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March 29, 2008
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Johnny Cash’s song “Mercy Seat is a first person narrative. The listener assumes that a prison chaplain has ministered to the man. And the man was probably in possession of a Bible that was probably given to him by the chaplain It is a song that is sung by a man who is being executed in the electric chair.
The idea of Jesus starts in the first verse: I began to warm and chill To objects and their fields A ragged cup, a twisted mop The face of Jesus in my soup…” The second verse contains more of the man’s thoughts: “I here stories from the chamber, how Christ was born into a manger and like some ragged stranger died upon the cross, and might I say it seems so fitting in its way He was a carpenter by trade, or at least that’s what I’m told.” The man is contemplating the fact that Jesus was a carpenter, and he was executed on a wooden cross. The man knows that he is about to be executed in a wooden chair. The man is seemingly making a far-fetched comparison between his death on a wooden chair and Jesus’ on a wooden cross. Perhaps, he finds it comforting to know that
The song is a juxtaposition of two ideas—that of a man sitting on an electric chair and that of seat that sat on top of the Ark. In Exodus 25 God tells Moses to put the mercy seat on top of the Ark: “You shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark; and in the ark you should put the covenant that I shall give you. There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the Ark of the Covenant, I will deliver to you all my commands for the Israelites.” (Exodus 25:21-22). This verse explains much about the meaning of the song. In the third verse the subject switches to the seat in which God sits on: “In heaven His throne is made of gold, The Ark of His testament is Stowed, A thrown from which I’m told all History does unfold, down here it’s made of wood and wire, and my body is on fire and God is never far away.”
The man obviously doesn’t want to die. However, like the mercy seat from Exodus, he desires it to be a place where God will come to him. He wants God to come and show him mercy.
Word Count: 423
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