{"id":2720,"date":"2023-12-21T01:45:26","date_gmt":"2023-12-21T01:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/?p=2720"},"modified":"2023-12-21T01:45:29","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T01:45:29","slug":"evensong-79","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/?p=2720","title":{"rendered":"EVENSONG 79"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Of the 79 psalms I\u2019ve read so far, this one is the most difficult to write about \u2014 and not because it\u2019s too repetitious or too simplistic or, in the case of the 23rd Psalm, too familiar. This one could have been written yesterday \u2014 well, any day after Oct. 7, 2023, really. It hits too close to home.

This psalm\u2019s subtitle is \u201cA Dirge and a Prayer for Israel, Destroyed by Enemies.\u201d It\u2019s another one of Asaph\u2019s works. You know, it occurs to me this instant that Asaph might also have authored \u2014 or edited, at least \u2014 the Book of Ecclesiastes. Maybe this poet was King Solomon\u2019s ghostwriter.

That\u2019s just uneducated speculation \u2014 I mean, I haven\u2019t even consulted Professor Google about it yet \u2014 but back in the day when I was a teacher, I could recognize a student\u2019s word-processed essay without even seeing their name. It wasn\u2019t just their errors; it was usually their unique style.

What makes this psalm so relevant is the bloody picture that the poet paints of the same kind of death and destruction that Israeli settlers and Gazan civilians have seen over the past 74 days. For the massacre, Asaph doesn\u2019t give us a reason, not even \u201cFor everything there is a season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of the 79 psalms I\u2019ve read so far, this one is the most difficult to write about \u2014 and not because it\u2019s too repetitious or too simplistic or, in the case of the 23rd Psalm, too familiar. This one could have been written yesterday \u2014 well, any day after Oct. 7, 2023, really. It hits … Continue reading EVENSONG 79<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2721,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720\/revisions\/2721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}