De Nieuwe Psalmberijming: Psalm 151

No, there isn't exactly a Psalm 151, or at least it's not titled such. But an additional one does occur in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) translation of the Old Testament as a Psalm "outside the number," or a supernumerary Psalm, about which I wrote two years ago. It is known especially in the Orthodox tradition, where it is accorded something close to canonical status. If Protestants are at all aware of it, they consider it part of the Apocrypha, those extra books (Judith, Tobit, the Maccabees, &c.) often included in an appendix after the New Testament or between the two testaments.

So I was surprised—pleasantly so, to be sure—to discover that our friends behind De Nieuwe Psalmberijming have recently posted a Dutch metrical versification of this psalm set to the Genevan tune for Psalm 19: Psalm 151. To be clear, the arrangement is not precisely of the version found in the LXX but of a longer version found at Qumran and thus part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This psalm is unusual in being autobiographical in nature and is written in the voice of David himself. The story recounted is the familiar one in which David slays the Philistine warrior Goliath of Gath (1 Samuel 17).

A few years ago, I tried my hand at setting the shorter LXX version to verse, using the Genevan tune for Psalm 7. At the time I wrote only one stanza, but I have now completed the psalm in unrhymed form in three stanzas:

1. Smallest was I among my brothers,
and in my father's house the youngest.
I tended to my father's sheep.
My hands have built a harp for me;
my fingers shaped a lyre to play on.
Who to my Lord will then declare it?
The Lord himself already knows,
for it is he who hears all things.

2. He sent his messenger to find me
and took me from my task as shepherd,
and bringing out his cask of oil
anointed me upon the head.
Although my brothers were my betters,
handsome and tall and full of vigour,
the Lord was not impressed with them
and did not find his chosen one.

3. Then I went out to meet in battle
the Philistine who uttered curses
invoking all his pagan gods,
calling for aid to them in vain.
But then I thwarted his intentions—
taking the sword that he had brandished,
beheading him—and thus removed
my people's shame and sore disgrace.

© 2024 David T. Koyzis