This week, I am going to talk about the verses of psalm 34 set as one of the options for Mothering Sunday. Apologies if you are using the other option or keeping Lent 4.
The first stanza calls children to come and listen. Which is probably why it is set for Mothering Sunday. This was quite straight forward but the second line was more literally, ‘the fear of the Lord I will teach you’. This presents several problems for me.
Firstly, the sentence structure is unnatural – English sentences are usually subject (I)-verb (will teach)-object. The subject is ‘I’, the verb is ‘will teach’ and there are two objects, a direct object ‘the fear of the Lord’ and an indirect object ‘you’.
Secondly, I find the concept of fearing a loving God unhelpful and so have chosen to render it as ‘respect’ as I think that is the nearest modern equivalent.
Verse twelve was a particularly difficult verse to translate, particularly when one of your translation principles is to avoid gendered terminology when it refers either to everyone or to God. In the Authorised Version, it reads: ‘What man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, that he may see good?’
It is clear that this is a question. I thought about how to render it by considering the context of a teacher engaging the class (Come, children…) and telling them why they should respect the Lord. So I began my question with ‘Who is there that enjoys life…’ I then simplified the rest of the verse to give, ‘and desires days full of good things’.
11 Come children, listen to me
and I will teach you to respect the Lord.
12 Who is there that enjoys life
and desires days full of good things?
This question is then answered by the refrain: ‘Those who seek the Lord lack nothing that is good.’ This is actually the second half of verse 10.
In the second stanza, the teacher moves on to a warning. This was much easier to translate. In verse 14, I considered using ‘chase after’, instead of ‘pursue’, but that is harder to sing.
13 Guard your tongue from evil
and your lips from speaking lies.
14 Turn away from evil and do good,
Seek out peace and pursue it.
The next stanza was also relatively straightforward, although I had to untangle the word order a bit in verse 16, the second half of which is more literally ‘cut off from the earth their memory’. I first put the objects in the right order: ‘cut off their memory from the earth’ and then decided that replacing ‘cut off’ with ‘removing’ would be clearer.
15 The eyes of the Lord are upon the just;
God’s ears are open to their cry.
16 The Lord’s face is turned against evildoers,
removing their memory from the earth.
In verse 17, most translations use the present tense. But the Hebrew is in the perfect tense, which indicates completeness. I have therefore put this verse in the past tense.
In verse 18 I decided to use, ‘The Lord is close to the broken hearted’, rather than ‘The Lord is near’ (CW), because that only suggests proximity whereas ‘close to’ suggests intimacy. In the second half of the verse, many older translations describe the broken hearted as those who have a ‘contrite spirit’ but a more literal translation is ‘those whose spirit is crushed’. The idea is that their spirit is crushed (literally pulverised) because they are full of remorse.
17 The just cried out and the Lord heard them,
God rescued them from all their troubles.
18 The Lord is close to the broken hearted
and saves those whose spirit is crushed.
The final stanza was relatively straightforward, although I again had to pay attention to word order so that it would sound natural. In verse 19, the Hebrew word order is ‘many afflictions the of the just but from them all rescues them the Lord.’
19 The just suffer many afflictions,
but the Lord rescues them from them all.
20 The Lord guards all their bones,
not one of them is broken.
And so, as is fitting, we move from a family-friendly mood to a more Lenten one. Click through for the full text and music to Psalm 34 for Mothering Sunday. Everything is still available on a 'pay what you think it is worth' basis.