The Day of Pentecost, and some language lessons

In recent weeks, I have renewed my attention to Hebrew. My goal has always been to read the Psalms in their proper tongue, so I decided to jump into the river, ready or not. Through Biblio.com, I purchased a parallel-language Sefer Tehillim (Book of Psalms), and when at home, I have been reading the appointed Psalms for the Daily Office out of it.

Psalm 78 on the fifteenth of the month took me around three hours.

I read a half-verse, compare it with the fairly literal English on the facing page and do my best to match up the words so that I have a good sense of how the Hebrew is going – but I avoid looking at the Lexicon or making any serious effort to parse out the verb tenses and forms. And I move on to the next half-verse.

I have nearly completed one cycle through the month, and I hope that the second and subsequent cycles will be easier.

This has proven to be a good complement to more detailed work with individual psalms. I have been working through the Psalms of Degrees (120 through 134) for about a year, and had gotten thoroughly bogged down, finding little time for the task since December, though I recite one of them each day in the Midday Office (that is, on the days when I pray this office, which is only about half of my days). This work of careful study followed by more-or-less regular recitation seems to have laid the foundation for what I am doing now. Should I live long enough, I would like to work through the entire Psalter in detail. I am not optimistic about getting around to it.

And next time the holy Torah comes around in the readings for the Office (January 2012), I would like to read it in the proper tongue, at the “surface” level of working with a parallel English/Hebrew text as I am doing with the Psalms. I am not optimistic about that, either.

But this raises a dilemma: I cannot imagine reading the Pentateuch in anything other than the Authorized Version (KJV). It is too beautiful to give up, even for the original tongue.

I should not wish to lose the glories of our various languages. Hebrew is unutterably beautiful, as I am learning. So is German, which I dearly love, the language of Luther and Gerhardt. And Latin, the holy and venerable language of the Western Church. And Spanish. And, not least, English, the language of the Authorized Version, the Book of Common Prayer, Shakespeare, Watts, and Wesley.

I once thought that all of our words in this life would one day come to an end, inadequate for the glory that is to be revealed, and that may indeed be so. But now I think that the Day of Pentecost gives the clue – indeed, Acts 2 revels in it, with its listing of “Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites” and all the rest. In it, “the Curse of Babel is undone.” Rather than giving up our languages, we retain them all, and through the grace of the Spirit, understand them all, every language of this “great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues.” (Rev. 7:9)

It seems to me that none of these tongues will be lost, but rather transformed, even as our physical bodies will be sown in corruption and raised in incorruption (I Cor. 15:42).

It seems to me also that our songs will undergo a like transformation. As any choral musician knows, the song is inseparable from its text, in its proper language. We will, it is promised, “sing a new song to the LORD.” But in some manner, we will continue to sing Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, and Gloria in excelsis Deo, and “My Shepherd will supply my need: Jehovah is his name” -- and Ashirah l'Adonai b'chaiyaiv: Azam'rah leilohai b'odi (Psalm 104:33 – I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being.)

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. (I Cor. 2:9)