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Okay, everybody! It's time for your lesson about psalms.
Here is the deal. There are basically two types of psalms: the Psalm That is Actually a Beautiful Piece of Religiously Significant Poetry, hereafter referred to as the Good Psalm, and The Psalm That is Actually an Excuse For David To Be a Whiny Bitch About Things, hereafter the Whiny Bitch Psalm. Oh, I grant you that occasionally a psalm may start out in Good territory and then veer into Whiny Bitch, but the point is that they stick to these two genres. You are not going to find the Action-Comedy Psalm or the Romantic And Erotic Psalm (that would be Song of Solomon, go read it, it's hot).
Here is an example of a Good Psalm: psalm one-thirty-one. It is also a short psalm, which does tend to help--as a general rule of thumb, the longer a psalm is the whinier and bitchier it is.
Psalm 131 (Domine, non est)
O Lord, I am not proud;
I have no haughty looks.
I do not occupy myself with great matters,
or with things that are too hard for me.
But I still my soul and make it quiet,
like a child upon its mothers breast;
my soul is quieted within me.
O Israel, wait upon the Lord,
from this time forth for evermore.
See? Nice. Brief, to the point, well-worded for maximum impact. Child imagery for David, which is a surprisingly effective device with him (see psalm 139 for another example, although be aware that halfway through (verse 18) it changes into a whiny bitch psalm. In fact, I generally like to pretend that psalm 139 does not go past the seventeenth verse, because it is gorgeous up until there).
You want a whiny bitch psalm? I'm putting it under a cut, because it's hella long and also just deeply annoying--yes, David, we know you suck, why do you have to do it so loudly? No wonder Saul was always throwing things at you, we're surprised Jonathan could stand sleeping with you--don't look so surprised, it's completely obvious--&c.
( Psalm 109 (Deus, laudem) )
Ohh, there's so much not to like here. There is some beautiful poetry here; a couple of these lines are really stellar. But it's kind of outweighed by the hypocritical stuff (oh those horrible people who curse people! I hope they burn in hell!) and the whiny WHINY JESUS DAVID JUST SUCK IT UP bitchiness (wah wah I'm hungry and no one likes me) and the sanctimonious beginning (they are so mean to me but I PRAY FOR THEM ANYWAY). I mean, really, David, some of this stuff is correctable, you know. The less you suck the more likely people are to be nice and feed you. Honestly, he reminds me of Ed here. Maybe David would have been more tolerable if someone had put a dead possum in his mailbox.
But you see here the two types of psalm. They're pretty much all like that, with an occasional--and I should have mentioned this before, I'm sure, I'll fix it when I do my senior thesis--deviation into TOTALLY BORING psalmistry. However, boring is boring and provides no entertainment, as least as far as I'm concerned.
To end on a good note, I will leave you with one last example of the type of psalm that must have won Jonathan's heart and somehow balanced for him the fact that otherwise his boyfriend was kind of a loser.
Psalm 42 (Quemadmodum)
( also kind of long )
...I should compile a book. "Psalms That Are Actually Worth Reading". It could be one of those coffee-table books, and have misty Meaningful Illustrations. Would you buy it?
Here is the deal. There are basically two types of psalms: the Psalm That is Actually a Beautiful Piece of Religiously Significant Poetry, hereafter referred to as the Good Psalm, and The Psalm That is Actually an Excuse For David To Be a Whiny Bitch About Things, hereafter the Whiny Bitch Psalm. Oh, I grant you that occasionally a psalm may start out in Good territory and then veer into Whiny Bitch, but the point is that they stick to these two genres. You are not going to find the Action-Comedy Psalm or the Romantic And Erotic Psalm (that would be Song of Solomon, go read it, it's hot).
Here is an example of a Good Psalm: psalm one-thirty-one. It is also a short psalm, which does tend to help--as a general rule of thumb, the longer a psalm is the whinier and bitchier it is.
Psalm 131 (Domine, non est)
O Lord, I am not proud;
I have no haughty looks.
I do not occupy myself with great matters,
or with things that are too hard for me.
But I still my soul and make it quiet,
like a child upon its mothers breast;
my soul is quieted within me.
O Israel, wait upon the Lord,
from this time forth for evermore.
See? Nice. Brief, to the point, well-worded for maximum impact. Child imagery for David, which is a surprisingly effective device with him (see psalm 139 for another example, although be aware that halfway through (verse 18) it changes into a whiny bitch psalm. In fact, I generally like to pretend that psalm 139 does not go past the seventeenth verse, because it is gorgeous up until there).
You want a whiny bitch psalm? I'm putting it under a cut, because it's hella long and also just deeply annoying--yes, David, we know you suck, why do you have to do it so loudly? No wonder Saul was always throwing things at you, we're surprised Jonathan could stand sleeping with you--don't look so surprised, it's completely obvious--&c.
( Psalm 109 (Deus, laudem) )
Ohh, there's so much not to like here. There is some beautiful poetry here; a couple of these lines are really stellar. But it's kind of outweighed by the hypocritical stuff (oh those horrible people who curse people! I hope they burn in hell!) and the whiny WHINY JESUS DAVID JUST SUCK IT UP bitchiness (wah wah I'm hungry and no one likes me) and the sanctimonious beginning (they are so mean to me but I PRAY FOR THEM ANYWAY). I mean, really, David, some of this stuff is correctable, you know. The less you suck the more likely people are to be nice and feed you. Honestly, he reminds me of Ed here. Maybe David would have been more tolerable if someone had put a dead possum in his mailbox.
But you see here the two types of psalm. They're pretty much all like that, with an occasional--and I should have mentioned this before, I'm sure, I'll fix it when I do my senior thesis--deviation into TOTALLY BORING psalmistry. However, boring is boring and provides no entertainment, as least as far as I'm concerned.
To end on a good note, I will leave you with one last example of the type of psalm that must have won Jonathan's heart and somehow balanced for him the fact that otherwise his boyfriend was kind of a loser.
Psalm 42 (Quemadmodum)
( also kind of long )
...I should compile a book. "Psalms That Are Actually Worth Reading". It could be one of those coffee-table books, and have misty Meaningful Illustrations. Would you buy it?
