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?

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

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:

1. Rabbi Akiva's comment on the sufficiency of the Song (see below),
2. T. S. Eliot's Journey of the Magi - it was, we may say, satisfactory,
3. 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).

Introducing the love song - [from program notes I wrote for a concert based on texts from the Song performed by vox humana April 1, 2007, St John the Divine, Victoria, BC]

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.

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...

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.

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.

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 ?

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 - 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

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.

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.

Poetry

A week has passed and it feels like a year since I last did any translation. I have tried to create a traditional hymn based largely on Psalm 107 (here). Next project is to translate the Song in parallel to Psalm 119 - an exercise. Let's see what it brings.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Psalm 6 revisited

I just uncovered a scansion of Psalm 6 by John Hobbins along with several other articles on Hebrew poetry.

I have compared this structure as described with Fokkelman's. It is still too early for me to confirm or deny syllable counts but the comparison helped remove a few errors and extra words from my own first cuts. See here for Fokkelman's version using my word by word structuring; and here for Hobbins using his line by line structuring (much more compact).