Day 46, Psalms 74-100

Psalms continues to be so excruciatingly boring that I want to claw my eyes out so I have an excuse to stop reading. But alas, I made a commitment to this project, and as I said in my bio, I FINISH WHAT I START!

But seriously, every time there's one that's more than a few stanzas I'm like OH SWEET JESUS ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

My scant observations:

Psalm 78 is one of those obnoxious long ones, but it contains this gem: "[God] rained meat down on [the people] like dust, birds like sand on the seashore" (Psalms 79:27). Oh wow, what an image! Raining meat!

Psalm 82 is actually kind of interesting, describing God ruling over the divine assembly, "render[ing] judgement among the 'gods'" (Psalms 82:1). What most people don't realize is that although Judaism and Christianity are regarded as monotheistic religions, during ancient times most people believed in multiple gods. The issue that Jews had with the gods of the Canaanites and Moabites and so on wasn't that they didn't exist, but that they were inferior to the Hebrew god. In psalm 82, these gods are said to "know nothing...[and] understand nothing. They walk about in darkness" (Psalm 82:5).

Psalm 87 reasserts the importance of Jerusalem. I don't even know why I liked it. Probably because it was a little different and therefore incrementally less boring than the rest of these dumb poems. And come to think of it, I actually relate to it a little bit: "Indeed, of Zion, it will be said, / 'This one and that one were born in her, / and the Most High himself will establish her.' / The Lord will write in the register of the peoples: / 'This one was born in Zion'" (Psalms 87:5-6).

Replace "Zion" with The Noble and Mighty Bear Flag Republic of California, and you've got me! God, I sure know what it's like to be awesome just by virtue of where I'm from.

Although I usually refrain from using this particular trope, because it's overdone, I cannot help but think of Psalm 88 as the emo psalm. After the biblical poet wrote this he probably dyed his hair black and put on striped knee socks and went shopping at Hot Topic. It contains such lines as "I am set apart with the dead, / like the slain who lie in the grave, / whom you remember no more, / who are cut off from your care" (Psalms 88:5) and "Darkness is my closest friend" (Psalms 88:18). Gee whiz.

That's all I got! Two more days of this. Let's keep on keeping on.