Psalms and Selected Canticles: Translated from the Hebrew

By William Flewelling

The Book of Psalms in the Bible attracts a great deal of devotional attention from many people, including this author. This attention turned in the Spring of 1993 toward a project of translating the Psalter from the original Hebrew. This was as a spiritual as well as scholarly task for me. The end product, with a few other Hebrew poems added to the collection, came complete in the Spring of 1994. In the late summer of 2022, I took to revisiting my work, revising and correcting it as I found it necessary, and brought to this format in the late Autumn of the same year. I had sought to provide a translation in the immediacy of the present tense, as free as I could manage of the generic masculine, and as lively as I could manage to formulate. I wanted to convey the energy of spirit and of devotion that I felt in the text as I had engaged it. As I brought my revisitation to a conclusion, I felt I had achieved what I had hoped and wished to share it all with what readers I may accumulate, hopefully you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665578301

William Flewelling

I am a retired minister from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) living in central Illinois. Led by a request from Mildred Corwin of Manua OH when I arrived there in 1976, I long developed and led a series of bible studies there and in LaPorte IN and New Martinsville WV. These studies proved to be very feeding to me in my pastoral work and won a certain degree of following in my congregations. My first study was on 1 Peter, chosen because I knew almost nothing about the book. I now live quietly in retirement with my wife of 54 years, a pair of dogs and several cats.

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© 2022 William Flewelling. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 12/16/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7831-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7830-1 (e)

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Contents

Foreword

Psalm 1

Psalm 2

Psalm 3

Psalm 4

Psalm 5

Psalm 6

Psalm 7

Psalm 8

Psalm 9

Psalm 10

Psalm 11

Psalm 12

Psalm 13

Psalm 14

Psalm 15

Psalm 16

Psalm 17

Psalm 18

Psalm 19

Psalm 20

Psalm 21

Psalm 22

Psalm 23

Psalm 24

Psalm 25

Psalm 26

Psalm 27

Psalm 28

Psalm 29

Psalm 30

Psalm 31

Psalm 32

Psalm 33

Psalm 34

Psalm 35

Psalm 36

Psalm 37

Psalm 38

Psalm 39

Psalm 40

Psalm 41

Psalm 42

Psalm 43

Psalm 44

Psalm 45

Psalm 46

Psalm 47

Psalm 48

Psalm 49

Psalm 50

Psalm 51

Psalm 52

Psalm 53

Psalm 54

Psalm 55

Psalm 56

Psalm 57

Psalm 58

Psalm 59

Psalm 60

Psalm 61

Psalm 62

Psalm 63

Psalm 64

Psalm 65

Psalm 66

Psalm 67

Psalm 68

Psalm 69

Psalm 70

Psalm 71

Psalm 72

Psalm 73

Psalm 74

Psalm 75

Psalm 76

Psalm 77

Psalm 78

Psalm 79

Psalm 80

Psalm 81

Psalm 82

Psalm 83

Psalm 84

Psalm 85

Psalm 86

Psalm 87

Psalm 88

Psalm 89

Psalm 90

Psalm 91

Psalm 92

Psalm 93

Psalm 94

Psalm 95

Psalm 96

Psalm 97

Psalm 98

Psalm 99

Psalm 100

Psalm 101

Psalm 102

Psalm 103

Psalm 104

Psalm 105

Psalm 106

Psalm 107

Psalm 108

Psalm 109

Psalm 110

Psalm 111

Psalm 112

Psalm 113

Psalm 114

Psalm 115

Psalm 116

Psalm 117

Psalm 118

Psalm 119

Psalm 120

Psalm 121

Psalm 122

Psalm 123

Psalm 124

Psalm 125

Psalm 126

Psalm 127

Psalm 128

Psalm 129

Psalm 130

Psalm 131

Psalm 132

Psalm 133

Psalm 134

Psalm 135

Psalm 136

Psalm 137

Psalm 138

Psalm 139

Psalm 140

Psalm 141

Psalm 142

Psalm 143

Psalm 144

Psalm 145

Psalm 146

Psalm 147

Psalm 148

Psalm 149

Psalm 150

Canticles

Psalm of Habakkuk Habakkuk 3

Song of Jonah Jonah 2:2-9

Song of Hannah 1 Samuel 2:1-10

Song of Miriam/Song of Moses Exodus 15:1-18

Lament of David 2 Samuel 1:19-27

Song of the Vineyard Isaiah 5:1-7

Song of the Feasting Isaiah 25:6-9

Song of Return Isaiah 40:9-11

Prayer of Hezekiah 2 Chronicles 30:18d-19

The Last Words Of David 2 Samuel 23:1-7

The First Servant Son Isaiah 42:1-4

The Second Servant Son Isaiah 49:1-6

The Third Servant Son Isaiah 50:4-11

The Fourth Servant Son Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12

A Song Of Trust Jeremiah 17:5-10

The Second Song Of Moses Deuteronomy 32:1-43

About the Author

Foreword

In the Spring of 1993, the interest is translating the Psalms rose to mind, partly as an exercise to enhance my skills at Hebrew vis-à-vis the Old Testament work I routinely did in my preaching work. I began with Psalm 1 and proceeded. Once I finished the 150 canonical Psalms, I moved on to texts of poetry and particular spiritual use: the Selected Canticles taken from the various books of the Hebrew Bible.

At the opening of the original collection, now only in a hard copy format, I offered the following Note, repeated here as a clear statement of what the translation was intended to accomplish, and the sources used in the work.

These Psalms and Canticles are translated under the desire to accomplish a handful of goals. (1) To work on my Hebrew; (2) to take the Psalter and related pieces as a devotional guide and the translation as a devotional tool; (3) to come up with an inclusive language translation which (4) reads with a cadence and with devotional power. It is hoped that the results satisfy the latter two reasonably well; the former two are personally enriching for me.

The Psalm texts are translated from the BIBLIA HEBRAICA STUTTGARTESIA, LIBER PSALMORUM (BHS), Deutsche Bibelstifftung Stuttgart. Brown, Driver, and Briggs’ Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford University Press, London, 1972 was my constant companion. I consulted Mitchell Dahood’s Commentary on the Psalms, three volumes in the Anchor Bible Commentary series throughout the effort. I also referred to Hans-Joachim Kraus two volume Commentary on the Psalms, published by Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis. Decisions, of course, are in the end my own.

For the Canticles, the text used was BHS for The Song of Habakkuk and The Song of Jonah and Rudolph Kittle’s Bibica Hebraica for the rest. Use was made of Theodore Hiebert’s God of my Vision, the Anchor Bible commentaries on Jonah by Jack M. Sasson, 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel by P. Kyle McCaeter, plus Frank Moore Cross’s Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic and Brevard Child’s The Book of Exodus.

I chose to translate in the present tense so as to reflect the intimate sense of living with the Psalms and Canticles. In doing that I contemporize both historical references and future promises on the part of God and on the part of the Psalmist or one praying the text. I also chose to avoid as much as possible the generic masculine. If the reference ‘he’ is to God, I simply use God. I circumvent the use of unidentified masculine figures, leaving references to David, for example in Psalm 132 and the all too ubiquitous Servant of Yahweh in the Fourth Servant Song from Isaiah. I further attempted to reflect the energy I felt in the Hebrew text.

I found the work satisfying in the original 1993-94 effort. I found it once again satisfying in this 2022 revisiting and, where necessary, correcting of the translation. I hope the reader finds it satisfying as well.

William Flewelling

Psalm 1

Psalm 2

Psalm 3

Melody of David: On his fleeing from the face of Absalom, his son.

Psalm 4

To the Choirmaster: With Strings: A melody of David

Psalm 5

To the Choirmaster: With Flutes: Melody of David

Psalm 6

To the Choirmaster: With Strings: upon the eighth:

Melody of David

Psalm 7

A Shiggayon of David, which he sang to Yahweh

upon the matter of Cush, the Benjaminite