Saturday, October 23, 2010

For us fights the Valiant One

(A Berg, not a Burg, but I didn't have a picture of a Burg.)

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.
The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
He utters his voice, the earth melts.
The LORD of hosts is with us,
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

~from Psalm 46~

We 'll be attempting to sing "A Mighty Fortress is our God" in church tomorrow.
This shouldn't be news to anybody, but it's a fantastic hymn. And it also requires a dictionary and an attention span. As Joe McKeever (someone about whom I don't know a thing except what I saw in this article when I googled "Lord Sabaoth") pointed out here, each verse is dependent upon the one that came before. No verses hit the cutting room floor on this one. Anyway, it clocks in at a very reasonable 4.

It also probably isn't news that Martin Luther himself wrote it in 1529 ("Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott") and based it on Psalm 46; it's also called the "Battle Hymn of the Reformation". When I was deciding whether we should do it and reading through, the words "the body they may kill" jumped out at me. My, that's grim! Are we really going to sing about being executed for our faith tomorrow? Isn't that sort of...passé? What an incredibly sheltered life I lead. We worry about Christian or theistic references being scrubbed out of public life, while Christians in other countries worry about being martyred. Themselves. Like, for real. Here's one example. Here's another.

Well, here's what I learned. A "bulwark" is just what it sounds like--something strong that keeps danger out. It can be a literal wall, a figurative support, or in the plural, a wall that goes around the deck of a ship to protect what's on the deck, like sailors. I like that last one best. Something about the idea of weathering the storm with God's protection speaks to me. (But maybe that's because I've never been besieged in an ancient castle surrounded by marauding rival tribes. Maybe then the "wall" would speak to me more.) (On a side note, if we're sailors, how does that fit in with Chaplain Kim's announcement that we are not part of the Navy or Air Force of God--there is just the the Army of God according to Scripture?!)

Lord Sabaoth seems to mean something like "Lord of Hosts" or "Lord of armies". It doesn't seem to have much to do with the Sabbath as far as I've read. This alternate translation of Luther's lyrics has that line translated as "Of Sabbath Lord, and there's none other God" while the standard translation says "Lord Sabaoth His name, from age to age the same". They both rhyme much too well to be close translations, don't you think? I wonder which one is right. Well I don't have time to delve into that. Romans 9:29 calls God the Lord of hosts in the ESV while the KJV & NASB say Lord of Sabaoth. It's a pretty cool phrase if you know what it means. There is one place in which the alternate translation wins hands down: Verse 2, stanzas 3 and 4. The one we'll sing reads "...were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God's own choosing" while the alternate is "...but for us fights the Valiant One, whom God Himself elected." Reading all of both translations, though, it's easy to see that for the sake of perspicuity we are singing the better version.

Tim Challies recently linked to a post about an early Protestant martyr (Rowland Taylor in 1555). The author quotes some of his parting words to his family as recorded in Foxe's Book of Martyrs:

"I say to my wife, and to my children, The Lord gave you unto me,
and the Lord hath taken me from you, and you from me: blessed be the name of the Lord!... Trust ye therefore in Him by the means of our dear Saviour Christ's merits: believe, love, fear, and obey Him: pray to Him, for He hath promised to help. Count me not dead,
for I shall certainly live, and never die.
I go before, and you shall follow after, to our long home."

The first song we're doing Sunday--chosen long before I read that quote--is "Blessed Be Your Name".

If you can't stomach the organ, I like this guy's version. Chord chart here.