How to Read the Psalms by Tremper Longman IIIMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I struggle with poetry in English … you can imagine how much more difficult are the Psalms; I was very interested in how this book might help with that (quite a bit it turns out). The book is divided into three (3) parts, with the first providing a solid introduction on what the Psalms are and how they are used. After each chapter, there are questions/exercises to help drive the point home as well as a list of sources for further research. Each chapter developed a specific theme in clear language that should be easy for pretty much any reader to understand. Of course, this is all an introductory work … so if you are already familiar with any of the scholarship surrounding the Psalms, this may be too simple a read … but I enjoyed it a lot. Part two (2) provides the reader with a few, more complex tools by which we can better interpret and understand the Psalm … somewhat necessary because the historical and cultural/linguistic distance between us and the ancient redactor is enough to make a number of themes difficult to tease out. Again, without too much detail, the author does a great job in explaining the most prevalent. Finally, the author walks you through three examples … a hymn, a lament and a thanksgiving psalm so the reader can see everything come together … all in all, an excellent introduction to the psalms.
The chapters and sections in this work are …
Introduction - An Invitation to the Psalms
PART 1 The Psalms Then and Now
ONE The Genres of the Psalms
TWO The Origin, Development, and Use of the Psalms
THREE The Heart of the Old Testament
FOUR A Christian Reading of the Psalms
FIVE The Psalms, Mirror of the Soul
PART 2 The Art of the Psalms
SIX Old Testament Poetry
SEVEN Understanding Parallelism
EIGHT Imagery in the Psalms
PART 3 A Melody of Psalms
NINE Psalm 98 Let All the Earth Praise God, Our Warrior
TEN Psalm 69 Lord, I Suffer for Your Sake
ELEVEN Psalm 30 Thank You, Lord, for Healing Me!
Epilogue
Appendix Is There a Meaningful Order to the Psalms?
Some of the other points that really got my attention (regardless of whether or not I agreed with them) are:
Thus, the Psalms are a kind of literary sanctuary in the Scripture The place where God meets his people in a special way, where his people may address him with their praise and lament.
We shouldn’t be surprised that we struggle to understand the Old Testament in general and the Psalms in particular After all, they are distant to us in three ways: historically, culturally, and theologically.
Though there are many different types of hymns, almost all of them share a similar basic structure 1 Hymns begin with a call to worship 2 Hymns continue by expanding on the reasons why God should be praised.
The lament is the psalmist’s cry when, in great distress, he has nowhere to turn but to God We discover three types of complaints as we read through the laments 1. The psalmist may be troubled by his own thoughts and actions 2. He may complain about the actions of others against him (the “enemies”) 3. He may be frustrated by God himself.
Besides mood, laments are also united by a similar structure The following seven elements are associated with a lament, though not strictly in the order listed here: 1. Invocation 2. Plea to God for help 3. Complaints 4. Confession of sin or an assertion of innocence 5. Curse of enemies (imprecation) 6. Confidence in God’s response 7. Hymn or blessing Rarely will all seven elements occur together, but a number of them will appear in each lament.
A thanksgiving psalm is praise to God for answered prayer.
Psalms of remembrance. The Psalms do not have a specific historical setting Nonetheless, they frequently make reference to the great redemptive acts of the past.
Wisdom psalms. In thinking of biblical wisdom, we normally turn to books like Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes In these books we read in concrete ways how God wants us to live our lives.
Usually we read to gain information; we think of it as a cerebral activity While the psalms inform us about God and his relationship with people, they do far more They arouse our emotions, direct our wills, and stimulate our imaginations
As we have observed, thanksgivings are closely related to hymns As a matter of fact, the Hebrew word for “thanksgiving” (todah) is formed from a verb that means “to praise” (yadah) Thanksgivings are further related to laments, since the former is seen as an answer to the latter.
The verb “lift” (dalah) elsewhere literally means to lift a bucket up from a well The verb evokes an image in our minds The psalmist had fallen into a well and the Lord helped him up.
Further, the psalmist asks God’s saints to praise him When we hear the word saints, we tend to think of dead believers The word here translated “saints” (hasidim) is related to a Hebrew word with which we have already become acquainted (hesed), which I have suggested translates as “covenant lovingkindness ” Thus, these saints are those who are in a covenant relationship, a personal relationship, with God.
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