h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Psalm 23 - A743564
Author: Just zis Guy, you know? † Cyclist [A690575] - U54363

In praise of Crimond (the tune not the town).

>the Israelites spent much time in the desert

This is an anachronism in relation to the Psalms. They had long since stopped wandering by then, and were busy producing milk and honey in the fertile valleys, and fighting Og. 'Cup' always refers to wine, not water. Wine had (still has, of course) a spiritual connotation, like the oil used for anointing. David is not talking about being an honoured guest, but about kingship. That is why Jesus is called the Christ, which means Messiah, which means anointed.

>Psalms were intended as short devotional readings to be contemplated by the reader.

Not in David's time - when were you thinking of?

You need to replace the tags with , using for line breaks.

Since you mention the Psalms being the common heritage of Christians and Jews, there's rather a fine example of this in the fairly well-known setting of Ps.23 in Bernstein's Chichester Psalms. Written for the Anglican Church but in the original Hebrew text.

Thanks for the Chichester Psalms reference - I'd forgotten about that. You are right of course about the desert wandering being in the past - but the references I have suggest that the overflowing cup was a reference to springs not wine (which is the thing I also normally associate with cups in the Bible). I defend the reading comment on the basis of having written the last paragraph at 11pm so I could save the thing and go to bed

Please don't take this the wrong way - being told that I "need" to use blockquote and BR tags gets my back up a bit. I have written nearly sixty Edited Entries by now - I am not averse to a gentle reminder, of course, but it is a stylistic point after all. Not that I am immune from slipping into unintended dogmatism from time to time, even after nearly forty years on the planet.

When I mentioned your use of it wasn't a stylistic point at all, or some dogma coming from me, just a question of what I believe to be the editorially preferred use of GuideML. That was the force of 'need', ie it's what I believe the h2g2 editors expect and require. But perhaps I am wrong about that - I defer to your vastly greater experience of writing Guide Entries. Obviously if you've got away with using like that in the past, you may well do so again. What I would say is that in my opinion it makes the entry more difficult to read, not least because in my browser it means the entry doesn't fit the screen and you have to keep scrolling to the right and back.

I don't dispute that BLOCKQUOTE is better - and thanks for the reminder. You will see that things are much shinier now

Interesting entry. In Quaker meeting today, I had the descant to the Crimond tune running through my head, together with the words:

A table Thou hast furnished
In presence of my foes
My head Thou dost with oil anoint
And my cup overflows.

For me, this meant that in spite of difficulties with other people, or however much other people seem to have, I should remember the abundance I have and realised the blessings I have. It's a wake-up call to concentrate on the blessings and not on perceived lack. It's about being content and not envious or covetous.

Now it's in an entry!

Blessings.

We're doing Brother James's Air for a wedding on 11th May - very nice. Only one bass in the choir (me) so a bit of pressure.

I'm sure you've a good strong voice! Good luck, though! (It's normally the tenors who are in short supply.)

True. Says a Tenor running for cover.

BTW glad to see you did mention the Scottish Psalter. There's also a number of modern settings for this Psalm one by Ian White and another by what's his name. My mum would kill me as this is one they always end up doing. It'll come evntually

I was taught that this was - literally - a sheperd's prayer. The tradition is that David was a shepherd after all. Yes, it is a metaphor, and a good one.

The reading I was given is as follows:

1. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
Obvious

2. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
Obvious. Mind you, meadows are bad for sheeps feet - they suffer in the wet. (Hence the line in 'Little Boy Blue' - 'The sheep in the meadow, the cows in the corn' - the sheep were getting bad feet, and the cattle were eating the harvest).

3. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Restoreth my soul - no metaphor
Tha paths of righteousness - ie: the safe paths, where sheep will not stumble, and where they are protected from predators

4. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
I was told that there is no concept of eternal life in Judaism - no pearly gates, no day of judgement, no heaven or hell.
I will fear no evil - obvious
rod and staff - the shepherd's crook, which is used to pull sheep out of danger. The crook still manifests itself today in the form of the bishop's crozier.


5. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
This is where you have to start taking the analogies in trust. The theory I was given was that the shepherd would gather good grass (as opposed to things like ragwort) and give it to the sheep. The poisonous weeds were the enemies. This seems tortuous to me - the whole point of grazing animals is that they graze. The oil - as I was told - was something like citronella which would keep away flies. Again I don't see a bronze age shepherd worrying too much about flies bothering the sheep. The cup in this context would be a spring of clear water.


6. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
And finally, my mother had a friend who assumed that 'Goodness' and 'Mercy' were a couple of boarder collies - but that takes the theory a tad too far.

My mother had a book of alternative versions of the 23rd Psalm, I cannot remember what they all were, but I do remember that the Sailor's version had the Pilot steering a course for the harbour, and the rest used other metaphors as appropriate.

I am not sure I would agree that the Psalms are prayers. Some of them are clearly songs 'Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp. Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.' Others strike me as poems and still others as meditations.

This entry is good - all of the above is comment rather than suggestion.

All the best

Ben

Rutter!!!

I knew I would get it eventually.

We have three tenors, but I can drown the lot of them

Not so eventually either - "round up the usual suspects" as they say. Which would be Rutter and Willcocks in this case

Rutter! I used to hate his stuff - so twinky.

There aare loads of gentle parodies of this. My favourite starts:

The Ford is my motor
I shall not want .. another.

and includes 'It anointeth my face (or was it my feet) with oil.

Yea though I run down the valleys, I am towed up the hills, etc.


Another goes:

The Union is my shepherd. I shall not work, etc.

Oh, couldn't resist it. Here is the Scabs Psalm:

http://cpsu-spsf.asn.au/campaigns/corr_services/20020307_64.html

Would it be worth giving the words in the original Hebrew? It is interesting to note that it is much more compact and poetical in Hebrew, since that it what it was written in. As already pointed out, this psalm appears in one movement of Chichester Psalms, so you could get the words from there, but I'm not sure if that is the whole of the psalm or only an excerpt. In Chichester Psalms, the words are written in our Roman Alphabet rather than in the Hebrew script - essential for h2g2.

Ps 23 is given in its entirety in Chichester Psalms. I have the score so could provide the transliterated Hebrew text if you can't get it elsewhere.


Ps 23 is a 'straight' setting by Bernstein. It's rather more instructive to compare the Hebrew of Ps 2 'Why do the nations so furiously rage together?' with Bernstein's setting of it, because he extracts individual syllables for dramatic effect, which are a nonsense in Hebrew but great fun to sing. If you see only the vocal score but not the actual text you probably don't realise what's going on. I think he does that as a paradigm of the Divine laughter mentioned in the psalm, where the Lord is sitting in his heavens ROFL.

La!




Ma!

Yes please!