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The Stories Behind the Songs on This Single
Sat., Dec. 16. 2023 3:27pm EST
J. Jackson, lead singer and lyricist for ApologetiX here again.
Here are the stories behind the songs on our 25th single of 2023:
HUNDRED NINETEENTH PSALM
Psalm 119 is almost twice as big as the second-longest chapter of the Bible, Numbers 7 (176 verses vs. 89 verses). It's often referred to as an acrostic poem, although I've read that the more proper term would be "alphabetical" or "abecedarian."
All of the lines in each section start with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet; then the next section starts with the next letter of the alphabet and follows the same pattern. This isn't the only time such a thing occurs in the Old Testament — just the longest. The runner-up is Lamentations 3, which has 66 verses, three verses for each letter, whereas Psalm 119 has eight verses for each letter.
When we did a snippet of "Hundred Nineteenth Psalm" for the '80s medley in 2011, I didn't have to spoof some suggestive sections in "Hungry Like the Wolf," but there was no way of avoiding them this time around. God worked things out in a cool way, though:
You see, when I was writing the expanded lyrics, I'd racked my brain trying to find a good place to insert the fact that Psalm 119 had 176 verses. Then it dawned on me that I could just exclaim "Hundred seventy-six verses!" instead of "Hungry like the wolf!" right before the heavy breathing. I loved transforming naughty into knowledge-y.
The idea to replace the woman moaning with exaggerated interjections like "Huh" and "Aww" came to me the day we recorded it. I was able to do those myself, but we enlisted Jimmy's wife, Eve, to do the iconic laugh in the intro.
PSALM PASSAGE AT NIGHT
Although I wrote the first verse of this parody in 2011, I still read a Psalm passage at night with my wife before we turn out the lights and pray at bedtime. There are 150 Psalms, so even if you read an entire Psalm every night, it'll still take you five months. By the time you're ready to start again, you'll probably have a whole new set of things to pray about, so the same Psalms may affect you in different ways.
If somebody tells me they have trouble reading the Bible, I usually point them to the Book of Psalms as a good place to start. Not all the chapters are brief (Psalm 119 being a notable exception), but many are. Of the first 20 Psalms, half of them have fewer than 10 verses, and only one (Psalm 18) has more than 20 verses.
When I used to work in the corporate world in downtown Pittsburgh — before going full-time with ApologetiX — I carried a miniature Gideon's New Testament in my pocket that also contained Psalms and Proverbs. Those Psalms were a great comfort to me when I needed some quick biblical inspiration on the job, on the bus, or on my lunch break.
Similarly, if somebody tells me they're having trouble praying, I often recommend they read the Psalms. Even though David and the other Psalmists lived millennia ago, the vast majority of things they prayed about are still relevant today. And their divinely inspired words (2 Timothy 3:16) cut to the core of the heart. Yes, that pun was intentional and corny, but it's also true (Hebrews 4:12).
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