Author: Administrator

After reminding us listeners once again how “great and awesome” YHWH is, this psalmist notes that “[t]he King’s strength also loves justice” — referring literally to David, not figuratively to YAH.

Further, with a fearsome image of the Ark of the Covenant, the Lord’s mobile home, the psalmist claims that David has “established equity; / [and] executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.”

Then he name-drops Moses, Aaron and Samuel as “priests … who called upon [YAH’s] name,” and got quick responses because they “kept His testimonies and the ordinance He gave them.”

Now the clincher — for me, anyway: “You were to them God-Who-Forgives, / Though You took vengeance on their deeds.” But did YAH actually punish them? And what about David himself?

Are the people who make laws for everyone else to follow ever punished? Don’t political power and greed — the green-backed gods — always have final say on what’s legal and what’s just?

If they didn’t have the last word, then Moses would have been truly punished for murder; Aaron, for idolatry; Samuel, for genocide; and David, for adultery, murder and psalm-writing that sucks.

“Oh, sing to the Lord a new song.” That’s how this psalm begins. Oh, how I wish David — or his fleet of songwriters — had taken that line to heart. But they didn’t, and this is the same old chart.

We do learn one thing new, though, about YHWH: “His right hand and His holy arm have gained Him the victory.” So YAH wasn’t a southpaw. He was Spahn, not Sain, and He was also the rain.

“Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth.” In the KJV, that’s the famous “make a joyful noise” line. Trumpet and cornet noise are mentioned — neither Miles nor Bix, ‘cause both were left-handed.

The last verse starts with “Let the sea roar,” reminding me of Chicago’s oldie “Wishing You Were Here.” Psalmists would have dug that song with its moldy theme of a heavenly love gone wrong.

Once again, this psalm admits that other cultures with other gods exist, noting “the multitude of isles” in this Old Hebrew psalmist’s world. Would that be the Greek isles? Islands near Turkey?

Of course, this guy’s main point is to say how great YHWH is, and he declares, “Let all be put to shame who serve carved [or graven] images, / Who boast of idols.” Like a star or cross, maybe?

That makes me wonder what the psalmist would say about other man-made objects we worship today — our iphones, our cars, our homes? And what about guns, red caps and all those flags?

And then there are logos — not words, but symbols. They say who we are and what we value. I collect — but certainly do not worship — the Aum, which reminds me of the iSoul, of Everything.

So graven images can be bad or good, depending on one’s mood. To the Amish and indigenous peoples, photography is the devil’s work. To us, a good pic is the icing on our social media cake.

After reading Spurgeon’s commentary and then the psalm itself, I’m reminded that we read the Bible all wrong — as progressive textualists, not as conservative originalists. We fool ourselves into thinking that The Holy Bible — like The Constitution — was written with Americans in mind.

When — as with this psalm — the psalmist writes, “Sing to the Lord, all the earth” and “the Lord made the heavens,” his ideas of the land and sky are much different from ours. His world — his entire universe, in fact — was much smaller, more compact, less well rounded than ours is now.

Even Spurgeon interprets those references in terms of his limited 19th-century knowledge when the preacher declares that “National jealousies are dead” and “All the earth Jehovah made” and “the sun shines on all lands….” Neither the State of Israel nor the late great USSR existed then.

But in Old Hebrew times, Copernicus and Galileo and all of those other great lookers and big thinkers weren’t even glints in their distant ancestors’ eyes, so the heavens and the earth to King David and King Solomon — and millennia later even the Rev. Spurgeon — were so much different than now.

And what about in this day and age with all the new wonders we’re seeing and coming to know, whether virtually or in person? Isn’t it ironic that many conservative thinkers now — originalists, they call themselves — interpret a wrong-headed holy writ like beat poets but our most vital rights like flat-earthers?

In tonight’s psalm, the concepts of God the Father and Mother Nature are interchangeable. “In [Her] hand are the deep places of the earth; / The heights of the hills are [Hers] also. / The sea is [Hers], for [She] made it; / And [Her] hands formed the dry land.” There’s no difference, really.

But I’ll take this exercise a step further and suggest that Nature or Science is neither binary nor non-binary, nor is it conscious of parental status or responsibilities. Is it the old clockmaker who built the timepiece, wound it up and left it to run? So, what sex is sunlight and shadow, anyway?

The iSoul — Emerson’s Over-Soul — is collectively unconscious, but in this psalm, It speaks of humanity’s failure as a caretaker: “For forty years I was grieved with that generation, / And said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts, / And they do not know my ways.’” But that’s not all.

“So I swore in My wrath,” adds the iSoul as this psalmist’s God, “‘They shall not enter My rest.’” In other words, when YHWH … when the iSoul … when Mother Nature tells us something we’re doing is like using a monkey wrench to fix a fine watch, we need to act before our time runs out.

I just read the first line of this psalm and winced: “O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongs—” Oh, god, another one of those psalms, I thought.

But I read the whole thing, anyway, and I saw that it describes as proud, wicked, and insolent, people like MAGA fanatics and their lying leader.

The psalmist asks why YHWH hasn’t smacked all those bad people down yet. “[Y]ou fools,” he says to the wicked ones, “when will you be wise?”

And then the psalmist adds, “The Lord knows the thoughts of man, / That they are futile.” But is this wise guy referring just to them or to us both?

This is a short psalm — only five verses. The overarching — or, in this case, overriding — image is of water — that YHWH is more powerful than the great sea billows that roll, than the mightiest tsunamis that cross the wide oceans, than the monster swells that only the best surfers can ride.

This psalm is called “A Song for the Sabbath day,” which we missed by a day or two, depending on one’s religious persuasion. However, what this psalmist — presumably David — has to share really isn’t that different from the psalms he sings any other day of the week. Here’s a summary:

Thank you, Lord, for being so great! And thanks for favoring me over everyone else. Let me sing you a song. O Lord, I forgot to capitalize those references to You. But You’ll forgive me, I’m sure. And while I’m playing my harp for You, how about smiting our enemies? Smite them good, Lord.

Like I was saying, You are kind, You are smart, and You are important — and I am special. Men like me “flourish like a palm tree, / [and] grow like a cedar in Lebanon.” And we “still bear fruit in old age.” You’re my rock, Lord. O, by the way, are You finished with all that Sabbath smiting yet?

The line that jumped out at me in this psalm was YHWH’s pledge to reward his followers not with afterlife in heaven, but with long life on earth — a direct quote from YAH Himself.

“Because [My follower] has set his love upon Me,” says YHWH, “therefore I will deliver him. … I will be with him in trouble. … With long life I will satisfy him, / And show him … salvation.”

So let me get this straight: In simplest terms, our righteousness may be measured by our age? Is the flipside of YHWH’S promise true — that only the bad die young? So insulting.

I was raised to be a fundamentalist Christian like my father — the one here on earth, not the one in heaven — and so was my brother, who was a better little guy than I will ever be.

He was diagnosed with cancer in October of 1976 and died less than four months later. He was 10 years old. Does his death at that age imply he wasn’t a good Christian soldier?

Now, I understand that the Jews back then — like King David and his wise son Solomon — had different values and beliefs than Christ’s current followers. But Jesus was a Jew, right?

And didn’t Jesus himself say that his mission wasn’t to change Jewish laws and teachings, but to make them mean something? Didn’t he die young decrying the shams of “good men”?

So when I read YHWH’s own words equating long life with righteousness — in the unerring, sacred book of Bible thumpers — I’m sure He was dead wrong about at least one little man.

This is the one and only psalm attributed to Moses — yes, that Moses, the really old one known for the Bulrushers and for parting the Red Sea, not Moses Malone or Woody Allen’s son, Moses Farrow, or even Grandma Moses, although she was sharp enough to create something like this.

Some folks say this is the oldest psalm of all 150, but then why is it No. 90, the first in the fourth book of the Psalter? (So I’m three-fifths of the way done with this project — only 60 more poems to go — and I will finish the whole kit and caboodle on Good Friday 2024, with a little good luck.)

This is an oft-quoted psalm, because Moses — or whoever wrote it — was a better writer and a lot more quotable than whiny-ass David: “For a thousand years in Your sight / Are like yesterday when it is past, / And like a watch in the night.” David would have made this song about himself.

Then Moses compares the days of our lives, no, not to sand in an hourglass, but to green grass that springs up and thrives in the sun by day, then in the cool of the evening is mown down and left to fade and blow away. I’m thinking Uncle Walt had this psalm in mind with Leaves of Grass.

This particular psalm also discusses the average man’s lifespan — “threescore years and ten … [or] fourscore years,” in the King James Version (no, not Lebron James); that’s 70 or 80 years in other bibles. Maybe Honest Abe read this psalm on his way to Gettysburg in November of 1863.

Keep in mind that Moses lived almost 4,000 years ago. Some things never change, except that the average man’s life expectancy is closer to 70 while the average woman’s is almost 80, says Dr. Google. No psalmists — not even Moses — have differentiated between the genders so far.

Be that as it may, the famous prophet asks YHWH: “So teach us to number our days, / That we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Whatever our gender or religion or place in life, that’s a lesson we all should internalize — to know exactly where we stand before we see that lawnmower coming.