(Here’s the 17th post in my continuing series on the Psalms for All Seasons Sunday school class I co-teach with Andrew Friend. Each week we sing psalm settings from Psalms for All Seasons, Lift Up Your Hearts, and other CRC hymnals. Previous posts is the series focused on Psalm 121, Psalm 122, Psalms 2/99, Psalm 72, Psalm 95, Psalm 147, Psalm 112, Psalm 29, Psalm 40, Psalm 23, Psalm 27, Psalm 130, Psalm 15, Psalm 51, Psalm 6, and Psalm 32.)
Our class looked at Psalm 143 (along with Psalms 38 & 102) during our fourth and final Sunday (Feb. 16) on the seven penitential psalms. The psalm has apparently been used by Christians as a prayer anticipating the Last Judgement.
Lord, hear my prayer, listen to my cry for mercy;
in your faithfulness and righteousness
come to my relief.
Do not bring your servant into judgment,
for no one living is righteous before you.
Psalm 143 is a cry for help from someone is great distress—crushed to the ground by an enemy, “dwell[ing] in darkness like those long dead.” Throughout the psalm he calls for help from the Lord, trusting in God’s covenant faithfulness and “unfailing love”—not on the psalmist’s own righteousness. The psalmist has faith in God because of his past deeds and meditates upon them.
I remember the days of long ago;
I meditate on all your works
and consider what your hands have done.
I spread out my hands to you;
I thirst for you like a parched land.
The psalmist asks not only for rescue from enemies, but also instruction and guidance:
Teach me to do your will, for you are my God;
may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.
In a collect written for the psalm, Eugene Peterson captures the connection between God’s past deeds and learning the right way to go: “I will go over again what I know of your ways and reorder my ways by what I learn in Jesus Christ.”
Members of our class were struck by a couple of themes in the psalm. First, troubles of the psalmist are spiritual ones—“ So my spirit grows faint within me; my heart within me is dismayed.… Answer me quickly, Lord; my spirit fails.” So the psalmist’s spirit requires help from God’s “good Spirit.” (A look at an online concordance shows that “spirit” is rare in the psalms—just 15 include it—and only Psalm 51 has more references to it than Psalm 143.)
Second, the psalm uses military imagery that is still applicable in modern warfare, e.g., in Afghanistan: being pursued by an enemy in a “parched land”; the desire to be on level ground and to find a safe way to go, e.g, a road without IEDs.
Psalm 143 is one of several psalms in which the psalmist waits for an answer in the morning, suggesting a night of prayer in the Temple. Presumably for this reason, the Revised Common Lectionary assigns the psalm to the Easter Vigil (during all three years).
The Psalm 143 hymn in Psalms for All Seasons and Lift Up Your Hearts is “Hear My Prayer, O God” (PFAS #143A/LUYH #895) with modern lyrics by Carl Daw set to Hal Hopson’s HYMN CHANT. Fortunately—since it’s the only Psalm 143 in either book—it’s a good one.
Hear my prayer, O God, and listen to my plea;
faithful, righteous One, give ear and answer me.
Judge me not, I pray; no merit dare I claim;
knowing my own faults, I trust in your just Name.
The responsorial setting is “I Lift My Soul to You; Hear My Prayer” (PFAS #143B), which is set to a fragment of “What Wondrous Love.”
A brief digression before discussing the Psalm 143 settings in the Psalter Hymnal: I started attending the CRC around 1993 when the gray Psalter Hymnal was just six years old, but because I never used a blue Psalter Hymnal, it seems like an older book to me. [By comparison, I can remember the Service Book and Hymnal (the red book) used by several Lutheran denominations before being replaced in the late 1970s by the Lutheran Book of Worship (the green book).] So prior to teaching this Sunday school class, I had little exposure to the blue Psalter Hymnal, a situation which may have continued if I hadn’t happened upon a copy in the piano bench in our house (I’m not sure how it got there) and began to look at its Psalm settings.
So while I wasn’t around to witness displeasure with the new (gray) Psalter Hynmnal in 1987, I am beginning to vicariously understand some of it by comparing the psalm settings in the two books. The psalm sections of the blue Psalter Hymnal (and the red Psalter Hymnal before it) were largely derived from the 1912 Psalter, created by Presbyterians but authorized for use in the CRC. The gray Psalter Hymnal replaced many of those with new lyrics set to psalm settings from the 16th Century Genevan Psalter, which was created under the supervision of John Calvin. As neat as this idea sounds, the problem is that many of those tunes aren’t as suitable for 20th Century congregational singing as the ones they replaced.
I mention this as background to the fact that our class liked the Psalm 143 settings in the blue Psalter Hymnal (both from the 1912 Psalter) more than the Genevan setting in the gray Psalter Hymnal. Those two blue PH settings are “Lord, Hear Me in Distress” (PH57 #294), a full versification set to DENBY, and “When Morning Lights the Eastern Skies” (PH57 #295), which is based on verses 8-12.
The full versification in the gray Psalter Hymnal is “LORD, Hear My Prayer, My Supplication” (PH87 #143) is set to GENEVAN 143 with lyrics by James Vanden Bosch.
When I remember days of old, LORD,
I meditate on all your doings,
on all the works your hand have wrought.
I stretch my hands out to implore you;
my soul thirsts like a desert land.
The gray Psalter Hymnal also has a short response derived from verse 1: “Hear Our Prayer, O Lord” (PH87 #624).