Emoting about idols

They say that the psalms are the hymnbook of Israel. I don’t know if this is true, but if it is I sometimes wonder what the atmosphere in ‘church’ was like back then. Take Psalm 96, which has been a favourite source for Christian songwriters for generations. One of the versions we often sing in church (and which I always enjoy) has a joyous, uplifting feel, as it calls on the congregation to sing a new song to the Lord, and to “worship the Lord in holy array”. This particular song paraphrases verses 3-6 of the psalm like this:

Majesty and honour are his, Strength and beauty, glory and righteousness, Great is the Lord, and deserving of praise, He is to be feared above all gods.

Marvellous stuff. Except verse 5 of the psalm is strangely missing. It’s the one that says: “For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens”. I can understand, of course, why the Christian songwriter chose to pass over verse 5. It’s hardly very uplifting or worshipful to start having a go at the idolatry of the nations. Yet it’s perhaps the central idea of the psalm—that Yahweh is the fearsome, great God over all gods, the majestic creator and Lord of all the earth, and that the nations had better leave their worthless idols and come with an offering to the sanctuary of the king in Jerusalem, because he is soon coming to judge them all. All the same, it’s hard to imagine a modern praise-and-worship number with this as its chorus:

Hallelujah, your idols are what? Hallelujah, they’re worth diddly-squat. Hallelujah, better serve God instead, Or Hallelujah, like idols, you’re dead.

Somehow I can’t see the music for this one bearing the inscription ‘slowly and worshipfully’. Yet this kind of sentiment is dotted throughout the psalms. What was the mood like when they sang this all together (if they did)? Was it like the mood of the crowd when Australia once again demonstrates its utter superiority in world cricket? All of which leaves me thinking: either this sort of stuff wasn’t really what Israel sang when they gathered at the temple, or else the emotional range of Israel’s poetic and musical expression was a tad wider than the bland pop ballads we call ‘contemporary Christian music’.