Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Psalm 40, Hebrews, and Camp Meeting

I was looking at Psalm 40 tonight in relation to Hebrews 10. Any number of "fun" observations here that send some people's understanding of the Bible into a tailspin. So Hebrews reads Psalm 40:6-8 on the lips of Christ as he enters the world. I have no problem with this whatsoever. What is interesting is 1) the author would not have put the whole psalm on the lips of Christ, since in Psalm 40:12 the original speaker of the psalm admits his iniquities and 2) the author uses a text of the Septuagint that had changed from the original Hebrew (which says "my ears you have dug out" rather than "a body you have prepared"). My hunch is that the author was quite aware that he was hearing a parabolic meaning to the text, although he probably did not know about the textual issue.

But all that aside, I was excited to find an old camp meeting song in some of the first few verses of the psalm. I've joked about making a CD of me singing all the choruses, hymns, and camp meeting tunes I know based on the psalms: "Ken Sings the Psalms." Do you know this one? I'll try it from memory so may mess up a little:

I cried to the Lord 'neath Jehovah's dread frown
And there to the Lord where my sin brought me down
I cried to the Lord from the deep miry clay
Who tenderly brought me out to golden day

He brought me out of the [deep] miry clay
He set my feet on the [solid] rock to stay
He puts a song in my [happy] soul today
A song of praise, Hallelu-jah!

Gives me goose bumps to sing it! I swear that music can be as much a means of grace as the official sacraments.

3 comments:

Keith Drury said...

In my neck of the woods the second line had me in a pit...

My heart was distressed ’neath Jehovah’s dread frown,

And low in the pit where my sins dragged me down;

I cried to the Lord from the deep miry clay,

Who tenderly brought me out to golden day.

He brought me out... & etc.

Ken Schenck said...

I'm sure that's right. I was doing it from memory.

S.I. said...

I KNOW THAT HYMN! I'm pretty proud of that fact,