Psalm 118—Faith a Bible Split at the Psalms
"The world without man or woman to say its name."
Note from Andy
We’re continuing the series of short poems inspired by George Herbert. I hope you like this one. If you have ideas for the title, leave them in the comments.
You can catch up with previous posts here: 1, 2, 8, 13, 14, 16, 19, 22, 29, 31, 32, 34, 38, 42, 46, 51, 53, 73, 74, 84, 86, 88, 90, 107, 121, 123, 130, 131, 137, 142, 147, and the Guided Tour.
Rendition of Psalm 118
Cast all your thanks onto the Lord,
For he is good, he is good.
He is kind and he is forever.
Let his people say, “He is kind and he is forever.”
Let those who have bound themselves to him say,
“He is kind and he is forever.”
Let all who fear him say, “He is kind and he is forever.”
When my crisis closed over me, I called on him.
He put me in an open place where I could stand.
If the Lord is with me, what should I fear?
If the Lord is beside me, what terrors can’t I face down?
His refuge is a better hope
Than any help mankind can make.
His refuge is a better hope
Than all the bright promises of princes.
Those who have arrayed themselves against me
Surround me on every side,
But they will be cut off by the name of the Lord.
They encircled me; they hounded me;
They swarmed like bees,
But the Lord fended them off
And they vanished like a fire extinguished
that leaves only a thin trail of smoke that rises and is gone.
They battered me so violently that had the Lord not helped
I would have been crushed and cast out.
But the Lord is strong and he is my song.
He has become my rescuer.
Now I hear the ringing cries of celebration
Coming from the tents of the righteous.
The Lord held them in his strong right hand
And that was all the strength they needed.
His hand raised me up and though I had come to the brink
I will not die but live.
I will tell the story of what he has done.
Though I was harrowed before his seeds were sown,
He has given me back to life, not death.
So open the gates of goodness to me
And I will enter through them,
He has shown me the way and I want it,
For God has become my rescuer and salvation.
The stone the builders rejected
Has become the one on which the building rests.
Who could have imagined what the Lord would do?
At last, this is the day the Lord made
And we can only be glad to have seen it.
Save us, Lord. Walk with us!
Send us the one who bears your name.
Break your blessing over us like the dawn chorus
Heard from the house of the Lord.
You are God and you have given us light from darkness.
What are the sacrifices you require?
We will bind ourselves to you like a gift on the altar.
We will say together, “You are our God.
You are kind and you are forever.”
Notes on the Psalm
This psalm is a master class in the Hebrew poetic convention of repetition.
I count 40 repeated lines in this medium-length Psalm! As a modern English-speaking person who has given himself the task of making a creative rendition of the Book of Psalms, bringing all that repetition into my version felt, well, redundant. I couldn’t do it.
I lack the literary conventions that put such emphasis on repetition. My conventions tell me the opposite. In modern writing, if something is redundant, it should be cut. As Strunk and White famously (and concisely) said, “Omit needless words.” For moderns, saying it twice is sloppy writing. The ancient Hebrew people had the opposite rule: If it is important, say it again.
So you get lines like Psalm 118:15, 16 (NASB)
The right hand of the Lord performs valiantly.
The right hand of the Lord is exalted;
The right hand of the Lord performs valiantly.”
Some have broken down the chiastic structure of the Psalm this way:
A) “The people say, ‘He is kind and he is forever.’”
B) “When my crisis closed over me, I called on him.
He put me in an open place where I could stand.”C) “The Lord is strong and he is my song.”
D) “The Lord held them in his strong right hand
And that was all the strength they needed.”E) “I will not die but live.
I will tell the story of what he has done.
Though I was harrowed before his seeds were sown,
He has given me back to life, not death.”
D2) “He has shown me the way and I want it,
For God has become my rescuer and salvation.”
C2) “At last, this is the day the Lord made
And we can only be glad to have seen it.”
B2) Save us, Lord. Walk with us!
Send us the one who bears your name.
A2) “The people say, ‘He is kind and he is forever.’”
If you want a brief crash course in repetition in the Bible, I wrote about that on Pattern Bible last week:
Notes on the Poem
In the film Finding Forrester—a movie every writer should watch—the main character is having trouble writing and is told by his teacher to begin to type out one of his teacher’s essays word for word so that he could start writing his own words when he “began to feel them.” Something similar is happening with these recent poems and George Herbert’s masterful poem Prayer (1).
Prayer (1) has put creative wind in my sails and has become a dialogue partner for my own work. Psalm 32 grafted Herbert’s structure into a new poem about grace. Psalm 90 did the same with time. This poem uses Herbert’s structure as the frame for a poem about faith. (Hope and love may be in the pipeline.)
Give the Poem a Title
I’ll title this poem in a couple of days if I don’t hear from you, but I’m leaving the first pick for readers. The naming convention for these poems is that the title must be a line from the poem.
Send your suggestions to andymatthewpatton@gmail.com or leave them in the comments.
Here is the poem.
Poem for Psalm 118
Faith a Bible split at the Psalms, the sunless city,
Silver that meets itself in the crucible,
The curve of the valley, songs on a midnight piano,
Your prophets paltry and ragtag,
Unlooked for, unhoped for, cursed until the end,
A step to the brink, the block, to the sea’s throat,
The world without man or woman to say its name,
A kind of prayer rising from the ground:
First the snowdrops, then the daffodils, the lupine, the lilies,
The stone the builders rejected, mother of pearl,
Saturday’s world, yesterday’s years,
Tomorrow’s bread, simply getting out of bed,
A laugh breaking rich beams,
The bare world brighter than it seems.
Read more from Andy
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
“Tomorrow’s Bread” would be my suggestion for a title.
The poem has many echoes of Herbert. Love it.
I keep coming back to this line: “Tomorrow’s bread, simply getting out of bed,”
And thinking about how getting in bed at the end of the day is faith, too, and sometimes (or maybe just for some of us) just as hard.