My
Strength
and My
Song
SIMON PETER IREDALE
My
Strength
and My
Song
A Year With the Psalms
MY STRENGTH AND MY SONG
A YEAR WITH THE PSALMS
Copyright © 2013 by Abingdon Press
All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Abingdon Press, P.O. Box 801, 201 Eighth Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37202-0801, or e-mailed to [email protected].
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Iredale, Simon, 1956-
My strength and my song : a year with the Psalms / By Simon Peter Iredale.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-4267-6047-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Bible. Psalms — Meditations. I. Title.
BS1430.54.I74 2013
223’.206—dc23
2013026303
Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations noted CEB are from the Common English Bible.
Copyright © 2011 by the Common English Bible. All rights reserved.
Used by permission. www.CommonEnglishBible.com
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
Cover design: Ken Strickland
Interior design: Ken Strickland
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22—10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To the memory of my mother
Joan Dorothy Mary Iredale
“a loving heart from first to last”
1931-2012
Introduction
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
