"The Message: Psalms," by Eugene H. Peterson (NavPress, 199 pp.; $15, hardcover; $10, paper). Reviewed by Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr., assistant professor of Old Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.
Following the same approach he employed in his folksy and informal rendering of the New Testament ("The Message"), Eugene Peterson has produced a paraphrase of the Psalms. Peterson writes in his introduction that "the Psalms in Hebrew are earthy and rough. They are not genteel." Allowing that the most widely used English versions of the Psalter are grammatically accurate, he believes that "as prayers, they are not quite right." Peterson explains that his paraphrase is intended to help ordinary people pray along with the psalmists "in the kind of language most immediate to them."
And one does discover renderings here that capture the vividness of the biblical text. For example, Psalm 44:12 laments, "You sold your people at a discount—/ you made nothing on the sale." Psalm 59:8 affirms, "But you, Yahweh, break out laughing; / you treat the godless nations like jokes."
Psalm 110:1 reveals, "The word of Yahweh to my Lord: / 'Sit alongside me here on my throne / until I make your enemies a stool for your feet.' "
These renderings are both faithful and effective. And throughout his version of the Psalms, one senses that Eugene Peterson must be both an understanding pastor and an interesting preacher.
But does a biblical version vindicate itself by helping people to pray? Is there not an antecedent and equally pastoral consideration, namely, consistent faithfulness to the meaning of the biblical text? While "The Message: Psalms" may help people in relation to God by encouraging frank praying, it may also hinder people in relation to the biblical text by encouraging inaccurate reading.
How so? First, some renderings are misleading. Psalm 2:7 ("You are my son, today I have begotten you") is paraphrased "You're my son, / and today is your birthday." The rest of the verse has Yahweh offering the son the nations as his birthday present. But Yahweh's "begetting" of the son in this verse is figurative for the royal son's installation into office at his coronation. A modern birthday party is 3,000 years and half a world away from the authentic sense of the text.
Other renderings are unclear. When Psalm 23:3 ("He restores my soul") appears as "He puts me together," I do not know what that language means. Here and elsewhere, Peterson's colloquial language is too ambiguous to be helpful. Still other renderings sound more like sermon illustrations than biblical meanings. Psalm 19:4 ("In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun") reads, "God makes a huge dome for the sun—an astrodome!" There are other problems with "The Message: Psalms" of a technical nature that cannot be discussed here.
But apart from debatable wordings here and there, one must ask a larger question concerning Peterson's entire enterprise. Is bringing the language of Holy Scripture down to the level of common American discourse a worthy goal to begin with?
Lovers of the Hebrew Psalter will agree with C. S. Lewis's observation that the Psalms evoke both raw emotional intensity and high liturgical sublimity. They conjure up in our imaginations not only the cries of elemental human passion but also the voices of an Anglican boys' choir.
I believe that the choirboys should be allowed to be heard in our reading of the Psalms. The Hebrew Psalter is intense but not pedestrian. What is there in the English language more elegant, more sublime, than Psalm 23 in the King James Version, a literal translation? Being earthy and rough may feel psychologically authentic to us modern people, but Bible translators should risk sounding remote when biblical beauty demands it. It then becomes the responsibility of pastors to lift modern people up to the level of Scripture, so that they can love higher and grander things than modernity has conditioned them to expect or even desire.
At a time when American Christianity is rapidly adjusting to popular culture, when just about the only thing left that might rescue us from its banalities is the Bible, is it helpful to put a spin on the biblical text that accommodates popular culture even further? The problem with our more formal versions of the Psalms is not that they cannot help us to pray, but that they call us to a depth of prayer that our modern superficiality has habituated us not to identify with.
"The Message: Psalms" is well-intentioned, at points enjoyable, and even ingenious in a homespun sort of way. But does it convey the meaning that the psalmists intended? Does its Norman Rockwell style lead us into the spiritual profundities they meant for us to discover? And if not, then does it really help us to pray as the psalmists prayed?
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