Refusing to Tame the Psalms: A Transparent Translation of the Psalter

By James M. Hamilton

The ideal can sometimes keep us from enjoying the real.  

What Is the Ideal Way to Read the Psalms? 

Applied to the Psalms, I can think of any number of preferable “ideal scenarios.”  

The best case would be for all of us to be fluent in biblical Hebrew, able to access the Psalter in the original with native ease. Even modern Hebrew, however, is not biblical Hebrew, and there are far more speakers of English than Hebrew in the world today, the vast majority of those English speakers having no Hebrew. Translations are necessary in the real world.  

In addition to best case scenarios regarding the readers of the Psalter, there are best case scenarios of what we would want in a translator. This would be a better translation of the Psalms: if the translator had Shakespeare’s command of the English language, Augustine’s theological profundity, Luther’s fiery creativity, and Gesenius’s grasp of the Hebrew language. Alas, all those men are dead, and none of them brought the virtues of each together in his one person.  

So here we are, not with what might be ideal, but in this the real world, privileged to read the Psalms.  

 What Makes a Good Psalms Translation? 

I’m attempting what I think is the next best thing to the experience of the Psalter in the original language: the most literal translation I can produce that will also be intelligible to English readers.  

The Psalter is full of repeated terms and phrases. These create links between individual psalms and continuity across the Psalter, but too often they are lost in the move from Hebrew to English. I have tried to render these continuity-creating repetitions so that they are recognizable, so that the connections from one psalm to the next through the whole are maintained.   

How Does a Fresh Translation Reveal God? 

In anticipation of complaints, here’s fair warning: Yahweh is not a tame God, and the psalmists are not limping poets.  

My goal has been to translate the psalmists in a way that refuses to domesticate them. Where their statements are difficult, I have not tried to make them easy. David and the others did not live in our culture, and they don’t talk the way people in our culture do. And as for the God to whom they address themselves, this Yahweh presented himself as God without apology: simple in infinitude, righteous in steadfast love, almighty in the gentlest concern. And however much those who think him nonexistent may trifle with him, he never leaves off being who he is. So if you’re not up for being confronted by believers in the living God, this is not the book for you.   

The men who wrote these poems were not playing intellectual games with experimental literature. They wrote of their lived experience, and these artists were fully committed to everything Yahweh had revealed of himself in earlier Scripture and in their own personal histories. Their claims about Yahweh are absolute: he is Lord of all, judge of all, standard of all good, and only savior of those who fear him. There is no other God. There is no other refuge. There is no other hope. So there is no one else to whom they cry for deliverance, and there is no one else they expectantly praise.  

Consider what the God of the Bible said of himself when he proclaimed his own name. On that occasion, he announced his name and explained it, saying,  

“Yahweh, Yahweh: a God merciful and gracious, long of nose and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; keeping lovingkindness for thousands, bearing iniquity and transgression and sin, but acquitting he will not acquit, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the sons and on the sons of the sons, to the third and the fourth generations” (Exod 34:6–7, author’s translation).  

The Bible presents God making these assertions, which declare that he himself is the standard of what is good, true, and righteous, and thereby also that he has defined what sin is. As the creator he reserves to himself the right to judge. So let us have no moral objections about the Bible. Take those to Yahweh himself. Be prepared to explain the basis for your standard of determining right and wrong. He might have a lot of questions for you. To prepare for the interview, see Job 38–42.  

All this about Yahweh being absolute in righteousness and every perfection is necessary if you want to understand his lovingkindness, which is the English term I use to translate the Hebrew word hesed, sometimes rendered “steadfast love,” “loyal love,” or “covenant love” (English doesn’t have a word that does all the work by itself). This term, Psalm 136 shows, is at the root of everything Yahweh is and does. But if you don’t know him in his commitment to things like truth, righteousness, and justice, your understanding of his lovingkindness is sure to be distorted.  

How Should You Read the Psalms? 

As you approach these Psalms, you should do so knowing that these ancient poets believed that Yahweh is everything he claims to be. So what does it look like for ancient near eastern literary geniuses who believed all the Scriptures to which they had access, who understood themselves to be in covenant with the living God, to write poetry that celebrates the God of the Bible, rehearses his past mighty deeds, anticipates the fulfillment of what he has promised to do in the future, and, perhaps most importantly, centers it all on the future king he promised to raise up from the line of David? This is what it looks like. These psalms.  

May your soul sing the Psalter.  

Psalm 113: A Transparent Translation 

Hallelujah! 

Hallel, O servants of Yahweh. 

Hallel the name of Yahweh. 

May the name of Yahweh be blessed, 

from now and unto the age, 

from the rising of the sun to its setting, 

halleled be the name of Yahweh. 

Exalted over all nations is Yahweh, 

over the heavens his glory. 

Who is like Yahweh our God? 

The one who makes high to sit, 

the one who makes low to look, 

on the heavens and the earth, 

the one who raises the poor from the dust, 

from the ash heaps he will lift up the needy, 

to cause him to sit with nobles, with the nobles of his people, 

who causes the barren to dwell in the house, 

a joyful mother of the sons. 

Hallelujah!

James M. Hamilton Jr is professor of Old Testament interpretation and biblical theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and senior pastor of Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the author of several books, including In The Beginning Was the Word and a two-volume commentary on the Psalms in the Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary series.