Thursday, April 25, 2019

Excerpts from "The Psalms, a New Translation"


I have not posted as much as usual as I am currently studying for my finals in accountancy and taxation. Today I went through the following translation of the Psalter:

The Psalms, A New Translation: Translated from the Hebrew And Arranged for Singing to the Psalmody of Joseph Gelineau (London: Fontana Books, 1963)

Here are some excerpts (it follows the “Catholic” enumeration of the psalms, so I have changed them to the enumeration that LDS and others are familiar with [e.g., Psalm 110 is Psalm 109 in the LXX and Vulgate])

What is man that you should keep him in mind, mortal man that you care for him? Yet you have made him little less than a god; with glory and honour you crowned him. (Psa 8:5-6)

God stands in the divine assembly. In the midst of the gods he gives judgment. “How long will you judge unjustly and favour the cause of the wicked? Do justice for the weak and the orphan, defend the afflicted and the needy. Rescue the weak and the poor; set them free from the hand of the wicked. Unperceiving, they grope in the darkness and the other of the world is shaken. I have said to you: ‘You are gods and all of you, sons of the Most High.’ And yet, you shall die like men, you shall fall like any of the princes.” Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you rule all the nations. (Psa 82:1-8)

Then Phinehas stood up and intervened, thus the plague was ended and this was counted in his favour from age to age for ever. (Psa 106:30-31)

The Lord’s revelation to my Master: “Sit on my right: I will put your foes beneath your feet.” The Lord will send from Sion your sceptre of power: rule in the midst of all your foes. A prince from the day of your birth on the holy mountains; from the womb before the daybreak I begot you. The Lord has sworn an oath and will not change. “You are a priest for ever, a priest like Melchizedeck of old.” The Master standing at your right hand will shatter kings in the day of his great wrath. He, the Judge of the nations, will heap high the bodies; heads shall be shattered far and wide. He shall drink from the stream by the wayside and therefore he shall lift up his head. (Psa 110:1-7)