Post by John on Jan 8, 2014 7:14:08 GMT -5
SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE
This introduction to The Psalms we put on FACEBOOK with an illustration but may not have been widely noticed and included Psalms 1 and 2.
[font size="4"]SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE[/font]
A Pocket full of rye
Four and Twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
I sometimes sing that when I call out at BINGO “ Two and four, twentyfour.” Another of our team of callers also loves to sing This of course is part of a Nursery Rhyme sung by children years ago, one of many on which our singing was weaned.
Singing is becoming more popular as against merely listening to other people singing, what with choirs of children that did not know a note, Servicemen's wives, Groups of tradesmen, buskers in the street. One of my friends had members of her family over for Christmas and the teenager went into town with his guitar and sang, and made over £40 very quickly. He reckons Saffron Walden is a great place to come to for buskering. Several groups sang carols outside Tesco's this year for the Salvation Army and for the Crossroads, the Carers Charity, as we have done for years. I recall the year when only 2 of us turned up and did a duet for an hour. One man did offer to pay if we'd shut up but what he offered was a paltry sum so we carried on.
BBC Songs of Praise still collects an audience of millions each Sunday, about double those that attend the churches on a Sunday, although more and more people are turning back to doing that.
Some of our Free Churches have only been hymn singing for 400 years as before that it was considered Popish or of the Devil to sing about God other than use the Psalms from the Bible. Congregations even divided into those who wanted to sing hymns and those who did not. One denomination only accepted singing hymns 2 years ago. Hymn singing in Britain goes back into the British Celtic Church which is older than the Roman catholic Church that it got absorbed into in the 6th century. Particularly the work of Caedmon an illiterate plough boy who also tended animals who received the gift to compose poems and songs about God and Nature and sing them. He was then invited to become a monk and sing in the monastery.
But from before that, the Church sang psalms and hymns in Latin,or in Greek and right back around 2000 years Christians have been singing, and before that in the Great Temple in Jerusalem they had huge choirs, and orchestras and the Psalms were sung to crowds of people who would join in.
THE PSALMS the 18th book of the Bible are full of praise, joy, thanksgiving, prayer, beauty and many references to the world around us, and the world yet to come. It would profit us all, Christian or non-Christian, believer or atheist to read the Psalms and even to sing them. Singing is good for our soul, our spirit, and indeed our body.
How to Read or Sing Psalms
The best way to use the psalms is also the most common way: to make these ancient prayers your own and speak them directly to God. So many of the poems catch such deep human feelings that you can't help being moved by them.
But not all the psalms seem attractive. Some sound harsh, self-congratulatory, or boring. You will not find it easy to pray these until you understand them.
Then there are so many psalms! This is the longest book in the Bible. To compensate, many people read only selected psalms, skimming over the others. But then they miss the deeper messages found there, including the messages that the New Testament writers saw when they quoted Psalms more than any other Old Testament book. The richest lessons from Psalms may come from particularly difficult poems you must read again and again until you begin to see what the author had in mind.
Readers may be confused by the psalms' frequent change of voice. In a single poem the psalmist may talk to God, then talk about him, and then return to talking to him, all in rapid succession. This would be strange English prose, but was common in Hebrew poetry.
Because so many of the psalm titles refer to David, you may find it helpful to refer to his life story. It is found in 1 Samuel 16-31, the whole book of 2 Samuel, and the first two chapters of 1 Kings.
WHICH BIBLE SHOULD WE READ?. If you have a Bible you've had a long while but have seldom read chances are it may be an Authorized Version otherwise called the King James Version in which case it is in Tudor English of the 4th revision published in 1789. If you are not used to reading the Bible it might be best to get a modern English translation rather than get bogged down in the beautiful cadences but difficult words and phrases of the AV. {alternatives such as The Good News Bible [Today's English Version] , the English Standard Version {ESV} or the Contemporary English Version [ CEV} or the New International Version [NIV} which is easily readable and widely used worldwide though in parts a bit inaccurate. Any psalms we publish on Facebook or our Web Board site www.lhpm.proboards.com are from the NIV, from the 2nd revision, since then it has been revised twice more to try to get rid of it's inaccuracies.,
However, most of the psalms can make perfect sense without reference to any outside information. They merely ask--and reward--time and close attention. Read and reread them. They grow richer with careful study. The numbers are chapter and verse numbers to help in finding them when given a reference like Psalm 2 .12 to find.
PSALM 1.
1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish
Blowing in the Wind
Psalms 1: verse 4
The opposite of "a tree planted by streams" (verse 3) should be a tree withered by drought--and so it is in Jeremiah 17:5-8, which paints a similar contrast between good and bad people. This image of the wicked as "chaff," however, is far more absolute--for chaff, utterly worthless even for a fire, disappears in the wind. God's judgment day is what finally makes the wicked seem like chaff
Psalm 2
1 Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth take their stand
and the rulers gather together
against the LORD
and against his Anointed One.
3 "Let us break their chains," they say,
"and throw off their fetters."
4The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
5Then he rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
6"I have installed my King
on Zion, my holy hill."
7 I will proclaim the decree of the LORD:
He said to me, "You are my Son;
today I have become your Father.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You will rule them with an iron scepter;
you will dash them to pieces like pottery."
10 Therefore, you kings, be wise;
be warned, you rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD with fear
and rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry
and you be destroyed in your way,
for his wrath can flare up in a moment.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
The Messiah in the Psalms
Psalms 2:2
Israelite kings and priests were anointed with oil when they took office. The "Anointed One" probably originally meant "king." It came, however, to stand for more. The Hebrew word is masiah, which became Messiah and translated into Greek as Christos or Christ. This psalm was understood in the New Testament as referring to Jesus--for no Old Testament king ever gained the control of the nations implied here. You can find quotations in Acts 4:25-26; 13:33; Hebrews 1:5; 5:5; and Revelation 2:27; 12:5; and 19:15.1
Caedmon St. Caedmon (died around 680) is the first known poet of the vernacular in English. He is thought to have been a Celt, who was already old at the time he went to Whitby to tend the animals. Too shy to join in the communal singing after meals, he slipped out to work with the animals. One night, according to Bede, Cædmon fell asleep and had a vision in which he learned a hymn; when he awoke, he knew the song and could recite it perfectly. After his performance, Abbotess Hilda urged him to become a monk. Cædmon remained illiterate but retained his ability to versify. He listened to the lessons the monks read and reworked them into English verse, which made the Scripture accessible to the laity. His verse form is said to have been the traditional, oral form of the Anglo-Saxons. His only surviving poem is the "Hymn of Creation," the poem he learned in his dream.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
A common modern version of the nursery rhyme is:
Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Wasn't that a dainty dish,
To set before the king?
The king was in his counting house,
Counting out his money;
The queen was in the parlour,
Eating bread and honey.
The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes,
When down came a blackbird
And pecked off her nose.[1]
The final line of the fourth verse is sometimes slightly varied, with nose pecked or nipped off. One of the following additional verses is often added to moderate the ending:
They sent for the king's doctor,
who sewed it on again;
He sewed it on so neatly,
the seam was never seen.[1]
or:
There was such a commotion,
that little Jenny wren
Flew down into the garden,
and put it back again
As to origins well in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night [ around 1602 ] in Act 2 Scene 3 Sir Toby Belch tells a clown “Come on, there's a sixpence for you. Lets have a song”
The first verse as published in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song book in 1744 reads
Sing a song of sixpence,
A bag full of rye.
Four and twenty naughty boys ,
Baked in a pye.
By 1780 “boys” had been changed to “ birds.”
This introduction to The Psalms we put on FACEBOOK with an illustration but may not have been widely noticed and included Psalms 1 and 2.
[font size="4"]SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE[/font]
A Pocket full of rye
Four and Twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
I sometimes sing that when I call out at BINGO “ Two and four, twentyfour.” Another of our team of callers also loves to sing This of course is part of a Nursery Rhyme sung by children years ago, one of many on which our singing was weaned.
Singing is becoming more popular as against merely listening to other people singing, what with choirs of children that did not know a note, Servicemen's wives, Groups of tradesmen, buskers in the street. One of my friends had members of her family over for Christmas and the teenager went into town with his guitar and sang, and made over £40 very quickly. He reckons Saffron Walden is a great place to come to for buskering. Several groups sang carols outside Tesco's this year for the Salvation Army and for the Crossroads, the Carers Charity, as we have done for years. I recall the year when only 2 of us turned up and did a duet for an hour. One man did offer to pay if we'd shut up but what he offered was a paltry sum so we carried on.
BBC Songs of Praise still collects an audience of millions each Sunday, about double those that attend the churches on a Sunday, although more and more people are turning back to doing that.
Some of our Free Churches have only been hymn singing for 400 years as before that it was considered Popish or of the Devil to sing about God other than use the Psalms from the Bible. Congregations even divided into those who wanted to sing hymns and those who did not. One denomination only accepted singing hymns 2 years ago. Hymn singing in Britain goes back into the British Celtic Church which is older than the Roman catholic Church that it got absorbed into in the 6th century. Particularly the work of Caedmon an illiterate plough boy who also tended animals who received the gift to compose poems and songs about God and Nature and sing them. He was then invited to become a monk and sing in the monastery.
But from before that, the Church sang psalms and hymns in Latin,or in Greek and right back around 2000 years Christians have been singing, and before that in the Great Temple in Jerusalem they had huge choirs, and orchestras and the Psalms were sung to crowds of people who would join in.
THE PSALMS the 18th book of the Bible are full of praise, joy, thanksgiving, prayer, beauty and many references to the world around us, and the world yet to come. It would profit us all, Christian or non-Christian, believer or atheist to read the Psalms and even to sing them. Singing is good for our soul, our spirit, and indeed our body.
How to Read or Sing Psalms
The best way to use the psalms is also the most common way: to make these ancient prayers your own and speak them directly to God. So many of the poems catch such deep human feelings that you can't help being moved by them.
But not all the psalms seem attractive. Some sound harsh, self-congratulatory, or boring. You will not find it easy to pray these until you understand them.
Then there are so many psalms! This is the longest book in the Bible. To compensate, many people read only selected psalms, skimming over the others. But then they miss the deeper messages found there, including the messages that the New Testament writers saw when they quoted Psalms more than any other Old Testament book. The richest lessons from Psalms may come from particularly difficult poems you must read again and again until you begin to see what the author had in mind.
Readers may be confused by the psalms' frequent change of voice. In a single poem the psalmist may talk to God, then talk about him, and then return to talking to him, all in rapid succession. This would be strange English prose, but was common in Hebrew poetry.
Because so many of the psalm titles refer to David, you may find it helpful to refer to his life story. It is found in 1 Samuel 16-31, the whole book of 2 Samuel, and the first two chapters of 1 Kings.
WHICH BIBLE SHOULD WE READ?. If you have a Bible you've had a long while but have seldom read chances are it may be an Authorized Version otherwise called the King James Version in which case it is in Tudor English of the 4th revision published in 1789. If you are not used to reading the Bible it might be best to get a modern English translation rather than get bogged down in the beautiful cadences but difficult words and phrases of the AV. {alternatives such as The Good News Bible [Today's English Version] , the English Standard Version {ESV} or the Contemporary English Version [ CEV} or the New International Version [NIV} which is easily readable and widely used worldwide though in parts a bit inaccurate. Any psalms we publish on Facebook or our Web Board site www.lhpm.proboards.com are from the NIV, from the 2nd revision, since then it has been revised twice more to try to get rid of it's inaccuracies.,
However, most of the psalms can make perfect sense without reference to any outside information. They merely ask--and reward--time and close attention. Read and reread them. They grow richer with careful study. The numbers are chapter and verse numbers to help in finding them when given a reference like Psalm 2 .12 to find.
PSALM 1.
1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish
Blowing in the Wind
Psalms 1: verse 4
The opposite of "a tree planted by streams" (verse 3) should be a tree withered by drought--and so it is in Jeremiah 17:5-8, which paints a similar contrast between good and bad people. This image of the wicked as "chaff," however, is far more absolute--for chaff, utterly worthless even for a fire, disappears in the wind. God's judgment day is what finally makes the wicked seem like chaff
Psalm 2
1 Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth take their stand
and the rulers gather together
against the LORD
and against his Anointed One.
3 "Let us break their chains," they say,
"and throw off their fetters."
4The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
5Then he rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
6"I have installed my King
on Zion, my holy hill."
7 I will proclaim the decree of the LORD:
He said to me, "You are my Son;
today I have become your Father.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You will rule them with an iron scepter;
you will dash them to pieces like pottery."
10 Therefore, you kings, be wise;
be warned, you rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD with fear
and rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry
and you be destroyed in your way,
for his wrath can flare up in a moment.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
The Messiah in the Psalms
Psalms 2:2
Israelite kings and priests were anointed with oil when they took office. The "Anointed One" probably originally meant "king." It came, however, to stand for more. The Hebrew word is masiah, which became Messiah and translated into Greek as Christos or Christ. This psalm was understood in the New Testament as referring to Jesus--for no Old Testament king ever gained the control of the nations implied here. You can find quotations in Acts 4:25-26; 13:33; Hebrews 1:5; 5:5; and Revelation 2:27; 12:5; and 19:15.1
Caedmon St. Caedmon (died around 680) is the first known poet of the vernacular in English. He is thought to have been a Celt, who was already old at the time he went to Whitby to tend the animals. Too shy to join in the communal singing after meals, he slipped out to work with the animals. One night, according to Bede, Cædmon fell asleep and had a vision in which he learned a hymn; when he awoke, he knew the song and could recite it perfectly. After his performance, Abbotess Hilda urged him to become a monk. Cædmon remained illiterate but retained his ability to versify. He listened to the lessons the monks read and reworked them into English verse, which made the Scripture accessible to the laity. His verse form is said to have been the traditional, oral form of the Anglo-Saxons. His only surviving poem is the "Hymn of Creation," the poem he learned in his dream.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
A common modern version of the nursery rhyme is:
Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Wasn't that a dainty dish,
To set before the king?
The king was in his counting house,
Counting out his money;
The queen was in the parlour,
Eating bread and honey.
The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes,
When down came a blackbird
And pecked off her nose.[1]
The final line of the fourth verse is sometimes slightly varied, with nose pecked or nipped off. One of the following additional verses is often added to moderate the ending:
They sent for the king's doctor,
who sewed it on again;
He sewed it on so neatly,
the seam was never seen.[1]
or:
There was such a commotion,
that little Jenny wren
Flew down into the garden,
and put it back again
As to origins well in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night [ around 1602 ] in Act 2 Scene 3 Sir Toby Belch tells a clown “Come on, there's a sixpence for you. Lets have a song”
The first verse as published in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song book in 1744 reads
Sing a song of sixpence,
A bag full of rye.
Four and twenty naughty boys ,
Baked in a pye.
By 1780 “boys” had been changed to “ birds.”