Some new psalms in a slightly revised table of contents
Psalm -27 July 2007 (149)
Psalm 119-V-Y July 2007 (257)
Psalm 149 July 2007 (63)
I am astonished at the personal love in the 119th psalm. So far I have managed the first 10 parts and have preserved the acrostic!!!!
It's a bit odd at times and I substituted a few letters of course. I was translating this while alter bloggo was writing poetry on bread making (just kidding - there is only one of us and we are neglecting our other work). Open Hebrew grammars and lexica strew the apartment here - exercises half completed, a major RFP to read and respond to in financial systems, and the toilet exploded this morning - the input pipe, fortunately. And all the time we are supposed to keep up with the myriad of Biblical Blogs!
Is there anything about exploding toilets in Psalm 119? No - but the word about enemies is deep. People [yes - there are enemies among them] do actually take advantage of you if you give them the opportunity. When they are confronted inescapably with their abandonment of trust, perhaps they too will know that word of promise and love that the Psalmist so clearly speaks of.
Of two things let's be sure: don't take advantage of another - especially if you have power, or knowledge, or whatever; and the steadfastness of God is our strength as well as the strength of our 'enemies', even of those that have taken advantage of us. It must be true as a consequence that if we do make enemies, there is the possibility of reconciliation - though it is not necessarily ours to effect. There is a thought here - I am not sure I have caught it - something to do with the reality and cost of love as understood in the context of the everlasting covenant with our God.
I have counted 8 key words in Psalm 119 - and a host of verbs to go with them. The 8th word is slightly hidden - I used red foreground to distinguish it. I will work more on this - I think there is something to find. (A contained explosion of clean water, perhaps).
Friday, July 13, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
July 11
Back in Ottawa for 7 weeks with a break in the big Apple on the long August weekend - will attend some choir school functions at St Thomas's and some concerts and stuff. I have my lexical assistants here so I will concentrate on getting to the half-way point in this project.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Psalm 1
Kevin Edgecomb has begun posting a set of translations - under the rubric formal and informal. I hope I can respond occasionally. I will be the tortoise.
I drafted Psalm 1 about 10 months ago. My first portrait was in pink, grey and blue. The Torah colour of purple also emerged.
Happy the man who has not walked in the advice of the wicked
and in the way of sinners has not stood
and in the seat of the scornful has not sat
It is 'the man' (הָאִישׁ) but it brings to mind the birth of Asher (by alliteration - asheri ha ish asher) so it includes the woman Leah (ach! not to forget Zilpah). I cannot make this inclusive in translation without doing violence to the poetry. Also - even an informal translation should respect the threefold structure and variety of position: walk, stand, sit. And I am not happy, for whether I have taken advice of the wicked or stood in the way of the sinner, I know I have envied the repartee of the scornful.
Asheri - rejoice! How will I rejoice? I will compare the two ways that are to come in the poem - on the one hand, and on the other (כִּי אִם) and I will hope that I can find delight. I do, but I cannot judge my own fruitfulness or reliability. And prosperity also is not to be measured lest it get the better of me and I become such debris as is blown away by the wind.
Therefore - by the knowledge of the LORD, a division is foretold and confirmed. How will I stand if the wicked will not stand?
Here is a version of psalm 1
Happy is the man who walks
not in the advice of the wicked
and in the way of sinners stands not
and in the seat of the scornful sits not
for if in the teaching of the LORD is his delight
and in his teaching he meditates day and night
he shall be like a tree
transplanted by streams of water
that is fruitful and reliable in its time
and its leaf does not fade
and in all that it does it prospers
Not so the wicked - for if ... like the chaff that wind scatters
Therefore stands not the wicked in the judgment
nor sinners in the company of the righteous
For the LORD knows a way for the righteous
but the way of wickedness will perish.
I am still very close to the literal, perhaps too close, but there is such an expressive parsimony here that I like to imitate with less rather than more. With fewer words, I have more hope.
I see that in my first draft, I was not as careful with the definite article as I might be. Is 'the way' better than 'a way'? English passes over the definite article as generic in some cases and as specific in others. In this case, I think English needs to acknowledge that 'a way' is not referring to an exclusive or only way as if uniformity was the operative aspect of the article. Generally speaking, I think 'a' is preferable just to knock us out of our 'obvious' pietistic responses.
I drafted Psalm 1 about 10 months ago. My first portrait was in pink, grey and blue. The Torah colour of purple also emerged.
Happy the man who has not walked in the advice of the wicked
and in the way of sinners has not stood
and in the seat of the scornful has not sat
It is 'the man' (הָאִישׁ) but it brings to mind the birth of Asher (by alliteration - asheri ha ish asher) so it includes the woman Leah (ach! not to forget Zilpah). I cannot make this inclusive in translation without doing violence to the poetry. Also - even an informal translation should respect the threefold structure and variety of position: walk, stand, sit. And I am not happy, for whether I have taken advice of the wicked or stood in the way of the sinner, I know I have envied the repartee of the scornful.
Asheri - rejoice! How will I rejoice? I will compare the two ways that are to come in the poem - on the one hand, and on the other (כִּי אִם) and I will hope that I can find delight. I do, but I cannot judge my own fruitfulness or reliability. And prosperity also is not to be measured lest it get the better of me and I become such debris as is blown away by the wind.
Therefore - by the knowledge of the LORD, a division is foretold and confirmed. How will I stand if the wicked will not stand?
Here is a version of psalm 1
Happy is the man who walks
not in the advice of the wicked
and in the way of sinners stands not
and in the seat of the scornful sits not
for if in the teaching of the LORD is his delight
and in his teaching he meditates day and night
he shall be like a tree
transplanted by streams of water
that is fruitful and reliable in its time
and its leaf does not fade
and in all that it does it prospers
Not so the wicked - for if ... like the chaff that wind scatters
Therefore stands not the wicked in the judgment
nor sinners in the company of the righteous
For the LORD knows a way for the righteous
but the way of wickedness will perish.
I am still very close to the literal, perhaps too close, but there is such an expressive parsimony here that I like to imitate with less rather than more. With fewer words, I have more hope.
I see that in my first draft, I was not as careful with the definite article as I might be. Is 'the way' better than 'a way'? English passes over the definite article as generic in some cases and as specific in others. In this case, I think English needs to acknowledge that 'a way' is not referring to an exclusive or only way as if uniformity was the operative aspect of the article. Generally speaking, I think 'a' is preferable just to knock us out of our 'obvious' pietistic responses.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Psalm -48 June 2007 (111)
Psalm -87 June 2007 (54)
Two more - slightly coloured. These two are both songs of Zion. Goulder maintains they were at first songs of the North, i.e. of Dan. I wonder if those rapscallion children of Korah left additional hints that they were the authors in each one. Psalm 87 has an odd title order which almost puts Korah concentrically opposite the players (traditional translation) which I rendered 'the profane'. Korah after all was profane as far as the priests in Jerusalem were concerned.
לִבְנֵי קֹרַח
שִׁיר
-----
וְשָׁרִים
כְּחֹלְלִים
My alter blogo has started a story. He has been known as a story teller sometimes in the past 10 years. I wonder if he can manage the serial form and whether he will get any feedback in this medium.
Psalm -87 June 2007 (54)
Two more - slightly coloured. These two are both songs of Zion. Goulder maintains they were at first songs of the North, i.e. of Dan. I wonder if those rapscallion children of Korah left additional hints that they were the authors in each one. Psalm 87 has an odd title order which almost puts Korah concentrically opposite the players (traditional translation) which I rendered 'the profane'. Korah after all was profane as far as the priests in Jerusalem were concerned.
לִבְנֵי קֹרַח
שִׁיר
-----
וְשָׁרִים
כְּחֹלְלִים
My alter blogo has started a story. He has been known as a story teller sometimes in the past 10 years. I wonder if he can manage the serial form and whether he will get any feedback in this medium.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Goulder and the history of Dan
Goulder's book on the Psalms of the Sons of Korah is delightful. He is dependent for some of his reasoning on the documentary hypothesis - perhaps unnecessarily. Is it still in vogue these days?
His thesis is that the sons of Korah were centred in Dan and then moved to Jerusalem after the fall of the Northern Kingdom. Far more than any single book for me, he has opened the OT in detail as to its history and cultic festivals. Just setting Psalms 42-48 in the autumn festival on the slopes of Mt Hermon reframes the whole Psalter. He has even made me want to reread Chronicles since he says it is an editing of the history by the Sons of Korah whom he even traces to modern day England (Corah and sons who are suppliers to Marks and Spenser)!
I will be working with his book this week at least to adjust my table of contents for the Psalms and to show possibly up to four festival sequences among the psalms book 2 (42-48) , 3 (84-89), 4 entire, and 5 (120-134). Goulder shows the depth of the liturgical use over a long period. We have a similar use of liturgy in the Anglican tradition from the 16th to 20th century but in an more technical society where we know how texts are propagated. The imagining of the beginning of such worship going back to 1200 BCE is gripping - to say the least.
His thesis is that the sons of Korah were centred in Dan and then moved to Jerusalem after the fall of the Northern Kingdom. Far more than any single book for me, he has opened the OT in detail as to its history and cultic festivals. Just setting Psalms 42-48 in the autumn festival on the slopes of Mt Hermon reframes the whole Psalter. He has even made me want to reread Chronicles since he says it is an editing of the history by the Sons of Korah whom he even traces to modern day England (Corah and sons who are suppliers to Marks and Spenser)!
I will be working with his book this week at least to adjust my table of contents for the Psalms and to show possibly up to four festival sequences among the psalms book 2 (42-48) , 3 (84-89), 4 entire, and 5 (120-134). Goulder shows the depth of the liturgical use over a long period. We have a similar use of liturgy in the Anglican tradition from the 16th to 20th century but in an more technical society where we know how texts are propagated. The imagining of the beginning of such worship going back to 1200 BCE is gripping - to say the least.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Psalm studies & canon
Two excellent books partly read on the train today: Michael Goulder on the Psalms of the sons Korah JSOT 1982, and Yitzhak Avishur, Studies in Hebrew and Ugaritic Psalms, Hebrew University Press 1994. I noted this book on my other blog under the Future of Canon because it relates to the intensifying ongoing discussion on canon.
There is also a brief post on necessary and sufficient conditions. Arguments have to have some rationale. Maybe this can help - with 1500 years of development, one can't be too quick on the decision. I am away from computers for a day - maybe this will help the thought process - one thousand years as a day. Hmmm, perhaps a day and a half would be better.
There is also a brief post on necessary and sufficient conditions. Arguments have to have some rationale. Maybe this can help - with 1500 years of development, one can't be too quick on the decision. I am away from computers for a day - maybe this will help the thought process - one thousand years as a day. Hmmm, perhaps a day and a half would be better.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
New Library
It was easier to renew my library cards than to get them the frist time. Ottawa Public Library has a smart card that makes borrowing at U of O and Carleton a breeze - so I have a whole new collection of BS-1430 (Psalms) to browse in - unfortunately much in French. One translation into French also of some letters on Judaism by Samson Raphael Hirsch and these contain some Psalms too - the French is more cumbersome than the English. And of course they are not Hirsch's translations.
Avant que les montagnes ne fussent créées;
Ah - the subjunctive - what a fussy sound! What do the French do with God's turning?
שׁוּבָה Turn
Tourne-toi de nouveau vers nous,
יְהוָה עַד מָתָי LORD, how long
ô Eternel! Jusques à quand tarderas-tu encore?
וְהִנָּחֵם and sigh
Aie pitié
עַל עֲבָדֶיךָ over your servants
de tes serviteurs!
9 words in English, 7 in Hebrew, 19 in French
Aie pitié is a curious turn of phrase. What is that nxm root? It may result in pity or mercy, but I think it is better related to God's repenting. It is the root of Nehemiah, the rebuilder of the temple. I almost wonder if it is the work of the Spirit in us as advertised in the NT. Speaking of the Spirit, the groaner (my alter blogo) has a few words to say about cessationism.
Avant que les montagnes ne fussent créées;
Ah - the subjunctive - what a fussy sound! What do the French do with God's turning?
שׁוּבָה Turn
Tourne-toi de nouveau vers nous,
יְהוָה עַד מָתָי LORD, how long
ô Eternel! Jusques à quand tarderas-tu encore?
וְהִנָּחֵם and sigh
Aie pitié
עַל עֲבָדֶיךָ over your servants
de tes serviteurs!
9 words in English, 7 in Hebrew, 19 in French
Aie pitié is a curious turn of phrase. What is that nxm root? It may result in pity or mercy, but I think it is better related to God's repenting. It is the root of Nehemiah, the rebuilder of the temple. I almost wonder if it is the work of the Spirit in us as advertised in the NT. Speaking of the Spirit, the groaner (my alter blogo) has a few words to say about cessationism.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Less than a milestone
It's embarassing publishing bugs in one's own calculations. That's why we always do walk-throughs when developing code. One should also pay attention to the little voice that says: your indicators do not make sense yet.
I have less than a bit of a milestone - more than 33% of the verses and of the phrases are in a drafted form in English and Hebrew on the emerging contents.
These three tipped the two measures over 33%.
Psalm -44 June 2007 (197)
Psalm -45 June 2007 (160)
Psalm 128 June 2007 (47)
I hope to do some consolidation over the next two weeks reviewing the consistency and variety of my drafts and doing exercises in Brettler especially in the area of verb recognition (I get to borrow the book for 2 more weeks!) . I hope to reduce my dependency on having first to find the word in some literal translation in order to find it in BDB using the Strong's number. What a history we have here - primitive identifications of words manually sequenced as if the body parts could make up a life! But I have to admit, for one who is not fluent at recognition, I could not have moved in this time period alone without the alternative lookup mechanism.
What is the best way to teach something so new as a language? Even just translating psalms 44 and 45 made me recognize that I was in the presence of another writer in the psalter - the prepositions even seem different (like מִנִּי which occurs in this form only in Ps 44,45,68,74,78,88 and Job many times, only 2 other places according to my Hebrew-Latin concordance. Maybe one of the sons of Korah, or someone named Asaph, also wrote Job.)
I have less than a bit of a milestone - more than 33% of the verses and of the phrases are in a drafted form in English and Hebrew on the emerging contents.
These three tipped the two measures over 33%.
Psalm -44 June 2007 (197)
Psalm -45 June 2007 (160)
Psalm 128 June 2007 (47)
I hope to do some consolidation over the next two weeks reviewing the consistency and variety of my drafts and doing exercises in Brettler especially in the area of verb recognition (I get to borrow the book for 2 more weeks!) . I hope to reduce my dependency on having first to find the word in some literal translation in order to find it in BDB using the Strong's number. What a history we have here - primitive identifications of words manually sequenced as if the body parts could make up a life! But I have to admit, for one who is not fluent at recognition, I could not have moved in this time period alone without the alternative lookup mechanism.
What is the best way to teach something so new as a language? Even just translating psalms 44 and 45 made me recognize that I was in the presence of another writer in the psalter - the prepositions even seem different (like מִנִּי which occurs in this form only in Ps 44,45,68,74,78,88 and Job many times, only 2 other places according to my Hebrew-Latin concordance. Maybe one of the sons of Korah, or someone named Asaph, also wrote Job.)
Friday, June 08, 2007
Thoughts on Canon
Some first thoughts on a discussion related to the canon are here. There is a slight relation to psalms as a source of help.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Readings...
It's been almost a week since I've written anything. I am still recovering from trying to speed-read Bauckham's Jesus and the Eye Witnesses - not a good idea. But what a beautiful Grammar Book I have been loaned - Brettler, Marc Zvi , Biblical Hebrew for Students of Modern Israeli Hebrew, 2002 [marvelous!]
Can you imagine a marvellous Grammar book? It is so cool - it reads in Hebrew and English concurrently and explains one or two words at a time in Hebrew so you learn fast. I am not a student of modern Hebrew but I've pored over Lambdin and a Hebrew-Latin concordance for a year and believe me this new book though based on Lambdin is a real speed-read. If only I took the time to do all the exercises - later...
The strongest component is its understanding of morphology - why propretonic reduction works and how consistent it really is. At some point, the implied rules will also help my root derivation algorithm - but that may need to wait till I retire from my day job :
Milestones: I no longer turn Hebrew books upside down - I can read the letters from the other side of the table without getting confused (that indicates internal visual brain connections growing - like the seed in the ground that grows without the farmer knowing).
Zvi's brilliant timing of his prose shows me that word recognition is happening without excessive conscious memorization. This shows that even old dogs can learn a language not by translation but by usage.
He introduces about 25 words per chapter - that's 275 words so far + a few more that aren't in the vocabulary lists. It's not many but I did recognize most of them immediately.
Newish psalms (some with minor changes, some a fresh draft) - the number in brackets is a word count - I'm looking for patterns...
Psalm -26 June 2007 (85)
Psalm -90 May 2007 (140)
Psalm 120 June 2007 (51)
Psalm 121 May 2007 (56)
Psalm 122 June 2007 (62)
Psalm 123 May 2007 (41)
Psalm 124 May 2007 (57)
Psalm 125 June 2007 (49)
Psalm 126 June 2007 (50)
Psalm 127 June 2007 (60)
Can you imagine a marvellous Grammar book? It is so cool - it reads in Hebrew and English concurrently and explains one or two words at a time in Hebrew so you learn fast. I am not a student of modern Hebrew but I've pored over Lambdin and a Hebrew-Latin concordance for a year and believe me this new book though based on Lambdin is a real speed-read. If only I took the time to do all the exercises - later...
The strongest component is its understanding of morphology - why propretonic reduction works and how consistent it really is. At some point, the implied rules will also help my root derivation algorithm - but that may need to wait till I retire from my day job :
Milestones: I no longer turn Hebrew books upside down - I can read the letters from the other side of the table without getting confused (that indicates internal visual brain connections growing - like the seed in the ground that grows without the farmer knowing).
Zvi's brilliant timing of his prose shows me that word recognition is happening without excessive conscious memorization. This shows that even old dogs can learn a language not by translation but by usage.
He introduces about 25 words per chapter - that's 275 words so far + a few more that aren't in the vocabulary lists. It's not many but I did recognize most of them immediately.
Newish psalms (some with minor changes, some a fresh draft) - the number in brackets is a word count - I'm looking for patterns...
Psalm -26 June 2007 (85)
Psalm -90 May 2007 (140)
Psalm 120 June 2007 (51)
Psalm 121 May 2007 (56)
Psalm 122 June 2007 (62)
Psalm 123 May 2007 (41)
Psalm 124 May 2007 (57)
Psalm 125 June 2007 (49)
Psalm 126 June 2007 (50)
Psalm 127 June 2007 (60)
Friday, June 01, 2007
Psalm 123
I haven't read any commentaries (except a snippet of Calvin) on this Psalm yet - and Calvin doesn't cut it. As reported in Psalms in community : Jewish and Christian textual, liturgical, and artistic traditions / edited by Harold W. Attridge and Margot E. Fassler, Calvin says that the contempt repeated in verse 3 is because the Church will always be scorned by the at ease and the proud. Or something of that nature. The poem I hope will admit of a different interpretation - for Calvin here smacks of a persecution complex. It would be more like a son, in my opinion, to be considering the love he has for those who are offended - or even contemptuous, proud, and at ease. What kind of projection am I reading into this rather odd Psalm - which starts and does not finish? Maybe when I finish all the songs of ascent, there will be a further clue as to the meaning of this stark unpoem. Can you imagine singing this on your ascent to the festival? You should be running for cover!
Speaking of songs of ascent - is this also a construct form? for it is shir הַמַּעֲלוֹת hama`aloth - which looks just like a king of the glory. So maybe there is some decision in hearing and translation as to whether two consecutive nouns are in a construct relation or not... and if they are not, one might stretch the tongue a bit to make its timing have a quizical, playful, or other impact on the sequence of processing in the brain. So I modified Psalm 24 to play a bit more with the he, this, a and the - as if the poet was finally going to get to the full impact of the construct only in the last verse.
Speaking of songs of ascent - is this also a construct form? for it is shir הַמַּעֲלוֹת hama`aloth - which looks just like a king of the glory. So maybe there is some decision in hearing and translation as to whether two consecutive nouns are in a construct relation or not... and if they are not, one might stretch the tongue a bit to make its timing have a quizical, playful, or other impact on the sequence of processing in the brain. So I modified Psalm 24 to play a bit more with the he, this, a and the - as if the poet was finally going to get to the full impact of the construct only in the last verse.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Who is a king of the glory?
I am not paying too much attention to the conventions of language sometimes. Should מֶלֶךְ הַכָּבוֹד [melek ha-kabod] be translated 'a king of the glory' or 'the king of glory'? There may be a convention - but the process of the last four verses seems to ask the question without necessarily knowing the answer in advance. What a concept!
And this psalm does not stand alone. Psalm 25 - the acrostic - comments on Psalm 24 through the repetitive use of the word נָשָׂא [nasa] to lift up - among its many meanings. How does one tell what a verb means? Examine the objects that a poet uses with it? Of lift up in Psalm 24 we have:
אֲשֶׁר לֹא נָשָׂא לַשָּׁוְא נַפְשִׁי who has not lifted up to emptiness his life,
and
יִשָּׂא בְרָכָה he will take away a blessing
and
שְׂאוּ שְׁעָרִים רָאשֵׁיכֶם lift up gates your heads
and
וּשְׂאוּ פִּתְחֵי עוֹלָם be lifted up doors of eternity
and in Psalm 25 to open the poem
אֵלֶיךָ יְהוָה נַפְשִׁי אֶשָּׂא I lift up my life to you
and, to close the circle, a prayer
וְשָׂא לְכָל חַטֹּאותָי lift up my sins
It is a remarkable set of differing objects.
And this psalm does not stand alone. Psalm 25 - the acrostic - comments on Psalm 24 through the repetitive use of the word נָשָׂא [nasa] to lift up - among its many meanings. How does one tell what a verb means? Examine the objects that a poet uses with it? Of lift up in Psalm 24 we have:
אֲשֶׁר לֹא נָשָׂא לַשָּׁוְא נַפְשִׁי who has not lifted up to emptiness his life,
and
יִשָּׂא בְרָכָה he will take away a blessing
and
שְׂאוּ שְׁעָרִים רָאשֵׁיכֶם lift up gates your heads
and
וּשְׂאוּ פִּתְחֵי עוֹלָם be lifted up doors of eternity
and in Psalm 25 to open the poem
אֵלֶיךָ יְהוָה נַפְשִׁי אֶשָּׂא I lift up my life to you
and, to close the circle, a prayer
וְשָׂא לְכָל חַטֹּאותָי lift up my sins
It is a remarkable set of differing objects.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Strong stuff
There's both strong and lovely food for thought in this morning's blogosphere - John Hobbins on literalism - on limitations to explanation, and Rachel Barenblatt on liturgy and ambiguity - an invitation to read with openness. Where in this commonality do I find the unity - the substance of the Shema? Not in polemics but in poetry. There are other poems - but that one from of old for me holds more than a full cup.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Psalms 20-21, 47, ++
With the recent celebration of ascension, my attention has been drawn to the king in the Psalms. Psalms 20-21 are described by Craigie as psalms of war - and so they may be. But what kind of war? And what is the role of the king? And how is the king related to God? Psalms 2 and 16 form the first basis of the role of the king in the Psalms - where would such a study take us?
I am not ready to go there, but after 10 months I can see a bit where I have been and how I have got here. Here is an outline of my method - the bootstrap of learning a new writing system and language concurrently.
First: don't worry about too many details; second: trust that you will be able to learn; third: there are mistakes - expect to correct them.
It is a multipass operation though I polished the first few psalms more than I perhaps should have to begin with. What was surprising was how easy Psalm 1 was - but how long it took: at least 6 weeks. The structure of verse 1 is beautiful - and it is missed by most translations - quite unnecessarily. I began with Fokkelman - a very hard book to read and not intended for beginners, but it introduced me to the idea of micro-structures and I remain keenly interested in structure. Structure has the capacity to resolve ambiguity and to enable communication. Pattern reveals and corroborates potential meaning.
If there is such a thing as the work of the Spirit and the Word of God, then it will be known in the pattern, not in a priori dictation of meaning. And the pattern will also be a fully human communication - a poet struggling to find words appropriate to his covenant dialogue.
I began also with Uriel Simon whose Four Approaches to the Book of Psalms showed me a completely different reading from the traditional piety of the Anglican Church. But I should note how much I love the Anglican liturgy and in spite of the limitations of 16th century piety, our traditional translations of the Psalms have not resulted in any loss of their power to heal and strengthen.
Having looked at these two books in part - for they are both still beyond my experience, I found I had four touch points in history for my start: my own time, the 16th century, the 11th century through Ibn Ezra via Simon, and the first century through the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews. So now I needed to see what the original poets' mind might be.
I have no doubt there were original poets and editors and that what we have is close to what they authored, performed, and had written. I find I can hold the multiple-author thought together with the five books being a second Torah revealed to David. My earth is flat and round at the same time. My only problem was to learn the language. Some of my previous posts show this process. [This reminds me that we need a study of LDAVID - is it better as 'to David' rather than 'of David'?]
I begin with the text - and largely leave it in its Masoretic form. I have a program that loads the database from extended html by word and phrase. I arrange the text into three groups: labels, being the verse numbers, input on the left, being the Hebrew, and output to the right, being a mechanical transliteration of the html into Latin characters. It is a very simple set of replace statements done in one pass - so it probably has some really oddball results - but it seems to compare reasonably well with other systems (so far). I then select the various classes of text and format them - Hebrew right justified reading to the left and transcription left justified reading to the right such as is used in the Mechon-Mamre site.
At this point I have a black and white boxed surface with pairs of columns roughly 5 to 6 verses deep. The challenge is to find the verbal structure. Sometimes I look in the Hebrew first but usually I translate a verse at a time using several tools: the Blue Letter Bible is very helpful - It has a reasonably full interlinear and I have to this point depended on it for most of my judgment of the verb conjugations. (But I have not followed its lead in translation since I think there are more assumptions being followed than are justified.) Sometimes since I know the King James version by heart in many places, it is difficult to escape from the 16th century tradition. But it is important to refuse the path of tradition since the mind of the ancient poet is not mine nor is it in full concord with the traditions of Christendom.
A second help is the site Scripture4all since its translation is word for word and therefore literal to the point of unreadability. Some words are very hard to find in the dictionary. Suppose in English you wanted to look up the word international, but the only place you could find it is under the 'root' ntn. Hey - it begins with I - why is it not under I? Dictionaries are a long story. I use two: the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon - marked with many yellow stickies so I can find the letter I am looking for, and a wonderful loan from my Hebrew teacher, Gidi Nahshon, of a Hebrew to Latin concordance. In the BDB it is hard to find the first letter of a word. In the Concordance, it is hard to find the first page of a letter because in this case, all the uses of a word are listed together. So for example: אוֹר - lux, lumen, splendor, nitor ... is followed by וְאוֹר - you can see that under the letter Aleph will include all words containing prefixes also. It gives a whole new meaning to 'begins with'.
Using the four tools then I proceed to find words for the poem. What I do is immediately part of a database, so I can get a query to show me what I have translated and to 'sort' it all - well - it's easy to say - roughly by English or Hebrew so I can see how arbitrary I am being with these silken gems of human understanding. I have an algorithm for root determination - but it is very difficult to pare the enclitics with rules.
After a rough cut translation, I have usually noticed many of the structural aspects of the Psalm and I colour them - I check these against any commentaries I can find. I have looked at several - none is sufficient by itself. Then I manipuate the diagram into an optimum form for showing the structural relations: get the columns to conform to the shell and centre(s) of the Psalm, colour and connect the dots; refine the words; split boxes where needed. Once in a more or less seeable form, I publish the database image as a jpg - it is one of several publishing options I could choose and it suits for now.
After several psalms, I often come across a comment that changes my mind or gets me to look at the whole from a different point of view. More recently some word studies have emerged. The most obvious is the usage of Elohim and related words against the usage of the tetragrammeton - clearly the Psalter has been edited into a sandwich structure. I am sure that other macro structures will emerge. And then there are notes from other on-line professors which challenge me to dig deeper and justify or abandon a particular phrase. I went round in circles on Psalm 2 as can be seen from these links which themselves will link to the other blogs.
May 20 Craigie on psalm 2
(references the latest diagram of the structure Psalm 2 )
Staring at Psalm 2,
May 17 Palindrome and alliteration in hebrew,
The son, The Son, field, purity
This is a brief record of the learning and bootstrap process to date. My current state is one of a - perhaps now almost 4 year old sounding out the letters. I have some word recognition happening and just tonight, I realized I could read Hebrew letters upside down - it is the first time I have noticed this. So to sum up in reverse order: mistakes are correctible; the brain works; and the details evolve.
Confortare et esto robustus - be strong and of a good courage. There is more promise in the land than one might think.
I am not ready to go there, but after 10 months I can see a bit where I have been and how I have got here. Here is an outline of my method - the bootstrap of learning a new writing system and language concurrently.
First: don't worry about too many details; second: trust that you will be able to learn; third: there are mistakes - expect to correct them.
It is a multipass operation though I polished the first few psalms more than I perhaps should have to begin with. What was surprising was how easy Psalm 1 was - but how long it took: at least 6 weeks. The structure of verse 1 is beautiful - and it is missed by most translations - quite unnecessarily. I began with Fokkelman - a very hard book to read and not intended for beginners, but it introduced me to the idea of micro-structures and I remain keenly interested in structure. Structure has the capacity to resolve ambiguity and to enable communication. Pattern reveals and corroborates potential meaning.
If there is such a thing as the work of the Spirit and the Word of God, then it will be known in the pattern, not in a priori dictation of meaning. And the pattern will also be a fully human communication - a poet struggling to find words appropriate to his covenant dialogue.
I began also with Uriel Simon whose Four Approaches to the Book of Psalms showed me a completely different reading from the traditional piety of the Anglican Church. But I should note how much I love the Anglican liturgy and in spite of the limitations of 16th century piety, our traditional translations of the Psalms have not resulted in any loss of their power to heal and strengthen.
Having looked at these two books in part - for they are both still beyond my experience, I found I had four touch points in history for my start: my own time, the 16th century, the 11th century through Ibn Ezra via Simon, and the first century through the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews. So now I needed to see what the original poets' mind might be.
I have no doubt there were original poets and editors and that what we have is close to what they authored, performed, and had written. I find I can hold the multiple-author thought together with the five books being a second Torah revealed to David. My earth is flat and round at the same time. My only problem was to learn the language. Some of my previous posts show this process. [This reminds me that we need a study of LDAVID - is it better as 'to David' rather than 'of David'?]
I begin with the text - and largely leave it in its Masoretic form. I have a program that loads the database from extended html by word and phrase. I arrange the text into three groups: labels, being the verse numbers, input on the left, being the Hebrew, and output to the right, being a mechanical transliteration of the html into Latin characters. It is a very simple set of replace statements done in one pass - so it probably has some really oddball results - but it seems to compare reasonably well with other systems (so far). I then select the various classes of text and format them - Hebrew right justified reading to the left and transcription left justified reading to the right such as is used in the Mechon-Mamre site.
At this point I have a black and white boxed surface with pairs of columns roughly 5 to 6 verses deep. The challenge is to find the verbal structure. Sometimes I look in the Hebrew first but usually I translate a verse at a time using several tools: the Blue Letter Bible is very helpful - It has a reasonably full interlinear and I have to this point depended on it for most of my judgment of the verb conjugations. (But I have not followed its lead in translation since I think there are more assumptions being followed than are justified.) Sometimes since I know the King James version by heart in many places, it is difficult to escape from the 16th century tradition. But it is important to refuse the path of tradition since the mind of the ancient poet is not mine nor is it in full concord with the traditions of Christendom.
A second help is the site Scripture4all since its translation is word for word and therefore literal to the point of unreadability. Some words are very hard to find in the dictionary. Suppose in English you wanted to look up the word international, but the only place you could find it is under the 'root' ntn. Hey - it begins with I - why is it not under I? Dictionaries are a long story. I use two: the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon - marked with many yellow stickies so I can find the letter I am looking for, and a wonderful loan from my Hebrew teacher, Gidi Nahshon, of a Hebrew to Latin concordance. In the BDB it is hard to find the first letter of a word. In the Concordance, it is hard to find the first page of a letter because in this case, all the uses of a word are listed together. So for example: אוֹר - lux, lumen, splendor, nitor ... is followed by וְאוֹר - you can see that under the letter Aleph will include all words containing prefixes also. It gives a whole new meaning to 'begins with'.
Using the four tools then I proceed to find words for the poem. What I do is immediately part of a database, so I can get a query to show me what I have translated and to 'sort' it all - well - it's easy to say - roughly by English or Hebrew so I can see how arbitrary I am being with these silken gems of human understanding. I have an algorithm for root determination - but it is very difficult to pare the enclitics with rules.
After a rough cut translation, I have usually noticed many of the structural aspects of the Psalm and I colour them - I check these against any commentaries I can find. I have looked at several - none is sufficient by itself. Then I manipuate the diagram into an optimum form for showing the structural relations: get the columns to conform to the shell and centre(s) of the Psalm, colour and connect the dots; refine the words; split boxes where needed. Once in a more or less seeable form, I publish the database image as a jpg - it is one of several publishing options I could choose and it suits for now.
After several psalms, I often come across a comment that changes my mind or gets me to look at the whole from a different point of view. More recently some word studies have emerged. The most obvious is the usage of Elohim and related words against the usage of the tetragrammeton - clearly the Psalter has been edited into a sandwich structure. I am sure that other macro structures will emerge. And then there are notes from other on-line professors which challenge me to dig deeper and justify or abandon a particular phrase. I went round in circles on Psalm 2 as can be seen from these links which themselves will link to the other blogs.
May 20 Craigie on psalm 2
(references the latest diagram of the structure Psalm 2 )
Staring at Psalm 2,
May 17 Palindrome and alliteration in hebrew,
The son, The Son, field, purity
This is a brief record of the learning and bootstrap process to date. My current state is one of a - perhaps now almost 4 year old sounding out the letters. I have some word recognition happening and just tonight, I realized I could read Hebrew letters upside down - it is the first time I have noticed this. So to sum up in reverse order: mistakes are correctible; the brain works; and the details evolve.
Confortare et esto robustus - be strong and of a good courage. There is more promise in the land than one might think.
48 of 153 files done - approx 30%
Link -----Date ---------(word count)
Psalm --1 August 2006 (67)
Psalm --2 August 2006 (108)
Psalm --3 September 2006 (70)
Psalm --4 October 2006 (77)
Psalm --5 October 2006 (111)
Psalm --6 November 2006 (84)
Psalm --7 November 2006 (142)
Psalm --8 September 2006 (77)
Psalm --9 November 2006 (165)
Psalm -10 November 2006 (162)
Psalm -11 November 2006 (68)
Psalm -12 November 2006 (79)
Psalm -13 January 2007 (55)
Psalm -14 / -53 January 2007 (93)
Psalm -15 January 2007 (55)
Psalm -16 January 2007 (97)
Psalm -17 February 2007 (124)
Psalm -18 May 2007 (397)
Psalm -19 January 2007 (126)
Psalm -20 May 2007 (70)
Psalm -21 May 2007 (104)
Psalm -22 April 2007 (253)
Psalm -23 September 2006 (52)
Psalm -25 May 2007 (159)
Psalm -42 January 2007 (132)
Psalm -43 February 2007 (59)
Psalm -46 September 2006 (99)
Psalm -47 May 2007 (77)
Psalm -51 December 2006 (153)
Psalm -67 December 2006 (53)
Psalm -73 December 2006 (193)
Psalm -89 December 2006 (384)
Psalm -90 May 2007 (140)
Psalm -92 May 2007 (112)
Psalm 100 December 2006 (44)
Psalm 107 January 2007 (278)
Psalm 115 May 2007 (135)
Psalm 117 March 2007 (17)
Psalm 118 March 2007 (198)
Psalm 119-A-H March 2007 (233)
Psalm 121 May 2007 (56)
Psalm 124 May 2007 (57)
Psalm 134 April 2007 (25)
Psalm 138 September 2006 (75)
Psalm 145 September 2006 (161)
Psalm 146 May 2007 (85)
Psalm 150 December 2006 (37)
Psalm --1 August 2006 (67)
Psalm --2 August 2006 (108)
Psalm --3 September 2006 (70)
Psalm --4 October 2006 (77)
Psalm --5 October 2006 (111)
Psalm --6 November 2006 (84)
Psalm --7 November 2006 (142)
Psalm --8 September 2006 (77)
Psalm --9 November 2006 (165)
Psalm -10 November 2006 (162)
Psalm -11 November 2006 (68)
Psalm -12 November 2006 (79)
Psalm -13 January 2007 (55)
Psalm -14 / -53 January 2007 (93)
Psalm -15 January 2007 (55)
Psalm -16 January 2007 (97)
Psalm -17 February 2007 (124)
Psalm -18 May 2007 (397)
Psalm -19 January 2007 (126)
Psalm -20 May 2007 (70)
Psalm -21 May 2007 (104)
Psalm -22 April 2007 (253)
Psalm -23 September 2006 (52)
Psalm -25 May 2007 (159)
Psalm -42 January 2007 (132)
Psalm -43 February 2007 (59)
Psalm -46 September 2006 (99)
Psalm -47 May 2007 (77)
Psalm -51 December 2006 (153)
Psalm -67 December 2006 (53)
Psalm -73 December 2006 (193)
Psalm -89 December 2006 (384)
Psalm -90 May 2007 (140)
Psalm -92 May 2007 (112)
Psalm 100 December 2006 (44)
Psalm 107 January 2007 (278)
Psalm 115 May 2007 (135)
Psalm 117 March 2007 (17)
Psalm 118 March 2007 (198)
Psalm 119-A-H March 2007 (233)
Psalm 121 May 2007 (56)
Psalm 124 May 2007 (57)
Psalm 134 April 2007 (25)
Psalm 138 September 2006 (75)
Psalm 145 September 2006 (161)
Psalm 146 May 2007 (85)
Psalm 150 December 2006 (37)
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
New version of diagram
I have revamped my emerging diagram of the psalter. I have begun labelling the psalms that are drafted, and a few 'indicators' show from the database what percentage of each part I have 'drafted'. I will be adding alerts to some diagrams to show various things about similar words in the database etc - ideas?... And I have a new self-eating query that shows me where the word I am translating is used in all the other Psalms I have translated so far - a real aide-memoire. Unfortunately to use this tool, you need to know some SQL for the full power. Still - it is real power as I hope to demonstrate. It sure helps me to keep my place in this project.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Two or three
John Hobbins in his files section has a very helpful article on Hebrew Poetry which I am working through in the early mornings when I am fresh and can read again. One consequence of the structure described by his general rule on page 5 of the paper is the confirmation that 'two or three witnesses are required'. So I look for more than one keyword or grammatical or alliterative or semantic move to confirm the shape of the poem and therefore to show at least one aspect of the milk or meat that is in the structure. (Not to throw out the skin - full of vitamins itself, and poetry may not have an external skeleton.)
There are a few other key numbers related to our human capacity: 7 for complexity, 3 for depth of nesting, and of course the golden mean for proportion and beauty. 7 itself is a witness of 2 and 3 since it is 2**3 - 1 (that's 2 x 2 x 2 -1). It seems to be a common structure in our perception. Chris Heard is mapping a Biblical structure using a conceptual mapping tool (competitive with the tool I use - maybe).
With whatever tool - language, image, or software, we need to be aware of the limits to perception that our readers require. Perhaps the idea of '2 or 3 witnesses' is a gift to us for our mutual building up. Lists may be longer than 7 and nests deeper than 3 but our limitations will make such lists and circles difficult to fathom. So Romans with its 55 questions in 10 sections + is a difficult argument to process.
There are a few other key numbers related to our human capacity: 7 for complexity, 3 for depth of nesting, and of course the golden mean for proportion and beauty. 7 itself is a witness of 2 and 3 since it is 2**3 - 1 (that's 2 x 2 x 2 -1). It seems to be a common structure in our perception. Chris Heard is mapping a Biblical structure using a conceptual mapping tool (competitive with the tool I use - maybe).
With whatever tool - language, image, or software, we need to be aware of the limits to perception that our readers require. Perhaps the idea of '2 or 3 witnesses' is a gift to us for our mutual building up. Lists may be longer than 7 and nests deeper than 3 but our limitations will make such lists and circles difficult to fathom. So Romans with its 55 questions in 10 sections + is a difficult argument to process.
Craigie on Psalm 2:12
[Revised] Craigie translates נַשְּׁקוּ-בַר (nashiqu-bar) as 'kiss the son' interpreting the br as Aramaic, son. He also gives a variation from Holladay who translates as: 'you who forget the grave' using what looks to me like a substantial rework of the text נַשְּׁי-קבַר . Though grave has a potential parallel in 'perish', it seems like a replacement of the poetic line rather than a translation. My contention is simply that the phrase must refer to the anointed directly or indirectly in order to complete the 8th structural component in the envelope surrounding the installation of the king as shown in my new diagram.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Staring at psalm 2
There is no easy way to deal with Psalm 2 - and so for the moment, I am shelving it. [Much later, read Rashi and realize that purity is a great structural completion and even a Janus parallel.]
Structurally, the last three verses sum up the previous nine: The kings of the earth (1) are recalled in 10. The wrath and burning (5) are reflected in 12 in reverse order with a diminutive hint of humour recalling the laughter of verse 4. The anointed, the subject of 2, 6-9, the ruler of the kings of the earth, the one about whom is the substance of the enthronment psalm is not mentioned in the recap unless we recognize the son in verse 12.
I can't get any other hint as to what נַשְּׁקוּ-בַר means unless it refers back to this major section and subject of the poem. I have to stick with kiss the son for now since otherwise the poem is structurally incomplete. It cannot mean do homage to the LORD; but kiss the ground is possible if it is deemed an act of submission to the anointed.
Structurally, the last three verses sum up the previous nine: The kings of the earth (1) are recalled in 10. The wrath and burning (5) are reflected in 12 in reverse order with a diminutive hint of humour recalling the laughter of verse 4. The anointed, the subject of 2, 6-9, the ruler of the kings of the earth, the one about whom is the substance of the enthronment psalm is not mentioned in the recap unless we recognize the son in verse 12.
I can't get any other hint as to what נַשְּׁקוּ-בַר means unless it refers back to this major section and subject of the poem. I have to stick with kiss the son for now since otherwise the poem is structurally incomplete. It cannot mean do homage to the LORD; but kiss the ground is possible if it is deemed an act of submission to the anointed.
To see a readable enlargement of the image illustrating these relations click here. I could improve my colouring. One day, I will learn that less is more, but my excuse is that this was one of the first I translated and coloured - and I was testing a product - and it goes beyond colour.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Palindrome and alliteration in Hebrew poetry
I suggested an idea about reversed structures in Hebrew poetry in my last post. The very next Psalm I am destined to translate contains just such a structure. Psalm 90:1 and 17 as pointed out by Magonet -A Rabbi Reads the Psalms. Adonay ma'on (aleph) and vihi no'am adonay (in the last verse) - note the palindrome! These writers were playful just as we are - except for us really serious people.
Is there a similar structure in Psalm 2 that would allow the horrible use of a borrowed tongue in verse 12? The rather ugly raw transcription follows - my colour-coding fails me at the moment.
Psalm 2
1 LAMAH RAgSHU gOYIm
לָמָּה רָגְשׁוּ גוֹיִם
UL'eMim YeHGU-RiQ
וּלְאֻמִּים יֶהְגּוּ-רִיק
2 YIthiaTSbU maLkeY-'eReTS
יִתְיַצְּבוּ מַלְכֵי-אֶרֶץ
VROZnim nOçDU-YAXaD
וְרוֹזְנִים נוֹסְדוּ-יָחַד
.aL-YY V.aL-mSHiXO
עַל-יְהוָה וְעַל-מְשִׁיחוֹ
3 nnaTQAH 'eth-mOçROtheYmO
נְנַתְּקָה אֶת-מוֹסְרוֹתֵימוֹ
VnaSHLikAH mIMeNU .abotheYmO
וְנַשְׁלִיכָה מִמֶּנּוּ עֲבֹתֵימוֹ
4 YOSHeb BaSHAmaYIm YISXAQ
יוֹשֵׁב בַּשָּׁמַיִם יִשְׂחָק
YY YIL.ag-LAmO
יְהוָה יִלְעַג-לָמוֹ
5 'AZ YDaBeR 'eLeYmO b'aPO
אָז יְדַבֵּר אֵלֵימוֹ בְאַפּוֹ
UbaXaROnO YbaHaLemO
וּבַחֲרוֹנוֹ יְבַהֲלֵמוֹ
6 Va'ani nAçakTi maLki
וַאֲנִי נָסַכְתִּי מַלְכִּי
.aL-TSiOn HaR-QADSHi
עַל-צִיּוֹן הַר-קָדְשִׁי
7 'açaPRAH 'eL-XoQ YY
אֲסַפְּרָה אֶל-חֹק יְהוָה
'AmaR 'eLaY Bni 'aTAH
אָמַר אֵלַי בְּנִי אַתָּה
'ani HaYOm YLIDTikA
אֲנִי הַיּוֹם יְלִדְתִּיךָ
8 SH'aL mIMeNi
שְׁאַל מִמֶּנִּי
V'eTnAH gOYIm naXaLAthekA
וְאֶתְּנָה גוֹיִם נַחֲלָתֶךָ
Va'aXeZAthkA 'aphçeY-'AReTS
וַאֲחֻזָּתְךָ אַפְסֵי-אָרֶץ
9 TRo.em BSHebet
תְּרֹעֵם בְּשֵׁבֶט
BaRZeL kIkLi
בַּרְזֶל כִּכְלִי
YOTSeR TnaPTSem
יוֹצֵר תְּנַפְּצֵם
10 V.aTAH mLAkim
וְעַתָּה מְלָכִים
HaSkiLU HIUAçRU
הַשְׂכִּילוּ הִוָּסְרוּ
SHophteY 'AReTS
שֹׁפְטֵי אָרֶץ
11 .IbDU 'eth-YY BiIR'AH
עִבְדוּ אֶת-יְהוָה בְּיִרְאָה
VgiLU BIR.ADAH
וְגִילוּ בִּרְעָדָה
12 naSHQU-baR Pen-Ye'enaph
נַשְּׁקוּ-בַר פֶּן-יֶאֱנַף
Vtho'bDU DeRek
וְתֹאבְדוּ דֶרֶךְ
ki-YIb.aR kIm.at 'aPO
כִּי-יִבְעַר כִּמְעַט אַפּוֹ
'aSHReY kAL-XOçeY bO
אַשְׁרֵי כָּל-חוֹסֵי בוֹ
Is there a similar structure in Psalm 2 that would allow the horrible use of a borrowed tongue in verse 12? The rather ugly raw transcription follows - my colour-coding fails me at the moment.
Psalm 2
1 LAMAH RAgSHU gOYIm
לָמָּה רָגְשׁוּ גוֹיִם
UL'eMim YeHGU-RiQ
וּלְאֻמִּים יֶהְגּוּ-רִיק
2 YIthiaTSbU maLkeY-'eReTS
יִתְיַצְּבוּ מַלְכֵי-אֶרֶץ
VROZnim nOçDU-YAXaD
וְרוֹזְנִים נוֹסְדוּ-יָחַד
.aL-YY V.aL-mSHiXO
עַל-יְהוָה וְעַל-מְשִׁיחוֹ
3 nnaTQAH 'eth-mOçROtheYmO
נְנַתְּקָה אֶת-מוֹסְרוֹתֵימוֹ
VnaSHLikAH mIMeNU .abotheYmO
וְנַשְׁלִיכָה מִמֶּנּוּ עֲבֹתֵימוֹ
4 YOSHeb BaSHAmaYIm YISXAQ
יוֹשֵׁב בַּשָּׁמַיִם יִשְׂחָק
YY YIL.ag-LAmO
יְהוָה יִלְעַג-לָמוֹ
5 'AZ YDaBeR 'eLeYmO b'aPO
אָז יְדַבֵּר אֵלֵימוֹ בְאַפּוֹ
UbaXaROnO YbaHaLemO
וּבַחֲרוֹנוֹ יְבַהֲלֵמוֹ
6 Va'ani nAçakTi maLki
וַאֲנִי נָסַכְתִּי מַלְכִּי
.aL-TSiOn HaR-QADSHi
עַל-צִיּוֹן הַר-קָדְשִׁי
7 'açaPRAH 'eL-XoQ YY
אֲסַפְּרָה אֶל-חֹק יְהוָה
'AmaR 'eLaY Bni 'aTAH
אָמַר אֵלַי בְּנִי אַתָּה
'ani HaYOm YLIDTikA
אֲנִי הַיּוֹם יְלִדְתִּיךָ
8 SH'aL mIMeNi
שְׁאַל מִמֶּנִּי
V'eTnAH gOYIm naXaLAthekA
וְאֶתְּנָה גוֹיִם נַחֲלָתֶךָ
Va'aXeZAthkA 'aphçeY-'AReTS
וַאֲחֻזָּתְךָ אַפְסֵי-אָרֶץ
9 TRo.em BSHebet
תְּרֹעֵם בְּשֵׁבֶט
BaRZeL kIkLi
בַּרְזֶל כִּכְלִי
YOTSeR TnaPTSem
יוֹצֵר תְּנַפְּצֵם
10 V.aTAH mLAkim
וְעַתָּה מְלָכִים
HaSkiLU HIUAçRU
הַשְׂכִּילוּ הִוָּסְרוּ
SHophteY 'AReTS
שֹׁפְטֵי אָרֶץ
11 .IbDU 'eth-YY BiIR'AH
עִבְדוּ אֶת-יְהוָה בְּיִרְאָה
VgiLU BIR.ADAH
וְגִילוּ בִּרְעָדָה
12 naSHQU-baR Pen-Ye'enaph
נַשְּׁקוּ-בַר פֶּן-יֶאֱנַף
Vtho'bDU DeRek
וְתֹאבְדוּ דֶרֶךְ
ki-YIb.aR kIm.at 'aPO
כִּי-יִבְעַר כִּמְעַט אַפּוֹ
'aSHReY kAL-XOçeY bO
אַשְׁרֵי כָּל-חוֹסֵי בוֹ
The son, the Son, the field, purity
update: 8 months later - see this (with some refinement of the rough suggestion in this post) as an example of possible resolving of unknowns with structure.
------------
Psalm 2 has given rise to much discussion in the past weeks. See for instance here which links to John Hobbins who references Craigie's translation among others. I have a problem with the whole confusing sense. My brain makes short links among all these concepts - wondering if they are connected. Pure now seems out. Kiss purely? Kiss the bar=son? Kiss the field=ground=grovel? What ironic or sincere twist is appropriate?
Psalm 2 is one of two that govern our interpretation of the whole. The last verse forms an inclusio with the first verse of Psalm 1. The first editor of the 150 presumably is pre-Christendom. Is there a clue here?
Can we take the end of the poem from the beginning? Presumably the kings are being warned - seriously yet also with some mockery - as if to say - who do you think you are fighting against? Also the hint of anger at the end compared to the threat of confrontation at the beginning invite finding the hint to BR at the beginning of the Psalm...
The hint is in the installation of the king on the holy hill of Zion.
a Kings rising -
b God laughing -
c wrath -
d installation -
הַר-קָדְשִׁי HaR-QADSHi
[declaration of the king as son and invitation to rule] -
naSHQU-baR נַשְּׁקוּ-בַר
d' - [unknown translation of BR]
c' - wrath
b' - a little
a' - blessing
Can this structure be supported? Perhaps the poet wanted BR to rhyme with HR - it's all very alliterative.
------------
Psalm 2 has given rise to much discussion in the past weeks. See for instance here which links to John Hobbins who references Craigie's translation among others. I have a problem with the whole confusing sense. My brain makes short links among all these concepts - wondering if they are connected. Pure now seems out. Kiss purely? Kiss the bar=son? Kiss the field=ground=grovel? What ironic or sincere twist is appropriate?
Psalm 2 is one of two that govern our interpretation of the whole. The last verse forms an inclusio with the first verse of Psalm 1. The first editor of the 150 presumably is pre-Christendom. Is there a clue here?
Can we take the end of the poem from the beginning? Presumably the kings are being warned - seriously yet also with some mockery - as if to say - who do you think you are fighting against? Also the hint of anger at the end compared to the threat of confrontation at the beginning invite finding the hint to BR at the beginning of the Psalm...
The hint is in the installation of the king on the holy hill of Zion.
a Kings rising -
b God laughing -
c wrath -
d installation -
הַר-קָדְשִׁי HaR-QADSHi
[declaration of the king as son and invitation to rule] -
naSHQU-baR נַשְּׁקוּ-בַר
d' - [unknown translation of BR]
c' - wrath
b' - a little
a' - blessing
Can this structure be supported? Perhaps the poet wanted BR to rhyme with HR - it's all very alliterative.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Psalms 115, 124, 146
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
The Rest of Psalm 16
There seems to be less disagreement in the commentaries for the rest of the psalm - except of course that Dahood has a third person singular pronoun instead of a first person pronoun for verse 7 (my heart, his heart), and verse 8 (his right hand instead of the usual my right hand). I guess one could ask who is on whose right hand? Well the obvious answer is that while in this life, the LORD is on the right hand, and in the eternal moment, we are on the right hand of majesty. I don't have access to the Ugaritic texts to see why Dahood chooses these pronouns - but מִימִינִי (verse 8) and בִּימִינְךָ (verse 11) have differing pronouns in the MT. So I won't divert myself from the more traditional parsing of all the other translations.
The next issue is - what is the import of the middle verses 5 and 6? Four images reinforce the Psalmist's confidence: portion and cup - belonging to the poet; the lot held by the LORD; the memory of pleasant places; and the beauty of the poet's heritage. Talk about a good thing.
The first image has an ambivalent word חֲבָלִים which I at first rendered as bindings - a word that could be both negative or positive. Yet I do not think the Poet necessarily holds up a 'fortunate' or 'providential' life - as if chance were the governing factor. The factor that governs is perhaps the agreement and consequent determination expressed in verse 8. Such an act of will, a miktam perhaps, confidence, commitment, trust, and counsel, learning, instruction in the night could be the heritage of the rich or the poor (if we must speak in worldly terms).
Here is the whole Psalm: - one day I will be able to do better with the etymological stuff - but translation and poetry - that is really difficult - too many conflicts both on the input side and the output side and a terrifying demand on one's memory.
1 Inscribed of David
Keep me, O God, for I trust you
2 I said to the LORD, you are my Lord
My good pales beside you.
3 Of the holy ones that are in the earth
Of them, and of my securities,
all my delight in them?
4 They will increase their hurts
hastening behind
I will not offer their drink offerings of blood
And I will not put their names on my lips.
5 The LORD is my inheritance and my cup
You maintain my stay.
6 Bindings have fallen to me in pleasures
Surely a beautiful inheritance to me
7 I will bless the LORD who advises me
Surely in the night, my centre instructs me.
8 I have agreed with the LORD
in front of me continually, even at my right hand.
I will not be moved.
9 So my heart joys
And my glory sings
Surely my flesh will live in security
10 For you will not abandon my life to the place of the dead
You will not allow one who trusts you to see a pit.
11 You will make known to me a path of Life, satisfaction of joys
In your presence pleasures at your right hand unending.
The Psalm begins where it started with words based on XSD (1,10). I replaced the translation of BTX (9) with security - playing on the modern idols of financial security (3) that I referred to in a prior post.
The next issue is - what is the import of the middle verses 5 and 6? Four images reinforce the Psalmist's confidence: portion and cup - belonging to the poet; the lot held by the LORD; the memory of pleasant places; and the beauty of the poet's heritage. Talk about a good thing.
The first image has an ambivalent word חֲבָלִים which I at first rendered as bindings - a word that could be both negative or positive. Yet I do not think the Poet necessarily holds up a 'fortunate' or 'providential' life - as if chance were the governing factor. The factor that governs is perhaps the agreement and consequent determination expressed in verse 8. Such an act of will, a miktam perhaps, confidence, commitment, trust, and counsel, learning, instruction in the night could be the heritage of the rich or the poor (if we must speak in worldly terms).
Here is the whole Psalm: - one day I will be able to do better with the etymological stuff - but translation and poetry - that is really difficult - too many conflicts both on the input side and the output side and a terrifying demand on one's memory.
1 Inscribed of David
Keep me, O God, for I trust you
2 I said to the LORD, you are my Lord
My good pales beside you.
3 Of the holy ones that are in the earth
Of them, and of my securities,
all my delight in them?
4 They will increase their hurts
hastening behind
I will not offer their drink offerings of blood
And I will not put their names on my lips.
5 The LORD is my inheritance and my cup
You maintain my stay.
6 Bindings have fallen to me in pleasures
Surely a beautiful inheritance to me
7 I will bless the LORD who advises me
Surely in the night, my centre instructs me.
8 I have agreed with the LORD
in front of me continually, even at my right hand.
I will not be moved.
9 So my heart joys
And my glory sings
Surely my flesh will live in security
10 For you will not abandon my life to the place of the dead
You will not allow one who trusts you to see a pit.
11 You will make known to me a path of Life, satisfaction of joys
In your presence pleasures at your right hand unending.
The Psalm begins where it started with words based on XSD (1,10). I replaced the translation of BTX (9) with security - playing on the modern idols of financial security (3) that I referred to in a prior post.
Psalm 16 - my goodness!
Protestants are always on about the non-relevance of our good before God. Is that what the bet verse is about? טוֹבָתִי בַּל עָלֶיךָ, tovati bal aleika, or in the vulgate: quoniam bonorum meorum non eges, translated as 'you don't need my goods'.
What good is this that is ours? It is, whatever we might think as pious and correct folks, nevertheless important to us. When my good is impacted, I respond, even with violence, whether of desire or of defense. It is good to me! It is not my righteousness - it might even be my unrighteousness, the old man, my second heart - as the sages say, the reason for the dagesh forte in heart. But this whole person is what God loves, so loves. And so do I. So tovati bal aleika is not a doctrinal statement of Lutheran protest against works-righteousness!
I passed over this phrase too quickly in my last post. My good - which is very important to me, is nonetheless, beside the good that God gives to me, not important - because God has given to me a good that is greater than my good, but he has made it truly mine - and that alone is trouble since I must in due course submit that gift also to God!
So how to put this across in three words (or 6) in English!
I suppose it is just as pious to declare God's good for me better than my idea of my good.
My good pales beside you.
This is I think, an answer to theodicy, with or without a doctrine of the age to come. We really have choice and we really must discover the chosen.
The tone of the Psalm is not then so much about a deliverance from a past or present crisis (Craigie) as about the deliverance in hope from the crisis of life in the flesh (Weiser sort of agrees with this in his long paragraphs). The rest of the poem must reflect this - let's wait and see if it does.
What good is this that is ours? It is, whatever we might think as pious and correct folks, nevertheless important to us. When my good is impacted, I respond, even with violence, whether of desire or of defense. It is good to me! It is not my righteousness - it might even be my unrighteousness, the old man, my second heart - as the sages say, the reason for the dagesh forte in heart. But this whole person is what God loves, so loves. And so do I. So tovati bal aleika is not a doctrinal statement of Lutheran protest against works-righteousness!
I passed over this phrase too quickly in my last post. My good - which is very important to me, is nonetheless, beside the good that God gives to me, not important - because God has given to me a good that is greater than my good, but he has made it truly mine - and that alone is trouble since I must in due course submit that gift also to God!
So how to put this across in three words (or 6) in English!
I suppose it is just as pious to declare God's good for me better than my idea of my good.
My good pales beside you.
This is I think, an answer to theodicy, with or without a doctrine of the age to come. We really have choice and we really must discover the chosen.
The tone of the Psalm is not then so much about a deliverance from a past or present crisis (Craigie) as about the deliverance in hope from the crisis of life in the flesh (Weiser sort of agrees with this in his long paragraphs). The rest of the poem must reflect this - let's wait and see if it does.
Psalm 16 verses 2-4
These are a conundrum. Who is speaking to whom? All I can do is to see if my own experience fits the dialogue in any way - does this make translation personal? Perhaps unavoidably. And maybe this is a good thing.
Problem 1: is it אמרת or אמרתי? You said (feminine or masculine) or I said?
Problem 2: is בַּל negative or positive?
Problem 3: are those foreign Gods - the holy ones and the majestic or the mighty?
Craigie says they are in parallel, but his translation is not parallel and there is a significant problem with the switch in pronomial subjects I, you, they.
If this is a reasonable analogue then I need to recognize in the poem both the covenant dialogue and the rationalizations for behaviour. If I skip ahead to the central instruction:
אַף לֵילוֹת יִסְּרוּנִי כִלְיוֹתָי
Surely in the night instructs me my centre - raw first cut avoiding reins, kidneys, and other euphemisms. What is it instructs you in the night? Take care through consecration - you shall be holy. And be still. This is one sign of our hope. Our psalmist is anointed. If I skip ahead, then in this one unit of poetry, I need to find where he is coming from that he can get to this security and have such security apply to the untimate end.
If we can't do this, it is not a poem. Since it is a poem, we must be able to do this. (Or fail).
Back to problem 2: it is a negative, but fortunately it is used 4 times in the poem - maybe it is a bit of irony, reversing its meaning by position. Hardly! (Is that a negative or a positive?) It is very helpful that it is repeated - could it be such an exclamation?
Will I trust in my (unspecified) pension? What! בַּל ! I don't know what will happen tomorrow - and certainly my pension doesn't either. But I know some things, says the Psalmist: my flesh will live in hope, my heart joy, and my glory rejoice, and I will continue as instructed in the night. Such is the nature of eternity.
So all three problems in the shopping bag, let's see if we can get them out.
I said to the LORD, you are my Lord
My good?
not beside you.
Of the holy ones that are in the earth
Of them, my securities, all my delight in them?
They will continue their mortality
hastening behind
I will not worship there
And I will forget their names.
The LORD is my inheritance and my cup
You maintain my stay.
OK OK - too fast and loose - but we are over the first hurdle. Did I stumble on it?
Problem 1: is it אמרת or אמרתי? You said (feminine or masculine) or I said?
Problem 2: is בַּל negative or positive?
Problem 3: are those foreign Gods - the holy ones and the majestic or the mighty?
Craigie says they are in parallel, but his translation is not parallel and there is a significant problem with the switch in pronomial subjects I, you, they.
You have said to the LORD, you are my masterYou can hear he has addressed one second person and the other indirectly, third person - not a parallel (and not the kind of 'person switch' which the Psalms are fond of). Of course they are not the same - yes I trust God, but don't lose my pension. I trust God, but I need the consumer society.
to the holy ones ... they are my mighty ones
If this is a reasonable analogue then I need to recognize in the poem both the covenant dialogue and the rationalizations for behaviour. If I skip ahead to the central instruction:
אַף לֵילוֹת יִסְּרוּנִי כִלְיוֹתָי
Surely in the night instructs me my centre - raw first cut avoiding reins, kidneys, and other euphemisms. What is it instructs you in the night? Take care through consecration - you shall be holy. And be still. This is one sign of our hope. Our psalmist is anointed. If I skip ahead, then in this one unit of poetry, I need to find where he is coming from that he can get to this security and have such security apply to the untimate end.
If we can't do this, it is not a poem. Since it is a poem, we must be able to do this. (Or fail).
Back to problem 2: it is a negative, but fortunately it is used 4 times in the poem - maybe it is a bit of irony, reversing its meaning by position. Hardly! (Is that a negative or a positive?) It is very helpful that it is repeated - could it be such an exclamation?
Will I trust in my (unspecified) pension? What! בַּל ! I don't know what will happen tomorrow - and certainly my pension doesn't either. But I know some things, says the Psalmist: my flesh will live in hope, my heart joy, and my glory rejoice, and I will continue as instructed in the night. Such is the nature of eternity.
So all three problems in the shopping bag, let's see if we can get them out.
I said to the LORD, you are my Lord
My good?
not beside you.
Of the holy ones that are in the earth
Of them, my securities, all my delight in them?
They will continue their mortality
hastening behind
I will not worship there
And I will forget their names.
The LORD is my inheritance and my cup
You maintain my stay.
OK OK - too fast and loose - but we are over the first hurdle. Did I stumble on it?
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Inscription
J.M. Neale and R.F. Littledale have collected commentaries on the Psalms from primitive and mediaeval writers. Like Westcott on Hebrews (1889), the assumptions of Christendom are simply a given for Psalm 16. Every phrase, one at a time, is put into the mouth of Jesus - more than the writer to Hebrews even! It is simply assumed that this poem belongs to the Son in his manhood. It is a shock to move to Dahood and find that Psalm 16 as a "profession of faith was composed by a Caananite convert to Yahwism."
So how will Psalm 16 stand up and allow itself to be read in the 21st century - with new eyes? Or to be heard with new ears?
I begin with the inscription: מִכְתָּם לְדָוִד - miktam ldavid. There are three words suggested for the root MKTM: inscription related to KTB (to write), golden related to KTM gold and atonement related to Akkadian KTM to cover (not the Hebrew which almost sounds like English Cover KPhR). What kind of choice will we give to the poet or to ourselves or to our readers?
It has to be gold because it speaks (if silently) of ultimate satisfaction at God's right hand. Silent because such things cannot be spoken. Of atonement since it is about being at one, not being abandoned, not being subject to chance, not being without hope, yet it knows of such abandonment, chance, and despair.
But it is only one word. Some translations leave it as Michtam. Not very helpful. Craigie suggests reference to Jeremiah 2:22 translating - your iniquity is inscribed before me. Also noted are the other psalms with this title (56-60). I defer their discussion to a later unspecified date.
The next line: שָׁמְרֵנִי אֵל, כִּי-חָסִיתִי בָךְ. Shamreni el, ki xasiti bak
XSH - trust surely is the other side of XSD loving kindness - for I have trusted in you. Here are the words in that part of my BDB (without the vowels):
חסד verb - to be good, kind, noun loving kindness.
with yodh mater before the D, adj - kind, good,
with yodh mater before the D and a final H - stork - one who is kind and affectionate to her young and that same word can mean Yah is kind (name of the son of Zerubbabel),
and a rare usage: XSD as reproach (verb and noun) - but if you are reproached in covenant by God, it is an act of kindness after all for God is with you.
Then there is XSH - to seek refuge and nouns: XSH (only used as proper name), XSuT with mater, refuge, MXSH, refuge, shelter.
Maybe trust is a poor translation - too cerebral a concept in comparison with take refuge or shelter. Shelter implies safety and there is safety in loving kindness if the strength can be trusted. (Hah!)
So what about the verb ShMR? Seems more straightforward than XSD. If whoever has 'taken refuge' then that whoever should be praying to be guarded, kept, or preserved.
So not yet knowing where we will go next (except to the difficulties of verses 2-4), here is the first 'refined' translation: Keep me, O God, for I take refuge in you. But it feels too long so I revert to
So how will Psalm 16 stand up and allow itself to be read in the 21st century - with new eyes? Or to be heard with new ears?
I begin with the inscription: מִכְתָּם לְדָוִד - miktam ldavid. There are three words suggested for the root MKTM: inscription related to KTB (to write), golden related to KTM gold and atonement related to Akkadian KTM to cover (not the Hebrew which almost sounds like English Cover KPhR). What kind of choice will we give to the poet or to ourselves or to our readers?
From gold, concerning atonement, through inscription, of David.
It has to be gold because it speaks (if silently) of ultimate satisfaction at God's right hand. Silent because such things cannot be spoken. Of atonement since it is about being at one, not being abandoned, not being subject to chance, not being without hope, yet it knows of such abandonment, chance, and despair.
But it is only one word. Some translations leave it as Michtam. Not very helpful. Craigie suggests reference to Jeremiah 2:22 translating - your iniquity is inscribed before me. Also noted are the other psalms with this title (56-60). I defer their discussion to a later unspecified date.
The next line: שָׁמְרֵנִי אֵל, כִּי-חָסִיתִי בָךְ. Shamreni el, ki xasiti bak
XSH - trust surely is the other side of XSD loving kindness - for I have trusted in you. Here are the words in that part of my BDB (without the vowels):
חסד verb - to be good, kind, noun loving kindness.
with yodh mater before the D, adj - kind, good,
with yodh mater before the D and a final H - stork - one who is kind and affectionate to her young and that same word can mean Yah is kind (name of the son of Zerubbabel),
and a rare usage: XSD as reproach (verb and noun) - but if you are reproached in covenant by God, it is an act of kindness after all for God is with you.
Then there is XSH - to seek refuge and nouns: XSH (only used as proper name), XSuT with mater, refuge, MXSH, refuge, shelter.
Maybe trust is a poor translation - too cerebral a concept in comparison with take refuge or shelter. Shelter implies safety and there is safety in loving kindness if the strength can be trusted. (Hah!)
So what about the verb ShMR? Seems more straightforward than XSD. If whoever has 'taken refuge' then that whoever should be praying to be guarded, kept, or preserved.
So not yet knowing where we will go next (except to the difficulties of verses 2-4), here is the first 'refined' translation: Keep me, O God, for I take refuge in you. But it feels too long so I revert to
Inscribed of David
Keep me, O God, for I trust you
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Blumenthal on theodicy
I am just rereading an essay I came across many years ago: David Blumenthal on theodicy.
One prays the liturgy of rage and protest vigorously and honestly. Then one tacks to a liturgy of joy and blessing. One turns yet again to a theology of courageous challenge. And then one tacks again to a theology of belonging and empowerment.
Answering the theodical question from the psalms - liturgical acts with such tacking implied - now seems possible. So off to school to the library to recover from three weeks without books on my desk. First job - make Psalm 16 stand up and speak.
That groanings blogger has commented on this discussion :) - this is a test of tracking.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Theodicy and delight - some reflections
From my list of psalm snippets in my first post on theodicy and faith, I derive the following characteristics of the LORD, God of the Psalmists.
Capable both of delight and of not taking delight. Psalm 147 is the most obvious - the LORD does not delight in the strength of your legs as if you were a horse, but does delight in those that fear him and in his people.
Psalm --5 also expresses what God does not take delight in. In Psalm -16, we find a confidence and hope even for 'the flesh' of the poet. This should warn us against too quick a conclusion on some things when we have said to God (Elohim even in this early psalm), 'I trust you'.
Psalm -51 , among the most famous, the classic of Ash Wednesday, the triumph of Allegri, again stresses both what God delights in and what is not God's delight - note again it is the delight of Elohim (no YHWH in this psalm).
Psalm 115 (and 135) says simply that God does what pleases him!
If we are displeased - nonetheless, God does (according to the psalms) what God pleases. Is God then good? That is not definable. What we read in the Psalms is that the psalmist expresses trust in God. It seems an act of will rather than anything else. It seems to have been rewarded and if not, there is always the lament such as Psalm -89.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
God's Delight
Here is a list of psalms which mention delight - some of them I have not yet translated. I was curious to see if one could approach the issue of theodicy that Rachel Barenblat and Chris Heard both raised for me yesterday by a side-door - what is it which delights or does not delight God? The word is חָפֵץ or XPTS.
(sorry about the Hebrew numbering - and the verse numbers are not guaranteed correct since I set them by a late addition to my algorithm for creating my lexicon, but there is still a challenge for me to learn the recognition and order of letters - so I let them stand in my query results.)
The first query looked for nodes surrounding ones that contained the letters XPTS in the right order (no unicode in our database yet). I kept results where God is the one to whom the delight is attributed.
Psalm --5 ה not a God who takes pleasure חָפֵץ in wickedness - of what God does not delight in
Psalm -16 ד all my delight חֶפְצִי in them - (? - who) delights in the holy of the earth
Psalm -18 כ for he delighted in me - the LORD's delight in David
Psalm -22 ט for he delights in him - scoffers on the LORD's delight
Psalm -35 כז my delight, my righteousness, ...
and the LORD delights in the peace of his servant
Psalm -37 כג and in his way, he [the LORD] delighted יֶחְפָּץ
Psalm -51 ח So truth you take pleasure חָפַצְתָּ in the inward parts
Psalm -51 יח for you will not delight לֹא-תַחְפֹּץ in sacrifice and I would do it
Psalm -51 כא Then you will delight תַּחְפֹּץ in a sacrifice of the righteous
Psalm 115 ג but our God in the heavens, all that he delighted in he did
Psalm 135 ו whatever he pleased, he did (=115)
Psalm 147 י He does not take delight in the strength of a horse
Perhaps I should add ratzon (will, pleasure, favour, etc) also: - it has taken me time to check my Hebrew search strategies, for the word occurs with parts of the root missing and other words fit my strategies. It is hard to know if I have hit them all and I had a few false positives like variations on to run יְרֻצוּן which has the same letters plus or minus a mater or a suffix.
The second query looked for nodes surrounding ones that contained the letters RTSN or RTSH in the right order. I kept the results where God is the implied subject or judge.
Psalm -30 ו life, his favour
Psalm -30 ח LORD, in your favour, stands my mountain strong
Psalm -40 ט I come to do your will
Psalm -40 יד be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me
Psalm -44 ד for you favoured them
Psalm -51 כ Do good in your acceptance of Zion
Psalm -68 יז which God desired to dwell in - different word חָמַד אֱלֹהִים
Psalm -69 יד O LORD in an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your mercy
Psalm -85 ב You have been favorable, O LORD
Psalm -89 יח and in your acceptance will be lifted up
Psalm 106 ד Remember me, O LORD, when you favour your people
Psalm 119-K-S קח The offerings of my mouth, accept, O LORD
Psalm 143 י Teach me to do your will
Psalm 145 טז Perfect (for the acrostic), you open your hand, satisfing all that is, acceptance
Psalm 147 יא The LORD takes pleasure in those that fear him
Psalm 149 ד The LORD takes pleasure in his people
The subject of 'who God is in God's self' compared with 'the way that the Poets of the Psalms wrote or recited about God' is a difficult starting point but I have to take it as given that we work from the ancient record of experience and see where it leads.
So, here are the two (twin?) issues
That's enough of a stimulus to thought for the moment and enough for a single blog post. I realize that there are lots of questions begged - not the least of which is the scandal of particularity, but let the stars burst where the original inconsistency of expansion manifests itself.
(sorry about the Hebrew numbering - and the verse numbers are not guaranteed correct since I set them by a late addition to my algorithm for creating my lexicon, but there is still a challenge for me to learn the recognition and order of letters - so I let them stand in my query results.)
The first query looked for nodes surrounding ones that contained the letters XPTS in the right order (no unicode in our database yet). I kept results where God is the one to whom the delight is attributed.
Psalm --5 ה not a God who takes pleasure חָפֵץ in wickedness - of what God does not delight in
Psalm -16 ד all my delight חֶפְצִי in them - (? - who) delights in the holy of the earth
Psalm -18 כ for he delighted in me - the LORD's delight in David
Psalm -22 ט for he delights in him - scoffers on the LORD's delight
Psalm -35 כז my delight, my righteousness, ...
and the LORD delights in the peace of his servant
Psalm -37 כג and in his way, he [the LORD] delighted יֶחְפָּץ
Psalm -51 ח So truth you take pleasure חָפַצְתָּ in the inward parts
Psalm -51 יח for you will not delight לֹא-תַחְפֹּץ in sacrifice and I would do it
Psalm -51 כא Then you will delight תַּחְפֹּץ in a sacrifice of the righteous
Psalm 115 ג but our God in the heavens, all that he delighted in he did
Psalm 135 ו whatever he pleased, he did (=115)
Psalm 147 י He does not take delight in the strength of a horse
Perhaps I should add ratzon (will, pleasure, favour, etc) also: - it has taken me time to check my Hebrew search strategies, for the word occurs with parts of the root missing and other words fit my strategies. It is hard to know if I have hit them all and I had a few false positives like variations on to run יְרֻצוּן which has the same letters plus or minus a mater or a suffix.
The second query looked for nodes surrounding ones that contained the letters RTSN or RTSH in the right order. I kept the results where God is the implied subject or judge.
Psalm -30 ו life, his favour
Psalm -30 ח LORD, in your favour, stands my mountain strong
Psalm -40 ט I come to do your will
Psalm -40 יד be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me
Psalm -44 ד for you favoured them
Psalm -51 כ Do good in your acceptance of Zion
Psalm -68 יז which God desired to dwell in - different word חָמַד אֱלֹהִים
Psalm -69 יד O LORD in an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your mercy
Psalm -85 ב You have been favorable, O LORD
Psalm -89 יח and in your acceptance will be lifted up
Psalm 106 ד Remember me, O LORD, when you favour your people
Psalm 119-K-S קח The offerings of my mouth, accept, O LORD
Psalm 143 י Teach me to do your will
Psalm 145 טז Perfect (for the acrostic), you open your hand, satisfing all that is, acceptance
Psalm 147 יא The LORD takes pleasure in those that fear him
Psalm 149 ד The LORD takes pleasure in his people
The subject of 'who God is in God's self' compared with 'the way that the Poets of the Psalms wrote or recited about God' is a difficult starting point but I have to take it as given that we work from the ancient record of experience and see where it leads.
So, here are the two (twin?) issues
- of faith ( 'engagement' as a deliberate act of will)
- or of evil (how is it that God who is good allows the evil we see?)
That's enough of a stimulus to thought for the moment and enough for a single blog post. I realize that there are lots of questions begged - not the least of which is the scandal of particularity, but let the stars burst where the original inconsistency of expansion manifests itself.
The Psalms and Theodicy
Rachel Barenblat and Chris Heard both posted today issues related to theodicy and random acts of violence, and the problems inherent in faith and trust as if they were measurable.
Chris asks why a “sovereign” God does not always get what God wants. And he suggests the solution of kenosis (Philippians 2)- self-emptying as if God hides part of self from self. My comment was not well-enough formed to get through the ether, so I will try and reconstruct the thought here. Moses in the later chapters of Deuteronomy (29:28/9) writes of Hidden things: These belong to God but the revealed things belong to us and our children for ever - come hell and high water. (He didn't say that last bit). Is this hidden aspect the other side of God's voluntary kenosis? Science notes that some things are not measurable concurrently - you can have momentum and position but you cannot be sure of both concurrently. We always disturb what we measure. As with science, so theology must recognize some of its inherent limitations. We think we could understand but our fullness is not even available to ourselves. (Cleanse me from my secret faults) (Psalm 19). And as for flat tires as acts of God - Psalm 148 allows for a certain fixity to reality and its rules without which we would have nothing rather than the hidden and the revealed.
Rachel quotes the Gemara: what does thought help to happen, and when does thought actually project an energy that prevents something from happening? Chazal say, that's a function of yirat shamayim [fear/awe of heaven/God]
The Sages do not mean, if I can dare to say such a thing, that your fear or faith or trust was somehow insufficient to enable the desired outcome. They refer, I expect, to that continuous voluntary engagement with the Most High which oscillates among presence, forgetfulness, joy, error, and hope. Why would it not be so? It is 'prayer without ceasing', to use the terms of the Jewish apostle to the Gentiles, Paul of Tarsus. You do not get your own way or what you deserved or what you wanted, but as with the Levites, you get God as your land. Who else do I have in heaven or on earth? (Psalm 73) What other hope is feasible for the twin problems of theodicy and faith?
There is much more - but it is beyond me to write about it at the moment. Thanks to the others for the stimulus.
Chris asks why a “sovereign” God does not always get what God wants. And he suggests the solution of kenosis (Philippians 2)- self-emptying as if God hides part of self from self. My comment was not well-enough formed to get through the ether, so I will try and reconstruct the thought here. Moses in the later chapters of Deuteronomy (29:28/9) writes of Hidden things: These belong to God but the revealed things belong to us and our children for ever - come hell and high water. (He didn't say that last bit). Is this hidden aspect the other side of God's voluntary kenosis? Science notes that some things are not measurable concurrently - you can have momentum and position but you cannot be sure of both concurrently. We always disturb what we measure. As with science, so theology must recognize some of its inherent limitations. We think we could understand but our fullness is not even available to ourselves. (Cleanse me from my secret faults) (Psalm 19). And as for flat tires as acts of God - Psalm 148 allows for a certain fixity to reality and its rules without which we would have nothing rather than the hidden and the revealed.
Rachel quotes the Gemara: what does thought help to happen, and when does thought actually project an energy that prevents something from happening? Chazal say, that's a function of yirat shamayim [fear/awe of heaven/God]
The Sages do not mean, if I can dare to say such a thing, that your fear or faith or trust was somehow insufficient to enable the desired outcome. They refer, I expect, to that continuous voluntary engagement with the Most High which oscillates among presence, forgetfulness, joy, error, and hope. Why would it not be so? It is 'prayer without ceasing', to use the terms of the Jewish apostle to the Gentiles, Paul of Tarsus. You do not get your own way or what you deserved or what you wanted, but as with the Levites, you get God as your land. Who else do I have in heaven or on earth? (Psalm 73) What other hope is feasible for the twin problems of theodicy and faith?
There is much more - but it is beyond me to write about it at the moment. Thanks to the others for the stimulus.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
SBL Link re Hebrew pointing
Best summary yet - and helps support my ignoring the cellophane implied by Lambdin's book (good though it is).
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Thumbnails
I cannot give you the full flavour of the diagramming and data based tool I am using - but here is a thumbnail of Psalm 22. The image is ordinary and somewhat colorless compared to many of the others - not that the psalm is unimportant. Seeing the structure is one key to understanding. How will we see structure on such a small surface for a large poem?
I just discovered that I had already translated Psalms 117 and 118 - and here comes 115 too which has more to its repetition than first meets the eye. They roll off the machine and I am scarcely aware of them - and I still can't speak this language! But piano, piano - like Bach's 6th suite in the background, I will remember - the endless has an end in me.
Psalm 18 - security and deliverance
Psalm 18 as I noted yesterday, is large. I have split it in 6 columns and identified sections (the theophany, and a short section which may turn out to be the central meditation) and a few words that repeat at least 3 times: הִצִּיל, ntsl, deliver, מְפַלְטִי palat, secure, צוּרִי, tsur, rock,תָּמִים, tamim, complete.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Psalm 18 and 25 first drafts
Two more psalms take their stand in a preliminary form. Psalm 25 is well analysed by Magonet and I have used some of his pointers to sketch a few colours. Psalm 18 is large and complex. It seems to have a theme of completeness in it.
The Spirit speaking through this writer speaks to me of the cost of loving enemies - not just battle-lines drawn up for destructive vengeance. The enemies were too strong for David - the reference to the Nations feigning obedience then quaking out of their fortresses is perplexing but almost reminds me of the astonishment of Isaiah 52 - who will believe our report? There is also a full-scale theophany in vs 8-16. What role does this play? What is the extraordinary space (20) into which the Psalmist is drawn? No colours yet - they will take time and I am looking for new ways of using them - full colour is a bit much to see.
Let the stew boil. I am not in a hurry to repeat the detailed logies of past ages - but the personal aspects of the poem especially as a certain first century Jews might have read it are intriguing.
The Spirit speaking through this writer speaks to me of the cost of loving enemies - not just battle-lines drawn up for destructive vengeance. The enemies were too strong for David - the reference to the Nations feigning obedience then quaking out of their fortresses is perplexing but almost reminds me of the astonishment of Isaiah 52 - who will believe our report? There is also a full-scale theophany in vs 8-16. What role does this play? What is the extraordinary space (20) into which the Psalmist is drawn? No colours yet - they will take time and I am looking for new ways of using them - full colour is a bit much to see.
Let the stew boil. I am not in a hurry to repeat the detailed logies of past ages - but the personal aspects of the poem especially as a certain first century Jews might have read it are intriguing.
Translating
I wonder whether it is time to put my cards on the table. What is my agenda? What is my motive after 60 years of bodily existence, for this exercise of learning an ancient tongue and putting the words of the Psalms into various pictures and forms of words.
I am over my head, but the Spirit gives me oxygen. There are those whose mother tongue is also English and who have spent a lifetime (some shorter some longer) with Hebrew and its cognate languages. I have spent a year to date after a long slow start of 30+ years perhaps knowing from a distance a word or two. I am very happy to have web-encountered a few of these scholars. I have had a few words with some scholars in the flesh: notably Peter Craigie (long before I was ready to tackle Hebrew) and John Sandys-Wynch and good advice from Bruce Gardner who suggested I ask God for help! So, God, having been engaged to my fleshly engine, and God, knowing well how to teach, God and I continue.
As if Hebrew were a tongue that I was not in a hurry to learn, as if I were a child with the brain of a child, I absorb in visual and aural terms in an almost unconscious manner, using both my own automated transcription (very primitive) and the Hebrew characters themselves. I am taking classes with the local Synagogue, Congregation Emmanu-El in Victoria. I use both online and offline tools generally every day, mostly BlueLetter Bible, Scripture4all, and Mechon-Mamre. The hardest thing to do is to see, hear, and read. Word recognition - I can read my own writing (!) but I cannot instantly recognize Hebrew words. I suspect this is due to the time required to grow brain connections between eye and mouth.
I use a new web-based tool which has been developed over the past 5 years by my own company. I could have used more standard tools but not with such power, flexibility, or beneficial effects to the testing process. But that is not my motivation - I am not in sales.
My 'Why' is highlighted by a post on John Hobbin's site in praise of the translations of David Curzon. I think I want to answer the questions begged by his article on translation.
I did a little search for this unknown person and found more fun and games - perhaps we will meet unknowingly on the streets of NY this summer. DC, where are you? Or should I say, where are you coming from? Physicist, diplomat, poet, theologian - a combination worth meeting. I am glad he is not 'of the cloth'. Better we should learn from everyone.
What questions does he beg:
He writes: Like all other literary classics, the Psalms are always in need of re-translation in order to have them in language, and with an interpretive emphasis, that is both accurate and contemporary. ... My aim is to produce translations usable by contemporary believers and non-believers as structures of meditation.
...
Bravo for the attempt to have poetry that unbelievers will buy and read! I must find more of these examples. My agenda is to undermine the commonplace piety of the 16th century and sentimental 20th century translations we have been subjected to in the Church. I don't know anywhere else that the Psalms are used (except of course the Synagogue - but they read without translation and there I see the LORD inhabiting the praises of his people.) So I am writing for those who are called or call themselves believers. I had better be careful in my criticism - some of these believers, even those one might mistakenly class as simple, mask a considerable Reality. What joy to discover such.
I have no quarrel with them. It is good, isn't it that I have a quarrel with some? (There must be divisions among you). I have a quarrel with some ancient assumptions of Christendom that no longer hold: hierarchy, trust in human forms, piety without engagement, false perfections including inerrancy in any form, and of course my own impatience and potential belligerence. There is a true perfection and exaltation - constantly in the hope of the Psalmist - is it here that Jesus found some of his aphorisms about being lifted up or the nature of the complete or the reality of loving enemies?
And again Curzon writes: The feelings expressed at the beginning of Psalm 13 are infantile. The demands which follow are adolescent. The pivotal recognition is that of a realistic experienced adult. The conclusion is natural wisdom.
...
What! infantile! and recovery to 'Natural' wisdom! What happened to me when I translated Psalm 13? Interesting - I never explicitly wrote about it. It fell in with all those that were in the 'relations with my enemies' genre for me. I certainly understand this - waiting. But the cry - how long - is very specific. The Psalmist cannot live without the presence of God and in some bodily sense of that presence. His hope is in the loving-kindness which has been experienced not just as if by some abstraction called 'belief' (but do see the dialogue between hashem and Elohim in Psalms 14 and 53). To an unbeliever, the Psalmist is deceived by subjectivity. To the Psalmist, the poem is covenant dialogue and God is 'on the hook' to the experience of the loveliness of the knowledge of God. The Psalmist is complaining to the right party! It is not infantile - any more than is Moses when he defends Israel from God's anger asking - what would the Egyptians say? (If we have no enemies, how can we learn how to love them?)
And Curzon writes (twice): God does not answer, and the answer does not depend on belief even though the poem could not have been formed without a culture based on belief in a God who does respond. ... God does not answer supplications in any psalm; the answer to all questions and demands is in the form of a revelation within the psalmist.
Subjectively we are trapped. But God answers. The Psalter has a multiplicity of meanings for me. Utimately God answers with the resurrection. You will not leave your holy one to see corruption. In the meanwhile, we have our full humanity to deal with in our response to the covenant. So I agree in part. God's answer cannot be so 'earth-shattering' as to violate the implied laws of Psalm 148:6 (hurrah for Physics - supported by the Psalms!) Also in the meanwhile, we have the book in which the writers of the NT learned how the Son communicated with the Father and how the life of Jesus recapitulated or was informed by the life of the Psalmist(s) in covenant. I am stretching to express something here - help me out.
And finally Curzon writes and may well achieve: I have in my translations used a strong-stress metric, with as much alliteration and assonance and as little Latinate vocabulary as seemed compatible with contemporary diction and accuracy.
I will admire this when I have time. What a great idea. Here I think he will share with me the desire that we should enter with good intent into this fundamental human endeavour - communicating through the ether across time and space with each other and with --- something more than a Grecian Urn, or the distant maker of a Big Bang without atmosphere. Perhaps string theory with all its unknown dimensions supports the ether after all.
I am over my head, but the Spirit gives me oxygen. There are those whose mother tongue is also English and who have spent a lifetime (some shorter some longer) with Hebrew and its cognate languages. I have spent a year to date after a long slow start of 30+ years perhaps knowing from a distance a word or two. I am very happy to have web-encountered a few of these scholars. I have had a few words with some scholars in the flesh: notably Peter Craigie (long before I was ready to tackle Hebrew) and John Sandys-Wynch and good advice from Bruce Gardner who suggested I ask God for help! So, God, having been engaged to my fleshly engine, and God, knowing well how to teach, God and I continue.
As if Hebrew were a tongue that I was not in a hurry to learn, as if I were a child with the brain of a child, I absorb in visual and aural terms in an almost unconscious manner, using both my own automated transcription (very primitive) and the Hebrew characters themselves. I am taking classes with the local Synagogue, Congregation Emmanu-El in Victoria. I use both online and offline tools generally every day, mostly BlueLetter Bible, Scripture4all, and Mechon-Mamre. The hardest thing to do is to see, hear, and read. Word recognition - I can read my own writing (!) but I cannot instantly recognize Hebrew words. I suspect this is due to the time required to grow brain connections between eye and mouth.
I use a new web-based tool which has been developed over the past 5 years by my own company. I could have used more standard tools but not with such power, flexibility, or beneficial effects to the testing process. But that is not my motivation - I am not in sales.
My 'Why' is highlighted by a post on John Hobbin's site in praise of the translations of David Curzon. I think I want to answer the questions begged by his article on translation.
I did a little search for this unknown person and found more fun and games - perhaps we will meet unknowingly on the streets of NY this summer. DC, where are you? Or should I say, where are you coming from? Physicist, diplomat, poet, theologian - a combination worth meeting. I am glad he is not 'of the cloth'. Better we should learn from everyone.
What questions does he beg:
He writes: Like all other literary classics, the Psalms are always in need of re-translation in order to have them in language, and with an interpretive emphasis, that is both accurate and contemporary. ... My aim is to produce translations usable by contemporary believers and non-believers as structures of meditation.
...
Bravo for the attempt to have poetry that unbelievers will buy and read! I must find more of these examples. My agenda is to undermine the commonplace piety of the 16th century and sentimental 20th century translations we have been subjected to in the Church. I don't know anywhere else that the Psalms are used (except of course the Synagogue - but they read without translation and there I see the LORD inhabiting the praises of his people.) So I am writing for those who are called or call themselves believers. I had better be careful in my criticism - some of these believers, even those one might mistakenly class as simple, mask a considerable Reality. What joy to discover such.
I have no quarrel with them. It is good, isn't it that I have a quarrel with some? (There must be divisions among you). I have a quarrel with some ancient assumptions of Christendom that no longer hold: hierarchy, trust in human forms, piety without engagement, false perfections including inerrancy in any form, and of course my own impatience and potential belligerence. There is a true perfection and exaltation - constantly in the hope of the Psalmist - is it here that Jesus found some of his aphorisms about being lifted up or the nature of the complete or the reality of loving enemies?
And again Curzon writes: The feelings expressed at the beginning of Psalm 13 are infantile. The demands which follow are adolescent. The pivotal recognition is that of a realistic experienced adult. The conclusion is natural wisdom.
...
What! infantile! and recovery to 'Natural' wisdom! What happened to me when I translated Psalm 13? Interesting - I never explicitly wrote about it. It fell in with all those that were in the 'relations with my enemies' genre for me. I certainly understand this - waiting. But the cry - how long - is very specific. The Psalmist cannot live without the presence of God and in some bodily sense of that presence. His hope is in the loving-kindness which has been experienced not just as if by some abstraction called 'belief' (but do see the dialogue between hashem and Elohim in Psalms 14 and 53). To an unbeliever, the Psalmist is deceived by subjectivity. To the Psalmist, the poem is covenant dialogue and God is 'on the hook' to the experience of the loveliness of the knowledge of God. The Psalmist is complaining to the right party! It is not infantile - any more than is Moses when he defends Israel from God's anger asking - what would the Egyptians say? (If we have no enemies, how can we learn how to love them?)
And Curzon writes (twice): God does not answer, and the answer does not depend on belief even though the poem could not have been formed without a culture based on belief in a God who does respond. ... God does not answer supplications in any psalm; the answer to all questions and demands is in the form of a revelation within the psalmist.
Subjectively we are trapped. But God answers. The Psalter has a multiplicity of meanings for me. Utimately God answers with the resurrection. You will not leave your holy one to see corruption. In the meanwhile, we have our full humanity to deal with in our response to the covenant. So I agree in part. God's answer cannot be so 'earth-shattering' as to violate the implied laws of Psalm 148:6 (hurrah for Physics - supported by the Psalms!) Also in the meanwhile, we have the book in which the writers of the NT learned how the Son communicated with the Father and how the life of Jesus recapitulated or was informed by the life of the Psalmist(s) in covenant. I am stretching to express something here - help me out.
And finally Curzon writes and may well achieve: I have in my translations used a strong-stress metric, with as much alliteration and assonance and as little Latinate vocabulary as seemed compatible with contemporary diction and accuracy.
I will admire this when I have time. What a great idea. Here I think he will share with me the desire that we should enter with good intent into this fundamental human endeavour - communicating through the ether across time and space with each other and with --- something more than a Grecian Urn, or the distant maker of a Big Bang without atmosphere. Perhaps string theory with all its unknown dimensions supports the ether after all.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
The brutish and the dull
There seems to be a pair of words used in parallel: the brutish man: אִישׁ בַּעַר and the dullard: וּכְסִיל (Psalm 92, 94, 49, and the latter frequently in Proverbs).
Today I begin Psalm 92 - knowing my own limitations but foolishly venturing into the unknown territory of some sites. I hope I can see the difference between 'publishing in the morning the loving kindness of the LORD' and forcing a cultural opinion about belief on others. I forgot for a moment how each Psalm opens up a new reality to me as I translate. On we go!
Today I begin Psalm 92 - knowing my own limitations but foolishly venturing into the unknown territory of some sites. I hope I can see the difference between 'publishing in the morning the loving kindness of the LORD' and forcing a cultural opinion about belief on others. I forgot for a moment how each Psalm opens up a new reality to me as I translate. On we go!
Psalm 145 Revisited
Still not at the poetic stage, but I had occasion these past two weeks to reread Magonet on the Psalms (A Rabbi Reads the Psalms, Jonathan Magonet SCM Press 2004). So I am beginning to diagram his structures for the Psalms he covers: 145, 92, 23, 25, 19, 22, 51, 118, 115, 121, 124, 134, 146, 90, 73, all of which are in depth. He has fun with Psalm 145, showing a considerable tension between the theology of the chosen and the theology of universality. The Psalmist's universality is shown in the frequency with which he uses the word all. (Blue foreground colour in the diagram.)
Note also I have managed the acrostic with a bit of shifting (clearly seen in the mismatched colours) and a few xtreme spellings and slang: such as xtreme for Het and teous ... righteous for Tsade and killer Glory (not so far from the mark!). Note also the red coloring for the works and deeds referred to. As someone said (must find the quote - Calvin I think) the whole gospel is in the psalter.
If we include the missing Nun from Amos 5:2, the centre of the Psalm is slightly shifted. Where is the centre? Is it the revealing to the children of dust the might and glory, honour of his reign, for all ages, your rule for all; Age to Age? I think the two verse centre is better than the KLM-MLK pun that Magonet suggests (though this works as the stimulus for the acrostic). King/Age are both keywords spanning beginning middle and end of the Psalm.
Other features to note are pronoun usage (I, they, you) and the eventual universality of blessing - if Adonai is blessed by all flesh, there is no two-tiered salvation structure.
Note also I have managed the acrostic with a bit of shifting (clearly seen in the mismatched colours) and a few xtreme spellings and slang: such as xtreme for Het and teous ... righteous for Tsade and killer Glory (not so far from the mark!). Note also the red coloring for the works and deeds referred to. As someone said (must find the quote - Calvin I think) the whole gospel is in the psalter.
If we include the missing Nun from Amos 5:2, the centre of the Psalm is slightly shifted. Where is the centre? Is it the revealing to the children of dust the might and glory, honour of his reign, for all ages, your rule for all; Age to Age? I think the two verse centre is better than the KLM-MLK pun that Magonet suggests (though this works as the stimulus for the acrostic). King/Age are both keywords spanning beginning middle and end of the Psalm.
Other features to note are pronoun usage (I, they, you) and the eventual universality of blessing - if Adonai is blessed by all flesh, there is no two-tiered salvation structure.
Shortlisted but not a winner
In the competition for space in the art forms for Synod, my Portrait of the Psalter was shortlisted, but unfortunately is not a winner.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Additional Blog
I find there are sometimes when I want to write on an issue that is not directly related to the psalms. To do this I have created another blog - entitled Sufficiency - under the rubric, who is sufficient for these things?
Monday, April 09, 2007
Out of order reading
I just corrected some early links that had changed since my first publication - I was putting together the Psalms that are translated by date and I noticed that I had a few broken links. Google reader thinks these are new publications, but they are old.
These are the psalms I have translated to date in this project: roughly 4 psalms per month average - of course they all bear rereading and rethinking.
Psalm --1 August 2006
Psalm --2 August 2006
Psalm --3 September 2006
Psalm --4 October 2006
Psalm --5 October 2006
Psalm --6 November 2006
Psalm --7 November 2006
Psalm --8 September 2006
Psalm --9 November 2006
Psalm -10 November 2006
Psalm -11 November 2006
Psalm -12 November 2006
Psalm -13 January 2007
Psalm -14 / -53 January 2007
Psalm -15 January 2007
Psalm -16 January 2007
Psalm -17 February 2007
Psalm -19 January 2007
Psalm -22 April 2007
Psalm -23 September 2006
Psalm -46 September 2006
Psalm -51 December 2006
Psalm -53 January 2007
Psalm -67 December 2006
Psalm -73 December 2006
Psalm -89 December 2006
Psalm 100 December 2006
Psalm 107 January 2007
Psalm 119-A-H March 2007
Psalm 134 April 2007
Psalm 138 September 2006
Psalm 145 September 2006
Psalm 150 December 2006
These are the psalms I have translated to date in this project: roughly 4 psalms per month average - of course they all bear rereading and rethinking.
Psalm --1 August 2006
Psalm --2 August 2006
Psalm --3 September 2006
Psalm --4 October 2006
Psalm --5 October 2006
Psalm --6 November 2006
Psalm --7 November 2006
Psalm --8 September 2006
Psalm --9 November 2006
Psalm -10 November 2006
Psalm -11 November 2006
Psalm -12 November 2006
Psalm -13 January 2007
Psalm -14 / -53 January 2007
Psalm -15 January 2007
Psalm -16 January 2007
Psalm -17 February 2007
Psalm -19 January 2007
Psalm -22 April 2007
Psalm -23 September 2006
Psalm -46 September 2006
Psalm -51 December 2006
Psalm -53 January 2007
Psalm -67 December 2006
Psalm -73 December 2006
Psalm -89 December 2006
Psalm 100 December 2006
Psalm 107 January 2007
Psalm 119-A-H March 2007
Psalm 134 April 2007
Psalm 138 September 2006
Psalm 145 September 2006
Psalm 150 December 2006
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Sufficiency and Judgment
It is curious that the words דָי satis, sufficiency and דִּין iudicare (damnare, punire, tueri)... sentence are so closely related - also seen in the name Dan, the judge. In Psalm 76:9 the earth fears and is quiet at the sentence from heaven. Does this relate in the thinking of Aramaic and Hebrew speakers of the first century? Do they necessarily extend the thought to the sufficiency and the means of atonement accomplished by the death of Jesus?
Sufficiency
Rachel Barenblat has a lovely set of eight thoughts that remind me of several things:
אָשִׁירָה נָּא לִידִידִי שִׁירַת דּוֹדִי לְכַרְמוֹ cantabo dilecto meo canticum patruelis mei vineae suae
Let me sing of my beloved; a song of my beloved about his vineyard.
There are many love songs from the ancient Near East. Perhaps the best preserved is the Canticum Canticorum or the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. And it is not alone in the canonical text. God sings a song for his beloved (Isaiah 5:1 above). There is a certain irony in Isaiah's use of a love song to begin a serious critique of Israel, but the prophecy does not end with chapter 5. His later namesake writes: For your maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name; (54:5).
The traditional 8 chapters of the Song of Songs can be seen as a structure of five parts divided by variations on what is almost a refrain: I have charged You, daughters of Jerusalem, by the hosts of roe or by the hearted dear hart of the field, not to awaken or disturb this my love till it please. This first charge (2:7) betrays plays on words that are untranslatable. The gazelle or roe (tsiba'ot) sounds like Sabaoth (hosts); the deer of the fields (aylot hasadeh) sounds like El Shadday - the Most High. God is not mentioned in the Song, but there is an undercurrent of play that implies presence rather than absence. The play is not without cost. At the end of part 3 (5:8), the girl, searching for her beloved in the streets, is apprehended by the keepers of the walls of the city: They struck me; they wounded me; they took away My veil from me; those keepers of the walls.
The Song has been a favorite text for composers. Palestrina wrote 29 motets of which the choir will sing 4 tonight. But compose or sing, there is a warning from Rabbi Akiva (c100 CE) not to see the Song simply as entertainment. Whoever warbles the Song of Songs at banqueting houses, treating it like an ordinary song, has no portion in the world to come. (Tos. San. 12:10)
We see from his record in the Talmud that he had a very high regard for this text. The entire world is unworthy of the day that the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all of Scripture is holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies. (M. Yad 3:5)
Christendom agrees with the rabbinic joy in the Song. Palestrina's mass based on the Sicut Lilium cantus firmus recognizes the identity and the costly role of the Bridegroom.
- Rabbi Akiva's comment on the sufficiency of the Song (see below),
- T. S. Eliot's Journey of the Magi - it was, we may say, satisfactory,
- and of course John the Evangelist's development of the work that the Son came to do: the witness of his acts - part of the chiasm in John chapter 5 but more explicitly made in John 19:30 - It is finished - also translatable as satisfactory, or complete (tetelestai).
אָשִׁירָה נָּא לִידִידִי שִׁירַת דּוֹדִי לְכַרְמוֹ cantabo dilecto meo canticum patruelis mei vineae suae
Let me sing of my beloved; a song of my beloved about his vineyard.
There are many love songs from the ancient Near East. Perhaps the best preserved is the Canticum Canticorum or the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. And it is not alone in the canonical text. God sings a song for his beloved (Isaiah 5:1 above). There is a certain irony in Isaiah's use of a love song to begin a serious critique of Israel, but the prophecy does not end with chapter 5. His later namesake writes: For your maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name; (54:5).
The traditional 8 chapters of the Song of Songs can be seen as a structure of five parts divided by variations on what is almost a refrain: I have charged You, daughters of Jerusalem, by the hosts of roe or by the hearted dear hart of the field, not to awaken or disturb this my love till it please. This first charge (2:7) betrays plays on words that are untranslatable. The gazelle or roe (tsiba'ot) sounds like Sabaoth (hosts); the deer of the fields (aylot hasadeh) sounds like El Shadday - the Most High. God is not mentioned in the Song, but there is an undercurrent of play that implies presence rather than absence. The play is not without cost. At the end of part 3 (5:8), the girl, searching for her beloved in the streets, is apprehended by the keepers of the walls of the city: They struck me; they wounded me; they took away My veil from me; those keepers of the walls.
The Song has been a favorite text for composers. Palestrina wrote 29 motets of which the choir will sing 4 tonight. But compose or sing, there is a warning from Rabbi Akiva (c100 CE) not to see the Song simply as entertainment. Whoever warbles the Song of Songs at banqueting houses, treating it like an ordinary song, has no portion in the world to come. (Tos. San. 12:10)
We see from his record in the Talmud that he had a very high regard for this text. The entire world is unworthy of the day that the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all of Scripture is holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies. (M. Yad 3:5)
Christendom agrees with the rabbinic joy in the Song. Palestrina's mass based on the Sicut Lilium cantus firmus recognizes the identity and the costly role of the Bridegroom.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
The psalter as a sandwich
The Psalter is a sandwich: The filling consists of psalms where the words related to Elohim predominate over the words related to the holy name. There are two pieces of bread - psalms 1-41 and psalms 87-150.
I read (Craigie, Word commentary) about the dominance of certain divine names in parts of the Psalter, so I formatted a query to the database and up popped the graph in the new table of contents. (The bars for Elohim include variations like El, Eli, and Elohay; the bars for the tetragrammeton include short forms like Yah.) I could do all sorts of measurements. Any suggestions?
The framework for translation is fully loaded but I have only published in the JPG form about 33 - so if you get a page not found when browsing, that's why. 33 rough translations starting about June last year - so maybe the project won't take 6 years as I originally thought.
BTW, I don't think that the different divine names are support for a 'documentary' hypothesis. It's just that pronouns etc are never used with the tetragrammeton - I am sure there are some good questions here...
I read (Craigie, Word commentary) about the dominance of certain divine names in parts of the Psalter, so I formatted a query to the database and up popped the graph in the new table of contents. (The bars for Elohim include variations like El, Eli, and Elohay; the bars for the tetragrammeton include short forms like Yah.) I could do all sorts of measurements. Any suggestions?
The framework for translation is fully loaded but I have only published in the JPG form about 33 - so if you get a page not found when browsing, that's why. 33 rough translations starting about June last year - so maybe the project won't take 6 years as I originally thought.
BTW, I don't think that the different divine names are support for a 'documentary' hypothesis. It's just that pronouns etc are never used with the tetragrammeton - I am sure there are some good questions here...
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Structure and Readings
Somehow when I began this translation project, I knew there was something missing from the traditional English psalter. On at least two fronts, I have now seen what is missing.
1. Translations that fill in the blanks for you prevent you from seeing the gap that the poet left for you to fill in. Sometimes the gap is impossible - it asks for you or your enemy or even God to be filled in - can we live with such ambiguity? (See Psalm 7:13-17 for one example) Some translators just say the Hebrew is difficult and pick one way and leave it at that. Others don't tell you there is a problem, and fill the gap anyway. The reader of the translation may never know that there were other possibilities.
2. Translations that change word order unnecessarily. There was a reason for the Hebrew word order. It reveals a thought process; it contains the equivalent of parentheses - key words bracketing the thought process. These may be a simple or complex parallel, or a chiasm, a parallel deliberately reversed, or they may be tips to a much wider structure. It's a poem - if we are going to sing it in a strange tongue - let's not break it.
I feel vindicated by a recent reissue of A Rabbi Reads the Psalms by Jonathan Magonet. What a lovely book. I love it because he is doing exactly what I have been looking for: revealing the structure and the convenantal dialogue in these poems. He outlines his discovery of the structure of Psalm 25 (and since I haven't translated this yet, it will be easier for having read Magonet) and then laments briefly that his work was rediscovery (Möller 1932 ZAW) of structures confirmed by others - but doubted by Ridderbos. Having looked at this passage in Craigie, it is clear that for once, I am following a set of scholarly links. Craigie is read in London too. So Magonet goes to some lengths to show his structure in detail. He reads it in the context of Exodus 33 and 34. It is convincing in my opinion and will appear soon in these notes.
(My wife likes his book too! It may be the first Biblical Studies book I have read in our 39 years of marriage that she might read too.)
When I was last at the library, I at first only got two commentaries out (Dahood on Psalms 101-150 and Pope on the Song). I got down the three flights of stairs from the BS stacks and heard an inner voice saying: you didn't check out BS-1430 - go up and see what you find. I found these two and several other books that I added to my checkout pile. These two were both good calls.
1. Translations that fill in the blanks for you prevent you from seeing the gap that the poet left for you to fill in. Sometimes the gap is impossible - it asks for you or your enemy or even God to be filled in - can we live with such ambiguity? (See Psalm 7:13-17 for one example) Some translators just say the Hebrew is difficult and pick one way and leave it at that. Others don't tell you there is a problem, and fill the gap anyway. The reader of the translation may never know that there were other possibilities.
2. Translations that change word order unnecessarily. There was a reason for the Hebrew word order. It reveals a thought process; it contains the equivalent of parentheses - key words bracketing the thought process. These may be a simple or complex parallel, or a chiasm, a parallel deliberately reversed, or they may be tips to a much wider structure. It's a poem - if we are going to sing it in a strange tongue - let's not break it.
I feel vindicated by a recent reissue of A Rabbi Reads the Psalms by Jonathan Magonet. What a lovely book. I love it because he is doing exactly what I have been looking for: revealing the structure and the convenantal dialogue in these poems. He outlines his discovery of the structure of Psalm 25 (and since I haven't translated this yet, it will be easier for having read Magonet) and then laments briefly that his work was rediscovery (Möller 1932 ZAW) of structures confirmed by others - but doubted by Ridderbos. Having looked at this passage in Craigie, it is clear that for once, I am following a set of scholarly links. Craigie is read in London too. So Magonet goes to some lengths to show his structure in detail. He reads it in the context of Exodus 33 and 34. It is convincing in my opinion and will appear soon in these notes.
(My wife likes his book too! It may be the first Biblical Studies book I have read in our 39 years of marriage that she might read too.)
When I was last at the library, I at first only got two commentaries out (Dahood on Psalms 101-150 and Pope on the Song). I got down the three flights of stairs from the BS stacks and heard an inner voice saying: you didn't check out BS-1430 - go up and see what you find. I found these two and several other books that I added to my checkout pile. These two were both good calls.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Psalms - by P. C. Craigie
What a joy it was to stumble over the Word Commentary on Psalms by my too briefly known teacher and friend, Peter Craigie. Reading his introduction to the series and his overview of the first 50 Psalms has put my psalmic house in a new order. I even know a bit about Ugarit and the first music (recorded here) - a find just discovered a few years before Peter's untimely death in 1985. I think I will review all my translations to date for he writes often and clearly about structure - the very thing I have sought. I was pleased to note in the introduction that I had discovered many of the things he was pointing out - and all by myself! So it shows that a careful reading can yield its own fruit. We can be helped by scholars but it is not a scribal necessity.
What a shock it was to me, today, only a day later, to attend a nearby parish (familiarizing myself with the local Anglican landscape) and to see the omission of the Psalm. There was not even one Psalm in the liturgy, though there was mention by the guest speaker of a native dance based on Psalm 91. How will the Lord inhabit the praises of the people if they omit Psalms? I was led to believe, in brief conversation during the peace with the director of music whom I happen to know, that this is their habit. Well, this needs pondering. I have to admit also that I did not stay after the peace when I discovered this. I was too much in shock.
What a shock it was to me, today, only a day later, to attend a nearby parish (familiarizing myself with the local Anglican landscape) and to see the omission of the Psalm. There was not even one Psalm in the liturgy, though there was mention by the guest speaker of a native dance based on Psalm 91. How will the Lord inhabit the praises of the people if they omit Psalms? I was led to believe, in brief conversation during the peace with the director of music whom I happen to know, that this is their habit. Well, this needs pondering. I have to admit also that I did not stay after the peace when I discovered this. I was too much in shock.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Psalm 119 - parts 1-3 rough hewn
It is a challenge to use one letter to begin every verse - and I fail somewhat. It has also been over 3 months since I first drafted the panels for Psalm 119 - and finally I am starting to translate. The first thing I notice is that these halachic psalms (1,19,119) are not pious as I thought when I grew up with them - again and again the Psalmist knows personal weakness - Ah that my ways were so accurately drawn... And so it is - at least for me. Also the Psalmist's confidence is never lacking - even in weakness, rejoicing in the testimonies more than anything else that satisfies: I am working with a Hebrew-Latin concordance - what a riot! So הוֹן is translated as facultates, opes, large, satis. Translating into Latin gives a different perspective from online literal translations like BLB and scripture4all and my copy of BDB. So what word can I use that begins with G for גַּם ?
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Dialogue with the Song
I have put together a brief dialogue in English.
The Song is not either / or but both / and. It is an erotic love song - and they are not 'married'! And it is also a song about the desire of God for us and our desire for God, both at great cost. The Beloved is both present and silent, real flesh and real presence. The seeker is both female and male. There are some double entendres in the poem that invite full participation in holiness.
The Song is not either / or but both / and. It is an erotic love song - and they are not 'married'! And it is also a song about the desire of God for us and our desire for God, both at great cost. The Beloved is both present and silent, real flesh and real presence. The seeker is both female and male. There are some double entendres in the poem that invite full participation in holiness.
Friday, March 02, 2007
The Song - a second try at seeing the structure
The Song will not yield easily to a structural analysis though it is 'obviously' a tightly structured piece of writing. Two more images are available for view. I combined the English and Hebrew into common nodes so as to reduce the complexity and I have done a little colour coding of keywords - but not many of them. Each verse has so many resonances that it is impossible to use colour effectively at this level. See if you can help: Full size;
Pint size; text in html format - suitable for correcting my errors
Pint size; text in html format - suitable for correcting my errors
Friday, February 23, 2007
Song of Solomon
The Song has occupied me for the past 2 weeks and Deuteronomy 6 calls in preparation for my next Hebrew class. The Psalms will be there when I return to them. I have been shortlisted for showcase at the Anglican Synod of Canada - the images are at Portrait of the Psalter - Limited Edition. As always there are changes I have made since sending this in via CD - but there we are. Life goes on - complete with mistakes and joy.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Psalm 17
Psalm 17 lies between 15-16 and 18-19. The same issues re enemies as in the first 10 psalms are part of this dialogue. The entrenchment of this prayer for enemies between two Torah-like Psalms may be deliberate. Many will say that this is a prayer for protection against enemies or a prayer against enemies - and there probably are some of these in the Psalter but I have not found them yet. Even Psalm 7 is ambiguous as to who the subject of the disaster is - it might be the LORD, not the enemies. I don't think I am condoning making enemies by this statement. That seems to happen all by itself sometimes - there are a few names in my black book, [and since writing this I have removed them lest I not escape till I have paid the last penny] and I am sure I am in the books of some. I wonder though if the prayer for enemies to find death has a positive spin in redemptive death. You may notice much red coloring in some verses - this usually points to the cost of redemption or the covenant of blood in some way.
I have it in mind to completely recolor some psalms - with some new ideas, shapes, and frames. That way too I will have to reread them in Hebrew since the transcription is not so obvious once they are translated.
I have it in mind to completely recolor some psalms - with some new ideas, shapes, and frames. That way too I will have to reread them in Hebrew since the transcription is not so obvious once they are translated.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Psalm 19
The commentators vary on this psalm - one nameless but famous says the two poems have nothing to do with each other. Harold Fisch (1985) in the stream of literary critics rather than Biblical Studies identifies easily the structural analogies. It appears that Scripture is replete with structural clues to resolve the ambiguity of love.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Psalm 107 completed
This psalm has a complex structure:
invocation, theme, chorus 1, theme, chorus 2, conclusion
verse 1 chorus 1 answer to verse 1 chorus 2 answer 2 to verse 1
verse 2 chorus 1 answer to verse 2 chorus 2 answer 2 to verse 2
verse 3 chorus 1 answer to verse 3 chorus 2 answer 2 to verse 3
coda, theme achieved, recapitulation, conclusion
The wise who keep these things are promised a resolution to theodicy in the loving kindness of the LORD. The weather patterns over the past few years might make one wonder about the green possibilities in the city.
invocation, theme, chorus 1, theme, chorus 2, conclusion
verse 1 chorus 1 answer to verse 1 chorus 2 answer 2 to verse 1
verse 2 chorus 1 answer to verse 2 chorus 2 answer 2 to verse 2
verse 3 chorus 1 answer to verse 3 chorus 2 answer 2 to verse 3
coda, theme achieved, recapitulation, conclusion
The wise who keep these things are promised a resolution to theodicy in the loving kindness of the LORD. The weather patterns over the past few years might make one wonder about the green possibilities in the city.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Psalm 107 - floods
Don't ask why - but Psalm 107 the last 10 or so verses got onto my list - random order for translation. Here, of the LORD, it is written that He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into watersprings. Well, of course one would not translate without experience, so our house got flooded the day after I translated these words. The floods have subsided. And they are meant to have been productive in this case, though later in these verses, the poet also speaks of calamity. Perhaps a little taste of both.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Psalm 14 and 53 continued
Note well that Psalm 14 is a note by the LORD, and Psalm 53 is a note by God (Elohim). The former complains of wantonness and stubbornness (how long must I put up with this generation?) and the latter complains of injustice and lack of worship (worship God - in Spirit and in truth). Could this not be more obvious? Did you ever imagine that Psalm 14 and 53 would reinforce the key reading of the letter to the Hebrews. The Psalms are dialogue between the Father and the Son.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Psalms 15-19
I think I have discovered a pattern - Psalm 17 may be the centre of 15-19; 15-16 share vocabulary and match the pattern of Torah then Messianic, 18 and 19 are Messianic and Torah related - 17 is in the middle and it is not well understood according to at least one commentator - let's see what poetic structure will make of it (eventually).
Psalms 14 & 53
Reading all the books about the psalms is no substitute for reading the psalms themselves. But how will you read without dealing with the original text? For example, Bible gateway notes that "The Hebrew words rendered fool in Psalms denote one who is morally deficient." Is that so? And if so, what is the implication for us who read the psalm? Are we morally deficient? or not? Are we right in all our thoughts? Do we ever note the possibility of the nihilism implied in Psalm 14 or 53? Is moral insufficiency of the essence of the problem?
In fact the 'Hebrew words' as if such a piece of intelligence was informative are not purely about 'morality' - whatever that means to us. They are about the tension in us to want our own power and the need in us to know some degree of transformation into joy. The word for fool is not a noun but an adjective. There is no definite article in the poem: so I have translated it as 'foolish said in his heart'. I did this so I could escape momentarily from the automatic reaction in me that says - I'm not so foolish. But am I?
The difference between Psalms 14 and 53 is instructive - in one case the word following abomination is 'wantonness', in the other it is 'injustice'. This foolishness is deeper than our acknowledgement of God as 'existing'. There are two words only in this phrase - AIN ELOHIM - 'God is of no account' would be one possible translation.
The phrase - 'there is none that doeth good' is three words in the Hebrew AIN OSEH TOV - literally 'nothing doing good', in parallel with 'nothing God'. These make the poem less moralistic than relational. Without the presence of God, we are only our own presence - incomplete, and in tune with 'nothing'. The consequences are how the term for foolish is defined in the lexicon: senseless, not appreciating the benefits of the LORD. Note how psalm 53 and 14 use different terms in the same spot in the poem for God - Elohim in Psalm 53 and YHWH in Psalm 14.
Note also the repetition of 'nothing doing good' followed by yet another difference in the psalms - stubborn (14) and not worshipping (53). Such is our state without the joy of love that God, the LORD gives. Whatever our intellectual knowledge - it is not in our own knowing what is not good, it is in the excellence of knowing that Good that comes only from God - an inexpressible word contained in the final verse of the psalm: Salvation (Hebrew yeshua) giving expressed joy in his people.
So this psalm is far from being merely moralistic in content. It lies on the axis of nihilism and joy - deeply expressing for us the reality of being counted among of God's people.
In fact the 'Hebrew words' as if such a piece of intelligence was informative are not purely about 'morality' - whatever that means to us. They are about the tension in us to want our own power and the need in us to know some degree of transformation into joy. The word for fool is not a noun but an adjective. There is no definite article in the poem: so I have translated it as 'foolish said in his heart'. I did this so I could escape momentarily from the automatic reaction in me that says - I'm not so foolish. But am I?
The difference between Psalms 14 and 53 is instructive - in one case the word following abomination is 'wantonness', in the other it is 'injustice'. This foolishness is deeper than our acknowledgement of God as 'existing'. There are two words only in this phrase - AIN ELOHIM - 'God is of no account' would be one possible translation.
The phrase - 'there is none that doeth good' is three words in the Hebrew AIN OSEH TOV - literally 'nothing doing good', in parallel with 'nothing God'. These make the poem less moralistic than relational. Without the presence of God, we are only our own presence - incomplete, and in tune with 'nothing'. The consequences are how the term for foolish is defined in the lexicon: senseless, not appreciating the benefits of the LORD. Note how psalm 53 and 14 use different terms in the same spot in the poem for God - Elohim in Psalm 53 and YHWH in Psalm 14.
Note also the repetition of 'nothing doing good' followed by yet another difference in the psalms - stubborn (14) and not worshipping (53). Such is our state without the joy of love that God, the LORD gives. Whatever our intellectual knowledge - it is not in our own knowing what is not good, it is in the excellence of knowing that Good that comes only from God - an inexpressible word contained in the final verse of the psalm: Salvation (Hebrew yeshua) giving expressed joy in his people.
So this psalm is far from being merely moralistic in content. It lies on the axis of nihilism and joy - deeply expressing for us the reality of being counted among of God's people.
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