Is there an S?
Is there not an S?
When you say “I love Psalms 103:5” is that wrong? There’s no S? OK, so then what about “The book of Psalm.” No S there? Is it “Psalmi?” Is that the plural of Psalm? Or is it “Psalmses?”
I think my confusion started as a child when I got baffled by Psalty, the singing blue Christian superhero. Was he a book of songs or Psalms or a hymnal full of a lot of Psalm? That perplexed me as a young lad and now as an adult, I still never know when to put an S on Psalms.
Honestly, I get that wrong and I’m worried that if I get it wrong in front of other Christians, they’ll make me turn in my Christian card. Like the time I dropped my circular hair gel and it rolled under three cars and I had to yell in the rain to my friend Chris while crawling on my hands and knees in the parking lot, “I can’t find my hair gel” and he asked for my man card.
I think the problem I have is that Proverbs is just Proverbs. There’s no singular or plural. It’s the “book of Proverbs” and Proverbs 4:10. All S, all the time. Plus, you don’t pluralize other books. It’s not the “book of Joels,” although that would be awesome. Just a bunch of Joels kicking it, loving on people, solving crimes maybe or jumping through time trying to get back home like Scott Bakula.
Whenever I have to write words on a whiteboard in a meeting in front of people, I have a “spelling trick” I like to do. If I don’t know how to spell the word, I’ll just abbreviate it right in the middle. Say I was writing the word “occasionally” and panicked that there might be a double s in the middle. On the board I’d just write, “Occ.” as in “I’m so busy right now I don’t have time to write the whole word. BTW we need to get things done ASAP, by EOD, so I abbreviated the word as a time saving technique not because I have ‘speller’s nerves’ while writing in front of other people.”
Should I do that? When I mention Psalms should I just say, “I love PS103:5?” That kind of sounds like I’m talking about my favorite element from the periodic table of elements though. (And everyone knows Selenium is actually my favorite.)
Please tell me I’m not the only who has ever had an “S” issue when it comes to Psalms.
Or maybe you use the table of contents to look up books of the Bible and you need to confess the shame of that?
Is there a really obvious Biblical twist you’re afraid to admit you get backwards sometimes?
