Benjamin Williams, Book of Psalms

Google Books has posted a copy of Benjamin Williams' Book of Psalms as Translated, Paraphrased, or Imitated by some of the most eminent English Poets, which include Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, whose "New Version" Psalter was published in 1696, and the great hymn writer Isaac Watts. This scanned volume was published in 1781 in Salisbury, England, and even includes the price of four shillings.

What is notable about this volume is a preface by the editor titled, "A Dissertation on Scripture Imprecations," undertaking to grapple with the darker texts in which the psalmist calls God's wrath down on his enemies. Williams takes a quite different approach to what I have written here: GOD AS JUDGE: PRAYING THE IMPRECATORY PSALMS. He believes that the imprecations in the Psalms are largely the work of faulty translators of the original Hebrew text, in which the imperative mood is routinely substituted for the future tense. The original authors were simply predicting what would happen to the wicked rather than wishing it upon them. I am no expert in Hebrew, but given that this was written nearly two and a half centuries ago and that no credible biblical scholars that I am aware of seem to have adopted this interpretation since then, we are probably justified in viewing this as an interesting example of someone struggling with texts that made him uncomfortable.

Not surprisingly, then, Williams used Watts' abbreviated and christological versification of Psalm 109, omitting the lengthy imprecations altogether and ending thus:

Their Malice rag'd without a Cause,
Yet with his dying Breath
He pray'd for Murd'rers on his Cross,
And blest his Foes in Death.

Let not his bright Example shine
In vain before our Eyes;
May we like him to Peace incline,
And love our Enemies.