Psalm 10 (Ut quid Domine recessisti longe) is a cry of anguish at God’s seeming distance in times of trouble. The psalmist laments the arrogance of the wicked, their oppression of the poor, and their presumption that God does not see. Yet the prayer turns to confidence: God does behold toil and sorrow, he defends the orphan, and the wicked will not prevail forever. This study format presents the Latin text, English translation, and word notes for closer reading.
Month: September 2025
Psalm 9 (Confitebor tibi Domine) is a hymn of thanksgiving and justice: the psalmist praises God for defeating enemies, judging the nations, and protecting the poor. In this study format, each verse is presented in Latin with a plain English translation and detailed word notes to aid learners of the language and those reflecting on the psalm’s meaning.
For centuries, Europeans explained fire and rust through phlogiston — an invisible substance thought to escape during burning. It was wrong, yet it marked a shift from mystical alchemy to testable theory. The turning point came with Lavoisier in the 1770s, who proved that combustion was not loss but oxygen combining with matter. From this, modern chemistry was born.
The lesson is clear: progress often passes through “usefully wrong” ideas. Science advances not by dismissing anomalies but by testing them — moving from superstition to discovery.
Here’s a **short excerpt** you could use on WordPress to accompany your Psalm 11/12 Study Format:
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**Excerpt**
Psalm 11 (*Salvum me fac, Domine*) is a lament over dishonesty and arrogance in society. “They speak vain things, each one to his neighbour… with a double heart they speak.” The psalmist contrasts human deceit with the purity of God’s words, “like silver tested by fire, purified seven times.” Across the centuries, through Hebrew, Latin, and English, the message remains the same: truth fails, the poor groan, and the powerful boast that no one rules over them. The language changes, but the behaviour it describes is constant.
Robert Prizeman transformed a modest parish choir in South London into Libera, an internationally known boys’ ensemble. His achievement was unique: talent, vision, and care for young singers combined with the allure of recordings and tours. At the same time, most parish boys’ choirs in England have vanished, victims of declining church attendance and social change. Today parish choirs are largely sustained by devoted adults, often older women. The contrast highlights a larger truth: talent is equally distributed across society, but opportunity is not. Prizeman’s legacy reminds us that schools and communities must nurture gifts wherever they are found, if a democratic culture is to flourish.
Psalm 8 presents a meditation on God’s greatness in creation and the place of human beings within it. The psalmist contrasts the vastness of the heavens with the smallness of man, yet affirms the dignity given to humanity: “You have made him a little less than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor.” In this study format, verbs are parsed for tense, voice, and mood, while selected nouns and particles are explained when they carry special meaning. The translation is literal, without poetic expansion, so that the reader can see the structure of Jerome’s Latin clearly. Notable features include the late use of quod to introduce a subordinate clause (“that you are mindful of him”), and the adjective memor governing the genitive (“mindful of him”). Animal terms such as pecora (herd animals, livestock) are also glossed to distinguish them from related forms. The psalm closes with the same refrain with which it begins: God’s name is “admirable in all the earth.”
Psalm 7 is a cry for deliverance from relentless enemies, framed in the language of covenant justice. The psalmist appeals to God’s role as judge, contrasting human malice with divine righteousness. Our study format highlights the verbal forms that carry the movement of the text (speravi, decidam, consumetur, confitebor) and notes key rhetorical features such as the infinitive used for imperative (exaltare), the rhetorical particle numquid, and metaphorical expressions like vasa mortis (“weapons of death”) and inanis (“empty, dishonoured”). Special attention is given to prepositional nuances, where ab inimicis meis literally means “by my enemies” but often translates idiomatically as “before my enemies.” The verse-by-verse structure is designed for students of Latin and theology alike, providing a clear path from grammatical detail to theological sense.
Three British TV dramas of the 1980s reveal very different faces of decline. Douglas-Home’s The Kingfisher dresses it in brittle comedy; Coward’s Mr. & Mrs. Edgehill satirises empire and marriage; Rattigan’s The Browning Version confronts failure with tragic restraint. Together, they chart the fragility of love, loyalty, and dignity when set against the hard surfaces of class and authority.
The UK’s “triple lock” on pensions, introduced in 2010 as political bait for older voters, guarantees rising payments but leaves governments exposed when inflation or wages surge. Beneath this promise lies a deeper financial story: the end of the Gold Standard, which acted as a catalyst for freer credit and speculation, paving the way for inequality as elites exploited new opportunities while ordinary wages stagnated. With debt now around 100% of GDP and house prices four times what they were in the 1990s, Britain faces a fragile future where pensions, savings, and housing are all bound together in a system “too big to fail.”
Psalm 6/ Mood: Penitential / Lament. A prayer of someone afflicted and weak, pleading for God’s mercy, deliverance, and healing.