Don't be intimidated by the beauty and eloquence of it. Look for the thoughts. Look at this as a dialog going on in the psalmist's mind. How would you express these thoughts to God in your own way? When you see this as a give and take, a dialog, a discussion or dispute with God that is finally resolved by a prayer of surrender, then it becomes a prayer that you can learn from. The psalm begins in verse 1 with two verbs, "search" and "know," and ends with the very same verbs in verse The psalm is about God's probing deep into a man's character, sometimes a most unpleasant, uncomfortable exercise cf.
God searches us, probes the heart, examines the mind, and knows us Jeremiah David is acutely aware that God knows his thoughts before he thinks them, his words before he speaks them. God knows his plans, his errands, his comings and goings, his strengths, his weaknesses, even his secret sins -- literally everything about him.
David seems a bit of frustrated by this, like you might if you knew your phone was being bugged and you were under constant surveillance. If you can imagine what it might be like to be guarded 24 hours a day by teams of Secret Service agents, kept out of harm's way, insulated from danger, perhaps you get a bit of his frustration. He appreciates it, but He can't understand such intimate knowledge. Not that he particularly wants to escape, but he is feeling constricted.
You've felt that way, too, when you are tempted with a favorite sin, but know you shouldn't give in because God is watching. It sounds crazy, doesn't it? But sometimes we chafe under God's scrutiny. Why do people imagine that God doesn't know what they do? Have you ever felt this way? Annoyance isn't all the psalmist is feeling. He is overcome with awe at God's omnipresence. There is much dispute about the exact meaning of the word, though it obviously refers to the place of the dead.
Both good men and bad men go there Genesis Probably it originally meant "the grave," and only later became a specialized word for "hell. In the heavens or the in the grave, God is present with us. The sea was often a thing of danger and fear for the Israelites, who were not seagoing people. So to "settle on the far side of the sea," would be to have passed through much danger and be far away from home.
The phrase "rise on the wings of dawn" is an evocative, poetic expression. Dear friend, are you feeling alone or lonely right now?
You may be cut off from human companionship for a time, but God is ever present. There's no place you can go to get rid of him, shake him off your trail, keep him away from your side. He is with you -- forever! For God to "lay his hand" on someone could be for harm Genesis Here it seems to be positive, since in verse 10 he says:. God's hand is upon David for good. God's guidance will be clear, no matter how much fog might obscure the path. Even pitch blackness is of no concern to God Job I love this passage:. Are you undergoing depression, anxiety, persecution, the pain of separation from one you love, failure and defeat, utter desolation?
If so, know this: No matter how black it is to you, no matter how impossible it seems, the path is clear to God. This morning in the car I found myself singing that praise chorus taken from Jeremiah No matter where you are or what is going on in your life, God is with you and his might and power are active on your behalf.
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- 7. David's Psalm of Surrender (Psalm ) -- Great Prayers of the Bible!
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In verses 5 and 10, how does God's hand touch the psalmist? Have you ever felt God's hand on you in a special way? Was it for your good? What was it like? The psalmist has considered knowledge of his ways and paths. Now he examines God's intimate knowledge of his very beginnings, his formation, and his inner being. Let's meditate on this beautiful passage for a moment to see God's intricate and tender care for us in the womb. God's awesome power extends to the smallest detail. The psalmist regards his formation inside his mother with awe and reverence. He is "distinct and marked out," now as he was from the time of his creation.
God's work is amazing. When you hold your firstborn in your arms and count all the tiny fingers and toes, you feel what the psalmist was feeling. Awe, amazement, wonder at the miracle of conception, formation, and birth.
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Finally, we see a hint of predestination, or at least God's numbering of the psalmist's days before he is ever born:. The word is also used of God's framing or devising something in his mind, of his preordained purposes. What might this mean to a young woman carrying a child? Why is such knowledge overwhelming to us? Do we resent God's intimate connection to us as an invasion of privacy, an intrusion on our "space"?
We could, and sometimes do. But the psalmist rather sees God's personal forming of his body and person as an awesome revelation of the immensity of God's "brain" and attention to the same kind of detail with every human being. Multiply " parts" times 8 billion living human beings and you begin to get the picture that David sees here:. Sleep can sometimes be fearful for children, especially when they have been raised on the prayer, " It expresses an emotional attitude toward persons and things which are opposed, detested, despised and with which one wishes to have no contact or relationship.
It is therefore the opposite of love. Jesus taught us Christians to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven But David's sentiment has something to say to us. Individual thanksgiving psalms , the opposite of individual laments, in which the psalmist thanks God for deliverance from personal distress. In addition to these five major genres, Gunkel also recognised a number of minor psalm-types, including:.
The composition of the psalms spans at least five centuries, from Psalm 29 , possibly an Israelite adaptation of an entire Canaanite hymn to Baal , [20] to others clearly from the post-Exilic period not earlier than the fifth century B. The majority originated in the southern kingdom of Judah and were associated with the Temple in Jerusalem , where they probably functioned as libretto during the Temple worship.
Exactly how they did this is unclear, although there are indications in some of them: The biblical poetry of Psalms uses parallelism as its primary poetic device. Parallelism is a kind of symmetry , in which an idea is developed by the use of restatement, synonym, amplification, grammatical repetition, or opposition.
An example of synonymous parallelism:. Two lines expressing opposites is known as antithetic parallelism. An example of antithetic parallelism:. Two clauses expressing the idea of amplifying the first claim is known as expansive parallelism. An example of expansive parallelism:.
How many psalms did David write?
Many scholars believe the individual Psalms were redacted into a single collection in Second-Temple times. In time, this approach developed into recognizing overarching themes shared by whole groups of psalms. In , Gerald H. Wilson 's The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter proposed — by parallel with other ancient eastern hymn collections — that psalms at the beginning and end or "seams" of the five books of Psalms have thematic significance, corresponding in particular with the placement of the royal psalms.
He pointed out that there was a progression of ideas, from adversity, through the crux of the collection in the apparent failure of the covenant in Psalm 89, leading to a concert of praise at the end. He concluded that the collection was redacted to be a retrospective of the failure of the Davidic covenant , exhorting Israel to trust in God alone in a non-messianic future.
Psalm 1 calls the reader to a life of obedience; Psalm 73 Brueggemann's crux psalm faces the crisis when divine faithfulness is in doubt; Psalm represents faith's triumph, when God is praised not for his rewards, but for his being.
Mitchell's The Message of the Psalter took a quite different line. Building on the work of Wilson and others, [26] Mitchell proposed that the Psalter embodies an eschatological timetable like that of Zechariah 9— These three views—Wilson's non-messianic retrospective of the Davidic covenant, Brueggemann's sapiential instruction, and Mitchell's eschatologico-messianic programme—all have their followers, although the sapiential agenda has been somewhat eclipsed by the other two.
Shortly before his untimely death in , Wilson modified his position to allow for the existence of messianic prophecy within the Psalms' redactional agenda. The Psalms were written not merely as poems, but as songs for singing. More than a third of the psalms are addressed to the Director of Music. Some psalms exhort the worshipper to sing e. Some headings denote the musical instruments on which the psalm should be played Pss.
Some refer to singing at the sheminit or octave Pss. And others preserve the name for ancient eastern modes, like mut la-ben Death of the son; Ps. Despite the frequently heard view that their ancient music is lost, the means to reconstruct it still extant. Fragments of temple psalmody are preserved in ancient church and synagogue chant, particularly in the tonus peregrinus melody to Psalm Regardless of academic research, Sephardic Jews have retained a tradition in the Masoretic cantillation.
Most individual psalms involve the praise of God—for his power and beneficence, for his creation of the world, and for his past acts of deliverance for Israel. The psalms envision a world in which everyone and everything will praise God, and God in turn will hear their prayers and respond. Worst of all is when God "hides his face" and refuses to respond, because this puts in question the efficacy of prayer which is the underlying assumption of the Book of Psalms.
Some psalms are called " maskil " maschil because in addition they impart wisdom. Most notable of these is Psalm which is sometimes called the "Maskil of David", others include Psalm 32 and Psalm Individual psalms were originally hymns, to be used on various occasions and at various sacred sites; later, some were anthologised, and might have been understood within the various anthologies e.
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In later Jewish and Christian tradition, the psalms have come to be used as prayers, either individual or communal, as traditional expressions of religious feeling. Psalms are used throughout traditional Jewish worship. Many complete Psalms and verses from Psalms appear in the morning services Shacharit. The pesukei dezimra component incorporates Psalms 30, and — Psalm commonly referred to as " Ashrei ", which is really the first word of two verses appended to the beginning of the Psalm , is read three times every day: On Festival days and Sabbaths, instead of concluding the morning service, it precedes the Mussaf service.
Psalms 95—99, 29, 92, and 93, along with some later readings, comprise the introduction Kabbalat Shabbat to the Friday night service. Traditionally, a different "Psalm for the Day"— Shir shel yom —is read after the morning service each day of the week starting Sunday, Psalms: This is described in the Mishnah the initial codification of the Jewish oral tradition in the tractate Tamid. According to the Talmud, these daily Psalms were originally recited on that day of the week by the Levites in the Temple in Jerusalem.
From Rosh Chodesh Elul until Hoshanah Rabbah , Psalm 27 is recited twice daily following the morning and evening services. There is a Minhag custom to recite Psalm 30 each morning of Chanukkah after Shacharit: When a Jew dies, a watch is kept over the body and tehillim Psalms are recited constantly by sun or candlelight, until the burial service.
Historically, this watch would be carried out by the immediate family, usually in shifts, but in contemporary practice this service is provided by an employee of the funeral home or chevra kadisha. Many Jews complete the Book of Psalms on a weekly or monthly basis. Each week, some also say a Psalm connected to that week's events or the Torah portion read during that week. In addition, many Jews notably Lubavitch , and other Chasidim read the entire Book of Psalms prior to the morning service, on the Sabbath preceding the calculated appearance of the new moon.
The reading of psalms is viewed in Jewish tradition as a vehicle for gaining God's favor. They are thus often specially recited in times of trouble, such as poverty, disease, or physical danger; in many synagogues, Psalms are recited after services for the security of the State of Israel.
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Note that Sefer ha-Chinuch [43] states that this practice is designed not to achieve favor, as such, but rather to inculcate belief in Divine Providence into one's consciousness, consistently with Maimonides ' general view on Providence. Thus, "to pray" conveys the notion of "judging oneself": New Testament references show that the earliest Christians used the Psalms in worship, and the Psalms have remained an important part of worship in most Christian Churches.
The Eastern Orthodox , Catholic , Presbyterian , Lutheran and Anglican Churches have always made systematic use of the Psalms, with a cycle for the recitation of all or most of them over the course of one or more weeks. In the early centuries of the Church, it was expected that any candidate for bishop would be able to recite the entire Psalter from memory, something they often learned automatically [45] during their time as monks. Paul the Apostle quotes psalms specifically Psalms 14 and 53 , which are nearly identical as the basis for his theory of original sin , and includes the scripture in the Epistle to the Romans , chapter 3.
Several conservative Protestant denominations sing only the Psalms some churches also sing the small number of hymns found elsewhere in the Bible in worship, and do not accept the use of any non-Biblical hymns; examples are the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America , the Presbyterian Reformed Church North America and the Free Church of Scotland Continuing.
New translations and settings of the Psalms continue to be produced. An individually printed volume of Psalms for use in Christian religious rituals is called a Psalter. Orthodox Christians and Greek-Catholics Eastern Catholics who follow the Byzantine rite , have long made the Psalms an integral part of their corporate and private prayers. The official version of the Psalter used by the Orthodox Church is the Septuagint.
To facilitate its reading, the Psalms are divided into 20 kathismata Greek: At Vespers and Matins , different kathismata are read at different times of the liturgical year and on different days of the week, according to the Church's calendar, so that all psalms 20 kathismata are read in the course of a week. During Great Lent , the number of kathismata is increased so that the entire Psalter is read twice a week.
In the twentieth century, some lay Christians have adopted a continuous reading of the Psalms on weekdays, praying the whole book in four weeks. Aside from kathisma readings, Psalms occupy a prominent place in every other Orthodox service including the services of the Hours and the Divine Liturgy. In particular, the penitential Psalm 50 is very widely used.
Fragments of Psalms and individual verses are used as Prokimena introductions to Scriptural readings and Stichera. The bulk of Vespers would still be composed of Psalms even if the kathisma were to be disregarded; Psalm , "The Psalm of the Law", is the centerpiece of Matins on Saturdays, some Sundays, and the Funeral service. The entire book of Psalms is traditionally read out loud or chanted at the side of the deceased during the time leading up to the funeral, mirroring Jewish tradition.
Several branches of Oriental Orthodox and those Eastern Catholics who follow one of the Oriental Rites will chant the entire Psalter during the course of a day during the Daily Office. This practice continues to be a requirement of monastics in the Oriental churches. The Psalms have always been an important part of Catholic liturgy. The Liturgy of the Hours is centered on chanting or recitation of the Psalms, using fixed melodic formulas known as psalm tones. Early Catholics employed the Psalms widely in their individual prayers also; however, as knowledge of Latin the language of the Roman Rite became uncommon, this practice ceased among the unlearned.
However, until the end of the Middle Ages, it was not unknown for the laity to join in the singing of the Little Office of Our Lady , which was a shortened version of the Liturgy of the Hours providing a fixed daily cycle of twenty-five psalms to be recited, and nine other psalms divided across Matins. The work of Bishop Richard Challoner in providing devotional materials in English meant that many of the psalms were familiar to English-speaking Catholics from the eighteenth century onwards. Bishop Challoner is also noted for revising the Douay—Rheims Bible , and the translations he used in his devotional books are taken from this work.
Until the Second Vatican Council the Psalms were either recited on a one-week or, less commonly as in the case of Ambrosian rite , two-week cycle. Different one-week schemata were employed: The Breviary introduced in distributed the psalms over a four-week cycle. Monastic usage varies widely. Some use the four-week cycle of the secular clergy, many retain a one-week cycle, either following St Benedict's scheme or another of their own devising, while others opt for some other arrangement.
Official approval was also given to other arrangements [Notes 6] by which the complete Psalter is recited in a one-week or two-week cycle. These arrangements are used principally by Catholic contemplative religious orders, such as that of the Trappists. Over the centuries, the use of complete Psalms in the liturgy declined. After the Second Vatican Council which also permitted the use of vernacular languages in the liturgy , longer psalm texts were reintroduced into the Mass, during the readings. The revision of the Roman Missal after the Second Vatican Council reintroduced the singing or recitation of a more substantial section of a Psalm, in some cases an entire Psalm, after the first Reading from Scripture.
This Psalm, called the Responsorial Psalm, is usually sung or recited responsorially, although the General Instruction of the Roman Missal , 61 permits direct recitation. Following the Protestant Reformation , versified translations of many of the Psalms were set as hymns. These were particularly popular in the Calvinist tradition, where in the past they were typically sung to the exclusion of hymns.
Among famous hymn settings of the Psalter were the Scottish Psalter and the paraphrases by Isaac Watts. By the 20th century, they were mostly replaced by hymns in church services. However, the Psalms are popular for private devotion among many Protestants and still used in many churches for traditional worship. Metrical Psalms are still very popular among many Reformed Churches.