Letting Go of the Psalms

Closing

A short detour. There is a passage elsewhere with the same shape though no direct connection, and setting them next to each other makes the writers' different concerns visible.（哀歌 3:22）

A note

Let me set the terms. This is not an argument about doctrinal correctness. It is one reader's account of what the text can be made to yield. I am going to leave the ending open on purpose.

A word about ordinary life. I think about this passage in the kitchen and on the train, almost never in a pew. I have come to suspect that is not accidental.（エレミヤの手紙 1:30）

8わが敵よ、わたしについて喜ぶな。 たといわたしが倒れるとも起きあがる。 たといわたしが暗やみの中にすわるとも、 主はわが光となられる。

ミカ書 7:8（口語訳（日本語））

Another way to read it

This is where I stopped. I could not go forward, so I stayed with the same few lines for a long time. I have come to think the staying was the point.（ゼパニヤ書 3:14）

I went through several scholarly treatments and found nothing decisive. On reflection, the absence of anything decisive may be the most appropriate result this passage could produce.（ゼパニヤ書 3:8）

17ἐξήλατο ὡς ἀττέλεβος ὁ σύμμικτός σου ὡς ἀκρὶς ἐπιβεβηκυῖα ἐπὶ φραγμὸν ἐν ἡμέραις πάγους ὁ ἥλιος ἀνέτειλεν καὶ ἀφήλατο καὶ οὐκ ἔγνω τὸν τόπον αὐτῆς οὐαὶ αὐτοῖς

ナホム書 3:17（七十人訳（ギリシャ語））

One word that snags

Finally, back to the text. No amount of commentary competes with the texture of the sentences themselves. Read it out loud once before you read anything else about it.

A word about ordinary life. I think about this passage in the kitchen and on the train, almost never in a pew. I have come to suspect that is not accidental.（申命記 23:24）

36ルベンの部族のうちからは、ベゼルとその放牧地、ヤハヅとその放牧地、

ヨシュア記 21:36（口語訳（日本語））

There are obvious objections, and I don't hold this reading with much confidence. What I would defend is narrower: that the text leaves room for it.

A word about ordinary life. I think about this passage in the kitchen and on the train, almost never in a pew. I have come to suspect that is not accidental.

Here is the conclusion, which is not an answer. I have decided to read this as a promise rather than a command, for the plain reason that I can live inside the first reading and not the second. Whether that is a legitimate reason I genuinely do not know.

A word about ordinary life. I think about this passage in the kitchen and on the train, almost never in a pew. I have come to suspect that is not accidental.

（ピリピ人への手紙 第1章）

Now set it back into its own century. What was the community that first heard this actually worried about? Simply imagining that changes the temperature of every line.

In an ordinary week

This is where I stopped. I could not go forward, so I stayed with the same few lines for a long time. I have come to think the staying was the point.（知恵の書 11:1-4）

How you render this one word determines the meaning of the whole paragraph. A translator has to decide, and the decision is already an interpretation. Readers deserve to know that a decision was made.（マカバイ記一 10:24）

13祭司たちよ、荒布を腰にまとい、泣き悲しめ。 祭壇に仕える者たちよ、泣け。 神に仕える者たちよ、 来て、荒布をまとい、夜を過ごせ。 素祭も灌祭も あなたがたの神の家から退けられたからである。

ヨエル書 1:13（口語訳（日本語））