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Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “O God, you search me and you know me” by Bernadette Farrell. By coincidence, it’s another setting of Psalm 139 (as on Friday last). Unlike the Taizé chant, which was set for cantor and congregation, this is a more straightforward congregational hymn or metrical psalm in five verses.
There’s therefore not much to add to what I wrote a few days ago, other than that (maybe because it’s by a female composer?) she includes the verse “You created me and shaped me, gave me life within my mother’s womb”. We who are not able to give birth obviously miss out on the joys, as well as the pains, of this experience common to nearly half the human race, but I presume it deeply affects any mother’s attitude to life, to have participated herself in bringing one or more people into the world.
Those who insist on referring to God only by male pronouns are missing much feminine imagery in the Bible of God as mother. As she spoke through Isaiah, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”
Psalm 139 is a favourite Psalm in the Psalter, well-known by many people, and I came across this particular setting of it a long time ago and have always felt a great warmth for it. I think Bernadette is at her best in this kind of writing. I think there are one or two strokes of genius in the words: perhaps the words “you are” at the end of verse 2 are the highlight, but the words “through and through” in verse 3 come close, as do “for the wonder of who I am, I praise you” in verse 5.
And although I have quibbles with some of Bernadette’s other tunes, I think this one is an exceptionally well-crafted one. I think the triplet at the start of the last line is especially fine! I regretted that I didn’t always get the penultimate note right when I sang it, but when I sang or played a C# that was my mistake rather than my deliberate alteration!
Stephen draws attention to the “(you) gave me life within my mother’s womb” in verse 5 as being indicative of a female author, but I didn’t think that – it is really only a faithful rendering of v13 in the Psalm.
However, I do have one quibble with the words – in verse 4 Bernadette suggests I DO “search for shelter from your light”, whereas v8-12 of the Psalm put it only as a possibility “IF I go to , even there you are present” (is this what grammarians call the “subjunctive”?). I did wonder if the whole verse could be rewritten in a mood of potential rather than actual, perhaps along these lines:
Your Spirit always is upon me:
if I searched for respite from your light,
there is nowhere on earth I could escape you:
even the darkness is radiant in your sight.
But, actually, I’m not so bothered as to be committed to this, and I didn’t sing it like that.