Here is one version of Psalm 150:
Praise ye the Lord.
Praise him in his sanctuary; praise him in the firmament of his power.
Praise him for his mighty acts; praise him according to his excellent greatness.
Praise him with the sound of the trumpet; praise him with psaltry and harp.
Praise him with timbresl and dance; praise him with stringed instruments and organs.
Praise him upon loud cymbals; praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.
Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.
Praise ye the Lord.
That's the King James version, or the KJV, or the Authorized Version, or the Version Grandpa Used.
Here is the Coverdale version, which is the basis of the Book of Common Prayer:
Praise God in his sacntuary: praise him in the firmament of his power.
Praise him in his noble acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness.
Praise him in the sound of the trumpet; praise him upon the lute and harp.
Praise him in the timbrels and dances: praise him upon the strings and pipe.
Praise him upon the well-tuned cymbals: praise him upon the loud cymbals.
Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.
More people probably know the Authorized Version of this Psalm in America, though in England, for centuries, many (most?) people would have been more familiar with the Church of England use of Coverdale's translation. The difference between the two is negligible, I suppose, though a person learning one version through years of repetition would naturally prefer the one embedded in the deepest strata of memory, the one that sounds just right because of its imprint. Either version is melifluous and easily memorized due to the rhythm and the language (the rhythm in part because of the strong caesura of the lines, the pause created for antiphonal reading in worship services).
Donald Davie, in his book The Psalms in English, offers sample translations of Psalms, from this early strata of KJV and Coverdale, through various poetic renditions over centuries. John Milton took a crack at translating Psalms into poetic forms, as did other Greats such as Edmund Spenser. Authors we now label as hymn writers also produced rhymed paraphrases of Psalms, such as Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley. Davies' argument is that the quality of this Psalmic poetry varies, but the hymn writers could produce poetry as good, if not better in some cases, than "official" poets. Here is Wesley, for instance:
Praise the Lord who reigns above
And keeps his court below;
Praise the holy God of love,
And all his greatness show;
Praise him for his noble deeds,
Praise him for his matchless power;
Him from whom all good proceeds
Let heaven and earth adore.
And that is just the first stanza!
Davie also points to more recent poets who have taken a shot at making the Psalms sing for a new age. The British poet Gordon Jackson published his version of 150 in 1993:
Halleluja!
O praise God: in the holy chancel of his love
in the mighty nave of his creation.
O praise God: for all his intricate artefacts,
for all his grandeur of design.
O praise God: sound his name with brass,
pick it out on harpstrings.
O praise God: write in with dancing in the dust
sign it with flutenotes on wind.
O praise God: on cymbals wake the dead with it;
transmit it through all outer space;
every drawn breath speaks his honour.
Hallelujah!
I think what Davie shows us is interesting for several reasons.
For one thing, seeing the Psalms in different forms like this can help peel away some of the resistance contemporary people have against poetry as such. In our present cultural malaise, "artsy fartsy" forms of art like poetry (and art, and dance, and theater) are increasingly identified as an activity suitable only for certain effete, liberal, secular types--hence, the statement that x (fill in the blank, such as "museums") are so "gay." By connecting the Psalms with poetry in this conitinuous historical way, we can come to see that poetry is a form of language use that is blessed and can be a blessing. We can rescue poetry from being an elitist entertainment and make it central to our perception of the world.
For another thing, this all works in reverse: poetry can help us read the Bible better. By seeing that the Psalms are a form of poetry, we can read poetry with fresh vigor, and by gaining skill in negotiating this kind of language use, we can go back to the Bible and read it, well, in an invigorated way.
One final upshot of Davie's helpful book is that we can gain a sense of the continuity of the Western tradition. The Psalms generate their own vital tradition: in the early church as chant, in the Reformation church as hymn, in the modern world as poetry. We learn to take the long view, to see something of personal importance in a formative tradition. We don't master the Western tradition to show we are so smart, but because it is a resource for spiritual well being in the sense that we learn to place ourselves as one small part of an ongoing life that extends through generations, through centuries.
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| Another modern version of the poetic Bible |