Just as the willful, tendentious censoring of the Psalms (and other books of the Bible) since 1945 has been a political act, so also will be the restoration of its original meanings in a new translation. I'll do my best to restore the strength and vigor of the earliest texts. I'll not care if, in the process, their offensiveness to the wealthy and to those in power is also restored. In this new translation of a book that people may be expected to turn to in troubling times, "mercy" will still be "mercy," and I'll never spin it into the vaguer and less visible, less accountable "steadfast love." "Truth" will still be "truth," the opposite of falsity and falsehood, and I'll never drain the blood out of it or minimize it by turning it into "fidelity." The poor, once "set on fire" because of the arrogance of the wealthy, but in recent translations only "vexed," will have the injustices done to them reported less abstractly and more honestly. In these and in countless other ways, this new and honest translation of the venerable Psalms will indeed be a very political act.
It was never more needed than it is today.
