Apologies for a rather lengthy post this week (a 5 min read). Psalm 40 has a lot of words, so it gives me an opportunity to show you how I approach making psalms easy to sing and understand. I hope you find it interesting.
Before I get going on that, though, I need to explain about the numbering of this psalm.
I have followed the numbering of Common Worship, which splits verse 5 into two verses. Most Bibles number these verses 1 – 11. The Coverdale Psalter (BCP) goes further, splitting and rearranging more verses to give 14 verses for the same section of text.
When I translate the psalms for setting responsorially, I follow a couple of self-imposed principles:
- To make the psalm text easy to sing, I try to make each line as concise as possible and have four lines in each stanza so it fits neatly with the four sections of the chant.
- To make the psalm text easy to understand, I try to ensure each stanza makes sense independently of the rest of the psalm and has a coherent theme.
Applying these principles to this exceptionally wordy text was quite a challenge.
The first problem was verse 2, which most translations divide into three or four sections. For example, the Authorised Version has:
He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.
I needed to fit this into two sections of chant without making each line too long for the cantor.
To shorten it, I looked at a number of ways of describing the pit, which is a well or cistern that has probably been repurposed as a prison (think of the well Joseph’s murderous brothers threw him into), finally coming up with ‘dread pit of sticky clay’.
1 I waited patiently for the Lord
God turned to me and heard my cry.
2 The Lord lifted me out of the dread pit of sticky clay,
set my feet on rock and guided my steps.
Verse 3 is also exceptionally long. Fortunately, however, the first half works well as the refrain, so I needed to set only the second half at the beginning of the second stanza, the rest of which was relatively straightforward.
3bMany will look in awe
and they will trust the Lord.
4 Blessed are they who trust the Lord
and do not turn to the proud or those who lie.
As noted above, verse 5 is so long that the BCP and Common Worship psalters split it into verses 5 and 6. However, the resulting verses are still very long!
The BCP (which has this as verse 6 due to also splitting verse 3) has:
6 O Lord my God, great are the wondrous works which thou hast done,
like as be also thy thoughts which are to us-ward *
and yet there is no man that ordereth them unto thee.
7 If I should declare them, and speak of them *
they should be more than I am able to express.
The Common Worship psalter manages to reduce the syllable count somewhat, while also modernising the language and making it more inclusive:
5 Great are the wonders you have done, O Lord my God.
How great your designs for us! ♦︎
There is none that can be compared with you.
6 If I were to proclaim them and tell of them ♦︎
they would be more than I am able to express.
It also translates the second and third lines quite differently. This psalter seems to be unique in using the phrase ‘designs for us’ (although a few translations have ‘plans for us’ or similar) rather than ‘thoughts towards us’, although both ideas are valid.
The last line is also quite different. The Hebrew here ('în ʿāraḵ 'ēl) can literally be:
‘not ('în) be arranged/stated in order/reckoned up/valued/compared (ʿāraḵ) to you ('ēl)’
Bearing in mind that Hebrew tenses work quite differently to English ones, this shows how different translation choices could result in either of the translations given above, although the meaning of the BCP translation is unclear to modern readers (or at least to me).
The Authorised Version helps here, especially when you look at the end of the verse (which is the next verse in the liturgical versions):
5Many, O Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.”
(Both the BCP and CW versions differ from the AV, and indeed most Bibles, at the beginning of the verse by describing God’s wonders/wondrous works as ‘great’ rather than ‘many’.)
So what choices did I make for my translation?
To smooth the syntax out, I first decided to put ‘O Lord my God’ at the beginning of verse 5 so it doesn’t interrupt the flow of the rest of the sentence.
I then decided to stick with the ‘many wonders’ found in most bibles because it links to the end of the stanza and the idea that there are more wonders than can be numbered or counted.
In the second line, I decided to go with the idea of God having thoughts towards us that cannot be listed (if you are reckoning something up or setting out things in order, you would be listing them).
I then shortened the third line by simply telling of them, rather than declaring and speaking or proclaiming and telling, which I view as a very minor translation loss
.
So we end up with a stanza of 39 syllables, rather than the 62 syllables in the BCP:
5 O Lord my God, you have done so many wonders,
your thoughts towards us cannot be listed.
6 If I were to tell of them all,
there would be more than can be counted.
Now, I could go into just as much detail about how I tackled the next stanza but I have probably taken up too much of your time already, so I will simply say that for the sake of cohesion within the stanza I have grouped three verses together, even though it results in quite long lines.
7 O Lord, you favour neither sacrifices nor offerings,
You told me you 8 needed neither burnt nor sin offerings.
So I answered, “See, I have come, 9 as is written about me in the book.
My God, I love to do your will and your law is in my heart.”
Finally, verses 10 – 12 are thematically connected but too long to fit into a single stanza, so I opted to divide them into two with verse 11 split between the two stanzas.
10 I have brought good news of justice to your people.
Lord, you know my lips have not held back.
11 I have not hidden your justice in my heart,
but have declared your faithfulness and salvation.
I have not hidden your mercy and truth from your people.
12 O Lord, do not withhold your love from me,
May your kindness and truth always keep me safe.
One final note on word-choice is the use of ‘your people’ instead of the more literal ‘great (as in large, lots of people) assembly/congregation’. I wanted to avoid using ‘great’ as it could give the impression that it means ‘really good’ or ‘fantastic’ rather than numerous. As the expression ‘great congregation’ referred to all of the Israelites gathered together, using ‘your people’ expands the meaning to include all god’s people now as well as then.
Psalm 40 can currently be purchased from the shop for whatever you think this work is worth!