Why Bible Verse and Psalm Numbers Differ
While looking at the NET Bible, I really enjoyed that hovering over a passage number would pop that passage onto the page. So I went into the rabbit hole of trying to do that for Following Imperfectly.
For context, I wanted to find a translation that was Public Domain so I could use it on the website freely. That brought me to the Original Douay-Rheims version and the Catholic Public Domain Version.
While testing things out, I realised something that I had never known. Verse numbers aren’t quite a universal system and different translations and editions may present different verse numbers. The same goes for Psalm numbers.
Psalms
Let’s start with the Psalms. The collection of 150 Psalms is the same. But the numbering can differ, depending on which numbering system is being used, because ancient textual traditions sometimes disagree about where one Psalm ends and another begins.
So we get two numbering systems:
- The Hebrew/Masoretic numbering
- The Greek Septuagint/Vulgate numbering
The Douay-Rheims comes from the Latin Vulgate tradition, while most modern English Bibles generally follow the Hebrew numbering. This means, for example, that Psalms 114–115 in the Hebrew/modern numbering can correspond to Psalm 113 in the Septuagint/Vulgate numbering.
Interestingly, this is also why some books may refer to the Psalms as something like Psalm 50[51], giving both numbering systems.
Verses
Verse numbering is a different problem. The chapter divisions we are familiar with developed during the medieval period, while the standardised verse-numbering systems came later, particularly around the 16th century.
So different editions may sometimes number smaller parts of the text differently. The Psalms can make this even more confusing because some traditions count the headings at the beginning of a Psalm as numbered verses while others do not.
There is also another problem that I initially thought was related to numbering but actually isn’t: textual variants.
Matthew 17:21 is a good example. Some manuscript traditions contain the verse while several important early manuscripts do not. Because modern translations may omit the verse while keeping the traditional numbering, you can end up going directly from Matthew 17:20 to Matthew 17:22.
So what I originally thought was simply a problem with verse numbers turned out to have a few different causes.
Workarounds
Given that I use both the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible (RSV-2CE) and the New Revised Standard Version Bible (NRSV), I had to ensure that the hover element would point to the passage I actually intended. In some cases, I may also need to add a note explaining why the numbering is different between the Bible used on the website and the Bible referenced in my notes.
In hindsight, this discovery was very interesting because it challenged an assumption I had about how things work. I had always treated chapter and verse numbers almost as if they were part of Scripture itself, without really thinking about where they came from.
Turns out, even Bible verse numbers can send you down a rabbit hole.