Praise

Psalm 150 is all about praise, halle means shout praise in Hebrew. There are lots of halleluiah's in psalm 150. Praising God gets our head on straight. I puts our situation in perspective. God has been forever and so will we with him. God is almighty. God is good. We praise him rightfully as his due.

I was asked for class to translate Ephesians 1 from the Greek. Wow. This is what the prof calls our "first effort".

Ephesians 1 is one long prayer of praise and thanksgiving. With my little understanding of Greek syntax this chapter looks like a whole lot of phrases sort of stapled together. The punctuation calls this about four very long sentences. It reminds me of extactic utterance. It reminds me of someone shouting out praise in a charismatic assembly. Paul is praising God by reviewing things he has done, in this case for the Ephesian people. The sense is excitement.

A translator into English has a problem of trying to link all these phrases into readable English. Again my understanding of Greek syntax may be lacking but in Greek all these phrases stand alone in ways that they could never do if literally translated into English. It would look like nonsense and my first translation certainly looks like nonsense.

Again there is extactic utterance in an unknown language, most likely praise of God that no one can understand. But there is also praise in one's own language. I prefer to use my own language until I run out extolling God and then remembering things he has done for me and my loved ones. I think of Paul doing a similar thing here, only in the written form.

This is praise and thanksgiving in prayer form. One commentator feels that the writer here understood that this letter would be initially read out loud to the congregation and wrote it with that in mind. This chapter certainly does do very well read out loud.