Regarding verse 16 of the psalm, which is carried across his stanzas 4 and 5, Watts picked up on the hopeful tone of the psalmist (“thou hast loosed my bonds”) and conveyed it as an act of grace. In the third stanza, instead of describing the deaths of saints (verse 15), Watts made the concern to be more about their life-blood, which leaves open the possibility of that blood being either shed or unshed. In the psalm, the response of verse 13 is “I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord,” which for Watts would have been a prime opportunity to inject an important New Testament practice-Communion-but here he translates this to a house (or perhaps a church) visit. The second hymn begins with the question of verse 12, “What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?” (KJV). The sense of verse 10 is covered in previous stanzas, whereas verse 11, which calls all men liars, is not represented in either of the two hymns. The sixth stanza carries much of the sense of verse 8, but for verse 9 Watts opted to close out the set with a response of praise rather than the psalmist’s quieter commitment to walk in the Lord’s path. The fifth stanza aligns closely with verses 6 and 7. Here the cry of the psalmist, in Watts’s version, contains statements not just of desperation but of trust in and affirmation of God’s power to rescue. The third stanza corresponds to verse 3 of the psalm, and the fourth stanza to verses 4 and 5. The second stanza carries the same sentiment as the first and serves as a restatement of verses 1–2. The original text by Isaac Watts spanned twelve stanzas of four lines, divided into two parts of six stanzas each, the second part beginning “What shall I render to my God.” The first part was labeled “Recovery from sickness” and the second part was labeled “Vows made in trouble paid in the Church or, Public thanks for private deliverance.” The second part is arguably a separate hymn, but it carries the same meter and it follows in continuation of Psalm 116.Īs a psalm paraphrase, the first four lines follow the Bible text roughly thought-for-thought. Whereas these other texts have long traditions with historic church tunes, his rendition of Psalm 116, “I love the Lord, he heard my cries” has had its own special journey, preserved and then reinvigorated within the African American community. Many of these creative re-interpretations remain in circulation 300 years later, including My shepherd will supply my need (Psalm 23), Jesus shall reign where’er the sun (Psalm 72), Our God, our help in ages past (Psalm 90), and Joy to the world the Lord is come (Psalm 98). He believed the Hebrew Psalms were best suited for corporate worship when they could be updated to include intertestamental theology, expressed through the lens of the Christian gospel, thus his collection was called Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (1719 | Fig. Psalm 116 I love the Lord, he heard my cries withĮnglish pastor and writer Isaac Watts (1674–1748) had an important vision for how to improve the condition of psalmody in English churches.
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