An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 119: ‘A’, you’re Adorable. Plus the One Verse Psalm (Psalms 116-120)

Psalms 116-120
‘A’, you’re Adorable. Plus the One Verse Psalm.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Psalms 116
“I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.”

I can’t recall, in the previous 115 psalms, quite such a personal one as this. The majority of the psalms that give reason of why God should be worshipped tend to focus on the big events – saving the Israelites from Egypt, the sojourn in the desert, the conquest of the promised land, the raising of the temple in Jerusalem and so on. In this psalm, the psalmist says that he will worship God because God helped him in a time of need (delivering his soul from death, his eyes from tears and his feet from falling, a nice little bit of rule-of-three rhetoric). In return, the psalmist has only his thanks and a vow of faith to offer.

I’ve found a lot of the psalms interesting from the point that they give a much more personal view of faith than the grand histories of previous books, but I think this one so far is the most personal of all. It helps that the poetry of it is quite good as well.

Psalms 117
“O praise the LORD, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD.”

I know from general trivia that “Jesus wept” is the shortest verse in the bible. But surely this must be the shortest chapter? That’s the entirety of it in the quote. Short and to the point, I guess. I can’t help feeling that it seems a little lazy compared to other psalms that say essentially the same thing but with a bit more roll and heft to the language and the use of at least two different metaphors. This one is almost like a simple litany, easy to remember, easy to say in a brief moment of prayer, a brief statement of faith not unlike the Lord’s Prayer, the Nicene Creed or the Muslim Shahada.

Psalms 118
“The LORD is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me?”

There’s a lot of impressive blood and thunder rhetoric in this psalm; the repetition of “his mercy endureth forever” as a kind of question and answer rhythm, as well as the repetition of “compassed” in the middle, some reversals with “Save now, I beseech thee, O LORD: O LORD, I beseech thee, send now prosperity” and similar verses.

This reads to me almost like a pre-battle speech, something like the St Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V. It’s fierce and rousing, calling upon God to smite the psalmist’s enemies. “The Lord is on my side” says the psalmist, a sentiment echoed by soldiers and warriors throughout history- usually on both sides of a conflict. “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD”. Perhaps metaphorically this psalm is meant as a spiritual call to arms, to “fight the good fight”, but given that it also falls within the historical period of wars between the Israelites and the various others – Philistines, Moabites, Ammonites etc. I think that possibly the battle cry overtones are more explicit than entirely a metaphor. I like the poetry. I find the sentiments worrying.

Psalms 119
“ALEPH. Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD.”

Well. From the shortest psalm in the book to possibly the longest. This is a mighty tour de force that runs through the Hebrew alphabet and starts a sequence of verses (in the poetic sense rather than the biblical) with each letter. Now, I presume that originally this was more of an acrostic with the first word of each meditation actually beginning with that letter. In this translation all they’ve done is give the name of the Hebrew letter and then start the verse with whatever the word must translate as directly, and I think they ought to have put more effort in – at least, perhaps, convert to the Roman alphabet and try to start each section with a word that fits (you could miss out a few of the trickier ones, I made it 22 verses in the Hebrew version).

It’s a great tool, and I can see it being used as an aide memoire for oral recital (although I can’t quite shake off “A, you’re Adorable” by Perry Como…), just a pity it is entirely lost and therefore pointless in the translated version. The content of each lettered section is similar throughout – a reminder to the reader/listener that the path to a righteous life is to keep God’s laws, and this lesson is pretty much the same for each letter, which is a shame because for such a lengthy psalm I don’t have much to discuss beyond its general structure.

Psalms 120
“I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.”

And now we are back to short and simple. This one is labelled as a “song of degrees”, the meaning of which is not immediately clear. We are on a familiar theme here – the psalmist is surrounded by enemies or unbelievers; lies and deceit beset him (like “coals of juniper” in one peculiar simile) and, as the last verse says, these people are warmongers when he is a peace-maker. This is probably one of David’s given how similar it is to many of those attributed to him, and if not the theme is much the same.

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