An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 104: Vogon Poetry and A Wedding (Psalms 41-45)

Psalms 41-45
Vogon Poetry and A Wedding.

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 41

“(To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.) Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the LORD will deliver him in time of trouble.”

The first line quoted above is another example of what I always think of to be a more New Testament attitude, but the more I go through the psalms the less original Jesus’ philosophy appears to be. It seems like He was reminding people of what was already said about charity and compassion in the psalms. There are a fair few books to go yet before we’re out of the Old Testament, but this is going to be something I’ll bear in mind in future chapters.

Actually the rest of this psalm is only tangentially related to that sentiment. It’s a little like the experience of Job – the psalmist complains of former friends turning against him when he is sick, and enemies using it to their opportunity. I guess this is a common occurrence, possibly the blame lies with those laws in Leviticus that were to do with separating sick people from the rest of the group. Which makes a certain kind of medical sense in that it isolates a potentially communicable disease, but also it’s not nice being the pariah.

Psalms 42

“My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?”

This fairly short psalm is one of those where the psalmist prays for God’s attention to fall upon him. There have been better ones, this is somewhat mixed, perhaps because it carries a kind of water metaphor throughout, about a “hart panteth for the brook”, the above-mentioned soul thirsting for God, mention of waterspouts and billows, but then also likens God to a rock, and enemies to swords, which kind of undercuts the running theme (I find myself wanting to type “counterpoints the surrealism of the underlying metaphor” per Arthur Dent re: Vogon poetry). Not a classic psalm.

Psalms 43
“Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man.”

This psalm is a mere five verses. It’s similar in theme to the previous one – “where are you God when I need you?” In fact it’s so similar to some previous psalms I almost thought that I’d mistakenly started reading the same group again. It’s almost like it’s not really a completed psalm, but an earlier draft of one of the longer “where are you God?” psalms – although it’s natural to assume that the psalms are given in chronological order there’s actually no evidence (from a direct reading) of this, so it could be the case. Or perhaps David is going through a bit of a dry patch and his poetry isn’t as good as usual.

Psalms 44

“Thou makest us a byword among the heathen, a shaking of the head among the people.”

The same “where are you God?” theme as the last two psalms, but this one elaborates a bit more, and the longer length allows the psalmist to build up a good head of steam on his rhetoric. I note that the past few psalms haven’t been flagged as having been written by David, so I wonder if they are still attributed to him or to another writer.

So, this psalm looks back to the time when the Israelites were successful in war because God was with them, and compares it to the current time when evidently they keep being defeated by enemies un-named (probably Philistines. It’s always Philistines). The psalmist, like Job, asks God what the people have done wrong to lose His favour – they keep the covenant, they don’t worship strange gods. Looking back to Samuel, God wasn’t happy with the idea of them having kings in the first place, so if you want a divine reason that could be it. Alternatively, verse 6 gives some clues “For I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me” – maybe a touch more military readiness and a bit less expectation that victory will come entirely from God will help your armies be more successful?

Psalms 45

“All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.”

This one took a bit of deciphering because of the sudden switch in gender in the middle, but it appears that it is written to a king and queen on the occasion of their wedding, so probably not a Davidian psalm. In a way it gives an idea of the ideal king and queen – the king is righteous, better than other men, ready to deal out violence to his enemies. The queen wears fancy clothing, worships her king as if her where her god, and produces princes.

I note that Matthew Henry’s commentary tries to make this a metaphor for the messiah (as king) and the church (as queen). Well… you can. It’s kind of a stretch though, you could probably turn Larkin’s This Be The Verse into a messianic prophecy if you were so inclined.