How wickedly they spread their lies

Not even Michael Perry (see notes to 75 and 82!) attempted to paraphrase this Psalm, one of the hardest to assimilate to Christian worship. It comes in none of his edited collections, and in few others which are not, as here, attempts to represent the complete Psalter. Yet it is in the apostle Peter’s mind as the 120 disciples meet to choose a replacement for the traitor Judas Iscariot (Acts 1:20), perhaps because it also seems to prefigure the scenes at the cross. Some have even placed the ‘cursing’ (vv6–15) in inverted commas in an attempt to read them as the words of the enemies rather than of the Psalmist. Calvin Seerveld has a bold contemporary version, Do not be silent, LORD God, in the CRC’s 1987 Psalter Hymnal. H F Lyte’s 16 lines, selected by Spurgeon for the Psalms section of Our Own Hymn Book, are distinctly smoother and more gentle than the original Psalm of David. At Peckham in June 1998 Christopher Idle wrote this one, ‘the Psalm that nobody wanted to do’, at the request of the ‘Psalms’ team as Praise! was nearing completion. Stz 2 consciously echoes Acts 1, stz 4 hints at Luke 10, stz 6 glimpses Romans 8, and 3.6 is quoted directly from Derek Kidner, whose commentary (as ever) helps to set this Psalm in context. TYDI A RODDAIST, composed by Arwel Hughes, was found by David Preston in Baptist Praise and Worship (1991); ‘it was a relief to find a solemn tune to fit these words in a rare metre’—DGP. It is a setting of ‘a rather slight devotional poem’ which is ‘in much demand on other occasions’ (Alan Luff, Welsh Hymns and their Tunes). The name is from the opening Welsh words of ‘’Tis thou didst give the dawn its hue’.

b Bromley, Kent 1938. Eltham Coll, St Peter’s Coll Oxford (BA, English), Clifton Theol Coll Bristol; ordained in 1965 to a Barrow-in-Furness curacy. He spent 30 years in CofE parish ministry, some in rural Suffolk, mainly in inner London (Peckham, Poplar and Limehouse). Author of over 300 hymn texts, mainly Scripture based, collected in Light upon the River (1998) and Walking by the River (2008), Trees along the River (2018), and now appearing in some 300 books and other publications; see also the dedication of EP1 (p3) to his late wife Marjorie. He served on 5 editorial groups from Psalm Praise (1973) to Praise!; his writing includes ‘Grove’ booklets Hymns in Today’s Language (1982) and Real Hymns, Real Hymn Books (2000), and The Word we preach, the words we sing (Reform, 1998). He edited the quarterly News of Hymnody for 10 years, and briefly the Bulletin of the Hymn Society, on whose committee he served at various times between 1984 and 2006; and addressed British and American Hymn Socs. Until 1996 he often exchanged draft texts with Michael Perry (qv) for mutual criticism and encouragement. From 1995 he was engaged in educational work and writing from home in Peckham, SE London, until retirement in 2003; following his return to Bromley after a gap of 40 years, he has attended Holy Trinity Ch Bromley Common and Hayes Lane Baptist Ch. Owing much to the Proclamation Trust, he also belongs to the Anglican societies Crosslinks and Reform, together with CND and the Christian pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. A former governor of 4 primary schools, he has also written songs for school assemblies set to familiar tunes, and (in 2004) Grandpa’s Amazing Poems and Awful Pictures. His bungalow is smoke-free, alcohol-free, car-free, gun-free and TV-free. Nos.13, 18, 21, 23A, 24B, 27B, 28, 31, 35, 36, 37, 48, 50, 68, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 85, 89, 92, 95, 102, 108, 109, 114, 118, 119A, 121A, 125, 128, 131, 145B, 157, 176, 177, 193*, 313*, 333, 339, 388, 392, 420, 428, 450, 451, 463, 478, 506, 514, 537, 548, 551, 572, 594, 597, 620, 621, 622, 636, 668, 669, 693, 747, 763, 819, 914, 917, 920, 945, 954, 956, 968, 976, 1003, 1012, 1084, 1098, 1138, 1151, 1158, 1159, 1178, 1179, 1181, 1201, 1203, 1204, 1205, 1209, 1210, 1211, 1212, 1221, 1227, 1236, 1237, 1244, 1247, 5017, 5018, 5019, 5020.