or the overbearing of noise of human creation,
God’s voice is audible.
About the Psalm
Psalm 89 straddles between an experience of agony, a complaint, and a sheer exhaustion from pursuit. The first thing to note is the length: 52 verses makes it one of the longest; while some English translations show sectional divisions, it is not immediately clear what the divisions are fo, when seemingly the whole text can be read without a break.
This psalm echoes the dire situation of little reason for joy or excitement: it seems that with every movement or change of emotion, there is always something or somebody observing you. So, the endless cries of pain.
Why? What is the purpose or focus of this Psalm? That is a question for Ethan, the psalmist. This might be a poet and/or musician, believed to be a contemporary of King David. The psalm gives a useful glimpse of life at the time of King David but not from the perspective of the King, it is from a commoner. How much this echoes the way King David utters pain and cries for God is one for each of us to determine. What might be an interesting observation is that either the two poets shared sketches and notes in their creative writing lectures, or they shared an incredible level of similar physical, emotional and spiritual experience that it was not immediately clear who was the author. (That, a kind of “academy” or “seminary” is a recurring feature even to the first century (New Testament) writers.) That, while of academic interest, is or should not overcome our attention. At this point, we haven’t answered the “Why? What Purpose?” question.
A cry of desperation, clinging on hope and promises of and from God: a majority of this psalm centres on this theme. The condemnation and ill treatment that the people suffered began to enter the text as the verses go on. It goes on to the question of not whether God cares, but whether God knows his people are suffering. Lastly, at the bolt of an awakening reality, as if from a frozen bath to blaring hot sunshine, the psalmist exhorts us (at least, himself) to praise God instead, or to do so anyway.
I propose the “why” of this psalm, for our use today, is that God understands our situation. Our physical capacity has come to an end, our body perhaps has begun to shut down, hunger turns to numbness, and pain turns to attachments or prostheses. The thing is, if God were to fix and put us back to a “perfect” state, we will want more: more “perfect”, being “perfect” in more areas, and be more “perfect” than the next person. Then, we become God. The God who is God becomes a busy body fixing people: whether God thinks this driving him down to desperation or cry of help is for him to answer. For now, this is a chain of personal interpretation of this psalm. If this proposition stands, we can answer the “What purpose?”: the text is so contemporaneous with our day to day that it is almost our thought process: we go from complaints, exhaustion and pains to some moments of praise and acknowledging God, but those negative feelings and hardship drives us so far as we think God has ignored us. Put aside, forgotten, disinterested. God is God, he is the creator, the source of all being. He is the one who knew our situation and called out a bewildering and humble leader and told him your mates who could not tell their right from their left could call me “I Am Who I Am”. The idea is so vast that Moses took it as if he had just landed on a different planet, taking in everything with no capacity to question. When the energy returns, the greatness of the situation sinks in, and the response is to praise God.
About the music
The length of the psalm presented a major challenge when setting it to music. It will be so long as to encompass six services from the morning to the afternoon. That might be a good thing: from the “spoken” service to junior church, from the family service to messy church, and from the contemporary worship to evensong.
Instead of taking such an approach, here, four broad themes are discovered and each is set to a new piece of music. There are some similar melodic patterns between the compositions, but each is served to stand entirely independent from each other: the text makes no reference to any of the other three.
The first theme, vv1-18, has a happy feel. Titled “Does God Care For My Troubles?“, our response should be “yes”.
The second theme, vv19-37, takes a dramatic and realistic turn of complaints to God about God. Titled “Does God Care For His Agreement?“. It shows the uncomfortable balance between acknowledging God and our hardship. It is the tenet of God’s covenant with us. Such a covenant is not a button that we are restored immediately when we push the button, it is, however, that the best for us will come in God’s time. If the best comes to us contrary to God’s plan, our situation could become far dire than that with the covenant.
The third theme, vv38-45, is “Does God Care For Wrongdoings?“, poing us to grow more like God, to see things his ways.
The fourth theme, vv46-52, is the utter contrast between “the God who ignores” and “the God we want to praise“.
Out of the four themes, the first one written and completed was “Wrongdoings” (vv38-45). I began with this to grapple with suitable handling of the text in music. There is no escaping from the tenacity of the text, a huge tussle between faith (wanting to believe and failing so) and terminality (knowing we are coming to the end of our lives). The text is honest and brutal. But in God’s own time for the greater purpose of his creation (including human), he will roll out his salvation plan. (He only needed one to respond: Moses.)
The “Wrongdoings” is set as an anthem. There are numerous patterns in the text that makes this possible. This allows the music to flow without too much “drag” and much time and space for the text to touch our senses. Suggested instruments are piano and organ, but the music can be played on either one.
I then worked on the “Troubles” (vv1-18), as a theme similar to “Wrongdoings”. Going back to verse 1, I thought, was crucial to discover the opening declaration of the psalm, which usually gives a focus about the rest of the text. It is set as a hymn.
The third one I wrote was “Agreement” (vv19-37). I wrote this as a “song” style which gives a different feel and contrasts with the other three. “Agreement” was painful to compose, for example, reflecting on:
- But if his children forsake my instructions
- his descendants reject my path of righteousness …
- I will beat them with the rod for their disobedience
The “rod” is metaphorical. In the theology of salvation brought possible by Jesus, we will interpret the “rod” differently. Fundamentally, we are not the end of a sets of rules for which the rod drops on us every time we miss a step. Rather, and crucially for our mind, body and spirit, the “rod” according to Jesus is more a supporting fabric that shapes and saves us, than a punishing instrument that ignore us and became interested in us when we are in the wrong. However, there is no escape that the “rod” will serve a disciplinary instrument when we put ourselves beyond the reach of God. This is applicable in our day-to-day, but also in a future time.
The last one I wrote was “Ignorance” (vv46-52). Much more challenging to compose, this theme appears to be the most remote from our relationship with God. It is honest and to the point. It bears some characteristics of being incoherent in belief: challenging God about his love to his people but also saying the love is no more (v49), and thought (the king being mocked everywhere). It is written as a hymn.
I present to you the study materials and the compositions.
