Psalm 42, verses 1-8
Philip Sidney Miles Coverdale
Miles Coverdale’s translation of the psalms was among the first fruit of Henry VIII’s ambivalent reformation. The religion of Henry’s England was essentially Catholicism without the Pope; but he did permit the translation of scripture into English, and in 1535 Coverdale printed the first full English bible. His Psalms were later included in the Book of Common Prayer and are still used in Anglican services today. Philip Sidney’s translations of the psalms were written about fifty years later. They were unprinted and incomplete when he died in 1586. These two translations of the opening of Psalm 42 differ in many ways. These differences are a result of the fact that the translators anticipated two very different audiences for their work.
One was the whole nation imagined as a religious community – the Church of England which Henry had conjured into existence and to which all his and his successor’s subjects automatically belonged (too bad if you didn’t like it).
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