Sunday 23 August 2015

Psalms can be 'funny' in The Message.

Courtesy of biblegateway.com:

47 1-9 Applause, everyone. Bravo, bravissimo!
    Shout God-songs at the top of your lungs!
God Most High is stunning,
    astride land and ocean.
He crushes hostile people,
    puts nations at our feet.
He set us at the head of the line,
    prize-winning Jacob, his favorite.
Loud cheers as God climbs the mountain,
    a ram’s horn blast at the summit.
Sing songs to God, sing out!
    Sing to our King, sing praise!
He’s Lord over earth,
    so sing your best songs to God.
God is Lord of godless nations—
    sovereign, he’s King of the mountain.
Princes from all over are gathered,
    people of Abraham’s God.
The powers of earth are God’s—
    he soars over all.

I was looking up psalm 47 to use for this morning's meeting, and biblegateway was still set to display The Message version. Methinks someone had a bit of fun crafting this particular translation.

2 comments:

  1. I have enormous respect for Eugene Peterson, but I'm not a big fan of the Message. I find his "vernacular" approach to translation (to make it sound in our culture like it would presumably have sounded in the original culture) to be quite jarring at times and possibly out of date (that is, not all that vernacular!). I consult the Message from time to time as I might a commentary or to help me see a passage with fresh eyes, but otherwise I don't use it.

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  2. It's not a version for use studying, but can sometimes be helpful if you need something informal. I'd looked up a passage in that version because of a discussion on a web forum, and wanted to re-quote a passage someone else had posted (in KJV with all it's strangeness and distortion for modern man) in a way that could be readily understood.

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