At a certain point, I was frustrated because the basic thing that prayer does is bring us honestly before God— everything we are, just the way we are—so God has access to us through our own offering of ourselves. People didn't want to do that. They prayed "nice."

Even the Psalms that aren't nice sounded nice when they were prayed and read in English. We have all those Elizabethan sonorities in the Psalms and it is hard to get away from them even when you are cursing.

I began to think that I would love to translate the Psalms into what I am thinking of as "American," something that is earthy, something that sounds like the Hebrew original, a rough language, a language that is close to the earth and deep into human experience. A few years ago, I started.

An earlier interest in Semitic language suddenly was back there for me as a gift and I began translating. The first one I did was Psalm 1. I brought it upstairs from my study and read it to my wife. She said, "I think you have got it!" This is the way it goes:

          You're lucky,
                    you don't hang out at Evil-Saloon,
                    you don't slink along Sinner-Road
                    you don't go to Smart-Mouth College.

          You thrill to Yahweh's Torah,
                    you chew on Torah day and night,
          Become a tree replanted in Eden,
                    bear fresh fruit every month,
          Never drop a leaf,
                    always in blossom.
 
          Not at all like the wicked,
                    windblown ash:
          Can't stand straight,
          Can't shoot straight.
 
          Yahweh plots the road you take.
          The road they take is skid row.

I hesitated a long time before I decided on what word to use to translate the name of God in Hebrew. I finally decided on Yahweh, even though it is unfamiliar to American ears. It is the closest thing we have to a personal name for God and so even though it sounds strange, I think it is the best I can do.

Psalm 5 is a morning prayer, a prayer getting us ready for the day, whatever is going to happen in the day.

          Listen, Yahweh! Pay attention!
                    Can you make sense of these ramblings,
                    my thunder-clap cries?
                    King-god, I need your help.
          Every morning
                    you'll hear me at it again.
          Every morning
                    I lay out the pieces of my life
                    on your altar
                    and watch for fire to descend.

          You don't go to parties with Wicked,
                    you don't invite Evil as your houseguest.
          Hot-Air-Boaster collapses in front of you,
                    you hate Mischief-Maker.
          Yahweh destroys Lie-Speaker,
                    Blood-Lusty and Truth-Bender disgust you.

          But I, your invited guest,
                    am full of awe.
          I enter your house, here I am
                    prostrate in your inner sanctum,
          Waiting for directions
                    to get me safely through enemy ranks.

          Every word they speak is a land mine,
                    their lungs breathe out poison gas.
          Their throats are gaping graves,
                    their tongues slick as mud-slides.
          Pile on the guilt, God!
                    let their so-called wisdom wreck them.
          Kick them out! They had their chance,
                    and used it to kick you out.

          Will you welcome us with open arms
                    when we run for cover to you?
          Let the party last all night!
                    Stand guard over our God-zest.
          You are famous, Yahweh, for taking in God-seekers,
                    for decking us out in delight.

When our language gets too nice or polite, we sometimes miss the humor. Psalm 7 has one passage toward the end that is funny and I've tried to recapture the cartoon-like character in my translation.

          Yahweh! God! I run to you for dear life,
                    the chase is wild,
          If they catch me I'm finished:
                    ripped to shreds by a lion,
                    dragged into the forest and left
          unlooked for, unremembered.

          Yahweh, if I've done what they say,
                    betrayed my friends,
                    ripped off my enemies;
          If my hands are dirty
                    let them get me, walk all over me,
                    leave me flat on my face in the dirt.

          Stand up, Yahweh, in towering anger
                    and stop their temper tantrums.
          Wake up, God, my accusers have packed
                    the courtroom; it's judgment time.
          Take your place on the bench, reach for your gavel,
                    throw out the false charges;
          I'm ready for your verdict,
                    "Innocent."

          Close the book on Evil, Yahweh,
                    but publish a charter for us.
          You get us ready for life:
                    you probe for soft spots,
                    you knock off rough edges.
          And I'm feeling so fit, so safe:
                    made right, kept right.
          God in solemn honor does it right,
                    but his nerves are sandpapered raw.

          Nobody gets by with anything.
                    God is already in action: sword
          Honed on his Arkansas whetstone.
                    bow strung, arrow on the string
          Lethal weapons in hand,
                    each arrow a flaming missile.

          Do you want to see something funny?
                    There's the man
          Who went to bed with Wicked
                    now he's nine-months pregnant with Mischief.
          Look! He's having
                    the baby — a Lie-Baby!

          Did you see that man shoveling day after day,
                    digging, then concealing, his mantrap
                    down that lonely stretch of road?
          Go back and look again — you'll see him headfirst
                    in it, legs waving in the breeze.
          That's what happens: the head
                    that conceives it gets it. Mischief
                    backfires. Violence boomerangs.

          I'm thanking God who makes things right.
          I'm singing the fame of heaven-high Yahweh.

Here is a brief Psalm—simple, direct—Psalm 15. It sounds to me like something William Carlos Williams might have written if he had been a David in a pre-Christian time.

          Yahweh, who gets invited
          to dinner at your place?
          How do we get on your guest list?

          "Walk straight,
                    act right,
                              talk from the heart.

          "Don't hurt your friend,
                    don't blame your neighbor,
                              despise the despicable.

          "Keep your word even when it costs you,
                    make an honest living,
                              never take a bribe.

          "You'll never get
          blacklisted
          if you live like this."

And Psalm 30:

          I give you all the credit, Yahweh,
                    you got me out of that mess,
                    didn't let my foes gloat.

          Yahweh, my God, I yelled for help
                    and you put me together.
          Yahweh, you pulled me up from Sheol,
                    gave me another chance at life
                    when I was down for the count.

          O Saints! Sing your hearts out to Yahweh!
                    Thank him to his face!
          He gets angry once in awhile but across
                    a lifetime there is only love.
          Many a night you'll cry your eyes out
                    then laugh the live-long day.

          When things were going great
                    I crowed, "I've got it made.
          Yahweh beaming made me his favorite,
                    made me king of the mountain."
          Then you looked the other way
                    and I fell to pieces.

          I called out to you, Yahweh,
                    I laid my cards on the table:

          "Can you sell me for a profit when I'm dead?
                    Sell me at a cemetery yard sale?
          When I'm 'dust to dust' my songs
                    and stories of you won't sell.
          So listen! and be kind!
                    help me out of this!"

          You did it: you changed wild lament
                    into whirling dance,
          You ripped off my black mourning band
                    and decked me in orchids.
          I'm about to burst with song,
                    I can't keep it quiet,
          Yahweh, my God,
                    I can't thank you enough.

There are psalms which help us express our anger, our dismay. Psalm 12 is a brief psalm which does that when we are up against it, feeling alone.

          Quick, Yahweh, your helping hand!
          The last decent person just went down,
          All the friends I depended on gone.
          Everyone talks in lie language,
          Lies slide off their oily lips.
          They double talk with forked tongues.

          Slice their lips off their faces!
          Pull the braggart tongues from their mouths!
          I'm tired of hearing: "Our tongues can make
          Anything happen; our lips manage the world."

          Into the depth where the poor lie smashed up,
          Where the homeless groan, God says:
          "I've had enough, I'm on my way
          To heal the ache in the heart of the wretched."

          God's words are pure words,
          Pure silver words refined seven times
          In the fires of his word kiln,
          Pure on earth now as in heaven.

          Yahweh, keep us safe from their lies,
          From the wicked who stalk us with lies,
          From the wicked who get honorary degrees
          For their wonderful lies.

David Hardin: Eugene, why do you pick the Psalms as the place to learn how to pray?

Eugene Peterson: They are the place where the church has always learned how to pray. They have been the place where pastors and theologians realize that Jesus prayed the Psalms. The whole churches worship became based on the Psalms. They touch everything in human experience. Everything that is human gets expressed to God in prayer.

Hardin: Is it also true that it is the one book in the Bible where the conversation is all directed at God?

Peterson: It is true. Most of the Bible is God's word to us and the Psalms are our word back to God.

Hardin: There have been a many translations of the Bible. I can't remember how many and they are still going on. Yet you choose to translate the Psalms one more time from the original text. Why do you do that?

Peterson: Well, there is no need for more translations of the Psalms in a scholarly way. The scholarship has been magnificent all through the Bible. I have been a pastor for the last thirty years. If there is anything that I am bringing to this translation, it is that I have been listening to people's speech, listening to the way they live, and the way they express themselves. I am trying to get that speech, that idiom, that distinctive American note into the Psalms so that Americans learn how to answer God as biblically as they can.

Hardin: So you are saying, "I want this to be in the way we talk so that we can really relate to the Psalms in a new way." This is as if I were talking to the Lord about the party, about the problem, about the enemies, etc.

You did the whole thing with pastorates. You started out with nothing in a church. There was nobody there to begin with. Thirty

years later you left a good-sized church behind. Was it a little scary to start?

Peterson: It was. I felt unharnessed. I didn't have any routines. I felt lost and it is still difficult. There were intimacies of thirty years there that are not easy to live without.

Hardin: What caused you to leave a church that you had built for thirty years?

Peterson: A strong sense of call to write. I have always written as a pastor. I never felt any tension between writing and being a pastor, but in the last couple of years I have. My parish has grown and I found I had another congregation, a congregation of readers who were writing to me, calling me, and suddenly I had two congregations. I couldn't do justice to both.

Hardin: You mentioned that the pastoral vocation has some problems today, too many demands, etc. What can the church do to help in the recovery of the pastoral vocation? What is the problem with the pastoral vocation today?

Peterson: It is something that I care about a great deal now and I write a good deal about this. Pastors talk to me about it. We have been commercialized. We have all started running churches instead being pastors. This commercialization of the pastoral vocation has nearly wrecked it. No longer is the pastor seen as a man or woman of prayer; no longer do people expect the primary thing to be led in worship; they want entertainment; they want help in a lot of different ways. They are not looking for God very much in the pastor. They are looking for other things. Pastors, unfortunately, have caved in to what consumers have asked.

Hardin: It is almost as if you need an alter ego, someone to run the church so you can be with the people. We had a speaker recently who said that the church puts so much energy into its own institution. I guess that is part of what we are talking about.

Peterson: It is.

Hardin: What are the answers to that?

Peterson: I have tried to work out the answers myself for thirty years. I've tried to be a pastor who takes care of a church and takes care of the needs of the institution but still maintains that center, that integral place of prayer and worship representing God to these people.