An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 97: A Brief Lesson In Ancient Hebrew Musical Terms (Psalms 6-10)

Psalms 6-10
A Brief Lesson In Ancient Hebrew Musical Terms.

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 6

“Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my bones are vexed.”

So here I am on the second day of the month of psalms. This one appears to be a prayer for relief of sickness, or perhaps more general troubles – vexed bones, weakness, night sweats (presumably the meaning of “all the night make I my bed to swim”, or it could be incontinence…), although the psalm ends with an exhortation for the singer’s enemies to be “ashamed”. Possibly real enemies, possibly the “evil spirits” that are causing the illness; this seems like one of those many bible passages that can be taken literally and metaphorically.

There are a couple of lines of note here. The first is in the instructions, “To the Chief Musician on Neginoth upon Sheminith”. Is this a very particular place? Perhaps the psalm was written at the request for one specific person. I did a bit of searching on this, and it appears the “sheminith” is thought to be a musical term, denoting the key. Interesting.

The other point is verse 5 “For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?” The singer doesn’t want to die because he will not be able to worship God when dead, which implies that the idea of an afterlife, particularly an afterlife where the righteous get to be in the presence of God, is not a common concept when this was written.

Psalms 7

“He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.”

Psalm 7 starts with another technical term that I went and looked up. This is a “shiggaion”, which is (according to dictionary.com) a poem written in a high emotional state. The topic of this particular psalm is righteous vengeance. The singer asks God to judge him against his enemy. If his enemy has just cause to hate him, because of a transgression on the part of the singer, then his anger is fair. If not, the singer asks that his enemy’s “mischief” turn back upon him. This is almost like a spell – presumably it was rationalised as a prayer and not a spell because it asks God for help and not a more local spirit or god.

Psalms 8

“Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.”

I can’t be sure if this is the origin of the saying “out of the mouths of babes”, as it doesn’t seem to carry the same meaning as usually implied, i.e. “comes forth un-looked for wisdom”. Maybe it will crop up again.

The instructions for this psalm mention a “gittith”, which again I looked up and found that it is thought to be a stringed instrument used to accompany the psalm. The text of this fairly short piece is a pretty straightforward hymn of praise. God is really mighty – just look at the heavens that he made – and man is lowly beside him, but even so God gave man dominion over the earth. Shame he didn’t also impart the words of Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben when he gave us the great power.

Psalms 9

“O thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end: and thou hast destroyed cities; their memorial is perished with them.”

Another mystery term in the first line of this psalm, this time “muthlabben”, and again I turn to a web search to find out more. Interestingly, this one is debatable; possibly meaning “on the death of Labben”, or the “death of a son” or even “the death of a fool”. Or possibly referring to an instrument to be used, or that it is sung by young boys. This last would also make a kind of thematic sense if it were also about the death of a son, perhaps. This psalm also includes the words “higgaion” and “selah”, again probable musical instructions. It’s fascinating that no-one is entirely sure what these terms mean, yet they are kept in the text out of tradition.

There’s nothing very elegiac about this psalm, if it was written on the occasion of a death. The text is quite similar to psalm 7; God judges between right and wrong, and there is a strong emphasis on the punishments awaiting the wicked and only a couple of lines about God being a refuge for the oppressed. I also note that the wicked will be “turned down into hell”. Does this mean that, unlike psalm 6, this psalm posits some kind of afterlife existence, or does “hell” here refer to a living hell?

Psalms 10

“Why standest thou afar off, O LORD? why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?”

I’m presuming, and I think it is generally presumed, that each chapter is a different psalm, although this one could easily follow on from the last chapter. In it the singer lists the various transgressions of wicked folk (lying in wait for murder, lying and cursing, arrogance and vanity, greed) and calls on God to not hide away (thus giving the wicked people the opinion that they can do what they like with impunity) but to come forth and punish them. This also follows on from the themes of Job – that bad people often seem to get away with it rather than be punished by a benevolent God. The implication given in this psalm is that God hasn’t noticed this going on, and the singer is trying to draw His attention.