Читать книгу My Strength and My Song - Simon Peter Iredale - Страница 5

At the outset, gentle reader, a word about the scope, intent, and character of this book. This is not intended to be a verse-by-verse commentary on the Psalms. There are a great many very distinguished ancient and modern commentaries, with which the shelves of libraries groan, easily available. Neither is it a work of academic theology. While theology (in its broadest sense as being the work of “someone who prays”) informs my responses to the Psalms, there is also a good deal of personal experience sprinkled like salt throughout the pages, which cannot be anything other than subjective. Hence, this book is the writer’s response to a selection of the Psalms, week by week, over the course of a year. Sometimes I will follow the psalm quite closely; at other times, the psalm proposes, as it were, a point of departure into reflections that belong to our own times. I invite you to accompany me on a personal journey, which I hope will also become your journey. The psalmist’s vision is all-encompassing, from the cosmic to the deepest and darkest places of the human spirit. It is often very “close up and personal.” It is moving, inspirational, exhilarating, tragic; in fine, human life, which is why the Psalter has been the meat and bread of discipleship for so many generations.

How should we approach the Psalms? Imagine a collection of poetry and music that a family has collected over many lives. It has not grown up in a systematic and organized way; rather it has come together organically, bundled together any-old-how with different family members at various times trying to impose some order on it. However, this was poetry and music that was used in a particular context. The Psalms reflect, scholars agree to different extents, cultic events in the Temple in Jerusalem. When the people made their long journeys from the surrounding countryside at the time of the great feasts, it was this music and poetry they heard when they crossed the threshold of the Temple and ringing out through its courts at the climax of those great religious occasions.

For this reason, the themes of many of the Psalms bring to mind the forming events of the history of the people of Israel. In the same way that stained-glass windows in our medieval churches tell the stories of the Christ and the New Testament, the Psalms would repeat to the chosen people the story of their own national history. Frequently they would hear the story of God’s saving actions in the events of the Exodus and the deliverance from slavery in Egypt. At times of great state occasions, too, the Psalms would grandly accompany the enthronement or anointing of a king. The Psalms constitute also a political landscape, with frequent references to the hostile nations that surrounded Israel, often portrayed as ravenous, savage animals. The enemies come thick and fast; sometimes they are beyond the walls of Jerusalem, but at other times the enemies are of the psalmist’s own community. There is jealously, plotting, spitefulness, and malevolence. While some psalms are meant for a spectacular liturgy, involving alternating choral “voices” and musical instruments with a strong emphasis on tympani, others appear to turn the volume right down as the complaint of a single anguished soul.

Psalms attributed to historical characters like King David form a substantial part of the Psalter, but there are many other attributions. There is no reason to doubt that King David was the composer of many psalms and that these are ones that reflect incidents (good and bad) in his tumultuous life. Frequently, also, we see above some psalms what might be called musical directions for the psalm to be played according to a certain piece of music. The Psalms have collections within them that derive from hereditary temple guilds of musicians and singers (Korah and Asaph). All has been eventually bound together in the book that we have had passed down to us. From these temple guilds we might also get an explanation of the mysterious word Selah we often encounter. This may have been a form of instruction from choirmaster to musicians and choir to make a certain change at that point—of tempo, of volume, or perhaps even a pause (take a breath!).

The beauty and originality of the Psalms arise from the inherently poetic potentials of Hebrew. Many times as we read the Psalms, we feel even in translation the lilt of the phrases, the echo of one sentiment with another. This is what scholars have termed parallelism, where a thought is intensified by the succeeding thought, a voice is answered by another voice. This must have made these psalms eminently memorable for those who were effectively part of an oral culture. I have used the Revised Standard Version (1952) unless otherwise indicated, and I have also at times made reference to the Greek translation, the Septuagint, to better appreciate the range of certain words.

Nevertheless, if this were simply an ancient song book, it would be wonderful enough but probably only of antiquarian interest. The Christian world has looked to the Psalms in the same way as it has looked to much of the Old Testament—as prophecies of the coming of Christ. At different stages of this book we shall see how Christ referred to the Psalms in relation to himself and how the writers of the New Testament drew on the Psalms to understand their salvation. The early church used the Psalms as a constant prayer book, and it was not unusual for the early saints to commit the whole of the Psalter to memory. Indeed, even today in many parts of the Orthodox Christian world, monks sing the Psalms around the clock, a continual hymn of praise to God but also an emblem of the struggles of the spiritual life.

In our modern (and not so modern!) church, we encounter the Psalms in the context of our Sunday services. However, they also form the heart of our private devotions. As we go through this book together, I think you will be surprised at how contemporary the Psalms are, how much they make an appeal to the trials and tribulations of modern life. Why should this be so? Simply because human beings really don’t change very much, and the struggles, hopes, and fears of the psalmist find an echo in us as much today as they did his hearers thousands of years ago. The Psalms are a spiritual workshop where God and the psalmist forge a holy life and we are privileged, as it were, to stand at the psalmist’s elbow and reflect on how what is said touches us and touches our faith.

Supremely, the Psalms are about faith in the living God. These are not dry and indifferent encounters with faith. They are often surpassingly beautiful and dreamlike, full of love and longing reminiscent of the tranquil quality of the Song of Solomon. Distilled in them, drop by shining drop, is also the wisdom of whole cultures. At other times we visit the psalmist in the depths of despair, even on the point of death, where he wonders whether all this effort in living a righteous life has been worthwhile at all. He does not shrink from saying the most challenging things to God, either. Not for the psalmist to mince his words. He is passionate, resentful, plaintive, insistent. Occasionally (perhaps too frequently for our shrinking, timid, sensibilities), he is caught up in a towering fury and calls down all kinds of terrible punishments on those who oppress him. This is the human condition raw and bleeding, not bound up and mollified by the soothing balm of forgiveness. It is this human realism to which we respond. Our hearts say, “Yes, I understand why you feel like that.” While we might feel overly polite about our faith, the psalmist effectively rolls up his sleeves and comes to grips with his Maker in the same way as Jacob wrestled with the angel (Genesis 32:24).

What is also presented to us through the Psalms is a vivid insight into an agrarian economy. We are permitted a glimpse of the fields and countryside beyond the walls of Jerusalem. We become familiar with the countryside seasons, the natural swing of the year marked by the festivals. We see the thankful processions of young men and women bearing the produce of the fields and the joy in created things. What I call the “creation Psalms” invite us, too, to look up into the night sky shining with stars and say, with the psalmist: “the heavens are telling the glory of God; / and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). Moderns though we are, surrounded by the often bleak and depressing walls of our cities, our hearts leap at this vision of how good God’s creation can be. It is a walk in the garden of Paradise. Perhaps this is the secret of the Psalms’ longevity: They are about a living relationship with our Creator God. It is stormy; it is loving; it has a history; it is forged and purified in the crucible of experience; it lasts a lifetime and it is new every morning.