* Walter R. Brooks, Freddy Goes to Florida. This is the first of the Freddy the Pig books, and in fact this one doesn’t focus on Freddy and originally didn’t have him in the title. But somehow Freddy took over. I read many of these as a kid, came upon them again more recently, and now have started reading them to my daughter. Lots of fun.

* Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part Two: From Noah to Abraham: Genesis VI 9 - XI 32. As I said last year, Cassuto is a very careful commentator and, even though he’s sometimes wrong, always worth reading because he discusses and notices things others often ignore.

* Rebecca Caudill, Happy Little Family. This is the first in the Fairchild Family series, and I enjoyed reading it to Theia before bed. Too bad the local library doesn’t have the whole series.

* Dale Ralph Davis, Looking on the Heart 1: Expositions of 1 Samuel 1-14. Very helpful material on 1 Samuel, which we’ve been going through in our Wednesday night Bible study here. Supplement with Peter Leithart’s A Son to Me.

* Brian Doyle, Spirited Men: Story, Soul, and Substance. A number of very interesting short biographical essays on men such as Plutarch, William Blake, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Van Morrison.

* Keith Ferrazzi, with Tahl Raz, Never Eat Alone and Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time. The title attracted me. There’s a lot of stuff a pastor could learn from this business-related book by a master networker.

* Dan Fesperman, Lie in the Dark and The Small Boat of Great Sorrows. Two novels about Croatian detective Vlado Petric by a journalist who knows Sarajevo and its recent struggles inside out. I enjoyed the first of these more than the second, but both were gripping.

* Charles H. Hapgood, Maps of the Ancient Sea-Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age. I first heard about this book years ago in one of Gary North’s books and have been interested in it ever since. It turns out that the Medford Public Library has a copy. Hapgood’s book is one of the most boring but fascinating books I have ever read.

It is boring in that he discusses in exhaustive detail all the various steps of his research, the mistakes he and his associates made, the failed attempts to figure out how the ancient maps worked, and so forth. If you’re a cartographer, you’ll be able to follow his discussion; if you’re like me, it’ll be pages of stuff you can hardly understand and you’re not remotely interested in. Boring.

But also fascinating: Hapgood, together with his students and aided by the US Air Force, studied Renaissance maps that seem to draw on even older maps. These maps involve both latitude and longitude, though it wasn’t until the eighteenth century that modern-era mapmakers figured out how to calculate longitude. The Renaissance mapmakers couldn’t, but the old mapmakers from whom they borrowed could. These old maps are remarkably accurate, when understood properly. For instance, if you look at an old map, you might see that Greenland is enormous, far larger than it really is. But Hapgood notes the reason for that distortion. The lines of longitude are farther apart at the equator and closer together the closer you get to the poles, but if you draw a map as if the lines of longitude are exactly the same distance apart everywhere, you end up with a huge Greenland. In fact, everything closer to the poles is going to be distorted and made a lot larger than it really is. (Note that every map involves some distortion, since you’re reproducing a rounded world on a flat surface.)

The implications of many of Hapgood’s claims, if they’re accurate, are fascinating. It appears that long, long before the Renaissance, there were mapmakers who were able to calculate longitude, who had traveled down the coast of South America (for instance) and had mapped the contours of those coasts, and who had even seen large portions of Antarctica without the ice caps. The last claim should then make you ask: How old are these maps? Don’t know. But it’s fun to think about.

* A. C. Harwood, The Recovery of Man in Childhood. Cecil Harwood was one of C. S. Lewis’s best friends. He was also committed to Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophism, which Lewis strongly rejected, and was one of the first teachers in a Waldorf school in England. So I don’t share the same philosophy, let alone theology. Nevertheless, Harwood’s book was extremely interesting and often made a lot of sense. Extremely thought-provoking.

* Jon Hassler, Staggerford. I enjoyed this novel a lot and will be reading more of Hassler’s in the future.

* Herge, King Ottokar’s Sceptre; Red Rackham‘s Treasure; The Seven Crystal Balls; Prisoners of the Sun; and Explorers on the Moon. 2009 was the year in which I reread the entire Tintin series, except for the earliest volumes which I was not able to obtain from the library. I loved them all, but the ones listed here especially stood out.

* Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train. Unputdownable. So intense that when a character sinned, I felt guilty.

* Peter Hopkirk, Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet. A couple of years back, I read Hopkirk’s Like Hidden Fire, which is the true story behind John Buchan’s novel Greenmantle. I enjoyed it a lot and wanted to read more Hopkirk. This one is the story of all the various explorers who tried to get into Tibet in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Tibet was off limits to outsiders.

* Mark Horne, Why Baptize Babies? An Explanation of the Theology and Practice of the Reformed Churches. Clear and helpful.

* Morag Joss, Half Broken Things. A well-written suspense novel. Like Ruth Rendell, Joss writes in a way that makes you sympathize with her characters, and all the more so as things start to go wrong. And they go very, very wrong here.

* Beth Kephart, Into the Tangle of Friendship: A Memoir of the Things That Matter. Good meditations about the meaning and implications of friendship, drawing on Kephart’s own life. Midway through the book, Kephart starts to talk about her former next door neighbor, a woman who was married to a Korean seminary student in Philadelphia and who eventually began to write. For a long time now, I’ve enjoyed the writing of Andree Seu in World magazine and I knew that she matched the description. Could it be? Well, I was right. That’s who Kephart’s neighbor was.

* Rudyard Kipling, The Phantom ‘Rickshaw and Other Stories. There are only two reasons this collection of stories is in this list. One is that Kipling has an amazing ability to make it seem as if he’s telling you a true story, though I can’t easily explain how he does it. It has something to do with the narrative tone and something to do with the incidental details, all of which ring true. The other is that this collection includes “The Man Who Would Be King.”

* Marsena Konkle, A Dark Oval Stone. A good novel about the very small changes that bring healing after terrible hurt. Konkle is the daughter of Ransom Fellowship’s Denis and Margie Haack.

* Ursula LeGuin, Rocannon’s World. LeGuin does a masterful job of writing richly detailed stories about other worlds.

* Peter J. Leithart, Wise Words: Family Stories that Bring the Proverbs to Life. Truth be told, the connection to the Proverbs here often seems tenuous. But these are good fairy tales, each one involving many layers of meaning and inviting rereading. I read this to Theia.

* C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It has been a long time since I read this book as a child and I deeply enjoyed reading it to my daughter for the first time. I have to admit, though, that I was surprised when Mr. Beaver says that Jadis is the daughter of Adam and Lilith. That’s weird, but it was the only grating flaw in the book.

* C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. Another book I read first a long time ago. It was far better than I had remembered, full of deep, rich wisdom.

* W. H. Lewis, Levantine Adventurer: The Travels and Missions of the Chevalier, d’Arvieux, 1653-1697. This is the first book I’ve ever read by C. S. Lewis’s brother. I found it in the Medford library. My review is here.

* Rich Lusk, Paedofaith: A Primer on the Mystery of Infant Salvation and a Handbook for Covenant Parents. Thought-provoking, challenging to me as a parent, and well worth reading.

* Stephen Mansfield, The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World. Someday, I’ll post a longer review of this book, which I received as part of Thomas Nelson’s Book Review Bloggers program (now renamed BookSneeze). I enjoyed the story Mansfield told and was charmed by his description of Guinness’s generosity toward its workers, but found myself wishing that there were a stronger and more obvious connection between that generosity and the founder’s Christian faith. I guess in general I wanted more from the book, but I did enjoy it.

* Nicole Mazzarella, This Heavy Silence. A slow-paced, thoughtful novel from a Christian writer.

* E. Nesbit, The Book of Dragons. I read this to Theia; it was a lot of fun.

* Patrick O’Brian, Master and Commander. I had read this before, got part of the way through the series, and then, for some reason, failed to continue. So I went back and started over. Having read this novel before didn’t diminish my enjoyment of it at all.

* Jeffrey Overstreet, Through a Screen Darkly: Looking Closer at Beauty, Truth and Evil in the Movies. I have long enjoyed Jeffrey Overstreet’s online reviews. Highly recommended to help you look closer at the movies and think better about them.

* Paul Park, A Princess of Roumania; The Tourmaline; The White Tyger; and The Hidden World. One long novel, divided into four volumes. I enjoyed it a lot, though I didn’t find the ending entirely satisfactory.

* Eugene H. Peterson, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work. I have a like-dislike relationship with Peterson’s books. I don’t care for his approach to Scripture, which often seems to draw on higher criticism and what I consider liberal scholarship. But his insights into pastoral work are wonderful.

* Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Some very good things here, especially on the push toward “total work” (as opposed to leisure and worship), toward defining people in terms of their work, and on worship as a bulwark against “total work.”

* Nina Planck, Real Food: What to Eat and Why. Planck, who has established farmer’s markets in various cities, argues strongly (and sometimes scientifically) for the health benefits of … well, of the kind of diet your grandparents used to have. She contends that raw milk (and cream!), cheese, butter, and other dairy products are good for you; that it’s good to eat red meat as well as chicken (including the skin!) and certain types of fish; that eggs are good for you; that cholesterol scares aren’t worth getting frightened by; and more.

* Barbara Pym, Some Tame Gazelle. The first of Barbara Pym’s novels. It’s slow, quiet, and often funny, much like the village lives she describes.

* Paul Shepherd, More Like Not Running Away. An intense novel; I eagerly await the sequels that have been promised.

* Russell Smith, Men’s Style: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Dress. A very helpful guide. Often, I asked my wife about the things Smith says (“Is that really what looks good?”), only to have her confirm his opinions again and again.

* Robert Spencer, Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions about the World’s Fastest-Growing Faith. Very well documented. Joins many other helpful volumes written by Spencer.

* Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island. A long time ago, when Theia asked what other books I had out in my office library, I used to tell her that I had many exciting books I could read to her someday. I’d name a few, but I often mentioned Treasure Island as an extremely exciting story. This past fall, I finally got to read it to her. I doubt she understood all the words, but she was certainly grabbed by the story.

One night, after I read the passage where Long John Silver falls on a good sailor and stabs him to death, I turned out the light and started to pray before bed … and Theia interrupted and said, “Pray that God would kill Long John Silver.” Do you pray for fictional characters? I did. I figure they are (as Doug Wilson said to me, when I talked to him about it some time later) “typological placeholders”: they stand in for real life people. So praying for the death of Long John Silver is praying for God to kill all such wicked people.

I prayed, and then Theia spoke up again: “Pray that God would kill his parrot, too.”

* Deborah Tannen, I Only Say This Because I Love You: How the Way We Talk Can Make or Break Family Relationships Throughout Our Lives. Very helpful. Tannen is not a psychiatrist, psychologist, or counselor; rather, she’s a linguistics professor. Her work involves careful study of how people communicate, and that makes this book extremely helpful for counseling, as well as for understanding your own communication patterns.

* John Thorne, Outlaw Cook. Fun reading, even though I didn’t attempt any of the recipes. Thorne writes well, challenges those who are bound to recipes, and interacts with (and often argues with) other famous food writers. His chapter on Martha Stewart is well worth reading (see here).

* James Thurber, The 13 Clocks. Read to Theia; a lot of fun. See here.

* Megan Whalen Turner, The Thief. A fun fantasy novel, though I do wonder why Turner set it in a Greece that never was instead of simply creating her own fantasy world entirely. This is the first in a series, and I’ll keep reading.

* Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy and On the Banks of Plum Creek. Read to Theia. I especially enjoyed all the eating that takes place in Farmer Boy.

* Valerie Worth, All the Small Poems and Fourteen More and Peacock and Other Poems. Absolutely wonderful. Worth is now one of my favorite poets. What’s strange is that libraries put these books in the juvenile section, as if the fact that these are small poems must mean that they are (only) for small people.

* Jane Yolen, Raising Yoder’s Barn. Gorgeous. So often when I see lists of great children’s books, I’m disappointed. I go and look up those highly recommended books and find that they were published in the 1970s and the artwork strikes me as sloppy and unattractive. I’m glad that from, perhaps, the 1990s to today, more and more books are coming out with beautiful artwork that complements well-written stories. This is just one example, but now I wish I had written down more of the books I’ve been reading to my daughter.

I knew nothing about this time period nor, I must confess, about the Chevalier d’Arvieux before reading this volume, which is largely a summary of his memoirs. At first, the narrative seemed a bit dry and assumed some knowledge I didn’t have, but before long the story itself began to interest me. D’Arvieux spent most of his adult life in the Levant, both working as a representative of the king and traveling for pleasure. Lewis has read the travel memoirs of d’Arvieux’s contemporaries — Spon, Thevenot, and Lucas — as well as of more recent travelers, and he frequently compares d’Arvieux’s descriptions with theirs, in a way that is sometimes illuminating. Consider this passage:

Kinglake [a 19th century traveler] and d’Arvieux both visited Damascus and I know no more striking example of the gulf which separates the romantic from his predecessors than their respective descriptions of the famous gardens. First Kinglake:

They bring back to your mind the memory of some dark old shrubbery in our isle that has been charmingly unkept for many a day … all through the sweet wilderness a loud rushing stream goes tumbling along till … in the lowest corner of the garden it is tossed up in a fountain by the side of a simple alcove.

Now d’Arvieux:

Although rustic they are delightful. They are surrounded by fruit trees which furnish the town with all kinds of fruit, both for eating in season and for turning into conserves all the year round. Caravans carry these fruits to Seide, Beirut, Tripoli and other places … One cannot imagine how prodigious is the consumption of fruit in Damascus (90-91).

At several points, it becomes obvious that Lewis considers d’Arvieux a better memoirist than these others. As he writes in his “Foreword,”

My own impression is of a man who enjoyed every minute of the business of living, whether he was eating, drinking, money-making, sight-seeing, or engaged in the petty diplomacy of the Council Chamber; though to be fair to him he more than once showed considerable diplomatic skill on a larger stage. With all his gusto d’Arvieux was neither ingenuous nor an enthusiast, but a good-humoured cynic who observed the follies of mankind with an indulgent eye, qualities which stood him in good stead as a memoir writer, where he is crisp, vivid, and generous; not so oppressively archaeological as Spon, Thevenot, or Lucas, and mercifully lacking in the bombast of Nointel…. d’Arvieux’s work has the unmistakeable ring of truth, and I agree with his first editor, Labat, when he says that “one never tires of reading these memoirs because they are a continuous blend of the useful, the instructive, and the pleasing” (8-9).

I suspect that Lewis saw d’Arvieux as a kindred spirit. Lewis’s own good humor shows up frequently in this book. He has a knack for picking out interesting tidbits from d’Arvieux’s account, holding them up for us to wonder about (is it really possible that the lions of a certain area were so timid that the women doing their washing could simply shoo them away?) and, even better, humorous anecdotes.

For instance:

Teonge, chaplain of the English frigate Ginny — by which I suppose he means either Guinea or Jenny — records with gusto their dinner on February 4, 1676, when in the cabin the afterguard demolished “a gallant baked pudding, an excellent legg of porke and colliflours, an excellent dish made of a pigg’s petti-toes, 2 roasted piggs, on (sic) turkey cock, a roasted hogg’s head, three ducks, a dish of Cyprus burds, and pistachioes and dates together and store of good wines.” His diary for February 5 begins with the entry, “Captaine not well this day” (112-113).

Or this:

To our ideas all these ships, especially the coaster, must have been abominably uncomfortable, particularly in heavy weather. Lucas, on a two-day passage in a small craft bound from Chios to Smyrna, got no sleep, “being importuned unceasingly by the babble of ninety women passengers.” Who were they, one wonders, and how did they come to be travelling alone? Thevenot took passage in a country ship, a caique, from Chios to Egypt in 1656 where the accommodation was so cramped that though he had the purser’s cabin, when he and his servant were in bed “there was not six inches of room left”; and as a caique “was almost round” and could sail only with the wind dead aft, their progress was leisurely. In this curious craft the unlucky man endured des vomissements horribles and in the intervals “blamed bitterly my own stupidity in quitting my ease to go voyaging”; though he was a trifle comforted by a large dose of opium administered by a sympathetic Turk. d’Arvieux, a much tougher man, caught out in a gale aboard a similar craft, has little to tell us except that he restored the courage of some despondent Moslems with tots of brandy. “Is it wine?” they asked suspiciously. No, no, only brandy, said d’Arvieux soothingly, after which they drank freely. Lucky for them, he concludes, that le bonhomme Mahomet had never heard of brandy (113-114).

Once started, I am tempted to keep looking up passages to quote. One can imagine Warnie Lewis, at work in his researches, regaling his brother or all the Inklings with these sorts of anecdotes.

While the anecdotes make the book particularly enjoyable, though, its value also lies in its illuminating observations. As the contrast with Kinglake above makes clear, he was he not a romantic, loving wild gardens. D’Arvieux preferred his gardens with the trees all in straight rows, and the sight of a garden prompts him not to raptures over sublime nature but to reflections on fruit.

But D’Arvieux is also not at all a contemporary of ours and he doesn’t share our attitudes. Lewis writes:

… no place in the Empire contained a larger population of burglars and highwaymen, a fact which gives d’Arvieux an opportunity to describe in detail the ghastly punishments of impaling and flaying alive. It is this sort of passage which suddenly reveals to us the gulf by which we are separated from a man of the seventeenth century. We jog along with d’Arvieux through the Levant, appreciating his good nature, his dry humour, and feeling that we should have got along famously with him, when all of a sudden we find him watching the infliction of horrible tortures with less emotion than he would show over a Greek inscription or a ruined temple (51-52).

There is more in this volume: descriptions of customs in many lands; the strange story of the battle over which Roman Catholic sect could say mass in the building in which d’Arvieux worked; episodes of amazing incompetence on behalf of the French government’s representatives — none of which, perhaps, may sound particularly interesting in themselves. But there you would be wrong. With good humor and keen insight, Lewis tells a story that overcame my initial ignorance and indifference to that time and place and made me want to read more.

That structure is obvious even in an English translation. But a look at the Greek reveals an interesting play on words. At the beginning, when Jesus’ “own people” say that he is “out of his mind” (3:21), the word used literally (or, rather, etymologically) means “standing outside.” (Perhaps that’s roughly equivalent to our English expression “beside himself.”) But at the end of the story, Jesus’ “own people” turn out to be his brothers and mother, who come and, “standing outside,” call him (3:31; cf. 3:32, which stresses again that they are “outside”).

So Jesus’ “own people” think Jesus is the one “standing outside” (in the sense of “crazy”). But Jesus’ family members turn out to be the ones literally “standing outside,” while Jesus identifies those who are sitting inside as his true family, those who, in obedience to God’s will, are “sitting around him” (3:32, 34). To be his true family — his true mother and brothers — his natural mother and brothers must come inside instead of calling him out.

Jesus does indeed belong with his family. But at this point, in spite of their natural relationship with Jesus, Mary and his brothers are not that family. They are seeking to take him away from the ones who sit around him in obedience to God, away from the ones he identifies as his mother and brothers and sisters, in order to take him into their protective custody, as if Jesus would be safe with them instead of they themselves being safe with him. And therefore, though they did later trust in Jesus, they are acting at this moment in unbelief. For Mary to become Jesus’ “mother and brother and sister” now, she must join those who are with Jesus; she must come inside. Otherwise, she will be left outside his family.

Furthermore, in a sandwich story, the middle story also relates to the story that frames it. And so here it is not just the frame story that involves standing (and sitting). In 3:24-25, Jesus says that a divided kingdom or a divided household cannot “stand.” And in 3:26, he speaks of “the satan” as “standing up” against himself.

The reference to the divided household that doesn’t “stand” might resonate with the frame story: Jesus’ natural household won’t stand if his mother and brothers are divided against Jesus. While Mary and Jesus’ brothers are not saying, with the scribes from Jerusalem, that Jesus is in league with the ruler of the demons, they are still opposed to him, still acting in unbelief, and therefore still in danger. Their natural family relationship to Jesus will not keep them safe. Mary is not saved through giving birth to Jesus, and she is not blessed apart from her faith. If Mary and Jesus’ brothers continue to “stand outside” instead of “sitting around him,” then their household won’t stay standing.

What about the reference to Satan’s “standing up” (a term for both resurrection and insurrection) against himself (3:26)? I’m not sure how — or if — it relates to the frame story, though it does provide one more verbal echo in this passage. For that matter, Mark’s Gospel is full of references to “standing”: in every healing, people “stand up,” until at the end the same terms are used for Jesus’ resurrection.

But the repetition of the word “stand” and especially of words having to do with “standing outside” sets up this question: Who is really “standing outside”? If Jesus’ family thinks Jesus is “standing outside” in the sense of being insane, then their household won’t “stand.” And if you think Jesus is “standing outside” in that sense, then you end up “standing outside” yourself, here literally but, as Jesus’ words make clear, also in a deeper sense.

The family is sitting inside, sitting around Jesus and with Jesus. While not everyone has to be crowded into the room where Jesus is sitting, everyone must be with him and not against him. That’s God’s will. Only Jesus’ family is safe, only the mother and brothers and sisters who stick with him. You’d have to be insane to be “standing outside.”

A psalm.
By David,
When he was in the wilderness of Judah.

God, my Mighty One you are.
Early I will seek you.
For you thirsts my soul,
For you longs my flesh
In a dry land,
Weary without water.

Thus in the holy place I have perceived you,
To see your strength and your glory.
Because better is your loyalty than life,
My lips will praise you.

Thus I will bless you in my life;
In your name I will lift up my palms.
When with fat and grease my soul is satisfied,
With joyous lips my mouth will praise.

When I remember you upon my bed,
In the night-watches I will meditate upon you,
Because you are a help to me,
And in the shadow of your wings I will shout joyously.
My soul clings after you;
On me your right hand holds fast.

And they, to ruin, are seeking my soul;
They will go into the depths of the earth.
They would give him over to the power of the sword;
The prey of jackals they will be.
But the king will rejoice in God;
Everyone who swears by him will boast,
Because the mouth of the speakers of falsehood will be shut.

A few comments on the translation of this psalm:

(1) In line 2, there isn’t a separate word for “early” and another for “seek.”  Rather, the word for seeking is related to the word for early dawn, so the word has the sense of seeking at early dawn, just before daybreak, which indicates extremely urgent, eager seeking.  “Dawn-seeking” isn’t really a word in English, though it’s tempting to use it here.

(2) In line 13, “fat and grease” is my attempt to translate two words that really both mean “fat.”  To us “grease” sounds a bit bad, not like something that satisfies our heart, but think of good greasy fries or the greasy drippings in the bottom of the roast pan.

(3) In line 19, “clings after” sounds awkward.  “Clings” is the same word that’s used in Genesis 2 for the man clinging to his wife.  But David is not saying just that his soul is clinging to God but also that, while clinging to God, he is also following after him.

(4) Line 23 is tough to translate.  The verb seems to mean “pour out.”  Here it’s a man being poured out, and literally that’s “upon the hand of the sword,” but “hand” often is used for power.  My translation here is the best paraphrase I can come up with.

Here’s C. S. Lewis’s response:

First, as to putting the clock back. Would you think I was joking if I said that you can put a clock back, and that if the clock is wrong it is often a very sensible thing to do? But I would rather get away from the whole idea of clocks. We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. We have all seen this when doing arithmetic. When I have started a sum the wrong way, the sooner I admit this and go back and start over again, the faster I shall get on. There is nothing progressive about being pigheaded and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world, it is pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on — Mere Christianity, 36-37.

Yogi Berra, the master of funny (and unintentional) aphorisms, captures the spirit of these “progressives” perfectly: “We’re lost, but we’re making good time.”

For the director.
On Jeduthun.
A psalm.
By David.

Only toward God is my soul silent.
From him is my salvation.
Only he is my rock and my salvation,
My refuge; I will not be greatly shaken.

How long will you attack a man?
Will you murder,
Like a leaning wall,
A pulled-down fence?

Only from his elevation they plot to lure him down;
They take pleasure in a lie;
With their mouth they bless,
But in their inward part they belittle. Selah.

Only before God be silent, my soul,
Because from him comes my hope.
Only he is my rock and my salvation,
My refuge; I will not be shaken.
With God is my salvation and my glory;
The rock of my strength, my hiding-place is in God.

Trust in him at every time, people!
Pour out before him your hearts!
God is a hiding-place for us. Selah.

Only vapor are the sons of Adam,
A lie, the sons of man.
In the scales they go up,
They themselves together, from a vapor.

Do not trust in oppression,
And in robbery do not become vapor.
When wealth flourishes,
Do not set your heart on it.

One thing God has spoken;
These two things I have heard:
That strength belongs to God.
And to you, Lord, belongs loyalty,
Because you yourself render to a man according to his deed.

A few comments about the translation of this rather difficult psalm:

(1) All through this psalm, the word translated “only” might perhaps be rendered “surely.” But “only” makes sense and seems to be the basic meaning of the word. So the psalm says that only when he looks toward God is his soul silent (lines 1, 13), that He alone is rock and salvation (lines 3, 15), that the only thing the wicked want is to bring him down (line 9), that the sons of Adam are only vapor (line 22).

(2) In line 5, the verb may be “attack” or “strike terror into,” depending on what root the word comes from.

(3) In line 11: “Their mouth” is actually singular: “his mouth.” I’m not sure what to do with that.

(4) In lines 22-23, “sons of Adam” and “sons of a man” can sometimes refer to men of low degree and of high degree (as in the NKJV).

(5) In lines 24-25, the idea seems to be that if all of these men were together on one side of the scales, a mere vapor on the other side would outweigh them. The side with the vapor on it would go down, and the side with all the wicked on it would go up. They aren’t just vapor; in fact, they are lighter than vapor.

(6) In line 26, the word translated “oppression” may mean extortion. It often seems to have something to do with thievery.

“Before Thee Let My Cry Come Near” (from Psalm 119)

David Erb’s version of Psalm 149:

“O ‘Twas a Joyful Sound to Hear” (Psalm 122)

Those who don’t perceive beauty in the face of a Down’s syndrome person are blind to all beauty or are so fearful of difference that they must at once turn away from every encounter with it.  In every face — in even the plainest and the most unfortunate countenances — there is some precious aspect of the divine image of which we are a reflection, and if you look with an open heart, you can see an awesome beauty, a glimpse of something so radiant it gives you joy —Dean Koontz, Seize the Night, 280.

We get at the meaning of baptism not by ignoring the properties of water but by musing on those properties.  Eucharistic theology properly emerges from considering the meaning of meals, of bread and of wine, of broken loaves and full cups.  So, too, we get to the rich and richly varied sensus plenior of the sacramental word not by moving past the letter to a spiritual sense, not by treating the letter as a husk for removal.  We get at the riches of Scripture precisely by luxuriating in the letter, by squeezing everything we can from the text as written — Peter Leithart, Deep Exegesis, p. vii.

Pagans say that matter has always existed, whether they are primitive pagans (”the cosmic egg”) or Greek pagans (”the co-eternity of matter and form”) or modern scientific pagans (”the Big Bang”).  They refuse to accept that God could and did create matter out of nothing.  This would point to a God Who presently sustains His creation personally, which in turn points to the existence of a God Who judges His creation continually.  Pagans seek above all else to escape God’s judgment — Ray Sutton, That You May Prosper, 25.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke to a young man on the street in Grants Pass.  He indicated that he was an atheist.  People believe in God because they don’t believe in themselves; belief in God is wish fulfillment, a crutch to help people who are too weak, who lack self-confidence.  In the course of the conversation, he kept saying that he had examined the evidence and that there was no evidence for God’s existence.

But then he made a telling admission.  In response to something I asked (I forget what), he said that he hoped God didn’t exist.   Why not?  Because if God did exist, then he would have to submit to him.  “I don’t want to submit,” he said.

He’s not alone.  When we encounter atheists, we ought to recognize that their problem is not simply intellectual, as if they just haven’t heard the right arguments (our arguments, perhaps) for the existence of God.  Rather, their problem is moral.  They don’t want to submit.

I think I learned this from Doug Wilson: the young man who goes to college and abandons the faith probably doesn’t do so because he heard arguments in a philosophy class.  He does so because he wants to sleep with his girlfriend.  Any arguments he hears against God’s existence — whether philosophical or ethical or scientific, as in Sutton’s example above, or whatever — suddenly take on new cogency because they help him soothe his fears.  No God means no need to submit.  No God means no Judge.

When you come along and argue for the existence of God, he doesn’t hear you neutrally.  He doesn’t hear you as a “rational man” who is interested in following your argument, wherever it leads.  He hears you arguing for the existence of the very God who forbids him his sin and who will judge him for it, and he’s not interested in hearing anything that suggests that conclusion.  If he’s honest, he’ll tell you so, as the young man in Grants Pass told me: “I don’t want to submit.”