Psalms 41-45: The king is Hugh Hefner!

Psalm 41

The first three verses offer up a paean to the charitable. Then, of course, it's ten verses of David feeling sorry for himself and whining about how mean and awful his enemies have been: spreading rumours, eating him out of house and home, trying to overthrow him, in other words, typical teenage stuff. So he asks god to make them sick and kill them whilst elevating David. What was that about charity?

Psalm 42

David is so lonely he's been eating his tears. I'm not making this up. He tries a new tactic to get god to pay attention to him: his enemies are taunting him, saying his god doesn't exist, so he challenges god to show up and prove them wrong!

Psalm 43

Blah, blah, David's feeling ignored. Seriously, people talk about how inspiring and uplifting they find these things. Methinks they haven't actually read most of them.

Psalm 44

Yay war poetry! David reminds us of all the legends where god saved his people from their enemies and promises to put his faith there in future wars as well. Then he remembers all the times god has let him down and his enemies have won. So confusing! But he vows to keep believing, like people who decide to keep having kids 'until we have a boy' and end up with 8 girls.

Psalm 45

Suddenly, incongruously, we have a love song to the king. The work of Jonathan? The king is good looking, especially when he's on a horse (though I suspect not as good-looking as this guy) and powerful but just. Oh, awesome! I hadn't read this entire thing when I posted the link to the Old Spice Guy, but verse 8 tells us how good the king's clothing smells. Am I psychic or what?

The king's daughters are honourable (v. 9), which I think is a tactful way of saying 'got hit with the ugly stick' and his wife looks hot in gold.

The psalmist then encourages all the nubile young virgins out there to forget also thine own people, and thy father's house (v. 10) and offer themselves to the king. If they do, the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift; even the rich among the people shall intreat thy favour (v. 12). But that's not all! If they can convince their friends to come along, they'll all get new clothes and their sons will be princes and they'll be immortalized forever. In Playboy. Okay, that last part was only implied.