The psalms are ordinary prayers. They were composed by kings and prophets and sung by shepherds and fisherman. They were good for singing in the Temple, and they were good for the Galilean countryside. These are the words and word pictures of God’s people who themselves, like us, fought the fight of faith in the midst of extraordinary events and ordinary days.

Along with praying the the Psalms, I’ve undertaken, it seems, a project to paraphrase them. I have a high esteem of the imagination and recognize the value of translating metaphors through different words in order to get at the meaning. Some of the psalms can be difficult for us to translate so that they mean something to us. Once however, we get to their meaning, we find that they express the life of faith, the desires of the heart, and the needs of those who find themselves in a place where there is nothing left but to pray.

Here is my paraphrase of Psalm 12. To compare, you may read a translation of Psalm 12 HERE.

Help! I’ve no friends left.
All the good and godly have disappeared from among Adam’s kids.
Not a good one remains.

On social media, they’re all cool and chill,
But in their secret groups, they speaks hate and lies.

May the Lord unplug all your devices
And silence your streaming feeds of lies,
You who say, “With our algorithms and bots,
Who can silence our posts?”

Because they steal from the poor,
Because those who need are targets,
Because they have no words but groans,
I will help them myself, says the Lord;
I will lift their eyes from their screens
And show them the place for which they’ve longed.

The Lord speaks with a single heart.
And his posts are worth it: true and bright.
You couldn’t compose them better if you had a week.
The Lord means what he says;
He’ll defend you from the mob.

The trolls are out there around every corner,
And the filth they post is praised by Adam’s kids.

© Randall Edwards 2020. This paraphrase of Psalm 12 is for Christ’s church. If it is helpful, please feel free to copy or reprint in church bulletins, read aloud, or repost. I only ask that an attribution be cited to myself (Randall Edwards) and this blog (backwardmutters.com