Part of it has been the pure enjoyment of Robert Alter’s translation of the Psalms. Alter is a foremost Hebrew scholar, and though I’m sure our views differ on many things, he does a wondeful job of catching the pithy Hebrew rhythms of the Psalms, which is the goal of his work. I came to realize I had never really experienced the Psalms until I did so in Hebrew for the first time some twenty years ago. Alter does the best I’ve seen of someone actually catching those Hebrew movements in English.
Though he lauds the beauty of the classic rendering of the King James Version, ultimately he finds it wanting for the simple reason that it is, well, too pretty. The Psalms are not pretty prayers and praise-pieces. They are pithy and pointed and rough, a gutteral sampling of the Hebrew psyche in prayer and worship. They are not refined poetic set-pieces of theology and devotion, they are a roiling and rolling expression of humanity grasping and gasping after God in the midst of a life that all too often makes little sense. More earthy than heavenly – or perhaps better, heavenly glories expressed in earthy rhythms. Heaven meets earth in a sloppy wet kiss. The line from the popular song has stirred more than a few frowns, but it’s not a bad description of the messiness and untidy nature of these ancient Hebrew songs. They are real. As a child I remember being struck by the oddity of seeing men get up to lead congregational prayers and witnessing their voice change and their words suddenly sound very unlike themselves at all. Such men could be reciting and praying seemingly Psalmlike with a King James’ air, but those listening in are hearing more of Shakespeare’s rhythms than the strumming of David.
Which stands as a reminder to me. Prayer and praise are not a performance public or private or otherwise. They are the gritty movements of our own heart and body and tongue as we like the deer pant after the living God in moments high and low. No subject is off-limits, no emotion taboo. If it happens on earth, heaven bends to hear the earthy strains of prayer and praise that issue from it.
The book of Psalms is quoted in the New Testament more frequently than any other Old Testament book (Isaiah is a close second, as I recall). Which means that Jesus and Paul lived in these pages. These Psalms were their climbing companions. When we, like the disciples, would ask either of them to “teach us to pray” they both would ultimately point us here (note that the “Lord’s prayer” that Jesus taught his disciples to pray is just as pithy and pointed, which is why we have remembered and passed it on for nearly two millenia).
May our experience of the Psalms free us from the seeming devoutness of flowery sacred speak, and into the gritty and earthy movements of truly inspired prayer and praise and poetry marked by our own rhythms as we would dare open our mouths in answering speech to God.
