Psalms 90:9

Andrew Macintosh’s “The Spider in the Septuagint Version of Psalm XC.9” (JTS, 1972). He suggests that the OG originally read as τὰ ἔτη ἡμῶν ὡς ἐμελέων, with μελετᾶν as a normal Greek equivalent of Hebrew הגה (sigh). But ἀράχνην may have crept into the text, perhaps via a marginal note, on account of the similar passage in Psalm 38:6-12 (Heb. 39:5-11) discussing the transitory nature of human life which in Greek has the sentence ἐξέτηξας ὡς ἀράχνην τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ (you melted his soul like a spider’s web), with הבל (breath) in v. 5, 11 (Heb.) acting as a sort of catchword with הגה (sigh) in 90:9. So a scribe added ὡς ἀράχνην from the other passage in the margin to explain ὡς ἐμελέων and then a later copyist combined the two expressions. John Goldingay in his commentary noted that a more recent discussion of the spider rendering can be found in Johannes Schnocks’ Vergänglichkeit und Gottesherrschaft. Studien zu Psalm 90 und dem vierten Psalmenbuch (Philo, 2002), pp. 88-90. Schnocks may thus give an assessment of Macintosh’s article and his own explanation of the rendering.