Friday, December 08, 2006

Psalm 150

Nothing like getting to the end before the journey is done. Psalm 150 is one I have sung many times but never before observed its simple structure: praise of the LORD who is God and praise with the means at our command. Conceptually at least, the whole is in two parts - 1. who 2. how and with a wrapper: Praise the Lord. I have republished all the images with no reduction of jpg size - so they are large, some of them. Yesterday I lost a day - but I was not alone; two of my staff also thought today was Thursday! So it is not just my involvement with learning a new language. Actually the form of the language is new but the human content is not. The poems are new and fresh but the forms of the poetry are not. Psalm 89 verse 38(39) was an issue - there is no mention of transgression, but a piling on of verbs - anaphoric almost. You have rejected us, you have cast us off, remember that we are but dust. I at first misread the verb as ZNH rather than ZNX - the first is really impolite, virtually accusing G-d as behaving like a harlot! The second is just rejection, not unfaithfulness, though the psalmist comes as close as he dare to pile on the compaint: 13 verbs in a row.

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