Psalms 1 to 12

 These were read, 1-2 a day from July 10, 2013 to the opening of this blog on July 19.

PSALM 1

This contrasts the blessed man and the wicked man.  In both cases, farming analogies are made.  The blessed man is like a tree but the wicked man is like “chaff driven by the wind.”  These analogies work best with people who do lots of farming, which certainly describes the audience it was written for.  The blessed man avoids the sinners and scoffers and mediates on God’s law all the time. There is also an allusion to Christian theology, saying the wicked man will not rise on the day of judgment.

PSALM 2

My goodness, this is an angry psalm.  I typically think of psalms as a place to find consolation from God when you feel down and/or alone, but this isn’t one of those psalms.  

This is a psalm about God coronating his anointed one, and how wrong the other kings are.  There is a lot of wrath in this one: 2:10-11: And now, king, give heed; take warning, judges of earth.  Serve the LORD with fear; exult with trembling.  This is one of those “don’t fuck with me psalms.”  It’s also one Christians can look to because of all the talk of God crowning his anointed one  (re: Messiah) but that said, you can see the Hebrew version of what a Messiah is.  The anointed one is literally a king – the next David.  When early Christians called Jesus the anointed one, Jews thought that was crazy talk – the anointed one was supposed to be a king, not a crucified guy.

PSALM 3

It’s the first one associated with David.  I wonder how many he actually wrote? 

At any rate, it’s a yearning for protection and help from the Lord in times of discontent and upheaval.  This one is set during Absalom’s uprising.  You have about three parts of this short (9 versus) psalm.  First the problems besetting him, second the Lord as the shield, and then last the Lord as the vehicle of vengeance. Then it ends w/ a brief note of salvation and blessings.

PSALM 4

It’s another one attributed to David.  Like many, this is a psalm about how when things are rough and dark in life, you can find solace in God.  People love what is worthless and chase after lies, but the poet can feel secure only in the Lord. 

PSALM 5

This is the third in a row attributed to David.  It’s another hymn of praise to God.  You look to him as a source of refuge.  The wicked don’t find refuge with him. 

While I get the appeal of the psalms, I’m not the target audience for them.  They’re intended to bolster the spirits of believers, but that ain’t me.  Frankly, I’m a little put off by some of the underlying themes.  There’s a black/white dynamic here – of good people and bad people, with the latter being those now with the Lord.  There is also some certitude here about the poet being able to enter the House of the Lord. 

Some of the phrasing here is nice.  I especially like the opening bit, “Give ear to my words, O LORD.”  It’s nothing too ornate, but it is simple and beautifully done.

PSALM 6

It’s an eleven lines long psalm, and for ten lines, it was my favorite.  It’s a plea for help from a man at the end of his rope.  It’s someone feelings completely distraught and upset, asking the Lord not to reprove him, to have pity on him.  His bones are shuddering and he needs God’s help to rescue his soul.  He is wearied and “I soak my couch with weeping.” 

In the 10^th line, there is finally a note of optimism – the Lord has heard his plea and will receive his prayer.  Then comes that damn eleventh line – his foes will be disgraced, and shudder greatly and they will be disgraced.

This revenge motif in the psalms bugs me.  It’s so damn junior high. Guy feels lonely and adrift and wants his enemies to all suffer?  Yeah, that’s how I remember junior high.  I don’t like the zero sum game implied by it all.  If thinks go well for our narrator, that means they’ll go poorly for someone else.  I don’t like how his spiritual salvation and uplift is tied to the fall of others.  And on top of that it reminds me of a lot that I don’t like about organized Christianity – the self-righteousness of God wanting people not like us to suffer. 

90% of the psalm is great, though.

PSALM 7

This is a six part psalm that goes through many of the typical stages of psalm-dom.  You begin with a please for the Lord to save and rescue the poet “Lest someone maul me like a lion.”  Then you have a part where the poet says if there is guilt on my hands, if I’ve mistreated anyone, let me be struck down.  Then you get to the too common vengeance portion of the psalm, then a hymn to go as a shield and a smiter of the bad guys, followed by a condemnation on the malice-doers.  Finally, it ends with the poet singing the praises of God.

Yeah ….my impression of psalms was that they were please for help from the Lord.  A place to turn to when you’re at the end of your rope.  You do see that in this and almost all the other psalms.  But you also get some self-righteousness combined with a desire to punish others.  Here, you do get the part where the poet (attributed to David, again) says let him fall if he’s harmed others, but it’s clear that in the psalm-ists mind, he hasn’t hurt others.  He’s done the judging and wants the Lord to carry out the sentence.

PSALM 8

It’s another attributed to David – that’s six of eight so far.  It’s a short one, even by psalm standards.  It’s a praise to the glory and power of God – one which has some clear possible uses for Christians, as it talks of “a son of man that you care for him?  Yet you have made him little less than a god, crowned him with glory and honor?”

Obviously, it’s not intended as any sort of precursor of Christianity – and the “little less than a God” bit flies in the face of Christian theology about Christ and the trinity.  The poem is about how God, through his power and glory, has sought fit to make this damn little thing called man and give him all the power over the earth.  People are allowed to rule over all the works of God’s hand.  Awesome, Lord!

PSALM 9

Psalms 9 and 10 were originally one poem in the Greek and Latin versions, but are two psalms in Hebrew.  That said, there is a clear bit of continuity, as each stanza of the double-psalm begins with a succeeding letter in the Hebrew alphabet.  Huh.  There are seven stanzas in Psalm 9 and four in Psalm 10.

This Psalm is a praise of the Lord, and thanking him for turning back the enemies.  Yeah, that’s pretty typical, as far as psalms go.  There is one new wrinkle here and in psalm 10 – there is a calling for the LORD to be “a stronghold for the oppressed.”  It isn’t too well developed a theme here, but more in the next.  Here, it’s mostly about striking down the other nations with terror.

PSALM 10

There is a palpable sense of evil lurking all around here.  The wicked boast of their greed and the robbers scorn the LORD.  Yet they are not punished. They lie in ambush near towns, they watch for the helpless, they murder in secret – this is like a post-apocalyptic wasteland of a psalm.

And the psalm-writer calls on the Lord to lift up his head and do something.  There is a plea to “Do not forget the poor!” and to take note of the misery and sorrow, to defend the orphans.  There is some wrath-ness here: “Break the arm of the wicked”  but it’s more about the harrowing hell people are living through, and that the poor and the oppressed and the orphaned can only cry out to the Lord for help.

There is a belief in this psalm that the lord will be there, but currently, he isn’t.  When the wicked boast of their insolence and sneer God, they get away with it.

Psalm 9-10 is another one attributed to David, but Psalm 10 in particular doesn’t sound like something a king would write.  It sounds like something coming from the mouth of the downtrodden. 

PSALM 11

This is a fairly short, standard psalm.  It’s taking refuge in the Lord, and notes that the Lord tests the righteous – and wicked.  God “hates those who love violence, and rains upon the wicked fiery coals and brimstone.”  Hmmm….. isn’t rainy fiery coals and brimstone of people rather violent?

PSALM 12

This is one of the more desperate, pleadings psalms.  For whatever reason, I tend to like those better – a sense that you turn to the Lord when there’s nowhere else to turn.  Hey, ultimately ain’t the way it often works, even for (and sometimes especially for) the faithful. This one begins with no one loyal left remaining, people just tell lies to each other, as they “speak with deceiving lips and a double heart.”  I like that – a double heart.  There’s a nice phrase.

Then it falls right into my least favorite psalm theme: violence on those who oppose the psalmist!  Cut off deceiving lips – and their boastful tongues too! 

I will say this, there is a part that makes me rethink my annoyance at the violence of the psalms.   This one justifies the violence by saying “Because they rob the weak and the needy groan.”  So far, in my mind, I associate the violence called for with religious intolerance and heavy-headed self-righteous.  Lord knows we see plenty of that in this country and this world.  People feel that because God’s on their side that they’re justified in doing anything they want.  And oftentimes, the people who feel that God is on their side have plenty of real power and wealth in society. 

This is a little different.  Talk of the weak and needy makes it sound like the psalmist is himself in dire straights – not just emotionally and spiritually – but also socially and economically.  He’s trampled by those above, and doesn’t appreciate it, and the only way he can imagine things improving is for the Lord to avenge.  I still don’t care for the violent language of the psalms, but it is a different way of looking at it.

Oh, and this psalm, like nearly all of them so far, is attributed to David.  I don’t doubt that David wrote some (he was good with the lyre and had enough power that the best of what he wrote would get special attention) but I doubt he wrote all.  He had power and a reputation, so psalms by unknown authors would just become attributed to him over time. 

EDITED to add: click here for the next batch of psalmshttp://gospelaccordingtodag.blogspot.com/2013/07/psalms-13-14.html