, from a Wikipedia article, are the 22 Hebrew letters, in order. These are all consonants; Biblical Hebrew did not write out vowels.

The most famous acrostic is Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible. That psalm has 176 verses, set in 22 stanzas, each stanza with 8 verses.  In each stanza, every verse begins with the same letter, so that verses 1-8 each begin with aleph, verses 9-16 each begin with bet and so on.

There are other acrostics in the Old Testament. They are primarily in the Psalms but occur in two places outside the Psalms. Much of my notes, below, follow from the paper Van der Spuy: Hebrew Alphabetic Acrostics OTE 21/2 (2008), available as a pdf file online here. According to Van der Spuy,  a list of the acrostic passages in the Old Testament (in addition to Psalm 119) include:

• Psalms 9-10: (each consonant covers two verses. The acrostic breaks down after verse 1 of Psalm 10 and picks back up at verse 12, having skipped four letters.)
• Psalm 25 (22 verses, each letter begins each verse.)
• Psalm 34 (22 verses, each letter begins each verse, except for the last verse which seems to be missing taw, says Kidner.)
• Psalm 37 (40 verses, each letter covers two verses most of the time but our verses break with that count in places.)
• Psalm 111 (ten verses, 22 lines (stichs), each stich begins with a different Hebrew letter.)
• Psalm 112 (ten verses, 22 stichs, each stich begins with a different Hebrew letter.)
• Psalm 145 (21 verses, each letter covers one verse, with the exception of the overly long verse 13, whose two halves are started by different letters.)
• Lamentations 1- 4:  (says Ven der Spuy, "In chapter 1 and 2 each Hebrew consonant covers 1 verse which consists of 3 stanzas. In chapter 3 each consonant covers 3 stanzas/verses, therefore it has 66 verses. Chapter 4 has 22 verses, each consonant consists of 2 stanzas beginning with that letter of the alphabet. Chapter 5 has 22 verses, but is not an alphabetic acrostic.")
• Proverbs 31: 10 –31  (22 verses, each letter begins one verse.)
• Nahum 1: 1- 9: (says Ven der Spuy, "The aleph covers three lines. There seems to be an interjection of 2 lines before the rest of the consonants, which covers only one verse each. The letter zayin appears in the second position of the line."

Why?

Why did Old Testament writers use acrostics? A number of reasons have been suggested and the real answer is probably a combination of these. Acrostics aid in memorization; recall that few people actually had access to the ancient texts and so acrostics would have aided recall of the texts when one was away from the synagogue. In addition, acrostics were chosen by the writers as both a statement and a challenge. One can imagine the author of Psalm 119 thinking, "I will demonstrate that the Law covers all things by reciting my love of the law from aleph to taw (from A to Z) and I will challenge myself to praise the law eight different ways with each letter." The acrostics then formed a disciplined ladder on which one would force once thoughts or praise.