You can never have too many Psalters.

This year I set out on a 10-year journey to commit all 150 Psalms to memory. As Psalm 77:10 reads in the Greek (LXX): Now have I made a beginning, this change hath been wrought by the right hand of the Most High.

I began preparations for this pilgrimage in the fall of last year. I had strong concerns I simply did not possess the requisite memory abilities to achieve my ambitious goal. I have always been dismal at remembering song lyrics, but I counted a glimmer of hope in my ability to recall movie quotes. I suspected some of my potential had been crippled by the progressive surrender of my faculties to the power and convenience of technology—a kind of iPhone and Google induced mnemonic atrophy.

I decided to test my capabilities by memorizing Psalm 1 since the words, “on His law will he meditate day and night,” sowed the very seed in my heart to begin this project. The process was slow and repetitive. I drilled and drilled the psalm. I hunted for musical versions and practiced with an Anglican chant setting I discovered. Progress came in chunks, specifically vv.1-2, 3-4, and 5-6. I wish I recorded how long it took me to memorize those scant 6 verses but, suffice it to say, it felt like months.

Through my stubborn perseverance, I discovered, or rather rediscovered the power of memorization laying dormant in me. Once I cemented Psalm 1, Psalms 4, 51, and 95 came much more quickly. I realized that through my new devotion to Morning and Evening Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer (begun in mid 2023) I had unconsciously memorized nearly half of the Daily Office. I was joyfully surprised and encouraged at awakening my capacity for memorization. It was as if I had reclaimed a lost aspect of my humanity and unlocked a doorway to a garden of cognitive and meditative potential. A fire was kindled within me to pursue this project with significant attention and fervor.

How then to begin such a journey? It can be as simple as picking up your Bible, opening to Psalm 1, and reading it 10 times a day. This is how I began my pilot of the project, but I quickly found myself wanting to know more about the psalm’s interpretation so I could better understand the words taking shape in my mind. This is a natural part of the process: When you give your attention to God’s word and become intimately familiar with a passage, you till the soil of your heart, sow seed, and God mysteriously brings growth. So be diligent to cooperate with the grace of His growth by faithfully watering this shoot. Fan into flame every spark sent from our Father of lights.

As I studied interpretations of Psalm 1, I became aware of subtle differences in translation, some significant for the sense of the text, but most were stylistic and affected my love for the text. Let me explain. I experimented with reciting several versions and found that certain wordings would embed themselves so firmly into my memory that they replaced the text I originally memorized. Some phrases were sticky. The Psalm 1 stored in my memory became a blend of at least three translations.

The qualities I experienced as sticky are peculiar to my tastes and sensibilities. Despite this subjective nature, certain literary works and styles are objectively proven by their enduring acclaim. The King James Version Bible is one such enduring work, and the Elizabethan mode is one such style. Much of the stickiest qualities I experienced are native to the Elizabethan style, such as non-SVO syntax or archaic pronouns and verbs, but others include consistent word choices and harmonized phrases across the Psalms.

Consider an example from Psalm 51:10–12, first from the KJV 1900.

Create in me a clean heart, O God;
And renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from thy presence;
And take not thy holy spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation;
And uphold me with thy free spirit.

While modern English syntax normally flows in Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) order, the Elizabethan English poetically varies this order. If you are not familiar with this sentence structure, it commonly requires more than one reading to parse out who (Subject) is doing (Verb) what (Object). However, if you are familiar, the distinct syntactical flow presents a poetic emphasis normally unavailable in languages bereft of inflection.

The same passage in the Christian Standard Bible (CSB) shows how significant the return to SVO syntax can be. The petitions of the psalmist sound mundane by comparison, even though their content remains essentially unchanged.

God, create a clean heart for me
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not banish me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore the joy of your salvation to me,
and sustain me by giving me a willing spirit.

There is no question that the CSB is a more accessible translation here. The meaning of the verses requires little to no contemplation to comprehend. But herein lies the rub—it is precisely contemplation that I am after when looking to “meditate on His law day and night.” Do not misunderstand this as a criticism of the CSB or other accessible translations as valid Bible translations, but instead as an evaluation of their particular utility in meditative memorization of the Psalms. I often use translations like the CSB, NET, NIV, and NLT (to name but a few) to help understand the literal sense of the text, but seldom for precise renditions of the original languages or memorable style.

To demonstrate the archaic pronouns and verbal forms, let us look to one of the Gospel canticles, the Nunc Dimittis of Luke 2:29–32. Here is the KJV 1900 again:

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

The second person singular pronoun, thou/thee/thy/thine, may be the most recognizable aspect of this era of English. It may also be the most misunderstood. Perhaps due to the sense of reverence the KJV language gives the Scriptures, “thou” is often thought to be a formal pronoun. Instead, it is the informal pronoun. Additionally, its various forms are the English equivalent of case inflections that tell you whether it is being used as a subject, direct object, or possessive.

Archaisms like this are strongly polarizing. I do not intend to make an authoritative claim about its fittingness in Christian Scripture or liturgy, only to comment on its stickiness for memorization and only according to my experience. All those thee’s and thine’s were the first thing to overwrite the texts I memorized. The archaic pronouns burst forth of their own accord during recitation, much to my surprise. I suspect that high esteem for the Elizabethan period disposes me to them, but I believe it goes beyond that. There is something truly euphonious about thou/thee/thine. If you consider the sound of you/your, it has a guttural vowel quality to it that while not necessarily cacophonous, it lacks the pleasing “th” consonant sound that breaks up the vowels. When thy is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, thine is used (likewise with my/mine). Again, it breaks up the vowels in a pleasing way that facilitates both pronouncing and hearing the words articulately.

Falling in love with the Elizabethan style native to Shakespeare, Cranmer, Coverdale, Spenser, and others comes with a catch. I am supremely aware of the fact that the Scripture of our New Testament was written in the vulgar Greek that we know today as Common Greek (κοινη/koine) and not in the high dialects we collectively refer to as Classical Greek. I am conscientiously following the opposite of this New Testament pattern, and that gives me pause. I fear the temptation to pretension and conceit that comes with the knowledge and usage of a high form of speech. This temptation heightens with the natural entropic descent of vernacular speech into vulgarity. In other words, the more our English is corrupted, the more pretentious it seems to recover archaic style.

I believe the tension between broadly accessible language and high linguistic beauty is universal. I do not have a profound or novel solution to resolve this tension apart from embracing both genuinely. Christians understand the nature of the cross as a timeless solution to the problem of horizontality and verticality. We traditionally focus on this as a symbol of the convergence of our horizontal relationship with our neighbor and our vertical relationship with God, however, a truth as deep as the cross is polyvalent. In this light, I embrace the vertical ascent I experience through the beauty and poetry of “high speech,” an oft laborious climb up the mountain of God that rewards the laborer with revelatory vistas. But after making an ascent, one must return to the everyday plains and share the fruits of contemplation. Scripture consumed through memorization must be digested before it can be related in accessible speech. The love begotten in communion with God on the mountain is made active by translating His words into a ladder that enables God-fearers to begin their own ascent from whatever altitude in which they find themselves. And if they are so disposed, it may be that in sharing a taste of the high language, it will elevate their gaze and inspire them to hold fast their faith and continue the ascent.

Through this cruciform consideration, I have decided to focus memorization on a vertical translation of the Psalms as well as routine reading through a horizontal translation. For the vertical axis, I have selected the Holy Transfiguration Monastery’s Psalter According to the Seventy. This translation comes from a Russian Orthodox monastery in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. As such, I often hear this translation referred to as the Boston Psalter or the HTM Psalter. This translation was built on the work of two independent translations, those of Fr. Lazarus Moore of India and Fr. Michael Gelsinger of New York. It was translated from the Greek Septuagint, itself an ancient translation of the Old Testament, and not the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT) common to most Bibles.

An explanation of those two textual traditions is very worthwhile, but out of scope for this discussion. Suffice it to say that in the era of the early church, the Greek Septuagint was the most accessible translation available for the ancient world because the Greek language was a lingua franca in the ancient world. Septuagint is a Latin word for seventy, often abbreviated using the Roman numerals “LXX”, alluding to the story of the original 70 (or possibly 72) Hebrew translators summoned to Alexandria to produce a Greek translation of the first five books of Moses. While you may not have heard of the LXX before, its influence is present throughout the New Testament where its authors often follow the Greek LXX and not the Hebrew MT.

The HTM Psalter is written in the style of the King James version of the Bible. The publishers believe this style contributes to solemnity, beauty, and liturgical use. In the Translator’s Introduction at the beginning, it states of the KJV English that, “it is a more ancient and purer form of the language.” While this translation bears much of the hallmark beauty of that style, it never feels ostentatious or excessively old timey. The raw, visceral emotions of the Psalms do not get airbrushed by flowery language. The subtle differences in the Greek LXX source text also contribute to a more straightforward reading of the Psalms that resonates more strongly with me.

The textual differences between the LXX and MT sources do not change the overall sense presented in each of the psalms. Psalms of lamentation remain a lament. Psalms of praise remain praiseful. Those psalms which are widely recognized to be prophetic retain their prophetic quality, though the Christological emphasis is often greater than in the MT. The superscriptions of each psalm do often differ, and scholars have long leveraged both textual streams for a fuller picture about the nature of each psalm. Without doubt, the most jarring difference is the enumeration of the Psalms. Because of a couple different choices regarding where one psalm ends and another begins, much of the Greek psalter is numbered one psalm behind the widespread numbering according to the Hebrews—the numbering used in all Protestant Bibles. This may seem very disconcerting, but the Roman Catholic tradition is very familiar with this problem given that the Latin Vulgate follows the Greek numbering as well.

The Greek of the LXX is distinct from its period because it incorporates much of the Hebrew idioms present in the original text. However, there are many places where such idioms were interpreted to accommodate intelligibility. These interpretive variants serve a tremendously important function to Biblical scholarship because they form a bridge through history from the original authors of the Hebrew text to us in the modern era via the translators of the third century BC.

One Hebraism I find confusing occurs in Psalm 70:3 (ESV):

Let them turn back because of their shame who say, “Aha, Aha!”

This phrase, “aha,” occurs in four verses of the Psalms (Ps 35:21,25; 40:15; 70:3) and always carries a sense of mockery from the ungodly. When I reflect on those passages, I can understand the sense of mockery, but I initially expect the word to be an exclamation of realization—the kind we even call an aha moment. Think of the famous epiphany of Archimedes when he cried, “Eureka!” This misunderstanding is hard for me to disassociate. Hear instead how the HTM renders this passage:

Let them be turned back straightway in shame that say unto me: Well done! Well done!

This change naturally lends itself to a tone of sarcasm. The original meaning thus remains unchanged and becomes more intuitive to my modern ears. Variations like this expand my understanding of the Psalms, and not from academic commentators, but from the textual tradition of the Church itself. It is my joy to bring this oft unheard witness to conversations on the Psalms amongst Christians.

The HTM bears a strong harmony of phrases and passages throughout the Psalms. If this harmony is not native to the Greek LXX itself, then the translators and editors of the psalter have labored long with an eye towards this kind of consistency which is a boon to memorization.

One such consistent phrase is found in the Songs of Ascent of Psalms 120–134. The first two verses of Psalm 129 begin with a call and response antiphon, which read like this in the 2019 New Coverdale Psalms:

“Many a time have they fought against me from my youth on,” may Israel now say; “Indeed, many a time have they afflicted me from my youth on, but they have not prevailed against me.”

Note how fought in the first verse is substituted with afflicted in the second. The HTM reads thus:

Many a time have they warred against me from my youth, let Israel now say, many a time have they warred against me from my youth, and yet they have not prevailed against me.

This harmony between the first two verses appears in the LXX text. Where this gets even more interesting is in the last verse of Psalm 120 where the HTM says, With them that hate peace I was peaceable, when I spake unto them, they warred against me without a cause. The phrase “warred against me” is repeated between these two psalms, lending them a memorable harmony. The 2019 New Coverdale reads, I labor for peace, but when I speak to them of it, they make themselves ready for battle. Here we find our third distinct phrase out of those three verses. The New Coverdale Psalms appear to veer from the Hebrew, which keep Psalm 129:1–2 in harmony, but the point remains. These and various other phrases make up the vernacular of the HTM and are used like building blocks for the language of the Psalms. These building blocks can likewise edify our memorization.

While the Psalter of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery occupies the vertical axis, I have chosen the 2019 New Coverdale Psalms to uphold the horizontal axis. This translation of the Psalms was published in the ACNA’s 2019 Book of Common Prayer. The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) is an integral part of the anglophone tradition of prayer and liturgy. Together these two selections cover vast historical and geographical territory as witnesses to the Eastern and Western Christian traditions.

This 2019 rendition stands on the shoulders of the seminal 1662 edition of the BCP which published the Psalms from Myles Coverdale’s translation of the Bible in 1535. His translation included William Tyndale’s work but had to supplement the remaining untranslated books with his own translations rendered not from the original Greek and Hebrew texts but from the Latin Vulgate and German translations (including Luther’s German Bible). The Psalter thus printed in 1662 bears the beauty of the Elizabethan English form and has a unique set of readings that incorporate the Latin Vulgate.

The 2019 Psalter modernizes the language of the 1662 edition for contemporary liturgical use, and it does this superbly well. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading through it in the monthly cycle of the Daily Office, and I appreciate how the verses retain a measure of the charm and grace of the Elizabethan poetry while not taxing comprehension. These are the fruits of the labor of many hands, including notable Anglican literary titans, T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis.

By selecting two translations, I am not proposing to memorize both in tandem. I will focus my attention memorizing the LXX Psalter since it resonates most strongly with me. However, I intend to continue reading the New Coverdale Psalms as a part of the Daily Office. This twofold approach also has a cruciform shape—the vertical practice of memorization and meditation and the horizontal practice of monthly recitation.

It is possible, perhaps even likely, that I will corrupt my efforts to memorize one translation by regularly reading through another. I embrace this possibility because recall of these Psalms is not an incantation, but a sacramental means to communion with the triune God. The words of any reasonable translation mediate to us divine truth, in which we encounter God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Wherever you are in your pilgrimage, I hope this inspires you to take up the Psalms like a warrior takes up his sword, and to select that sword with care and attention to detail so you may wield it effectively. I pray your recitation and memorization trains your hands for battle so that in the day of testing you might slay the dragon of the passions.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men.

Perhaps you recognized that the title of this article is the opening line of the Psalms. I have always been captivated by Psalm 1—perhaps because it provides the thesis for the whole collection, or perhaps because I struggle to engage and stay motivated through all the psalms (something that has changed dramatically for me recently). My determination to memorize Scripture is a product of much reflection on the content of Psalm 1. Let’s have a look at how it opens.

Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law will he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the waterside, that will bring forth his fruit in due season. His leaf also shall not wither; and look, whatever he does, it shall prosper.

In this psalm of David, we are given a picture of a man who is truly blessed—what he does and what he does not do. I point out that the psalm is written about a man in particular not because it cannot apply to all humanity, but because the prototypical man of Psalm 1 is Jesus Christ himself (and the original languages are unambiguous). The picture of blessing is interesting. Instead of anthropomorphizing an object—attributing human characteristics to a non-human entity—the anthropos (human) is given the characteristics of a plant. The blessed or happy man is like a tree nourished by living waters (i.e. flowing waters). The tree, receiving its life from the waters, in turn yields life as it bears fruit reliably.

At the center of the tree-man’s blessing, indeed the core practice that yields all the signs of blessing, is the delight in and the meditation on the law of the Lord. The Septuagint (LXX) alternately translates “delight in” by saying that his will is in the law of the Lord, putting “delight” and “will” in an insightful parallel. Perhaps delight is not something we are helpless to direct, but can, in fact, be something we cultivate through willing the good found in the law.

But what is this law? In the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT), we see the word torah, while the Greek LXX employs nomos. Torah is a word with two prominent senses—law and instruction. However, since the first five books of Moses are also referred to as the Torah, it has the additional synecdochical sense of referring to the whole collection of Holy Scripture. The Greek term, to my knowledge, does not share other senses beyond “law.” It functions in the place of “torah” in the New Testament writings, especially in the discourses of Jesus. As the translation of the Hebrew word, it imports the same connotations. As Paul says to the Romans, Christ is the end and fulfillment of the nomos (Rom 10:4). Jesus himself says this in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:17). Paul also speaks of τὸν νόμον τοῦ χριστοῦ (ton nomon tou christou), or “the law of Christ” in Galatians 6:2. The law of Psalm 1 is nothing less than the Word, instruction, and commandments of God revealed through Holy Scripture and ultimately incarnated into time and space by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary as Jesus Christ himself.

Now we come to the core practice of the happy man: he meditates day and night on the law—in other words “without ceasing.” But what kind of “meditation” does he practice? Here in the United States, the word itself often brings to mind a distorted picture of a commercialized Buddhist practice directed towards self-help goals like stress reduction. This kind of meditation is different. Think instead of contemplation. If you meditate on the law, then the words of the law will be on your heart and your lips day and night, when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You will hold it in your mind, turn it over, test it with questions, and ponder it alone on your bed and in the community. This kind of meditation is the means by which we receive the blessing of the Word.

This age does not encourage a life lived with ample space to reflect. The face of our master and commander is none other than our calendar, and it is a ruthless taskmaster. But how can we learn if we do not reflect? And how can we reflect if we lack a quiet moment where our thoughts are not stifled? And how can redeem the moments given to us when our delight is in distraction? Reflection is a virtue. Stillness is essential. Our will must be in the Word.

I’ve spent the last several years trying to get Scripture into my head through reading, study, podcasts, sermons, and anything else I can get my hands on. This time has not been fruitless by any account. But I still long for greater understanding. I want it deeper within me. I want the Scripture embedded in my heart. I want to have the living water flowing through the center of me so I can become like the tree of life. So I have begun memorizing Scripture, and in particular the Psalms of David. Not just memorizing them, but reciting them throughout the day or pairing a psalm with a routine action so that together they become an offering of praise and thanksgiving as well as a living meditation.

It is important to me to set goals in order to organize a plan of action. So the idea occurred to me to memorize the entire psalter, but in a reasonable amount of time for a working father of two. I plan to memorize all 150 psalms in 10 years. This means I ought to memorize an average of 15 psalms each year. In one psalter I own, this amounts to 215 pages over 10 years, or 21.5 pages per year. That is less than 2 pages per month. I started pursuing this goal in the final quarter of 2023, and it appears the pace is sustainable. I try to read through the psalter each month, so I have been picking out the psalms that are most applicable for recitation as my 2024 liturgy. The list is not finalized, but here is a preview of the working list (using MT numbering):

1. Psalm 1
   Hopefully the importance of this psalm to me is apparent.

2. Psalm 51
   This is the great penitential psalm of David after his sin with Bathsheeba. It has routine prayer application, but it is also a great psalm to hallow your time in the shower. The themes of cleansing can be put into physical meditation—“create in me a clean heart, O God…”

3. Psalm 110
   This is the most quoted psalm in the New Testament. It is a theological linchpin.

4. Psalm 121
   If we are to take “a song of ascent” as a possible hymn for ascending/traveling to a Jerusalem feast, this is a quintessential travel psalm. The theme of the Lord as our keeper is very potent and can be said each time you enter your car before you set out.

5. Psalm 91
   This psalm is read at sext (midday) in the eastern traditions and at compline (bedtime) in the western traditions. It was quoted by the devil to Jesus during his temptation in the wilderness, and curiously enough, the lines immediately following that quotation speak of treading on serpents, lions, dragons and basilisks (depending on your translation). If you look into the Hebrew in context of the neighboring gods, you’ll find several of those gods mentioned by name. It is nothing less than a powerful psalm of exorcism that finds its greatest fulfillment in Christ’s victory trampling the serpent and opening the way for us into His victory.

I have a few more that are probable choices, but the list won’t be finalized until the beginning of 2024. I have been locked in an internal debate over which translation of the psalms I intend to stick to, or whether or not to cherry pick my own anthology. I expect this may not be an issue for many who spend their time in one bible translation. Such is not the case for me, and I find the differences endlessly fascinating. While I plan for precision, getting the psalms into my heart is the goal and not word-for-word accuracy. I will share more on my technique, but suffice it to say that careful study is integral so that memorization imperfections avoid any great theological distortions, Lord willing.

I pray that sharing this and subsequent articles will inspire you to join me in general, but especially in this particular goal to learn the Psalms. Change the plan from 10 years to 15 or even 30 to make it more approachable. You can always scale the plan up or down as you see fit. But make it part of your day. Set your will on this meditation of the law of the Lord, and may it bless you.

Glory to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
both now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.

In other words, I hope to share my reflections on walking in the way of Christ as one who is admittedly far from sainthood (and perhaps therefore highly relatable to those of us who are still children in Christ), but by God’s grace as one who is hopefully not being conformed to this age, but being transformed by the renewal of the mind.

I hope to bring you alongside my own studies of Scripture as I challenge and expand my linguistic abilities, interpretive lenses, and assumptions about the Word. We’ll spend no small time looking at prayer practices from various vantage points, as well as explore fasting and almsgiving; we’ll investigate the riches of monasticism and look for ways to learn and apply their rule of life outside the solitary and cenobitic; we’ll spend time discussing great works of fiction that point us to the transcendent; we’ll try to inhabit the mind and worldview of other eras before enchantment was taken captive and banished by the Enlightenment; we’ll look under the hood at the manuscript traditions behind the canon of the Bible; we’ll walk through different church liturgies; we’ll try to memorize Scripture together; and we’ll explore some of the great branches of the Church as we aim for the unity Christ prayed for in John 17: that we might all be one just as the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, so that the world might know that Jesus is the only Name under heaven given among men by which we might be saved.

The title of this publication—The Ladder Of Divine Ascent—is a work by St. John Climacus that I confess I have not yet read. Lord willing I will start a series on it early next year around Lent, but regardless I find it the perfect symbol for my intentions. The eponymous text is a famous ascetical treatise written around 600 AD for fellow monks as a guide to ascend to heaven and gain salvation by renouncing the world. Not unlike Jacob’s Ladder of Genesis 28, the ladder connects heaven and earth, or God and Man. Climbing the ladder is the journey we take when we choose to follow Christ, and each step is a virtue we must strive for or a vice from which we must abstain. Along the journey, there are many other Christians climbing, and some have already attained greater heights and so encourage and guide others.

I hope to be something of a middle step in such a ladder as I look up to learn, and in my turn guide. We live in an age with access to an abundance of spiritual riches nestled away quietly in a digital warehouse several orders of magnitude more vast than the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I want to curate some of the riches of wisdom, formation, and practice I have found tucked away and put it within reach of others climbing the ladder. We all refract the light of truth in ways particular to ourselves and our progress on the journey. When we share our unique perspective, we can make wisdom more accessible to others seeking as well as provide an opportunity to be corrected by the wise.

I write to you from the desert of both this world and of Phoenix, Arizona. I have grown up in churches that fall under the broad evangelical umbrella, and more specifically as semi-Charismatic, though my own study and pursuit of the faith has led me across the pews of Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox churches. I don’t have a specific church I currently call home, but I am actively seeking and discerning where I may worship God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the fullness of the faith. I intend to share the joys and doubts of this search in the hope that it will be fruitful and encouraging for those also seeking where they might encounter God most deeply, be changed most fully, and participate in His church to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth.