Dragon books

Fuck it. We did Psalm 1; let’s do Psalm 2.

For the past several years, in my old age, I have gotten back into reading what I call my “dragon books” — fantasy novels — to have some semblance of escape in my reading from the horrors of societal life since circa 2015. While it is true I have interspersed them with canon and non-canon “good” literature (not sure where Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem falls in there) as well as great non-fiction (I highly recommend Foner’s Reconstruction, which I read in 2018 according to Goodreads), I always return to these dragon books just to have a few minutes at the end of the day to think about something other than everything that is wrong. It’s a fake world, with fake problems, that fake good people work together to make a little less bad. It’s great.

In reading Psalm 2, I am struck because the part of the book I am currently reading is a pretty good match. I won’t say what it is, because it’s the last book in a pretty popular series, and it would be a major spoiler to a lot of people if I said much more than that. But I’m in the middle of a massive climax and it includes some wars, a king fighting one of the gods*, and that god being particularly wrathful as a result.

* Getting this out of the way as quickly as possible. The Book of Psalms is a fascinating book, a collection of songs collected probably after the exile but from old standards that likely predate it by a long, long time. Think of the Great American Songbook, but amassed over centuries with no written records. That is all to say, some of these songs are downright polytheistic.

Let’s get into the text. Here we are using the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Just going to drop the whole thing in here because I don’t have any interest in picking it apart piece by piece.

¹ Why do the nations conspire
    and the peoples plot in vain?
² The kings of the earth set themselves,
    and the rulers take counsel together,
    against the Lord and his anointed, saying,
³ “Let us burst their bonds apart
    and cast their cords from us.”

⁴ He who sits in the heavens laughs;
    the Lord has them in derision.
⁵ Then he will speak to them in his wrath
    and terrify them in his fury, saying,
⁶ “I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.”

⁷ I will tell of the decree of the Lord:
He said to me, “You are my son;
    today I have begotten you.
⁸ Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage
    and the ends of the earth your possession.
⁹ You shall break them with a rod of iron
    and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

¹⁰ Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
    be warned, O rulers of the earth.
¹¹ Serve the Lord with fear;
with trembling ¹²kiss his feet,
or he will be angry, and you will perish in the way,
    for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Happy are all who take refuge in him.

Now, first of all, we got a good line in here. You may recognize if it if you grew up in a Christian church or are currently attending one. “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” Or, to go back to the venerable KJV (because if the former describes you, you may be more familiar): “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.”

If you are not familiar: let me throw some New Testament at you. The writer of Hebrews 5:5 gives us this line (NRSVUE): “So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest but was appointed by the one who said to him, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you.'”

There is some controversy about the authorship and date of the book of Hebrews, but let’s be clear: it was written to the (er, this is an uncomfortable sentence construction, but would have been accurate at the time) Jewish followers of Jesus, who would very much recognize this reference.

This past week, I had the pleasure of hanging out with a very old (but younger, by just a hair) friend of mine. They identifiy as Jewish and I don’t question it because I don’t question what people identify as. We had several chats and in one we discussed with my general desire to gain a better specifically Jewish understanding of the Old Testament/Tanakh**. If you have read any of these past posts since we came back, you’d understand that I grew up with a strictly Christological understanding of the Bible, and, deflatingly, the scriptures of an entirely different religious tradition. As a proper Kantian, I do not want to use my friends as a means to an end, and we’ve been around each other long enough to know we would never do that.

** sidenote: they recommended that I read this essay, and I have to say, it is thorough.

So, when researching (lightly) this Psalm, I have to be a little thrown back because it is traditionally considered a messianic psalm. Now, of course, my old church would have considered this (among basically everything) a psalm about Jesus, but of course this isn’t about Jesus. But remember, or know, that post- and pre-exilic Judaism did have a messianic element. It wasn’t always “crap this shit always happens” (this is a theme of a lot of Psalms) but also “somebody is going to make this a lot better for us someday.” Hope, man, they even had it back then.

Now, just reading it in its entirety, you could also consider it a Psalm about the current events. Kings (no kings) raging against an almighty god. I haven’t considered it. That doesn’t exist in the current day, and may never exist.

I prefer to read my dragon books. Can’t wait to see how this current one ends.