Note from Andy
If you are just joining us, the Darkling Psalter is a project to create renditions of the Psalms (creative rewordings based on the original Hebrew), notes, commentary, and original poems to pair with each one.
You can catch up with previous posts here: 1, 8, 14, 19, 22, 29, 31, 32, 34, 38, 42, 46, 51, 53, 73, 74, 84, 86, 88, 107, 121, 130, 131, 137, 142, 147, and the Guided Tour.
Rendition of Psalm 2
Why do the lost nations rage?
And the people scheme and plot in vain?
The kings of the earth take their stand
And the rulers join together to establish themselves
Against the Lord and his messiah, saying,
“Let us break our shackles,
And throw off our bindings.”
The Lord of the heavenly realm laughs;
God mocks them.
He will warn them in his anger
And dismay them in his fury, saying,
“I have established my king
On Zion, my holy mountain.”
The Lord said to me, “You are my son;
Today I have become your father.
Ask of me and I will make the nations your inheritance,
And the ends of the earth your possession.
Your iron scepter will shatter them,
And break them in pieces like pottery.”
Be wise, you kings;
Be warned, you rulers.
Serve God with holy fear,
And rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the son,
Lest he become angry and you go astray,
For his wrath burns at a touch.
Blessed are all who make him their shelter.
Notes on the Rendition
Psalm 2 stands at the gateway of the Psalter. Along with Psalm 1, it introduces the major themes of the whole book of Psalms, namely the promise of the coming Messiah, God’s son, who will set the world to rights.
Sonship in the Bible
Be wise, you kings;
Be warned, you rulers.
Serve God with holy fear,
And rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the son,
Lest he become angry and you go astray along the way,
For his wrath burns at a touch.
Blessed are all who make him their shelter.
Sonship is one of the Bible’s central themes and it runs through scripture from start to finish, recurring in various ways, providing unity, and ultimately pointing to God’s own son, Jesus and the adoption of all God’s children into one global family.
The Jews of Jesus’ days interpreted their “chosenness” as God’s people along familiar, ethnic lines, but sonship in the Bible is not only a genetic category; it also follows one’s ultimate allegiance. The borders of God’s family are not set by blood. The Hebrews of ancient times had long understood themselves as God’s exclusive chosen sons (think of Hosea 11:1 when the prophet recalls the exodus and writes “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” However, when Jesus arrives, he constantly contests this too-narrow understanding. When, in Matthew, Jesus is told his mother and brothers are outside wanting to see him, he answers,
“Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
When the Pharisees challenged, he said, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.”
The gospel writers take pains to show that Jesus, not the Jewish people in particular, is God’s true son, even claiming Hosea’s words about the Israelite exodus from Egypt for Jesus himself, who also went down to Egypt and returned (Matthew 2:15).
In the New Testament, Paul and the gospel writers unfold a further mystery: all believers have the right to become the children of God, as Paul writes in Romans,
“You received the Spirit of sonship, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15)
So sonship in the Bible is always opening up and out. From one man, to one family, to a nation, and then through God’s true son to the whole world.
Notes on the Poem
This post would have gone out months ago if this poem had not been so slow in coming together.
In part, the slowness was due to the fact that it was to be paired with Psalm 2, an important poem in the structure of the Psalter. I wanted it to be one of the poems in the Darkling Psalter that walks in lock-step with the biblical psalm it is paired with in content and (to some degree) form. Lastly, I have done a lot of re-reading of the poems so far in the past several weeks in order to weave in language from the other poems and renditions into this one.
It is for that last reason that I am sending it out anyway despite the fact that even now it is not finished. Just as Psalm 2 introduces some of the major themes of the biblical Psalter, this poem will introduce themes of the Darkling Psalter. Because it is going to need to mirror the images and language of the rest of the project, it won’t be truly finished until the whole of the Darkling Psalter is finished. This poem will talk about things like evil, rebellion against God, getting lost in your own anxious strivings, and God’s loving and severe counter-strokes in the same way that the rest of the project talks about those things. So once the project is nearing completion, I’m going to have to weave all those images and all that language back into this poem so that Psalm 2 introduces those themes into the overall narrative arc of the project.
All that being said, what you are about to read is only a rough-hewn version of the future version of the poem for Psalm 2, but hopefully, since you’re reading along with this project at such an early stage, that is the sort of thing that you like.
Poem for Psalm 2—A Beast Arrayed Against the Lamb Itself
“If we were to live, we had to live free of anger. It is the dubious luxury of normal men and women.” -The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
I. Nebuchadnezzar Speaks
I know you are a consuming fire.
I know you are a harsh master.
I know you will turn the hard blade
Of your hand against us.
I know you crook your finger
And before a man hath power to say, ‘Behold!”
He staggers and falls. So quickly
Bright things find the darkling.
So I became the stoneburner.
I was heaven itself. I was cast in gold.
I split love seven ways.
It cost me my life, but God, I was beautiful.
I plotted and raged.
I spoke in tongues. I saw secret things.
I made a deal and now
This show don’t stop for no one.
How were we supposed to love
That thunderous light?
How could I abandon all this regalia?
The auguries were all indifferent,
And time tumbles pips up.
If you go back enough
It is all just dice.
II. God Speaks
Where were you when the thunder fell?
When everything burst to flame
But nothing burned?
When the crystal stars cried out in unison
And the sky opened?
You could never take inside yourself
The reprisals of your friends when they braved
Your dagger-bladed smile.
You called for heads and told yourself
You could shelter better than the living God
These little ones you loved and ate.
You could not pick up with tongs
The hot coals inside yourself and kiss them.
You failed at every careful chance you got.
Anymore you barely need a reason
To give yourself to things
You can’t come back from.
So now you have headaches
And suffer through all you wanted.
So now you are wires and exposed bone
And frenzy and heartstring.
But I saw you when no one was there,
Pawing at the ground under the black roses
Sure you’d lost something.
I saw you keep turning around
Sure you’d heard a voice,
Or falling silent, or starting sentences,
Or waking at night convinced there were wolves,
And striding out like a fool to shout at the trees,
Or bending double to eat the grass
Like a beast arrayed against the lamb itself.
Photo by Lians Jadan on Unsplash
But you could say the same for building an understanding of what I mean by “Darkling.”
So many good ideas to choose from! I like “black roses” because the image has already appeared elsewhere and it might cue people in to look for repeated images early on.