Psalm 2

Both the translation found in the Bay Psalm Book and the Alter Book of Psalms of psalm #2 work to establish where God's favor lies and that those who follow him are superior to those who don't. However, there are clear differences between the two, including word choice and the time periods in which both translations were made which greatly impacts their purpose.

The Book of Psalms by Robert Alter is supposed to be an accurate translation of the original text written in hebrew. The Bay Book of Psalms translation, published in Massachusetts when expansion to the west was still occurring is also supposed to be an accurate translation, but connections between its version and the events taking place at the time are to important to ignore. 

Some differences between our translation and the Bay translation include:

• Nations-Heathens
• Aroused-Rage furiously
• Fetters-Bands
• Ends of the Earth-Coasts abroad

I believe this translation is another example of how early American sentiment was molded to perceive the Native Americans as savages, in order to make their extinction seem justified. A puritan upon reading this would  see himself/herself as superior to the Natives and probably would see their being killed as a punishment by God for not being loyal. This is actually very similar to the idea of the Lost Race for the Indian mounds because they served the same purpose. Just as we now have no need for that lost race theory, we have no need for the old translation of the psalms, and so we now have Alter's updated version. I believe it is just another work that creates "perceptions of convenience" as I called them in class once.