When the Psalms mention couches...
  • matthewjmatthewj
    Posts: 2,700
    What exactly were these couches like? These were written hundreds of years before our Lord walked the earth... what were they made of? What was their design?

    Has anyone here ever researched this?

    Heather Davis in this piece claims of our modern couches that "prior to its innovation in the late 1680s in France, no such piece existed. People sat on hard, straight-backed chairs (though that changed around this time, too), or on trunks."

    So what is the couch that the Psalmist soaks with tears?
  • musiclover88
    Posts: 156
    This is a cool website that shows pictures of furniture from Biblical times. I know nothing about this, but the website says that the Hebrew word for "couch" means the same thing as "bed."

    http://www.biblepicturegallery.com/Pictures/Furniture.htm
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,092
    People in that time and place ate reclining, rather than sitting on chairs. The Romans had a formal triclinium arrangement of raised couches with an end on which a diner leaned sideways, but in other cultures reclining might be done on upholstered devices on the floor, et cet. The Last Supper did not look like Da Vinci's painting.
    Thanked by 2Gavin CHGiffen
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,092
    The high Roman style (which would have gradually been aped by social climbers in the eastern part of the empire; the Last Supper definitely involved reclining, but not necessarily with the luxurious Roman style - as the table needed to accommodate more than three individuals, so there were different approaches to that need - and the seder we are familiar with today is an artifact of the post-Temple era; oh, and family would be present in some form, too, as women were very necessary in the preparations for the Pesach.)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CqDKkcguDk

  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    I prefer to picture something more of the Georgian or Federalist style...
  • Daniel Bennett PageDaniel Bennett Page
    Posts: 835
    The new Canadian version of this edition will use the word 'chesterfield' instead.
  • ronkrisman
    Posts: 1,394
    All uses of “bed” in Revised Grail Psalms refer to where one sleeps, not dines – except Psalm 18:16: bed of the ocean.

    The only time “couch” is used is in Psalm 6:7. But it is in parallel to "bed" in the same verse.
    4:5 ponder on your bed and be still

    6:7 every night I drench my bed with tears, I bedew my couch with weeping

    18:16 bed of the ocean

    36:5 In bed he plots iniquity

    41:4 The LORD will help him on his bed of pain

    63:7 When I remember you upon my bed,

    132:3 the bed where I rest

    Palestinian and Roman dining practices, while very interesting, figure into none of the psalms' references to "bed."
    Thanked by 2M. Jackson Osborn Liam
  • matthewjmatthewj
    Posts: 2,700
    Yes Psalm 6:7 is one that comes up often for us since it's one of the verses in the Lumen Christi seasonal offertories, which we use for daily Masses during OT.

    What does the revised Grail do with this line: "My couch is among the dead," from Psalm 88 that came up this past Tuesday?
  • frwaldmanfrwaldman
    Posts: 12
    According to a good friend of mine who is a fine Latinist, "They will rejoice in their rest" is a fairer translation than "in their beds" or "couches" because of the synecdoche which the word "cubile" implies. So "resting place" or "place of repose" is a good way to translate it. (It's also a nice thought to have when one is taking a nap!)
    Thanked by 2M. Jackson Osborn Gavin
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,215
    It wouldn't be wrong, but it's good to keep the synecdoche too.

  • ronkrisman
    Posts: 1,394
    What does the revised Grail do with this line: "My couch is among the dead," from Psalm 88 that came up this past Tuesday?

    That verse is Psalm 88:6a. The responsorial psalm for Tuesday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time (Year 2) has verses 4 and 5 as one strophe, and verse 6 as another. In Revised Grail Psalms they are:
    4 For my soul is filled with evils;
    my life is on the brink of the grave.
    5 I am reckoned as one in the tomb;
    I am like a warrior without strength,

    6 like one roaming among the dead,
    like the slain lying in their graves,
    like those you remember no more,
    cut off, as they are, from your hand.

  • brndurham
    Posts: 71
    I'm just a little confused about how the two, bed and couch, are the same thing. The Vulgate renders the Psalm 6 verse as "Laboravi in gemitu meo lavabo per singulas noctes lectum meum in lacrimis meis stratum meum rigabo." Lectum here seems to be the word for bed, but stratum for couch. I find this strange, because wouldn't couch normally be rendered in Latin as Kline or Clinium? Stratum normally means "cover" or "layer," which might mean a cushion or mattress.
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