A Second (Brief) Scholion on David and the Psalms

"David said, 'the house that is to be built for the Lord must be exceedingly great....I will therefore make preparation for it.' So David provided materials in great quantity before his death."
1 Chronicles 22: 5

Understanding that the bodies of the faithful are the new temple of the Lord, can this prophecy mean anything other than that we adorn the interior of this new temple in the Spirit by recitation of the 'materials provided' by David, the Psalms?

Scholion on David the King

"David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. When his brothers and the rest of his family heard about it, they came down to him there. He was joined by all those who were in difficulties or in debt, or who were embittered, and he became their leader. About four hundred men were with him. " 1Samuel 22: 1-2

"All those...who were embittered..." Who can this be but those who, with Qoheleth, see that the world involves us relentlessly in 'vanity of vanities'? And what can it mean that we who suffer this bitterness of heart should seek out David as our leader, but that we should seek our solace in the Psalter?

"I believe that the whole of human existence, both the dispositions of the soul and the movements of the thoughts, have been measured out and encompassed in those very words of the Psalter....For whether there was necessity of repentance or confession, or tribulation and trial befell us, or someone was persecuted, or...someone has become deeply sorrowlful and disturbed...for any such eventuality he has instruction in the divine Psalms."
St. Athanasius, Letter to Marcellinus, 30

"If I am disquieted by the urges of anger, avarice, or sadness, and if I am being pressed to cut off the gentlness that I have proposed to myself and that is dear to me, then, lest the disturbance of rage carry me off into a poisonous bitterness, let me cry out with loud groaning, 'O God, incline unto my aid; O Lord, make haste to help me.' [Ps. 60/70: 1]
"We find all of these [human] dispositions expressed in the psalms, so that we may see whatever occurs as in a very clear mirror and recognize it more effectively."
St. John Cassian, Conferences, 10.IX.10, 10.XI.6.

David managed to assemble a disciplined army out of the outcasts of society. We, who are abhorrent to (and thus outcast by) the World, can find a place in the disciplined army of the Son of David, if we allow ourselves to be instructed in self-knowledge and praise of God by David's songbook, the Psalter.

More Adventures in Translation

I often find it helpful to read an Old Testament passage in the Tanakh translation, prepared by the Jewish Publication Society. Translators always bring their presuppositions to the task, and so to read a translation from a Jewish point of view often illuminates a passage that Christian tradition may have rendered opaque through habit.

So we came to this wonderful phrase in the Psalms last night:

"My vows to the Lord I will fulfill
Before all his people.
O, precious in the eyes of the Lord
Is the death of his faithful."

I have been giving the community a series of Chapter conferences on the links between our monastic vows and baptism, which is baptism into the death of Christ. How wonderful suddenly to see vows and death connected, and to see God's pleasure in it.

Nevertheless, this question of why the death of the Lord's faithful should be pleasing has not escaped Christian meditation. As a foreshadowing of Christ's sacrifice, we have no problem with this; Augustine gives a classic explanation of the death being precious because it is Christ's, linking this with an earlier verse aboiut 'raising the cup of salvation', understood as the chalice containing the Precious Blood. How, I wondered, was this passage meant to be understood in its original context, when it would seem that god would prefer the continuation of life of His faithful ones?

So I turned to the Tanakh rendering (rather than immediately to the Hebrew: more anon):

"The death of his faithful ones
is grievous in the LORD's sight."

Hmmm. Unfortunately, there is no footnote explaining this choice, which would seem to require some emendation of the text. Let's look at it in Hebrew:

yaqar b;einei YWHW hammawtah lahsidaiw
(I apologize for the seat-of-the-pants transliteration; we are limited in Blogger)

If this clause appeared on a Hebrew exam, I would render it thus:
"Precious in the eyes of YHWH is the death of his faithful ones."

The BHS gives us a footnote on this passage indicating that yakar is missing from a manuscript from a Cairo Geniza. This merely removes the offending word, but does not replace it with 'grievous'.

After some investigation, fruitless perhaps because my Hebrew isn't all that good, I concluded that there was no emendation; that the translators stretched the meaning of the term like this: precious--costly--difficult--grievous. My intuitions was given confirmation from an odd corner, the New American Bible, which reads, "Too costly in the eyes of the LORD."

Here are a few more renderings to ponder for fun.
RSV: "Precious in the sight of the LORD"
LXX: ""Precious in the sight of the Lord"
Vulgate (from the Hebrew): "Glorious in the sight of the Lord" (Leave it to Jerome to push the sense even further!)
La Bible de Jerusalem (my trans. from the French): "Costly in the eyes of YHWH"

--This last has the virtue of giving cross-references in support of this interpretation, making it sound a bit more plausible to me. The editors connect it to the oft-expressed complaint of the Psalmist that God loses out if he dies, because the dead cannot praise God or make His greatness known.

I'm happy sticking with the precious/glorious death of the faithful one. Any other thoughts?