a musical direction attached to a psalm, literally "the eighth", whose exact sense is lost: most likely the low bass part an octave beneath the higher voices, possibly an eight-stringed instrument.
The word is nothing more than the feminine form of the everyday Hebrew word for "eighth" (שְׁמִינִי), with "the" attached to the front. Everywhere else that word simply counts: the eighth day, the eighth year, the eighth month. In three places it is lifted out of counting and used as a technical instruction for musicians, and the whole difficulty is that the thing being counted goes unstated. The eighth what? String, note, voice part, choir, day?
Two answers have held the field for centuries.
- An eight-stringed instrument. This is the older reading, taken from the ancient Aramaic version of the Psalms and carried on by the medieval Jewish commentators, and it survives in Bibles that print "an eight-stringed instrument". Its weakness is that in two of the three places an instrument is already named right beside this word, so the direction looks like something added to the instrument rather than the instrument itself.
- The low part, an octave down. Since Gesenius this has been the scholars' preference: the deep voices, or the low range of the strings, as against the high part. Its main support is the pairing in 1 Chronicles 15:20 and 21, where one group of players is set to alamoth (עֲלָמוֹת), often read as the high voices, and the next group is set to this word.
Neither case is strong. The pairing in Chronicles only works if alamoth means "high voices", and that word is every bit as obscure, so the two are largely propping each other up. The other common argument, that a low and solemn sound suits Psalm 6 and Psalm 12 because both are laments, quietly assumes the answer it is trying to prove. What the recovered Babylonian tuning tablets and the notated hymn from Ugarit did settle is that a seven-note scale, and therefore the idea of an eighth note completing it, was known in the region long before David. That removes the old objection that an octave would be an anachronism, but it does not tie this Hebrew word to anything.
The most telling evidence is what the earliest translators did with it. The Greek and Latin versions just repeated the number, "for the eighth", and explained nothing, and in 1 Chronicles the Greek does not even translate it. Working knowledge of what the direction asked for was apparently gone centuries before the New Testament. Most modern Bibles follow suit, printing "Sheminith" with a footnote that admits the uncertainty.
Disputed
What the technical direction שְׁמִינִית designates: a performance range, an instrument, or a tune. The standard lexica decline to decide (BDB calls the musical sense "wholly dubious"; HALOT concludes that the final answer must remain undecided), and most modern translations transliterate rather than choose.
- majorityA performance range or tuning: the octave, that is, the low (bass) register an octave beneath the higher voices, standing in opposition to עֲלָמוֹת in 1 Chronicles 15:20-21. The more favoured of the two live readings in current scholarship, and argued as likelier rather than proven.; Wilhelm Gesenius, Thesaurus philologicus criticus linguae Hebraeae et Chaldaeae Veteris Testamenti, s.v. שְׁמִינִית; Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Psalms, on Psalm 6; Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50, Word Biblical Commentary 19, on Psalm 6; Joachim Braun, Music in Ancient Israel/Palestine: Archaeological, Written, and Comparative Sources
- minorityA stringed instrument of eight strings. The oldest interpretation, originating with the Targum on Psalms and transmitted through the medieval Jewish exegetes; its modern critics object that עַל in the superscriptions does not normally introduce the instrument (which is introduced by בְּ and separately named in Psalm 6 and 1 Chronicles 15:21), and that the Targum's gloss looks like an inference from 1 Chronicles 15:21.; Targum on Psalms, at Psalms 6:1 and 12:1; Rashi, Commentary on Psalms, on Psalm 6; David Kimhi (Radak), Commentary on Psalms, on Psalm 6
- minorityThe rubric names the melody to which the psalm was to be sung, on the pattern of other superscription tune titles, rather than an instrument or a vocal range.; Abraham Ibn Ezra, Commentary on Psalms, on Psalm 6