[CatherineTorpey]

Hello there!

Our Rev. Natalie Perkins will be preaching on “I Just Called to Say…” — and it makes me think we’ll get some lovely singing out of her during her preaching!

Her text is Psalm 138, which is short and sweet. Below is the translation made by Robert Alter and all the commentary below is by him, though I’ve edited it down quite a bit. He writes in “scholar speak,” which adds in details that obscure his meaning, so I have trimmed the fat, so to speak:

from “The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary” by Robert Alter

Many of the psalms derive some of their poetic force from the literary antecedents on which they draw. But the Hebrew poems were framed for Israelite purposes, and loosely parallel to the polytheistic texts from which many were derived.

When were the various psalms composed? … The writing of psalms was a persistent activity over many centuries. Davidic authorship has no credible historical grounding. (It was a regular practice in the Late Biblical period to ascribe new texts to famous figures of the past. Although many psalms include the name David in the superscription, the meaning of the Hebrew particle “le” that usually prefixes the name is ambiguous. It is conventionally translated as “of,” but le also can mean “for,” “in the manner of,” “suitable to,” and so forth. The present translation seeks to preserve this ambiguity by translating “mizmor ledawid” as “a David psalm.”) One cannot categorically exclude the possibility that a couple of these psalms were actually written by David, although it is difficult to gauge the likelihood.

PSALM 138
1 For David.

I acclaim You with all my heart,
before gods* I hymn to You.
2 I bow toward Your holy temple,
and I acclaim Your name
for Your kindness and Your steadfast truth,
for You have made Your word great across all Your heavens.*

3 On the day I called You answered me,
You made strength well up within me.*
4 All kings of the earth will acclaim You, LORD,
for they have heard the words of Your mouth.*
5 And they will sing of the ways of the LORD,
for great is the LORD’s glory.

6 For high is the LORD yet the lowly He sees,
and the lofty, from a distance, He knows.
7 Though I walk in the midst of straits,
You give me life in spite of my enemies’ wrath.
You stretch out Your hand,
and Your right hand rescues me.

8 The LORD will requite me.*
O LORD, Your kindness is forever.
Do not let go of Your handiwork.*

PSALM 138 NOTES
v.1: before gods:
This implicitly polytheistic phrase has troubled interpreters through the ages. The Aramaic Targum rendered it, not very convincingly, as “judges.” Following this line, Rashi and other medieval exegetes understood it as a reference to the Sanhedrin(!). It is most plausible to see here either a linguistic fossil from polytheism or even an anti-polytheistic polemic gesture: I hymn to You in defiant presence before all those deities that people imagine to be real gods.

2. for You have made Your word great across all Your heavens.
The Hebrew is problematic. The literal sense of the received text is “for You have made Your word greater than all Your name.” This translation adopts a frequently proposed emendation, reading instead of shimkha, “Your name,” shameykha, “Your heavens.”

3. You made strength well up within me.
The verb hirhiv is surprising because it would generally mean something like “to make proud.” It could have an extended meaning here, or it could be a mistake for hirḥiv (literally, “to broaden”) or hirbah (“to increase”), as several of the ancient versions show.

4. All kings of the earth . . . / have heard the words of Your mouth.
At least on the face of it, the saving act of YHWH in this psalm is in the life of one individual, so the kings of the earth would scarcely be aware of it. Perhaps … God has shown His kindness to the speaker, and this same attribute, for different reasons, is recognized across the earth.

8. requite me.
The Hebrew verb gamar might also mean “finish” or “complete”…, but the context suggests that here it is the equivalent of the verb gamal, “requite.”

Do not let go of Your handiwork.
The Hebrew verb has a concreteness diluted by the conventional translation as “forsake.” The verb hirpah means to relax the muscles of the hand so that what it holds is dropped or released. The speaker, as a human creature, reminds God that he is God’s own handiwork. The use of the “hand” component in all likelihood encouraged the poet to choose this particular verb. God is thus implicitly figured as a potter (as in Genesis 2) who is implored not to loose his hand and allow what he has made to fall and shatter.

[CatherineTorpey]

RESOURCES FROM CHAT FROM TODAY’S BIBLE IN THE MIDDLE:

Danté Stewart

Red Lip Theology

The Lies We Believe:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156479.The_Lies_We_Believe

article about banned books clubs:
https://bipartisanreport.com/2022/02/01/banned-book-clubs-pop-up-to-spite-republican-censorship/

Howard Thurman

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Anne Lamott recent post on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnneLamott/posts/488486552639856

Reading Lolita in Teheran

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