O praise, you servants of the Lord

This, the shortest of a ‘praise’ trio of Psalms (see 111 and 112, notes), echoes or prefigures the songs of both Hannah in 1 Samuel 2 and Mary in Luke 1. It thus nicely complements the masculinity of the one before it (112), and appropriately uses the same source, Sing Psalms (1997) from the Free Church of Scotland Psalmody Committee; cf note to 4. The 2003 edn changes ‘barren’ to ‘childless’ at 3.5. Timothy Dudley-Smith, Christopher Idle, Andrew King and Will Maggs are among others who have versions in print, while Paul Denning’s popular 1970s song From the rising of the sun is drawn from vv1–3. Calvin writes that the Psalmist (or ‘prophet’) ‘extends the glory of God’s name to all parts of the earth; wherefore our apathy will be totally inexcusable, if we do not make its praises resound among ourselves.’ The tune SIDMOUTH, named from the S Devon seaside town, is best known among 20th-c Baptists and Methodists. It was composed by Benjamin Dale for the 1904 Methodist Hymn Book and retained its place in 1933 (set to John Wesley’s My Saviour, thou thy love to me) but not in 1983.

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.