Singing Psalm 109

Psalm 109:8 got significant attention in recent years as Sen. David Perdue used it as a prayer against President Barack Obama. And so I wondered about musical settings of the Psalm. Some of them skip precisely those kinds of details, as for instance this version by Carol Clayton:

Orlando di Lasso likewise selects a smaller section of the Psalm to set.

So too does Samuel Sebastian Wesley:

This free reworking by Richard Bruxvoort Colligan tries to give the anger in the hymn a more positive spin:

As I was looking into this, I also made the pleasant discovery that you can find video recordings of native Greek speakers reading from the Septuagint!

It isn’t surprising that there isn’t much in the way of settings of Psalm 109, at least in our numbering. Since the Septuagint and Vulgate numbering is different, there are in fact lots of beautiful settings of “Psalm 109,” but the text is what English Bibles categorize as Psalm 110.