Psalms in Our Time

Psalm 27: God is my strong salvation

This abridged psalm version exemplifying James Montgomery's finest ideals of hymnwriting, converts an occasional prayer into a universal expression of personal trust. It is now often connected with an early-nineteenth-century American folk hymn in an ancient church mode.

Text: James Montgomery, 1822

Meter: 7,6,7,6

Rhyme scheme: abab

The psalm consists of an expression of faith based on past help from God, a plea to God to help in the current "darkness and temptation", and a concluding determination to wait patiently until God's help comes.

This is an abridged version, including words or ideas from several verses of the psalm. It omits the plea for help, creating an internal paraenetic dialog that is always in season. Its four stanzas are balanced: 1 and 2 ask the question, 3 and 4 give the answer. In a different kind of symmetry, the outer stanzas speak of God's unchanging attributes -- salvation, help, light, love, mercy; the inner stanzas speak of the current situation and human response. The inner stanzas are even tightly crafted in inverted parallelism:

Is this reading the hymn too closely? Certainly, Charles Wesley¹ had already crafted some some hymns with this kind of tight structure. Montgomery had both poetic ambitions² and high ideals of poetic craftsmanship.

Does this kind of "deep structure" matter? Nils Lund³ argues that it reflects a basic type of human reasoning; whether that be true, the simple fact is that both the Old and New Testaments contain numerous examples of this structural form -- in narrative, poetry, and logical argumentation. A modicum of respect for the Wisdom of God would compel one to deduce that it must be an effective form for many diverse kinds of communication.

"Wedlock": Traditional American; Sacred Harp, 1844; arr.

Incipit: rmrmsllsmrrdld|drmrmsl; 23235 66532 21611

Melodic scheme: aa'ba'

Mode: Dorian (pentatonic)

This folk hymn tune has been traced back to England, and (like most old folk tunes) occurs in several different versions. One version was published in the western American "shaped-note" tunebooks; another was recorded in the southern Appalachians in 1918.

This is a pentatonic⁴ tune in the Dorian mode. The key signature is identical to D major (or B minor) but the melody begins and ends on E. The Dorian "E" scale differs from E minor only in using F instead of F#. As in a minor key, the tonal center shifts restlessly from the "relative major key" (D) to the modal root (E minor), and even to G, the relative major of E minor. The harmony has been recast; there does not yet seem to be a standard four-part harmonization. If these harmonies are too difficult, this (like many folk tunes) is still a strong unison tune.

This tune seems me to fit these words. It is intensely emotional without being sentimental; its climactic opening of the third line, which suggests a harmonic shift to G major, matches the change of mood at the beginning of alternate stanzas. The combination was apparently introduced in the 1964 Methodist Hymnal, which revived a number of old American tunes, and has since been adapted by several American hymnals. Rejoice in the Lord uses the simpler, shorter chorale "Christus Der Is Mein Leben", which also works, and is a an excellent alternative where this tune is too challenging⁵.

Use:

Removing the distinctly personal and occasional prayer from the psalm provides for a more generally useful congregational hymn; the introspective mood is preserved, making it less of a precatory "gospel song" that we would sing to (or at) each other, and more like a spiritual dialog in which each worshipper can recognize his own questions, and the find the answer he needs.

We could therefore profitably substitute this song for some of the over-used Gospel or Sunday-School songs on the same subject. Compared to the naive optimism of, e.g., Trust and Obey, this more realistic, more profound, and more scriptural expression of a more mature trust deserves consideration wherever spiritual growth is valued.

This hymn especially speaks of dark hours; we may feel no need for this song so long as we are confidant that temptations will never come without warning, and only come when we are refreshed and ready to resist.

Notes:

¹Compare the analysis of Jesus, lover of my soul in Bernard Manning, Hymns of Watts and Wesley, online at CCEL.

²Montgomery had been looking for a publisher for his poetry when he stumbled into his newspaper career. Today he is recognized as a "minor Romantic poet", and is probably excluded from anthologies primarily because his longer poems have religious themes but don't exhibit the naive optimistic progressivism that modern politically correct secularism retained from mainline Victorian religious thought. See Dictionary of National Biography, "James Montgomery", online at CCEL.

³In Chiasmus in the New Testament, 1941.

⁴The notes "fa" and "ti" (G and C#) do not occur in the melody. See the introduction to modes.

⁵For those who think the tune is too challenging, however, I have a conundrum. This is a folk tune, not a symphony! How is it that generations of illiterate peasant farmers had no trouble transmitting it without benefit of musical education or notation -- and yet we, with all our opportunities, can't learn it even with the music?

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Copyright © 2002,2003,2004, Stephen Hutcheson
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