Praise God! The man is blessed who fears the Lord

‘A man who bows himself to the Lord is in clover’—so Gordon Jackson, see notes to 46A and 111. But the Psalter to which we are indebted for this further alphabetical song is that of the Free Church of Scotland, the 1997 Sing Psalms; see 4, note. The complete 2003 edn makes slight changes to 1.1, 4.1, and 6.3. It is virtually impossible to avoid the gender-specific language of this Psalm without doing violence to its frankly OT perspective on the blessings of God; but cf 113 and note. It is illuminating to compare the contrasting strengths of the two Michaels, Saward in Psalm Praise, 1973, and Perry in Psalms for Today, 1990. Before we are too critical from a 21st-c viewpoint, we may observe its corrective to our latter-day individualism with the concept of family or tribal solidarity, notably in stzs 1 and 2. Some have seen this whole Psalm as growing from the final lines of the one before, as in Psalms 148–149. Alan MacMillan’s ROCK HARBOR is a welcome contemporary addition to the overworked, because small, group of tunes in this metre of 4 tens (‘beloved of preachers’ according to one student of hymns). It was composed for Hal Helms’ text Let heaven rejoice before the living God, a partnership which won an American award in 1986 for the best combination of new text and new tune. They were published by the American Hymn Society, notably in Holding in Trust (1992), and hymnals such as The Worshiping Church (1990). The present book is the first to link the tune with this Psalm text. Rock Harbo(u)r is in Isle Royale on Lake Superior, in the state of Michigan where the composer was at high school.

1997ff. In writing in 1979 about the Scottish metrical Psalms in general and the Church Hymnary 3rd Edn (CH3, 1973) in particular, Erik Routley commended 3 versions by Ian Pitt-Watson (1921–95): ‘His versions are beautifully done and are a good augury for any revision of the Scottish Psalter that may, within the next thousand years or so, be in view.’ (A Panorama of Christian Hymnody pp189–90, revised edn 2005 p400.) Without waiting for future millennia, a committee of the Free Ch of Scotland chaired by Donald M MacDonald began work in the 1990s towards a completely new version of the 150 Psalms which would be ‘a metrical translation rather than a paraphrase’. As in 1650 but unlike Watts and many versions in Praise!, there is no ‘Christianising’; it avoids any rendering ‘which determines whether the passage is exclusively or typically messianic’ and aims to avoid archaisms and (where possible) the inversions which have plagued so many earlier metrical Psalters. Verse (stz) numbers correspond to standard English translations. Various samples were made available, on whole-page format, as the work progressed, some of which are used here; the complete book was published in 2003 with the traditional split pages (music above words), to allow for easy reference to alternative tunes. The texts are anonymous but many contemporary tunes are featured. Its brief Preface, followed by a Music Preface, is also much to the point; an Appendix adds 5 items from the 1650 Psalter and tunes, composers and topics are indexed. A words-only edn is also available. See B E Bridge in HSB215 (April 1998). Nos.4, 8, 112, 113, 119E, 129.