So, You Don’t Sing Psalms, Eh!
Psalm-singing is strange. At least, that’s what they tell me. And that stops people from doing it. Of course, they don’t say it is wrong. They can’t say that. It isn’t wrong. It’s right! The Bible demands it. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs… The Bible calls for Psalm-singing. The Bible also allows some of the other. But Psalm-singing is required. Weird or not. So, they don’t say it is wrong. Just that it is “strange”.
But that is a strange argument to me. We are Independent. That is strange. We are “fundamentalists”. That is strange. We are Baptists. When did Baptists ever shy away from doing something because it is strange? They call us extremists – IFB-“X”, they say. They think we are strange. Our ladies wear culottes. That is strange. Did strange ever stop us before? Then what’s the problem?
Strange. Strange that we don’t sing Psalms. But then, we do. We sing Psalms. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their head (I know, it’s Isaiah). This is the day that the Lord hath made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. We sing Psalms. We sing the nice ones. But not the whole thing. We sing the nice parts of some of the Psalms. But we skip the hard stuff. After all, its strange (to sing, at least).
But we’ll say it. We’ll say all of it. All of the Psalms. We preach them. We love them. They make us feel good. We’ll even shout the Psalms. We’ll pound the pulpit while we do. But we don’t sing Psalms. Singing it is too, well, that is strange. It doesn’t fit with our tradition. We sing Mac and Patch. Psalm 109 wouldn’t work in any of their arrangements. We’ll stick to our traditions. And in our tradition, we don’t sing Psalms.
It’s too bad, really. Because Psalm-singing is “strange”, good people miss out on singing about crushing heads and chopping arms. They have to sing Christianity according to Frank, and miss out on Christianity according to David, the giant-slayer, the warrior-harpist.
Psalm-singing is strange, but only because we haven’t done it in years. We’ve forgotten how. We’ve forgotten about all the bloodshed. But we shouldn’t let our amnesia last forever. Nor should we let our traditions stop us, no matter how steeped in them we are. Get out a good Psalter, and praise the Lord like men. It will do you good, even if you aren’t one. But then, we encounter something else that is strange. Praising the Lord like men. That is strange. Maybe we’ve been singing In the Garden for too long.
posted by Dave Mallinak at
2:23 PM
14 Comments:
* ... "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord."
*
* Speaking through my hat:
* --------------------------
* From Websters 1828 Dictionary, "PSALM: A sacred song or hymn; a song composed on a divine subject and in praise of God. The most remarkable psalms are those composed by David and other Jewish saints ... The word is also applied to sacred songs composed by modern poets being versifications of the scriptural psalms, or of these with other parts of Scripture, composed for the use of churches; as the Psalms of Tate and Brady, of Watts, &c."
* The English of the verse here quoted, Ephesians 5:19, does not limit psalms to those recorded in Scripture, it just says "Psalms." Many of the songs in the hymn books we use, especially the old favorites, qualify as psalms.
* I approve of singing the Psalms as found in the KJV, but I have yet to see any such Psalms, even Psalm 100, set to post-revolutionary war era music (that's after 1776, for those of you in Rio Linda) that didn't change, omit, or add to the holy words of Scripture. Some are so bad as to become unrecognizable, and I wouldn't know they were from a Psalm except it says so on the top of the page.
* For some people, to sing something, especially when done repeatedly, is to memorize it. This tendency is present to some extent in almost all, if not every person with normal mental capacity. We wouldn't accept someone standing in the pulpit and preaching from an alternate version of Scripture. Why then should we memorize such distorted scripture under the guise of "Singing the Psalms?
I don't know very many Psalms that are set to a tune. I am not musical inclined to be able to figure it out. But I do know a few and I have made an effort to teach my family, my favorite being Psalm 48:1.
This is a great post because, at least it is a key component to Bible memorization. Setting verses to a tune makes it even easier to memorize. Which in return can help a backslidder come back to the Lord, like it did me.
Oh, don't talk about In the Garden. Some fundamentalist might think you're a new evangelical. You're attacking one of the fundamentals of the faith!
Someday, I'm going to give a contemporary rewording to that song just to show how little is there.
It is pretty though.
Throwback13,
So aren't the normal hyms and choruses of the faith even more watered down than a poetic attempt at the psalms?
Also, can you propose a tune for Psalm 119? Thanks.
And they also sing the Psalms out of context. Shouldn't Psalm 119 be sung with 118 and 120?
Don't you go to this guy's church? Maybe you should reserve your disagreements for a private forum???
Sincerely,
Peppered while bird hunting
P.S. - Question: did preservation begin in 1611?
Very, very good Pastor M. Funny too. Spontaneous exhalation. Throwback (Joel), the versification of the psalms is a literal translation in meter of the Hebrew Masoretic, the text behind the KJV. You can't sing the KJV translation because it isn't versified and it isn't in meter. I'll let you think about that, but they are not singable as a translation. I'm thankful for the few, various people who have done a good versification.
By the way guys, over at Sharper Iron, someone ridiculed the skirt standard in their front page article Graceful Modesty and I commented and it created a firestorm. I think you would find the comments interesting. Out.
I just been blog looking. I saw you are a independent baptist. I am too. I am a preacher of the Gospel and I agree with you on this post. Maybe sometime you may get a chance to check my blog out. I try to put thoughts on my blog that the Lord gives me through study. Again this post is a blessing. I will be checking back regularly.
Bro Tim
Take it easy there, Blowback.
* Blowback 12 1/2:
*
* At first I was amazingly flattered that someone would go to all the trouble to set up an alias (even pretending to be V.P. Dick Chenny, no less), mocking my blogging name, just to disagree with me. But then, I realized from what you wrote that you were really disagreeing with the initials "KJV", a three letter word, one might say.
* That prompted me to remember Hebrews 4:12 "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."
* The KJV does more dividing and discerning with its two edged sword than the mere versions, all of which are loaded with rubber bullets. I wonder if perhaps the KJV has found a target.
* Thanks, Pastor Mallinak, for posting not only my response to your blog entry, but also Blowback's response. A man is known by the enemies he stirs up.
*
* Pastor Brandenburg:
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* If some of the "Psalms" that I have seen "versified" have any relationship to the Hebrew for the corresponding psalms, then the KJV doesn't.
* Even "versification" of the Hebrew does not provide justification for varying from the KJV (if you believe the KJV to be the perfect word of God). If it did, we could sanction the text of the NIV or the NWT just by putting it to music.
*
* Talking through my hat (with no sarcasm intended).
* ... Joel
I love singing Scripture songs - whether whole chapters or individual verses, though I have never been in a church where they actually sung any of the Psalms in Metre. I would love to do that though. There are several passages I have made tunes for in my head so I can sing and memorize them, including Psalm 12.
You might appreciate this page, which contains the lyrics of the Psalms in Metre and the Psalms of David by Isaac Watts. Unfortunately, I do not have any music with those, just the lyrics - but if you like reading solid Biblical-based poetry, I am sure you would appreciate that link on my site:
http://www.earnestlycontending.com/KT/psalms/psalms.html
The Introduction and Make It Better are also worth reading. If you are interested, I have put together SwordSearcher modules for these Psalms - these can be downloaded from our main page on EC (I just realized that I never put the links for the modules on the Psalm pages themselves - which is something I will have to do).
Throwback,
Christ said not one jot or tittle. No jots or tittles exist in the English. The KJV is an accurate translation of a perfect text. However, the 1611 edition differs from the 1769 edition in many ways, so which one of these two is word for word the original manuscripts? Of course, that would say that God-breathed in English. We know He breathed in Hebrew and Greek. Versifying the Hebrew text is the way to go, rather than attempting to versify the English.
Kent Brandenburg said:
"Christ said not one jot or tittle. No jots or tittles exist in the English." Red Herring. This is meaningless. Jots and tittles distinguished the words in Hebrew and Greek (If I remember what you told me). English distinguishes the words in different ways (spelling, context, capitalization). Of course the KJV is different from the extant manuscripts - they are different languages.
"The KJV is an accurate translation of a perfect text." So, is the KJV perfect, or not?
"However, the 1611 edition differs from the 1769 edition in many ways, ..." The 1769 is the 1611 edition with the typos corrected and the spelling unified. In 1611 there was no standard for spelling. The words (except for the typos) are the same.
"... so which one of these two is word for word the original manuscripts?" Neither. They are both the word for word correct, Holy Spirit superintended, translation of what the Holy Spirit preserved as the correct Scriptures. Through several reiterations and printings, the 1611 text had the typos removed (and there were very few of them) and the spelling standardized. The result is the 1769 printing. That's what I carry to church, have my family devotions out of, and have on my computer. My study Bible is descended from it, but has typos. I have gone to extensive effort to mark and correct the typos.
"Of course, that would say that God-breathed in English. We know He breathed in Hebrew and Greek." Why are so many people so willing to allow that God inspired and superintended a perfect set of autographs, but so reluctant to allow God the power to have superintended the selection and translation into English? (Answer: We don’t have the autographs, so we don’t know what the perfect, inspired autographs said. But if we allow that God superintended the translation of the KJV, then we have the perfect word of God and we don’t need scholarship and scholars to give it to us. God already did! And the scholars can no longer set themselves up as the arbiters of the truth.)
"Versifying the Hebrew text is the way to go, rather than attempting to versify the English." This is an argument that by versifying the Hebrew text we have a result that is superior to the King James Version. Either you accept the KJV as perfect, or you don't. If it isn't perfect, it cannot be the Word of God. If it is perfect, it can't be improved.
Not speaking through my hat,
... Joel
* "The Bible demands it. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs…"
* I just noticed. It says SPEAKING in psalms. How do we get from there to SINGING? "Singing and making melody" is a seperate item in the same list (Eph. 5:19).
*
* Asking through the hole in my hat.
* ... Joel
Just my two cents worth: sometimes the word speaking in the KJV includes other sounds coming from our mouths, which would include singing. See this verse for an example.
Psalms 58:3 The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.
These babies certainly didn't speak in the idea of saying words, but in their fussing and crying, they lied with their mouths because nothing was wrong with them. (Now, I have not traced the word "speaking" throughout the Bible to see how it was used elsewhere - but I can see it being used in the sense that it is in this Psalm.)
* Jerry Bouey wrote: "...the word speaking in the KJV includes other sounds coming from our mouths, which would include singing."
* O.K. I admit that this might be the intent of this verse. However, it does make the construction a bit strange as it seems to contrast speaking psalms in the first part of the verse with "singing and making melody in your heart ..." at the end of the verse.
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