King James Sundays: 12/1/2024

Advent! A new church year!

Click here for an introduction to my King James Sundays series.

We come again to a new church year with the first Sunday of Advent. This is Year C in the three-year ABC cycle, meaning that the Gospel lessons will all be from Luke (Year A = Matthew; B = Mark). Here I talk about one of my favorite Psalms.

Washington Allston, “Moonlight” (1819); Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA)

Revised Common Lectionary
Advent I.C
Jer 33.14-16 • Ps 25.1-10 • I Thess 3.9-13 • Lk 21.25-36

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Psalm 25.1–9 (Book of Common Prayer 1979)

1. To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul;
   my God, I put my trust in you; *
   let me not be humiliated,
   nor let my enemies triumph over me.

2. Let none who look to you be put to shame; *
   let the treacherous be disappointed in their schemes.

3. Show me your ways, O LORD, *
   and teach me your paths.

4. Lead me in your truth and teach me, *
   for you are the God of my salvation;
   in you have I trusted all the day long.

5. Remember, O LORD, your compassion and love, *
   for they are from everlasting.

6. Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; *
   remember me according to your love
   and for the sake of your goodness, O LORD.

7. Gracious and upright is the LORD; *
   therefore he teaches sinners in his way.

8. He guides the humble in doing right*
   and teaches his way to the lowly.

9. All the paths of the LORD are love and faithfulness *
   to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.

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Psalm 25.1–10 KJV (1611)

A Psalm of David.

¹ Unto thee, O LORD, do I lift up my soul.

² O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed,
let not mine enemies triumph over me.

³ Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed:
let them be ashamed which transgress without cause.

⁴ Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths.

⁵ Lead me in thy truth, and teach me:
for thou art the God of my salvation;
on thee do I wait all the day.

⁶ Remember, O LORD, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses;
for they have been ever of old.

⁷ Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions:
according to thy mercy remember thou me
for thy goodness’ sake, O LORD.

⁸ Good and upright is the LORD:
therefore will he teach sinners in the way.

⁹ The meek will he guide in judgment:
and the meek will he teach his way.

¹⁰ All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth
unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.

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COMMENT

This week I’m not using NRSV as an example of a modern translation. I’m using a liturgical version of the Psalms from the Episcopal Church’s 1979 Book of Common Prayer (“BCP”).¹ This version is more familiar to me than NRSV given my many years reciting them in Episcopal worship and my private devotion. Given its liturgical purpose, sometimes the verses of the 1979 Psalter are numbered differently than most other Bibles. But like last week, here I am again drawn to the Hebrew poetry of the Old Testament.

I love the Book of Psalms. It might be my favorite book of the Bible. When I was a new believer in high school, starting to read the Bible for myself, I didn’t get the Psalms. They functioned as prooftexts, not prayers; a comforting verse here and there. But in college, as I painfully learned what mental health was and how I was struggling with it, and the toll the struggle took on my capacity to be a functional student, they became a lifeline. They helped me be less alone.²

One winter break, as I explored Anglicanism for the first time, I decided to follow the Book of Common Prayer’s tradition of praying through all of them in 30 days.³ This is the experience that unlocked the Psalms for me. I now understood the power of praying the Bible: it is a way for the soul to concentrate its feelings when a believer can’t make their own words, for times when they believe but plead help for their unbelief. It is soul alchemy.

Psalm 25 is one of my absolute favorites. I think I like it for its tone of voice—it is hopeful about God’s providence yet also honest about personal distress and loneliness. It strikes just the right balance for me. I particularly like the plead in vv. 6–7 KJV, “Remember, O LORD, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses; / for they have been ever of old. //  Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions.” As I grow older (I will be 32 next month), I certainly carry more regrets. I think back on the rough times in college, and times throughout my 20s when I should have been wiser, should have been kinder, should have been more courageous. But I can only live in the present and walk toward the future. This future is one the psalmist insists God prepares for us while we are yet sinners, because He is “good and upright.” In the meantime, I must trust, “for we walk by faith, not by sight” (II Cor 5.7). Derek Kidner says that trust works here with “a certain tenseness: the trust is eager, waiting in hope rather than resignation. This hope is unfulfilled at the close, but the waiting continues.”⁴ What a fitting statement for the life of Advent, which is nothing less than the life of a disciple in this world.

The very useful Jewish Study Bible says: “A key word is ‘z-kr,’ ‘remember,’ found three times in these two vv.”⁵ KJV (vv. 6-7) and the 1979 BCP (vv. 5-6) both translate the word consistently here as “remember,” so the triplet is easy to see. Human memory is harsh, and full of strife, but God’s memory of us desires a future of “tender mercies and lovingkindnesses” (KJV), “compassion and love” (BCP ‘79). KJV excels here and elsewhere with the word lovingkindness, a brilliant way to blend together all the tender and mighty ways the Lord relates to us. “All flesh is grass” (Isaiah 40.6),⁶ and perhaps that is exactly how God gets “his way” (vv. 9/8) in the end.

One of the last verses is mentioned in the opening of one of my beloved Prayer Book prayers: 

O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment,
and light rises up in darkness for the godly:
Grant us, in all our doubts and uncertainties,
the grace to ask what you would have us to do,
that the Spirit of wisdom may save us from all false choices,
and that in your light we may see light,
and in your straight path may not stumble;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.⁷

You can recognize the Ps 25 allusion in “by whom the meek are guided in judgment,” with KJV v. 9, “The meek will he guide in judgment / and the meek will he teach his way.”⁸ But the allusion, ironically, is not obvious in the current Prayer Book’s translation, v. 8, “He guides the humble in doing right.” Meekness certainly carries a more negative connotation today compared to humility, but they’re lexically related in the legacy of the English Bible. 

More importantly, you can see in both this prayer and the Psalm the desire for divine guidance. The psalmist proclaims like a creed that God has a good path planned for His followers: like the word “remember,” in both translations of this Psalm portion the word “way” is repeated three times. Three and three almost make a full week’s worth of divine memory and divine paths—such is how humanity shall discover true peace and true rest. There is one Day left to complete the week of creaturely life in this world, the Day where all creation shall rest in the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Who is Lord of the Sabbath.

“On thee do I wait all the day.”

1. I think Psalms is one of the trickiest books of the Bible to translate, because translators need to balance scholarly concerns of fidelity to the languages with liturgical concerns about how pleasingly they can be prayed in devotion and worship. Moreover, liturgical concerns blend into theological concerns because the Christian faith prays the Psalms Christologically. For example, should the last verse of Psalm 2 read “kiss the Son,” (KJV, NASB, ESV, NIV2011), or should it say “kiss his feet” (RSV, NRSV, CEB)? What should take precedence here: the legacy of Christian doctrine and liturgy, or lexical analysis? 

2. I think my experience of loneliness this is why vv. 16–17 are so meaningful to me:

“Turn thou to me, and be gracious to me;
for I am lonely and afflicted.
Relieve the troubles of my heart,
and bring me out of my distresses.” (RSV)

I’m most familiar with this translation. I also like the 1979 BCP’s wording:

“Turn to me and have pity on me, * for I am left alone and in misery.
The sorrows of my heart have increased; * bring me out of my troubles.” (p. 615)

3. This is Thomas Cranmer’s simple but brilliant medicine for the soul: try to pray the prayer book of the Bible in sequence, once a month, every month, for the rest of your life.

4. Derek Kidner, Psalms 1–72: An Introduction & Commentary on Books I & II of the Psalms; Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1973), p. 117.

5. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, “Psalms,” in The Jewish Study Bible: Second Edition—Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 1294.

6. KJV, RSV, NASB, ESV, CEB. The NRSV and NIV2011 have a tin ear here with “All people are grass” and “All people are like grass [NIV1984: All men etc.],” respectively.

7. “For Guidance,” no. 58 in “Prayers & Thanksgivings,” in The Episcopal Church, Book of Common Prayer (1979), p. 832. This prayer also alludes to Psalm 112.4 in its invocation: “Light rises for the upright;” and Ps 36.9 in its final petition: “For with thee is the fountain of life; in thy light do we see light” (RSV).

8. This is also in Coverdale (1535), a.k.a. the Psalter of the classical Prayer Books: “Them that are meek shall he guide in judgment, / and such as are gentle, them shall he learn his way.”