Aug 16– Psalms 109 through 119 American Standard Version

 Psalm 109

Aug 16– Psalms 109 through 119 American Standard Version

Summary: 109 God curse my enemies and be nice to me. 110 and 111 God curse the bad people and be nice to the good ones. 112 if you listen to God you'll get blessings. 113 God is so great and powerful. 114 is the escape from Egypt. 115 Jehovah is the only real god. 116 Jehovah is merciful (please keep being merciful). 117 Worship God (but shorter this time). 

    118 is longer and more complex than the others, saying that it doesn't matter if people hate you if you listen to God, because he'll take care of you. But punish you. But not to death.

    119 is just the whole reading rewritten as an acrostic poem.

Commentary: I don't think I've complained about a selection's start/stop points this week, so here goes. Eliot puts us smack in the middle of Psalm 109, and then cuts off midway through 119, despite being under the length target (normally 10-15 pages a day, but a page of poem is less than a page of prose). If he wanted to go short, he could've just hit 110-118, or he could've fit the entirety of all of the selections (119 in particular breaks weird) and gone long. Since the selection is really repetitive, I'd probably have gone with all of one section and just cut the other.

    The front (unselected) half 109 is a god ol' Christian mercy poem, praying for God to ruin your enemy's life.

6 Set thou a wicked man over him;

And let an adversary stand at his right hand.

7 When he is judged, let him come forth guilty;

And let his prayer be turned into sin.

8 Let his days be few;

And let another take his office.

9 Let his children be fatherless,

And his wife a widow.

10 Let his children be vagabonds, and beg;

And let them seek their bread out of their desolate places.

11 Let the extortioner catch all that he hath;

And let strangers make spoil of his labor.

12 Let there be none to extend kindness unto him;

Neither let there be any to have pity on his fatherless children.

13 Let his posterity be cut off;

In the generation following let their name be blotted out.

14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with Jehovah;

And let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

15 Let them be before Jehovah continually,

That he may cut off the memory of them from the earth;

16 Because he remembered not to show kindness,

But persecuted the poor and needy man,

And the broken in heart, to slay them.

17 Yea, he loved cursing, and it came unto him;

And he delighted not in blessing, and it was far from him.

18 He clothed himself also with cursing as with his garment,

And it came into his inward parts like water,

And like oil into his bones.

19 Let it be unto him as the raiment wherewith he covereth himself,

And for the girdle wherewith he is girded continually.

    We don't get super specifics on what the adversaries have done (lied and fought against the speaker somehow) but apparently it's enough that they and their entire family need their lives ruined. The second half (Eliot's selection) is about asking God to take care of you, since you deserve it. Eliot has never shied away from OT revenge God before, so not sure why he skipped it here.

    110 is further classic OT, "God's going to kill everyone" fun stuff, again making the removal of the revenge part of 109 seem kind of pointless. 111 pairs with 110 the way the two halves of 109 do. While he's smiting all the bad people in 110, he's taking care of the good ones in 111.

    We get the return of the one word lovingkindness (chesed) in 118, which both looks silly, and is ridiculous in the context of asking God to destroy your enemies a page ago.

    119 is an acrostic with the first eight letters of the Hebrew alphabet. I have no idea why there's this sudden stylistic departure, but here we are. It's about as long as the entire selection put together, and is basically the same content. I think I'd have just have gone with it, personally. You get to do the interesting format and the same content, instead of multiple incomplete sets that kind of repeat each other.

    So, yeah. Standard Old Testament "fuck everyone but me, I love God, please don't hurt me!" repeated in several combinations.