When I saw I only had to read like twenty chapters today I got excited, but of course all it means is that they're freaking LONG. Psalm 119, which we will address later on, is actually the longest chapter in the bible, and has more verses than thirteen Old Testament books! What the fuck, Biblical Poet?!
My observations:
- God is a total asshole in Psalm 117, making a bunch of sailors to freak out by causing a giant storm and then stopping it when he gets bored to prove how AWESOME and POWERFUL he is. Once the storm ends the sailors "give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love" (Psalms 107:31). If he loved you so much, maybe he would fuck with you less, sailors!
- Psalm 110 opens with the weird line, "The Lord says to my lord" (Psalms 110:1). What the hell does that mean? Obviously the upper-case Lord refers to God, and I would guess that "lord" refers to a king or something, but geez louise. The thesaurus is your friend, Biblical Poet!
- Psalm 114 delighted me because it is the first psalm that RHYMES like a REAL POEM, and is sort of Doctor Seuss-esque. Here is the stanza of interest: "The sea looked and fled, / the Jordan turned back; / the mountains leaped like rams, / the hills like lambs" (Psalm 114:3-4). Lambs and rams! What a great line! Later on in the poem, Thing One and Thing Two come and cause some trouble. Just kidding. That doesn't happen.
- Psalm 117 is the best because it's only ONE STANZA! I LOVE YOU PSALM 117.
- Psalm 119, on the other hand, fucking sucks. Oh man is it ever lengthy. It's an "acrostic poem" meaning each line begins with a successive letter in the Hebrew alphabet, but obviously that is lost on us anglophiles. Also, the writer is an insufferable brown-noser who goes on and on about how freaking WONDERFUL God's laws are: "My soul," he writes, "is consumed with longing / for your laws at all times" (Psalm 119:20). The author later comments that he is "lowly and despised" (Psalm 119:141) which is no surprise to me, considering he's such an obnoxious suck-up.
That's it for the day. I'm going to class now. After awhile, crocodiles.
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