Word: psalmists
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...commoner but a king, and he does not merely listen to birds, he becomes one. Sweeney Astray is in fact not an original poem but a brilliant rendition of the 7th century Irish legend Buile Suibne. In it, Mad Sweeney slays an innocent psalmist and is cursed for his great offense by St. Ronan: "It is God's decree/ bare to the world he'll always be." Thereafter, the king loses a battle, a mind and an identity when he is reduced to a pitiable creature, "wind-scourged, stripped/ like a winter tree/ clad in black frost...
...where UFO speculations are concerned, "the sky might as well be the limit." If the radio discs on earth ever do pick up coherent beep-beeps from another form of life, or the spaceships ever do land, however, the theologians may be forced to consider in systematic earnest the Psalmist's ancient question: "What is man that Thou art mindful...
...When the Psalmist sang "O Lord, how manifold are thy works!" (104:24], he saved for his climactic example the whale-nature's piece de resistance and everybody's favorite metaphor. But the whale, alas, is referred to more often than studied. A century ago, Herman Melville could say of the sperm whale, "His is an unwritten life." Then he proceeded to write it, of course...
Sacred as it was to Judaism, Jerusalem also attracted pagan conquerors. In 586 B.C., the city and its Temple were destroyed by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, who marched most of its inhabitants off to captivity -a tragedy that inspired the Psalmist to some of his most wistful lamentations. Thanks to the generosity of King Cyrus of Persia, who conquered the Babylonians, the Jews returned 48 years later to rebuild the Temple. In the next centuries, though, Jerusalem was conquered time and again by Greeks, Egyptians and finally the Romans, who adopted Herod as their vassal King. Although hated by Orthodox...
...Abraham received the title deed from God. This religious tradition has maintained a sense of community among Jews scattered over the world since the Romans destroyed the Palestine Jewish community in A.D. 135. For centuries, Passover and Yom Kippur services have ended with "Next year in Jerusalem!" And the Psalmist sang...