Psalm 34—Listen For The Sound Of Water On Rocks

New translation and poem for Psalm 34.

Before we get to Psalm 34, the winners of the poll are in. After this, I’ll be doing Psalm 88 (it’ll be a bit of a downer) and Psalm 46 (not a downer at all and interesting for the way it is quoted in Mark 11). Now on to Psalm 34.

Rendition of Psalm 34

Lord, you are my hallow and hope. 
I tell of your marvels.
My life is your boast.
May those who are cast off
Take comfort and consolation.
May the rumor of God grow great among us.

I sought the Lord and he found me. 
My fears were shadows that fled
For he shone. I forgot
All the things my shame had given me.
I shook inside his grip and slipped,
But I was still safe.
The Lord encamps around those who fear him.
He remains their deliverance.

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.
He keeps all who make him their refuge.
He is the Fear that hallows his holy ones.
He is the feast the hungry lack.
He is the goodness that draws them back.

Come, children, listen.
I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
If you want life and you love your days,
Come take his goodness. 
Do not let your mouth make evil,
Nor your tongue builds deceptions.
Turn aside from evil and choose the good.
Search for flourishing and fly toward it. 

God watches the righteous 
And listens for their cries for help.
He turns from those who make evil
And they are cut off. 
The righteous raise their prayers to him
And he is swiftly at their side.
He draws nearer to the brokenhearted than they know.
He saves and frees those who have been
Crushed, bruised, and snuffed out. 
Though the afflictions, fears, and wounds 
Of the righteous teem against them,
The Lord delivers his people out of them all. 
They are pressed but unbroken,
But the wicked meet their own afflictions,
And are condemned by their own hate.
The Lord saves his servants.
None who shelter in him will be condemned.

Notes on the Rendition

Nephesh Isn’t “Soul”

Though the ESV and other modern translations translate nephesh as “soul,” I can’t help but translate it as “life” instead. The connotations around the modern English word “soul” are so far from the way that nephesh is used (683 times) in the Old Testament.

For instance:

• Nephesh as “living beings”—“And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures (nephesh) according to their kinds. (Genesis 1:24)

• Nephesh as “life”—“From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life (nephesh) of man.” (Genesis 9:5)

• Nephesh as “appetite”—“My appetite (nephesh) refuses to touch them; they are as food that is loathsome to me.” (Job 6:7)

• Nephesh as “neck or throat”— “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul (nephesh) thirsts for you…” (Psalm 63:1)

Those examples are miles away from what modern people think of when we think of the word “soul.”

As many authors have noted, the English word “soul” has undergone a de-physicalization. Modern thought makes a (non-biblical) divide between the physical (the secular realm) and the spirit (the sacred realm). That isn’t to say that the Bible doesn’t distinguish between things that are embodied (like humans) and things that are not (like God). It does. It is just to say that we have laid much more emphasis on it than the Bible does.

For instance, what do you think of when you hear the phrase “go to heaven”? Do you picture your invisible, non-physical soul living for eternity in the invisible, non-physical heavenly realm? That isn’t what the Old Testament writers had in mind when they used the word nephesh at all. And it isn’t what the New Testament writers had in mind when they wrote about the ultimate state beyond death. Biblically, heaven comes down to earth, we don’t go to heaven. The New Creation is physical, not a place for disembodied souls.

So in the translation of Psalm 34, I changed “My soul makes its boast in the Lord” (ESV) to “My life is your boast.” See what a difference it makes! The former is talking about something attitudinal, something happening inside your head. The latter is talking about something visible, something that includes your whole life, attitudes, and actions.

“My life is your boast” is much closer to the thing God was trying to make when he made humans in his image—a physical, visible, living demonstration of his nature and ways. Our lives are supposed to be his boast. They are supposed to be proclamations that he is real.

On the other hand, “My soul makes its boast in the Lord” fits more comfortably with an individualized, modernized gospel in which internal states determine one’s eternal state. The modernized gospel makes it easier to sit in church and imagine that agreeing with the things that are said is the same thing as being a Christian. It isn’t. Faith should run rampant in the life of a Christian. It doesn’t confine itself to the confines of one’s head. It tips over tables and starts driving out the money changers until your whole life is a boast the Lord makes. I am real, God says to all who enter the circle of your influence, who get in arm’s reach of your life, your nephesh.

That is what it means to be a soul (read: living being) made in God’s image.

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Notes on the Poem

This poem is about Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Having your head around the basic plot of the play will help understand where the characters and images in the poem are coming from.

The story centers on Prospero, a wizard and the ousted Duke of Milan, and his daughter, Miranda. Years ago, Prospero was usurped and exiled by his brother and has lived his life since his downfall on an island with his daughter. But when his enemies come near the island on a ship, he uses his power to generate a tempest that makes the ship crash onto the rocks of the island. Antics ensue, many of which are not relevant to the poem.

In the course of events, Miranda discovers the truth of her past. She falls in love with prince Ferdinand and they are married. Prospero is restored as duke and Miranda goes off to her new life.

And that is all the backstory you should need for this one.

Poem—Listen For The Sound Of Water On Rocks

Miranda, today
You walk with the king your father
His hand on your shoulder,
And it is impossible to say
Who is guiding whom.

I, Prospero—who has raised you on these rocks, 
Refugee of an alien fullness,
Of another kingdom beyond the chasm, lord of all things
Lost to the storm and to the water— declare,
The fragile shelter we built was real,
But still was not enough to resist
Time’s sinuous tide.
It has brought us fate’s flotsam as from a disaster
Which marks the ending of all we have known.
I can keep you no longer.

Miranda, I know
Things will happen to you
When I am not there. I know
The times you will flee the tempest
And run into its embrace.
But do not pursue the flight from feeling,
The spirits of the air that make you sleep.
Though you press your image
In the mirror and it returns the gesture,
Do not give yourself to the mirror maze. But wait
As we waited these years for the other power,
Unwritten in my books of spells,
To find you.

I—Prospero, wizard of wave and wind, declare:
When you move beyond 
The compass of my waning kingdom;
When Milan and its effervescence
Come to claim you;
When the pain years set in,
The nights of fever dreams;
When you are visited as by ghosts
Who whisper how it was and wasn't;
Remember: What is to be born,
Must be carried to term.

Walk through the midnight lanes of memory
And listen for the sound of water on rocks.
Seek all that I taught you, for which you were not ready.
The plain world is deeper than it seems and thicker.
The lives of stars are nothing to you.
This the tempest exposes.

My daughter, the end discloses everything.
Your demons are not all that follows you. 
Let us pray.

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Read more from Andy on Still Point (reflections on deconstruction and why people leave Christianity) and Three Things (a monthly digest of worthy resources to help people connect with culture, neighbor, and God).

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