Psalms in Our Time

Psalm 98: New Songs of Celebration Render

This lively picture of a victory procession uses the ancient Jewish celebration as a metaphor for community praise, and exhibits a model for modern metrical psalms.

Text: Erik Routley, © 1972

Meter: 9,8,9,8

Rhyme scheme: abab

This psalm is a picturesque vision of a parade, in which the whole universe turns out to make a raucous racket in celebration of the Creator's act of deliverance. Like Psalm 150, it cannot be taken literally; but rather illustrates the attitude that should characterize God's people when remembering any of God's actions.

Erik Routley (1917-1982) may be the most important hymnologist of the twentieth century. He served as minister of Congregational churches, and as director of music at Mansfield College in England, before taking posts as professor of music at Princeton and at Westminster Choir College in the United States. He wrote 37 books on church music; edited the Bulletin of the Hymn Society in the British Isles for over 25 years; edited hymnals,¹ companions and supplements; wrote and translated hymn texts,² and composed hymn tunes.

This text exhibits an attempt to realize his own "ideal of a modern metrical psalm."³ The vocabulary and phrasing are in clear, formal but contemporary grammar and idiom. Each poetic line represents a complete phrase; each four lines round off a sentence in the English, as well as representing a major point of the original psalm in parallelism -- an important aspect of Hebrew poetic form. The ideas of the original are slightly compressed and rearranged to achieve the well-rounded English form, and the personifications of nature are modified and expanded -- which may be necessary for hyper-literalistic modern readers.

The approach to a metric scheme should be mentioned. The lines are generally Iambic, but if examined in detail, the meter is surprisingly irregular. And yet the text just works. Read aloud, it rolls majestically off the tongue; sung, it fits the tune admirably. How can that be?

First, the grammar and rhetoric are simply compelling. The choice of words is unexceptionable: Routley has mastered the difference between "the lightning bug and the lightning." The smooth use of masculine and feminine rhymes (not a false rhyme on the page) and alliteration would carry the reader over many a worse misstep than occurs here. (If the lightning strikes close enough, you don't complain about the timbre of the thunder.)

Second, the tune rather hints that the first foot in each line might well be Trochaic -- and of 24 lines half begin unambiguously Trochaic, and another quarter are simply ambiguous. That Trochaic foot seems to give the lines extra momentum, as well as weakening the expectation of a strong two-syllable ta-dum ta-dum beat. Furthermore, the Genevan tune is very tolerant of weak or nonexistant accents in some places: however, it expects the fourth syllable of the line to be strongly accented, and this text hardly ever disappoints it.

Unlike Watts, Routley did not make a specifically Christian application, except where he substituted "friends of every nation" for "house of Israel." However, most Christians will already think of "salvation" as a theological technical term, rather than any kind of "rescue" or "deliverance" or "vindication" (which is the word's actual meaning).

"Genevan 118": Louis Bourgeois, 1543

Incipit: dlsddrfmr|smmdfmrd; 16511 24325 33143

Melodic scheme: Through-composed

The poetic meter of the text was chosen to fit this tune,⁴ reflecting the tradition of the Genevan Psalter, in which it was also used for Psalm 98.

This tune, from the earliest strata of that psalter, is one of the most popular of the Genevan tunes, and justly so: Songs of Praise Discussed describes it as "in some ways the finest of all the early psalm tunes ... perfectly proportioned ... a tune which gives the true 'spinal thrill'; of its kind it is unsurpassed." It was retained for Psalm 118 in the 1564 Scottish Psalter. Since 1854 it has been widely used, especially with Heber's communion hymn Bread of the world, in mercy broken.

Use:

This call to creation to praise the Creator would be appropriate on almost any occasion. Its majestic and exalted tune, without strained leaps or fast arpeggiatos in any voice part, lends itself to the "voice warmup" at the beginning of any service (where we tend to overuse "Nicaea" (Holy, Holy, Holy) and "Old Hundredth" because we have so few alternatives that are of comparable quality: poetically coherent, thematically appropriate, and musically practical.)

Some people (today, as in Watts' day) may be disturbed by the mention of musical instruments, and suppose that this is Routley's way of affirming their use⁵ in Christian worship. That would be a misapprehension on both points. First, we easily forget the fundamental fact that it would have been impossible, indeed inconceivable, to accompany singing with the ancient "trumpets" or "horns", which were loud, untuned noisemakers good only for drowning out the bleating of slaughtered sacrifices, or signalling transitions on battlefields and mass temple ceremonies. Second, as Eric Werner has shown,⁶ as early as the Maccabean period, references in psalmody to "instrumental" praise of God were no more to be literally understood⁷ than hill-hand-clapping or river-chanting. In some cases at least, surely that was the original author's intention.

I should therefore take this English version as a faithful expression of the meaning of the Hebrew psalm, and sing it with full assent to the meaning, as understood by the first (Jewish) Christians, and possibly even as understood by the original author.

Notes:

¹Notably including Rejoice in the Lord: A Hymn Companion to the Scriptures, 1985.

²See also his translation of Psalm 1.

³As he described Timothy Dudley-Smith's version of Psalm 115.

⁴Also known as "Rendez a dieu" (from the first words of Psalm 118 in the Genevan Psalter) and "Genevan 98."

⁵Routley was at times a church organist. But his priority was congregational song; he considered an organ's proper purpose to aid congregational singing. His discussion (in Church Music and the Christian Faith) about how this might be accomplished includes caustic remarks about how often its typical use rather hinders than helps; and his language waxed vitrioic on the attitude of instrumentalists that failed to act in accordance with the proper priority.

⁶Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, art. "Music", which Routley certainly knew; he quotes it as an authority on music in the early church.

⁷Compare discussion of similar issues in Psalm 150; the reference to the Temple in Psalm 42 has ample scriptural justification in the New Testament to being taken as a metaphor for the church, and will cause less difficulty -- although I have heard thoughtless but ignorant Christians object to I love Thy Kingdom, Lord on similar grounds. But we ought not to show scruples at metaphors that the New Testament authors so often used: rather, we ought to recognize their pivotal importance to understanding the New Testament message.

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