Psalm 11 - A Poetic, Oral Translation
—Picture credit, CDBR’s page on Psalm 11.
Psalm 11 - A Poetic, Oral Translation
Last week, I shared about the role singing the Psalms has in God’s mission on earth. This week, I will share the poetic, oral translation that I completed for Katie’s team using the exegetical resources that they developed for Psalm 11.
The Making of a Psalm
According to CDBR’s research on Psalm 11, David wrote this psalm as a response to advisors who feared God would not care for him. David reports their fear-filled advice with scorn in the first section (vv. 1b-3) and corrects them with a God-centered worldview in the second section (vv. 4-7). The last line of David’s correction brings the audience to an astounding truth: the morally upright will behold God’s face, a privilege withheld even from Moses (cf. Exodus 33-34). This psalm reflects David’s rock-solid trust in the goodness of God’s providence and God’s ultimate judgment of the wicked, and it hints at a state of life in which the righteous will see God’s face (i.e. the resurrection).
On the second-to-last day of CDBR’s work retreat a few weeks ago, Katie commissioned me to translate and perform this short, beautiful psalm as an encouragement for her colleagues. This task might have proved challenging because I was also caring for our energetic 9-month-old explorer, Carissa. However, watching their excellent videos gave me everything I felt I needed to understand, internalize, and translate this short psalm in about an hour. I also had a high level of confidence in their interpretation, knowing that they had boiled down the best findings from their ~2 months of man-hours into an hour of video content.
My Poetic, Oral Translation
The “real” version of my translation is the performance, which you can access here. I’d encourage you to listen in order to get the full effect. The following is the transcript of my performance:
I have taken shelter in the Lord!
How can you say?!
Fly in fear like a bird to your mountain!
The wicked prepare their bows!
They put an arrow on its string—
to shoot in the night at the morally upright.
They busily burrow through the foundations of our fortress.
What has the righteous done?
Tsk
The Lord is in his holy temple;
The Lord is on his throne in heaven.
His eyes see—they test humanity.
The Lord tests the righteous,
but the wicked and lovers of violence, his soul hates.
May he rain bird nets on the wicked,
and reward them with burning sulphur and blasts of flaming wind.
Because the Lord is righteous.
He loves righteousness.
The upright will gaze on his face.
Its Reception
The team loved the translation and was encouraged that their hard work could inspire a poetic rendition. They were especially encouraged that someone could use their work to produce such an engaging translation (their evaluation, not mine!) so rapidly.
TL;DR
If the email was too long to read, here are the main points: - I made a poetic, oral translation of Psalm 11. - I used materials from CDBR, the team my wife is on, to produce the Psalm. - The Psalm was well received.
Challenge for You
Watch some of CDBR’s materials and see if you can make your own version of a Psalm!
Sources
- Psalm 11 Poetic, Oral translation by Joshua Frost (2023).
- Picture credit: CDBR’s page on Psalm 11.