All of which has nothing to do with the purpose of this post, other than to explain my current offline forays into footnotes. In reviewing the texts about Leviathan and Behemoth in Job 41, I noticed a footnote for Job 41:18 that read:

Lit. eyelids of the morning.

Cool image! But what did they translate that as in the NEB text?

His sneezing sends out sprays of light,
and his eyes gleam like the shimmer of dawn.

Urk. Am I guilty of functional heresy to prefer the literal idiom? Preserved in the KJV, NASB, ESV, NRSV et al., the personification of “the early beams of the dawn as the cover of night lifts” (NET tn), works well with the depiction of the mythological Chaos as a crocodile (or hippo, if you so prefer). Don’t you think?

The last personality test meme I came out as a Mystic… what will it be this time?

Peter has passed along a link to a personality survey by the Enneagram Institute that scores us in nine different categories. Whereas Peter scored highest as an “Investigator”, my results show me to be a “Type Nine: The Peacemaker”.

Nines are accepting, trusting, and stable. They are usually creative, optimistic, and supportive, but can also be too willing to go along with others to keep the peace. They want everything to go smoothly and be without conflict, but they can also tend to be complacent, simplifying problems and minimizing anything upsetting. They typically have problems with inertia and stubbornness.

At their Best: indomitable and all-embracing, they are able to bring people together and heal conflicts.

The more detailed description begins… “We have called personality type Nine The Peacemaker because no type is more devoted to the quest for internal and external peace for themselves and others. They are typically “spiritual seekers” who have a great yearning for connection with the cosmos, as well as with other people. They work to maintain their peace of mind just as they work to establish peace and harmony in their world. The issues encountered in the Nine are fundamental to all psychological and spiritual work—being awake versus falling asleep to our true nature; presence versus entrancement, openness versus blockage, tension versus relaxation, peace versus pain, union versus separation.”

Sounds like the Mystic to me… nice to know that these tests are at least somewhat consistent!

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the pledge of a good conscience toward God) through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 3:21)

Of course, this is preserving the KJV’s translation of this phrase, something that none of the other translations I consulted do. Most use a variant of “[...] not as a removal of dirt from the body [...]“, which clarifies that Peter is not talking about a physical washing in comparing baptism to Noah’s salvation through the flood in vss. 18-20.

[Aside: the NET Bible's footnotes clarify that there are no moral connotations to "flesh" (Gk. sarx) here, despite Strong's definition of the Greek rhupos ("dirt, i.e. (morally) depravity:-filth"), but whether a less resourceful reader would be confused and substitute perhaps "sinful nature" (cf. NIV) in their reading, I couldn't say.]

The HCSB has been noted for its modern English grammar, compared to the ESV for example, but it’s worth also noting that it retains that touch of the traditional by preserving or recalling the KJV either through small phrases like this one or as alternative translations in its frequent footnotes.

There has been quite a bit of discussion of Psalm 51 lately, especially on Better Bibles by Suzanne, David et al., so I thought I would add one more late voice to the chorus. A few days ago, I received my copy of Seerveld’s translation of some three dozen or so psalms and other passages from the OT and NT.

Those who read my post on Seerveld’s translation of Song of Songs will know that his approach to translation is to explore as fully as possible the original message and then present it in American English in “a format that is accessible today but may also seem a touch quaint or unusual in the current tongue, so one catches a little of the otherness in what is being articulated anew.” (p.xxiii)

Included in the present collection is Seerveld’s take on Psalm 51:

God! be merciful to me in your covenantal love!
In your boundless motherly compassion undo my violating act!
Scrub me utterly clean of my guilty wickedness!
Make me pure from my wasteful sin!

Yes, I know intimately my dirty deed myself, I do.
My spoilsome sin is ever in front of my face.
I have sinned against you; especially against you have I sinned, O God.
I did evil while you looked on -
You are perfectly just in your accusation;
You are utterly right in your judgment.
It’s true, I was born perverted.
When my mother conceived me, I was already crooked.
I know, you want truth in the gut:
quietly now teach me that wisdom deep down, O God.

Purge me with hyssop that I become pure;
Wash me until I become whiter than snow.
Make me cheerful and happy again.
Let my very bones you have broken move joyfully once more -
Turn your face away, O God, from my wasteful sin.
Wipe out all my dirty deeds.

Create in me a clean heart, O God!
Give me a steady, fresh spirit inside.
Do not expel me from your presence.
Do not take your Holy Spirit away from me!
O God, bring back to me the joyful experience of your help again.
Prop me up – make me a willing obedient spirit.

Then I will teach rebels your ways of doing things
so that sinners will be turned around to come back to you -
Deliver me, God, O God of my salvation, undo the blood-guilty deeds!
so that my tongue may jubilate at your trustworthily coming through.
O, my Lord, let me lips be opened
so that my mouth may shout out your praise!
A sacrifice is not what you want
- even if I were to give you a burnt offering
it would not smell sweet to you.
My offering, O God, is a chastened spirit.
O God, a chastened, yielded heart you will not despise, will you?

Do good to Zion in your grace, O God.
Rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
Then you shall take pleasure in offerings of right-doing,
in offerings that go completely up in smoke, the “total” kind of offerings
- that’s the festive time when people will offer whole young bulls on your altar!

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I have mentioned Calvin Seerveld’s translation and study of The Song of Songs several times on this blog, as well as in the comments on many others. I was introduced to Seerveld’s work five years ago in the midst of a two-year Bible study and found it utterly fascinating. His approach blows the cobwebs off the doors of traditional allegorical interpretation, restoring the positive and negative characteristics of physical love and relationship in a completely Biblical context.

In the sections to follow, I will attempt to summarize the key approaches that Seerveld takes. I am not a Hebrew scholar, so I will steer clear of his extensive discussion of the structure of the underlying Masoretic text and leave it to others to discuss his application from a textual viewpoint.

Synopsis. The subtitle of Seerveld’s book is “In Critique of Solomon” and the title character fares poorly in this translation. Rather than Solomon the Lover as most interpretations have it, Seerveld casts Solomon as a lascivious old lecher, more enamored with the lusts of physical flesh than the beauty of love.

“A beautiful virgin in love with a shepherd is brought away from home to the king’s court against her will in order to become another one of Solomon’s wives. Despite Solomon’s declarations of affection, his royal promises, and even the harem women’s exhortations to join herself to the blood line of David, the Shulammite maiden remains true to her betrothed lover [who] searches for her far away. The mighty potentate finally leaves the scene rebuffed, and the lover and Shu come back home to renew their vows near the sweet-smelling mountains.” (p.19)

Obviously the greatest difference between Seerveld and mainstream translations is the recasting of the relationship between the Shulammite and Solomon from lover/beloved to faithful maiden/lecher. The separation of the traditional male voice into the virtuous shepherd lover and the lustful old king is dramatic and utterly natural the more one becomes acquainted with the translation.

Translation. Seerveld states that his approach to the text is literal, perhaps even hyper-literal. He writes that:

The translation presented here is so literal, in fact, that when the Hebrew verb is feminine a woman says it, and when the verb has a masculine ending it is spoken by a man; when the verb is a plural form, several voices say it. [....]

Literal translation is more than substituting brute American English letters for untouched Semitic vowels and consonants. Literal translation means getting across exactly, in one’s native tongue, what is literally there in the strange, original text. This translation tries to do that, as no official one does, by tenaciously showing the constant shift in speakers’ gender and number, and by pointing up in passing the rich variety of song, poetry, dream, dialogue and action embedded so effortlessly in this artistically composed biblical text. (p.10)

In essence, Seerveld has cleverly adopted “literal translation” as a byword for dynamic translation, using the idioms of the receiver langauge to show what was meant in the original text. However, Seerveld goes beyond just a textual translation, however, and employs a variety of literary-dramatic devices to present the text, including song, verse and stage cues. Seerveld’s translation is noted as an arrangement for “oratorio performance”, placing more import on the work as a song than as literature.

Excerpt. Any discussion of Seerveld’s work would be meaningless without presenting the translation itself. In many ways, this is almost impossible, since as a drama, it forms a cohesive whole not easily broken apart to be studied verse by verse. That said, I will take Seerveld’s dramatic organization and present here the fifth movement, or rhapsody, which corresponds to Song of Songs 6:4-8:4. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to compare these verses with the traditional translation of their choice.

Obviously I am not able to reproduce the actual musical settings presented in the book; you will have to be satisfied with my annotations of what is sung vs. spoken.

Implications. Either as a hymn of praise and love for God’s people Israel, a history of God’s redemptive dealings with Israel, or the mutual love of God and Church, “Song of Songs” has been largely interpreted as allegory by both Christian and Jewish interpreters. According to Seerveld, modern scholarship mainly sees Song of Songs as a collection of ancient Near Eastern erotic and profane love lyrics, which casts doubts on the suitability of the book’s inclusion in the divine canon, which leads back to the need for allegorical explanations.

Instead, Seerveld boils down the Song of Songs to this wisdom statement: “you cannot buy love”.

It must come naturally, like buds blossoming on an apple tree, or it had better not come at all. Love can be waked, but not manufactured. Love can be tantalizingly enjoyed, but not professionally practiced. Love is not a prize to be somehow won, but is a gift possibly to be received. Built into love is an unstudied, unable to be compelled spontaneity. (p.71)

Song of Songs becomes God’s revelation of the beauty of fidelity in the face of compulsion. It is breathlessly about physical love, not an antiseptic allegorical theological tale. It is divinely profane without apology for our modern sensibilities. It is painstakingly honest in its presentation of passion and perversity.

God is love and the image of our Creator is found in the beauty of love, not the perversion of lust. Song of Songs is God’s song of love to us, a song of the natural beauty of physical love between His created lovers.

* * * * *

Final thoughts. Lest you think that Seerveld is some crackpot without depth behind his dramatic work, I want to assure you that I’ve only scratched the surface of his book. The translation and notes that I’ve referenced make up only half of the book. I will perhaps return with another post on the supporting material, including Seerveld’s notes on unity and structure of the Hebrew, oratorios, dating and authorship, difficult phrases and textural variants. Even better would be someone with knowledge of Hebrew to examine this same material.

P.S. For those interested in more from Seerveld, I am waiting for his recent volume on Psalms to arrive. It contains translations of three dozen psalms and several passages from elsewhere in the Bible, including this take on the Beatitudes (audio link).

David Ker tagged me and several others with a “weird worship” meme, which evidently focuses on bizarre worship song lyrics. In addition to David’s original post, there have been a number of great replies, including this from Peter and this from Eclexia and now this from Doug. I’m not sure that I’ll come up with five, but I’ll try.

#1: Leading off is one that has bothered me from the first time I heard the song. It’s from the group Avalon; their song “I Don’t Want To Go” includes this chorus:

I don’t want to go somewhere
If I know that You’re not there
‘Cause I know that me without You is a lie
And I don’t want to walk that road
Be a million miles from home
‘Cause my heart needs to be where You are
So I don’t want to go

First off, is there anywhere that God is not? So the whole premise is faulty. But let’s say that for some reason, it was valid. Isn’t the heart of evangelism proclaiming Christ where the gospel has not been presented? So, basically, this song is saying “No, God, I don’t want to go proclaim your gospel. Let me stay home and sing comfy praise songs”. Ouch. It doesn’t help that the music is arranged as a power ballad, with the “emotional quotient” set at 11.

#2: Because no worship song meme would be complete without a “Jesus is my boyfriend” (JIMB) reference, I offer the following from Lenny LeBlanc, whose music I normally enjoy. The musical premise of this one is great and if you don’t listen to the lyrics, it’s a great song to bop along with in the car. However, about those lyrics…

I’m crazy no mistakin’
My heart’s been overtaken
Hopelessly in love with You Jesus
Gone off the deep end
Out of my head
Over the edge I’m truly devoted
When it comes to loving You
I have to say
I’m crazy

Crazy indeed. And just a little bit weird sung by the silver goatee’d Lenny.

#3: As an antidote to the JIMB of “I’m Crazy”, I turn to Billy and Cindy Foote’s new song “If I Say I love You“:

If I say I love You
I will do what You say
I will obey You and surrender all
If I say I’m Your friend
I will keep Your commands
I will obey You and surrender all

What, personal responsibility and accountable obedience in a worship song? Weird indeed, pretty cool. Calvinists will probably scream that all those “I will…” lines is putting human response over the work of Spirit. Heh, heh… gotta like those Pelagian worship songs.

#4: I wonder… if Thomas Ken hadn’t felt the need to write no less than 11 (!) verses to his 1674 hymn “Awake, My Soul, and with the Sun“, would he have come up with something a little less goofy than the rhyming in his last verse?

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

How many millions of children and liturgical chanteuses (both male and female) hence have needed the theological correction that Casper is not part of the Trinity? Which is ironic because Ken wrote in a time “when the es­tab­lished church be­lieved on­ly Script­ure should be sung as hymns-with an em­pha­sis on the Psalms. Some con­sid­ered it sin­ful and blas­phe­mous to write new lyr­ics for church mu­sic, akin to ad­ding to the Script­ures.”

#5: Finally, this one by Michael Card (no, not Amy Grant) is weird probably just for me and me alone. Certainly thousands, if not millions, of others enjoy singing this song, if their personal testimony to me is to be believed. For me, it’s just weird.

El-Shaddai, El-Shaddai (God Almighty, God Almighty)
El-Elyon na Adonai (God most high, O Lord)
Age to age, You’re still the same
By the power of the name.
El-Shaddai, El-Shaddai (God Almighty, God Almighty)
Erkamka na Adonai (I love you, O Lord)
We will praise and lift You high
El-Shaddai (God Almighty)

With that, my contribution to the meme is complete. Now I’m supposed to tag five more people and have them contribute. First, as one of few musical bloggers I know, I tag Greg Willson. For introducing me to the decidedly not weird Sovereign Grace Music, I tag Steve Douglas. For confusing me with their names, I tag Bryan L. and Bryan Lilly. Finally, to get more content on his new blog, Genesis III, I tag Byron S. So for the new victims, please give five examples of Weird Worship and tag five more people to do the same.

I was particularly struck by the differing types of poetic structure each of these translation uses. The NRSV uses “deliver/deliverance” to frame the verse:

Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.

The NJB ends each line with a variant of “save”:

Deliver me from bloodshed, God, God of my salvation,
and my tongue will acclaim your saving justice.

Finally, the REB slips into what feels like a stream of consciousness word trail in the first part of the verse:

My God, God my deliverer, deliver me from bloodshed,
and I shall sing the praises of your saving power. (REB)

There’s a directness to this last example that is quite appealing – the words just pour out in rhythm as you read them. I can feel this one as a spoken prayer, more than poetic verse.

John 15:1-6 (Revised English Bible):

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. Any branch of mine that is barren he cuts away; and any fruiting branch he prunes clean, to make it more fruitful still. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Dwell in me, as I in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself, but only if it remains united with the vine; no more can you bear fruit, unless you remain united with me.

I am the vine; you are the branches. Anyone who dwells in me, as I dwell in him, bears much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not dwell in me is thrown away like a withered branch. The withered branches are gathered up, thrown on the fire, and burnt.

I found the photo above (source: Corbis) to be a haunting companion to this verse – the image of barren vines lined up like a row of crosses in the moonlight is quite striking.

An unmarried man is concerned about the things of the Lord – how he may please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the things of the world – how he may please his wife – and he is divided. (1 Corinthians 7:32-34a, HCSB)

I’ve recently found myself in the awkward position of having to say “no” several times to opportunities to play with the worship band and orchestra at church. It’s not that I don’t want to play, I do. I just can’t. Either my wife is sick and needs help with the kids, or the kids are sick (they all suffer from environmental allergies that leave them with colds more often than not). Or the rehearsals fall on weekday evenings when my wife is working and schedules can’t be easily rearranged. Or… or… or…

Most recently I was asked to play this Sunday with the orchestra. However, here in the U.S., Sunday is Mother’s Day and my wife is spending the afternoon with her mom and sister, which leaves the morning for our family (including going to church). Logistically, I could slip out of the house early, play at the first service as requested, and be home before she leaves, but that leaves no time for the boys and I to honor her as Mom, and makes her solely responsible for the kids on the one morning when she should be pampered instead.

Am I divided, as Paul writes? You bet. I want to please the Lord with an offering of worship. And I want to please my wife by honoring her. Am I a heathen for putting “the things of the world”, e.g. my wife, before serving the Church?

Perhaps I should just quit serving the Church with my horn and serve my wife as I serve Christ. Oh wait, I can’t serve Christ because I’m honoring my wife. Ack!

[1] Therefore, while the promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear so that none of you should miss it. [2] For we also have received the good news just as they did; but the message they heard did not benefit them, since they were not united with those who heard it in faith [3] (for we who have believed enter the rest), in keeping with what He has said:

So I swore in My anger,
they will not enter My rest. [Ps 95:11]

And yet His works have been finished since the foundation of the world, [4] for somewhere He has spoken about the seventh day in this way:

And on the seventh day
God rested from all His works. [Gn 2:2]

[5] Again, in that passage He says, “They will never enter My rest.” [Ps 95:11] [6] Since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news did not enter because of disobedience, [7] again, He specifies a certain day-today-speaking through David after such a long time, as previously stated:

Today if you hear His voice,
do not harden your hearts. [Ps 95:7-8]

[8] For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken later about another day. [9] A Sabbath rest remains, therefore, for God’s people. [10] For the person who has entered His rest has rested from his own works, just as God did from His. [11] Let us then make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall into the same pattern of disobedience.
- Hebrews 4:1-11 (HCSB)

The thought that struck me was that God rested on the seventh day from his work and He is still described as resting in the days of David (Psalms) and even in the days of the author of Hebrews and presumably even today. This spawned a flood of questions and tangential thoughts that I have no answer for:

Are we then living within the context of the seventh day of Genesis? How does that fit with a literal reading of Genesis 1? What does that mean in terms of how we view God having an active or passive role in the unfolding of our history? Does God resting mean that he has removed himself from interacting with His creation? Did he wind up Creation’s toy top motor and now watches as it winds down, wobbling across the pages of time?

According to the author of Hebrews, God the Creator’s work has been done “since the foundation of the world”. Jesus the Son’s work was accomplished on the Cross and He now sits (rests) at the right hand of the Father, with all his enemies under his feet. The Spirit of New Life’s work is being accomplished in/through the Church. If the Spirit is still working, can a triune God truly be said to be resting?

How does our view of God’s present rest affect our view of what life/work/rest on the future physical New Earth will be like? Will it be a celebration? an eternal nap? or tireless, joyful new work?

For us here and now, the Sabbath rest is a pause, a break in daily activities to stop and remember the blessings of God. The Sabbath was not eternal, it was always followed again by work. Will God’s 7th-day Sabbath end when Creation is redeemed? Is God’s Sabbath the millennium? Is the final judgment the end of God’s rest?

Just a few questions for a Monday morning…

* * * * *

HT: At about the same time that I was reading Hebrews 4, Greg Willson posted some thoughts on this same passage.