Day 48, Psalms 120-150, Proverbs 1-3

This last batch of psalms have been, for the most part, blissfully short. Not a lot of weirdness, just the standard crap about how great and merciful God is. Of greatest interest is Psalm 137, probably the most famous in the bible; it opens the with the line, "By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept / when we remembered Zion" (Psalm 137:1). You know it, right?! You know it, I know it, we all know it. How freaking great.

It's a pretty standard "lament" psalm, but I got a little excited over it just  because it crops up periodically in literature. For instance, in The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot there is a line that mirrors the first verse of the psalm: "By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept..." And William Faulkner got the title of his book, If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem from the following line: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning" (Psalm 137:5).

Awesome!

Anyway, after that brief moment of light and clarity in the endless abyss of stupid psalms, I finally emerged from the wreckage and began to read Proverbs. FINALLY!

I'm not exactly sure how Proverbs is going to shake out, but from the introduction and first three chapters it seems very interesting. One of the more secular books of the bible, Proverbs borrows from non-Israelite wisdom traditions, particularly those of the Egyptians, to "represent the results of a search for a divinely sustained cosmic order in the lessons derived from human experience." The first  nine chapters, which are the youngest, tend to be slightly more religious in nature than the rest of the book.

Chapter 1 serves as something of an introduction, explaining the importance of understanding proverbs and stating that "the fear of the Lord is the foundation of knowledge" (Proverbs 1:7). Oh boy. The author goes on to warn against sinfulness, then describes wisdom, personified as a woman. Chapters 2 and 3 basically continue on this note, urging the student to "take [these] words to heart" (Proverbs 2:1) and obey human teachers and God.

I think tomorrow we will get into the juicy stuff, but today we'll just have to be happy that we finally finished Psalms. I'm going to go eat jam out of the jar. See you tomorrow!