Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks.

Where we connect the Bible to your life,

in the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Patrick Miller.

One of the strange features of the Psalms

is that there's small notes before the lyrics

that the actual words of the text begin.

Sometimes they give the context of a song. David wrote this

while he was fleeing from Saul. Or sometimes they tell musicians how to play the

music. Use stringed instruments for this one.

But every now and then, they tell us the melody that the song is to be sung to.

And Psalm 9 is one of those examples.

David's musical instructions read this,

for the director of music to the tune of the death of the sun,

a Psalm of David.

Did you catch the name of the tune, the death of a sun.

We don't know what this melody sounded like, but the name is jarring and awful.

It must have been a dirge, a funeral song painted in a minor key, each stroke of the melody putting to music the worst

thing any parent can imagine the death of a child in the ancient world when child

death was frequent I must imagine that people knew this song by heart.

But I doubt that that ever made it easy to sing.

I've had friends who've held the broken lifeless bodies of their infants in their hands.

...