A Weeping Psalm and a Weeping Song

This Sunday (nevermind that it's July 4th...) the lectionary brings us to Psalm 30.   Our congregation has taken the Psalms as our focus for the year - so rather than a sermon about patriotism or government or the (supposed) Christian heritage of our nation... we'll be looking at Psalm 30.

The superscription doesn't seem to relate to the rest of the Psalm.  "A Song at the dedication of the house of David."  No one is really sure if that means the Temple (which David didn't build) or if it mean's David's home... or that King David even wrote it.  The Hebrew could also accurately be translated - for David, -of David, or -by David.    But the Psalm itself doesn't mention the Temple, a house of any kind, or any specific event from King David's life.

The superscriptions aren't original to the Psalms themselves, though.  So it might be that this superscription was tagged to the wrong pslam due to inattentiveness or a copyist error.  Either way; it doesn't really matter.

It is a pslam of Thanksgiving - specifically for recovery from a nearly fatal illness.  The last couple of psalms have been dark - melancholic - desperate.  But this one moves us toward the light, toward hope.

Weeping may endure for a night
but joy comes in the morning.Psalm 30: 5


I want to work in one of my favorite songs - The Weeping Song - by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.



"This is a weeping song,
a song in which to weep
while we rock ourselves to sleep
but I won't be weeping long.
No, I won't be weeping long."