Rising at Midnight: Changing Sleep Patterns and Daily Prayer

Most western adults try to sleep between seven and eight hours a night, with some needing less and others more for proper functioning during the day. However, many of us suffer from insomnia, unwillingly lying awake for hours in the middle of the night. As it turns out, however, fretting about wakefulness seems to be a modern preoccupation. Our ancestors appear to have taken this as a normal state of affairs, as reported here: Your Ancestors Didn’t Sleep Like You.

Your ancestors slept in a way that modern sleepers would find bizarre – they slept twice. . . . The existence of our sleeping twice per night was first uncovered by Roger Ekirch, professor of History at Virginia Tech.

His research found that we didn’t always sleep in one eight hour chunk. We used to sleep in two shorter periods, over a longer range of night. This range was about 12 hours long, and began with a sleep of three to four hours, wakefulness of two to three hours, then sleep again until morning.

References are scattered throughout literature, court documents, personal papers, and the ephemera of the past. What is surprising is not that people slept in two sessions, but that the concept was so incredibly common. Two-piece sleeping was the standard, accepted way to sleep.

Although unfamiliar to us today, a perusal of the Bible appears to support Ekirch's discovery. Here are a few telling references:

But Samson lay till midnight, and at midnight he arose and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two posts, and pulled them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron (Judges 16:3).

At midnight the man was startled and turned over, and behold, a woman lay at his feet! (Ruth 3:8)

At midnight I rise to praise you, because of your righteous rules (Psalm 119:62).

Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning (Mark 13:35).

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them (Acts 16:25).

What did people do with these wakeful hours in the middle of the night? According to Stephanie Hegarty, writing for the BBC,

During this waking period people were quite active. They often got up, went to the toilet or smoked tobacco and some even visited neighbours. Most people stayed in bed, read, wrote and often prayed. Countless prayer manuals from the late 15th Century offered special prayers for the hours in between sleeps.

This answers a question that has puzzled many of us who have studied the ancient patterns of daily prayer practised by God's people of the old and new covenants. Nowadays we have difficulty imagining why anyone would willingly consent to be roused from a supposedly deep slumber by the summons to prayer at such an (if you'll pardon the expression) ungodly hour. Yet they may already have been awake. Both Roman and Orthodox monasteries prescribed a midnight office, with certain psalms assigned to be prayed at that hour. According to chapter VIII of the Rule of St. Benedict:

Making due allowance for circumstances, the brethren will rise during the winter season, that is, from the calends of November till Easter, at the eighth hour of the night [between 12 and 1 am]; so that, having rested till a little after midnight, they may rise refreshed.

Some of us who have suffered from insomnia in the past have already discovered the benefits of prayer during these periods of wakefulness. Perhaps it is time to change our attitude towards these times. Rather than see them as occasions for suffering, at least where obvious illness is not a factor, perhaps we might view them as opportunities to bring our praises, petitions and thanksgivings before a gracious and loving God, who, as the psalmist assures us, neither slumbers nor sleeps (Psalm 121:4) and for whom night is as bright as day (Psalm 139:12).

Le psautier de Genève à Taizé

The Genevan Psalter finds a place even at Taizé. Here is Psalm 92:

Bert Polman (1945-2013)

My former colleague, Bert Polman, died last month after suffering a number of health setbacks in recent years. He taught music at Redeemer University College between 1985 and 2004, when he went to Calvin College to teach. Polman was on the committee that produced the 1987 edition of the Christian Reformed Church's Psalter Hymnal and was highly respected in the field of hymnology. A collection of Polman's liturgical material has now been compiled and posted here: God, We Sing Your Glorious Praises: Hymns and Prayers for Devotional Use. This is from John Witvliet's introduction:

Bert had a particular concern for the faithful use of the biblical Psalms in public worship, and frequently took up the challenge of versifying many lesser-known Psalms for inclusion in volumes of congregational song. These texts reveal Bert’s passionate commitment to the Psalms and a large-scale view of God’s peaceable kingdom which comes through Jesus Christ.

Those of us who knew him personally will miss Bert, yet, as St. Paul the Apostle puts it, we grieve but not as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). May Bert rest in peace until the resurrection, and may God grant comfort to those he has left behind.

Why sing the psalms?

Rob Slane puts forth an argument for what he calls "inclusive psalmody": Why the church needs to sing the Psalms. Here's Slane:

The Psalms, which form the biggest book in the Bible, were clearly meant to be sung, and the Bible gives many exhortations for us to sing them. This is most clearly seen in the Psalms themselves: “Sing to him, sing psalms to him; talk you of all His wondrous works” (Psalm 105:2); “Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to him with psalms.” (Psalm 95:2); “Sing unto the Lord with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm” (Psalm 98:5). . . .

One of the most striking things about the Psalms is that perhaps more than any other book of the Bible, they establish the antithesis, with wickedness on one side and righteousness on the other. This is seen clearly in very first Psalm which divides between on the one hand, the blessed man who “walks not in the counsel of the ungodly” and on the other hand the ungodly man who is “like the chaff which the wind drives away.” The righteous man, it goes on to say, is like “a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season,” in contrast to “the way of the ungodly (which) shall perish.”

Eu Pertenço

This year marks the 450th anniversary of the publication of the widely loved Heidelberg Catechism, commissioned by Elector Frederick III the Pious and written by Caspar Olevianus and Zacharias Ursinus. Back in 1986 I set the text of the first question and answer to verse under the title, I Belong, and composed a tune, HEIDELBERG, in 2001. In 2011 my good friend and collaborator Lucas Grassi Freire wrote an original versification in the Portuguese language in two stanzas to be sung to my tune. The title is Eu Pertenço, and I have just posted it at my website.

We were privileged to have Freire as a guest in our home during his recent visit to North America. We wish him and his new wife Emma God's richest blessings as they begin married life together.

Keep calm and . . .

In recent years "Keep Calm" images have become ubiquitous on the internet, originating in an unused British propaganda poster created just ahead of the Second World War.


Now the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America has come up with a wonderful variation on this theme: KEEP CALM AND Sing the Psalms. Good advice at any time.

Scottish acapella psalmody: Psalm 95

Although my principal interest is in the Genevan Psalms as sung by the continental European Reformed churches, our family are currently members of a church that is closer to the Scottish tradition. When we sing the Psalms, they are usually adapted from the venerable Scottish Psalter of 1650. A choral group associated with the Presbyterian Reformed Church of Charlotte, North Carolina, has posted a number of videos of acapella singing of the Scottish Psalms. Here are Psalms 36 and 95:

Singing the Psalms: Psalm 104 (103 LXX)

Although Reformed Christians are well known for emphasizing psalm-singing, they would do well to remind themselves that other Christians sing the Psalms as well. Here is a lovely Orthodox Christian version of Psalm 104, which is numbered 103 in the Greek-language Septuagint. It is not a metrical version, but it might perhaps be sung by an ordinary congregation, with some training and leadership by a choir.

Singing the Psalms: the 'majority position' in the church

"It's clear, isn't it, from all that we've seen, that the singing of the Psalms was part of the inheritance of all the people of God down through the centuries of the Christian church. It is an indisputable historical fact that the Psalms have dominated the praise of the Christian church for 3,000 years [sic]. . . And so when you take all of the history of the Christian church into account, when you don't just look at the small tiny little sliver of time that we live in today, we discover that the singing of the psalms in praise to God is not an unusual thing. it's not a peculiar thing. It's not an odd thing. . . . This has been the majority position of the Christian church throughout her history."

– Rev. Warren Peel

From church to stage: nurturing a culture of congregational song

While the Bible speaks of praising God with musical instruments (e.g., Psalms 147, 149 and 150), there is an ancient tradition of unaccompanied singing in the church. The Orthodox Churches, Reformed Presbyterians and the Churches of Christ sing a cappella in their worship services. Such groupings out of principle exclude musical instruments from their liturgies. Although many of us would not go quite that far, there is nevertheless much to be said for the argument Justin Taylor, drawing on John Piper and James K. A. Smith, makes in noting “The Difference between Congregational Worship and a Concert.” Taylor quotes Smith:

Christian worship is not a concert. In a concert (a particular “form of performance”), we often expect to be overwhelmed by sound, particularly in certain styles of music. In a concert, we come to expect that weird sort of sensory deprivation that happens from sensory overload, when the pounding of the bass on our chest and the wash of music over the crowd leaves us with the rush of a certain aural vertigo. And there’s nothing wrong with concerts! It’s just that Christian worship is not a concert. Christian worship is a collective, communal, congregational practice–and the gathered sound and harmony of a congregation singing as one is integral to the practice of worship. It is a way of “performing” the reality that, in Christ, we are one body. But that requires that we actually be able to hear ourselves, and hear our sisters and brothers singing alongside us. When the amped sound of the praise band overwhelms congregational voices, we can’t hear ourselves sing–so we lose that communal aspect of the congregation and are encouraged to effectively become “private,” passive worshipers.

It might seem odd to jump from liturgy to the theatre section of the New York Times, but this report is a marvellous witness to the power of a culture of congregational song in one segment of the American church: Something Happened on the Way to Bountiful: Everyone Sang Along. Cicely Tyson currently appears in a Broadway revival of the Horton Foote play, The Trip to Bountiful, playing Mrs. Carrie Watts, a character played so wonderfully by the late Geraldine Page in the screen version nearly three decades ago. At one point Tyson sings Fanny Crosby and Phoebe Knapp’s familiar gospel hymn, “Blessed Assurance.”

From the first note, there’s a palpable stirring among many of the black patrons in the audience, which the play, with its mostly black cast, draws in large numbers. When Ms. Tyson jumps to her feet, spreads her arms and picks up the volume, they start singing along. On some nights it’s a muted accompaniment. On other nights, and especially at Sunday matinees, it’s a full-throated chorus that rocks the theater.

“I didn’t realize they were doing it until someone remarked to me how incredible it was that the audience was joining in,” Ms. Tyson said in a recent interview, referring to her preview performances. “I said, ‘Where?’ I was so focused on what I was doing that I didn’t hear it.”

After the play opened, on April 23, she began tuning in. “At that point, I was relaxed enough to let other things seep in,” she said. “It was absolutely thrilling.”

Thrilling but unexpected. Under normal circumstances the Broadway experience does not include audience participation, even when catchy songs from classic musicals are being performed.

Some decades ago, at a worship conference at Calvin College, I heard someone remark that Christians are among the few people who regularly sing together in a culture which has so thoroughly professionalized the music “industry.” A vibrant culture of congregational song is something we should continue to nurture in our churches lest it be suppressed by the ubiquitous choirs and praise bands that have reshaped the liturgy in so many settings. And if we do so, it may just manage to spill over into the rest of our lives, even into such unlikely venues as Broadway!

Stolz: Psalm 83

Our friend Ernst Stolz continues his recording pilgrimage through the Psalms, with Psalm 83 his latest contribution. I love the organ and recorder combination. However, to be quite honest, I find it difficult to warm up to the crumhorn, whose sound too closely resembles that of a kazoo for my comfort. But let the listener judge for herself.

Fantasia on Psalm 47

The actual title is Fantasy and Fugue on a theme by Goudimel for Organ Duet, by Rachel Laurin, performed last September by Marnie Giesbrecht and Joachim Segger. This was commissioned by the Edmonton RCCO Special Enhancement Fund in Edmonton, Alberta. The title should perhaps reference Louis Bourgeois rather than Claude Goudimel, who merely arranged the melody for the Psalm. An impressive performance all round.

Hungary sings God's praise: Psalms 42 and 138

In Hungary it seems that even Baptists sing the Genevan Psalms, a wonderful example for Baptists elsewhere in the world. Here is the Vox Nova Baptist Male Choir singing two stanzas of Psalm 42 but only one of 138, undoubtedly leaving the audience wishing for more:

Update: Psalm 66

I have just posted my 82nd Genevan Psalm versification, namely, Psalm 66. This psalm is one of thanksgiving and celebration for God's deliverance of his people, especially in the exodus from Egypt, which suggests its use in the Passover liturgy (see verse 6). Indeed, the authors of this wikipedia article tell us that within Judaism Psalm 66 is "recited on the second day of Passover in some traditions and the sixth day in others."

Given the spiritual connections between Passover and the Christian Pascha, it is not surprising that it should find its way into the Easter liturgy of the church as well. In fact, the superscription in the Septuagint translation of the psalm, numbered 65 there, runs: ωδή ψαλμού [αναστάσεως], that is, "an ode of a psalm [of resurrection]," the bracketed word perhaps a later christian liturgical interpolation. Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon observes that the first four lines of this psalm occur in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom for Pascha, which was just celebrated this past sunday in the Orthodox churches. Here is my own versification of verses 8 and 9:

Now bless our God, you earthly peoples;
let all your praise to him resound,
for he keeps us among the living
and placed our feet on stable ground.

In the Genevan Psalter, Psalm 66 shares the same tune with Psalms 98 and 118, the latter of which is also sung at Easter. All three are psalms of celebration breathing a similar spirit of thanksgiving to God for his mercies. The tune is one of the better-known and more durable of the Genevan Psalter, with the eucharistic hymn, Bread of the World in Mercy Broken, being set to it. Revisiting this tune persuaded me to make a very modest alteration of the arrangement. The entire score can be found here.

Psalm 96

I have just posted my own performance of Genevan Psalm 96 on my Byzantine Calvinist youtube channel. At some point I hope to have access to better recording equipment, but this is the best I can do for now, I think.

Recording the Psalms

Our friend Ernst Stolz has now made it as far as Psalm 80, leaving only 70 more to go. If he keeps up the current pace, he will finish recording all the psalms by 8 September 2014. When that day arrives, we should all down a good Dutch beer to celebrate.

Congregational singing: Psalm 138

The Canadian Reformed Churches are virtually the only churches in North America that sing from the Genevan Psalter in its entirety on a regular basis. Frank Ezinga posted this rendition of a CanRef congregation singing Psalm 138, whose tune seems to have been the basis for the familiar hymn melody, MIT FREUDEN ZART. Notice the lag between the organist's entrance and the congregation's entrances at the beginning of phrases. I first encountered this at a Christian Reformed Church in Hamilton 25 years ago, and it drove me crazy at first. My understanding is that this is the way congregations sing in the Netherlands, but it takes getting used to by those unfamiliar with it.

Ali Ufki and the Psalms

The title of this book in Turkish is Ali Ufki ve Mezmurlar, or Ali Ufki and the Psalms. The author, Cem Behar, teaches in the Department of Economics at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. Although his principal professional interests are in economics, and demographic and social history, scrolling down his curriculum vitae reveals an apparently unrelated series of publications on traditional Ottoman and Turkish music, of which this book is one. Such an avocation is nearly as incongruous as an academic political scientist taking an interest in the Genevan Psalms!

This book was published in 1990. Those of us with an ongoing interest in Ali Ufki's work, but who know no Turkish, would love to see it translated into English. Something to hope for in the future.

Singing the Psalms through adversity — in Turkish!

God’s people have sung the Psalms for millennia, especially in dark times when it seems that he has abandoned them. One young man nearly four hundred years ago found himself in a horribly difficult situation. His name was Wojciech Bobowski (c. 1610—1675), a Polish Reformed Christian who at the age of eighteen (or perhaps as old as twenty-eight, depending on the year of his birth) was kidnapped by the Tatars during one of their occasional raids into his homeland. Sources differ on his birthplace, some pointing to the village of Bobowa (hence Bobowski) and others to Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine). During his childhood and early youth, he had come to know the Bible thoroughly and to sing the Genevan Psalms, apparently in his native language.

Because Bobowski was intellectually brilliant and an accomplished musician and linguist, the Tatars sold him as a slave to the Ottoman Sultan. In an act reminiscent of Pharaoh’s promotion of the biblical Joseph, the Sultan recognized his gifts and elevated him to the positions of court musician, treasurer and translator. Bobowski at least nominally converted to Islam and came to be known as Ali Ufki. Yet even if his conversion was genuine, he did not leave behind his interest in, and apparent love for, the Bible, which he translated into the Turkish language, in which it came to be known as Kitabı Mukaddes, or “Holy Book.” Well into the twentieth century Ali Ufki’s Bible was the only translation available in the Turkish language.
Ali Ufki also translated the Church of England’s catechism and the works of Hugo Grotius and Jan Comenius into Turkish. He eventually gained his legal freedom and lived out his years in Egypt as a dragoman, or diplomatic interpreter.

Yet it is his translation of the first fourteen Genevan Psalms into Turkish for which Ali Ufki is best remembered today. As it turns out, the distinctive modal flavor of the Genevan tunes made them well-suited for adaptation to the musical system used in the Ottoman Empire. This enabled him to publish his collection, Mezmurlar (Psalms), in 1665. We do not know whether he ever intended to translate the entire Psalter and, if so, why he stopped at 14. Nevertheless, in the first decade of this century increasing numbers of musical performing groups began paying attention to them.

For example, in 2005 the German musical group Sarband, in conjunction with the King’s Singers, produced a recording titled, Sacred Bridges: Christian, Jewish and Muslim Psalm Settings. Featuring Ali Ufki’s renditions of Psalms 2, 5, 6, 7 and 9, most of which are sung in both French and Turkish, this recording brings together two quite divergent musical traditions, and the overall effect is little short of astounding. Employing Turkish instruments, Louis Bourgeois’ sturdy tunes take on the unmistakable flavour of typical Near Eastern music. In fact, a youtube video performance of at least one of these comes complete with whirling dervishes, an addition that would leave the typical Dutch or Hungarian churchgoer reeling.


Other recent recordings include The Psalms of Ali Ufki and One God: Psalms and Hymns from Orient & Occident.

How well are Ali Ufki’s Psalms known amongst contemporary citizens of the Turkish Republic? Turkey is, of course, a largely Muslim country with a secular constitution enforced by a nervous military fearful of traditional religious loyalties. Christians coexist uneasily under the regime in Ankara. Whether they sing from Ali Ufki’s abbreviated Psalter I cannot say.

However, I received one more surprise in my research into Ali Ufki. When I mentioned his name to my father, who was born in the Greek Orthodox community in Cyprus, he recognized it immediately and said that he knew his work well, especially his Turkish-language Bible.

It is commonly believed that western Asia Minor, heartland of today’s Turkey, was the first place on earth to have a Christian majority during the Roman era. It would be marvelous if God, in his providence, saw fit to use Ali Ufki’s Mezmurlar to advance his kingdom in this once but no longer Christian land.

David T. Koyzis has taught politics at Redeemer University College, Ancaster, Ontario, for just over a quarter of a century, and is the author of the award-winning Political Visions and Illusions. His next book on authority, office and the image of God is forthcoming from Pickwick Publications, a division of Wipf & Stock. This column appeared in the April 8 issue of Christian Courier as part of his monthly “Principalities & Powers” column.

Singing the Psalms through adversity: the Czechs

The following appeared in the 11 March issue of Christian Courier as part of my monthly "Principalities & Powers" column. I have, of course, written on this subject before in this space.

In November 1976 I was privileged to visit what was then called Czechoslovakia and its capital city, Prague. Although the communists were still in power and the weather was cold and gloomy during my stay, I fell in love with this beautiful 14th-century urban jewel, which managed to glitter despite the austere Stalin-era buildings at its periphery. As a child I had grown up hearing one of my mother’s favourite musical pieces, Bedřich Smetana’s Vltava, or Moldau, a tone poem dedicated to the river on which Prague is built. Thus I was thrilled finally to walk across the fabled Charles Bridge spanning the waterway that had inspired the 19th-century composer.

For an amateur musician Prague is a treat, as its residents glory in the music of Antonín Dvořák, Leoš Janáček, Bohuslav Martinů and many others. Stepping into a church one Sunday I heard a soloist singing two of Dvořák’s Biblical Songs, which I had worked up in my undergraduate voice lessons and had come to love. Dvořák wrote these haunting songs based on the Psalms while in the United States, after learning of the death of his friend and conductor, Hans von Bülow, and of the imminent death of his own father back in Europe. Not surprisingly, the grieving composer turned to the Psalms for comfort.

While in Prague I visited more than one antiquarian book shop, purchasing an 1845 Czech New Testament and Psalms. (In retrospect I’ve come to recognize the irony in my taking a Bible out of a communist country when so many other Christians were taking risks to bring Bibles in.)

But it was another purchase at one of those stores that I keep returning to decades later. This was a small, thick volume called Malý Kancionál, or Little Hymnal, published in 1900 by the Unity of the Brethren, also variously known as the Bohemian Brethren, the Moravian Brethren and the Unitas Fratrum, founded by Jan Hus at the start of the 15th century. On the front cover is a stylized illustration of a chalice, a prominent Husite symbol, stemming from their championing the right of the laity to receive the Eucharistic cup along with the bread to which ordinary believers were at that time restricted. Inside the covers I found a complete metrical psalter, along with some 350 hymns – a psalter hymnal, in short. This sat on my shelf for nearly a decade before I discovered the significance of this book. The 150 Psalms are in fact set to the Genevan tunes, as used in the Swiss, Dutch, Hungarian and other Reformed churches. I had had no idea that Czechs had ever sung these, but obviously some did. Where did they come from?

A few years ago I learned the full story. Jiří Strejc (also known as Georg Vetter, 1536-1599), was a Brethren minister born in Zábřeh in Moravia. Strejc studied in Tübingen and Königsberg, where he came into contact with the Psalter of Ambrosius Lobwasser, a professor of jurisprudence at the university there. Strejc was so favourably impressed by Lobwasser’s German translation of the Genevan Psalter that he decided to model his own Czech versification on it, an undertaking he completed in 1587. Strejc is probably best known for his German-language hymn text, Mit Freuden Zart, familiar in English as Sing Praise to God, Who Reigns Above, the tune to which comes from the Bohemian Brethren’s Kirchengesänge (1566) and bears more than a passing resemblance to that of Genevan Psalm 138. Whether Strejc and Lobwasser ever met I have been unable to determine, but the latter’s psalter would come to influence the liturgical life of Czech protestants by way of Strejc.

The modern Czech Republic is a largely secular society with abysmally low rates of church attendance, a condition undoubtedly exacerbated by four decades of communist misrule. Nevertheless, possessing such a rich heritage in Dvořák’s Biblical Songs and Strejc’s metrical psalter, Czech Christians have a solid basis on which to reinvigorate their country’s tepid church life six centuries after Jan Hus’s abortive efforts at reformation. May God grant that Hus’s work finally come to fruition in the churches of the Czech Republic.