[Ellen F. Prince <ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu>]

<...>
       the ones that are 'alphabet poems' are psalms 25, 34, 37, 111, 112,
and 145. but perhaps the best-known 'alphabet poem' in the bible is not
one of the psalms--it's the end of the book of proverbs, starting in 
section 31, line 10, in english 'a woman of valor who can find...' it's
called 'eshet khayil', literally '[a] woman [of] valor'. it praises the
'ideal woman' and is traditionally sung by the father and children every
friday night at the start of the sabbath. it's also sung at women's funerals.
let me know if you have trouble finding it.

[David Powers <powers@dfki.uni-kl.de>]

<...>
        the psalms (in the Jewish/Christian Bible) are many of them
acrostic (each line starts with a different letter).  Some of them
are multiply acrostic - e.g. three lines in a row start with the
same letter before moving to the next.  The longest psalm (119 in
the Western numbering system) is a set of many many acrostics.

[Yair Friedman <yair@cs.huji.ac.il>]

                                            This style is not used any
more in modern Hebrew poetry, but I choose one of my favorites from
the Bible.  It is Psalm 111. 

  In Hebrew we have 22 letters. There are five letters that have
different shape when they appear in the end of a word becoming total of
27 characters.  Since you can't find all of them in the chapter I
give, I also joined the last two verses of Psalms 110 to complete the set.

                                                                      dielld

                                                          aal lka ceci dce`
                                                        dcre mixyi ceqa
                                                           ceci iyrn milecb
                                                      mdivtg lkl miyexc
                                                              elrt xcde ced
                                                        crl zcnr ezwcve
                                                           eiz`ltpl dyr xkf
                                                        ceci megxe oepg
                                                             ei`xil ozp sxh
                                                       ezixa mlerl xkfi
                                                         enrl cibd eiyrn gk
                                                      mieb zlgp mdl zzl
                                                        htyne zn` eici iyrn
                                                       eicewt lk mipn`p
                                                              enrl gly zect
                                                        ezixa mlerl dev
                                                         eny `xepe yecw
                                                       ceci z`xi dnkg ziy`x
                                                      mdiyr lkl aeh lky
                                                         crl zcnr ezldz


                                    dax ux` lr y`x ugn zeieb `ln mieba oici
                                              y`x mixi ok lr dzyi jxca lgpn
