Overview to the Psalms

LIt would be difficult to overstate the importance of the psalms in learning to communicate with God and our spiritual development. The value of the Psalms have been emphasized over and over in the life of the the church.

Psalms is the most quoted book by the New Testament writers.

Benedictine monks were required to read the entire book of psalms once a week.

Martin Luther called the book of psalms "a little Bible" because "in it is comprehended most beautifully and briefly everything that is in the entire Bible."

John Calvin said that in the Psalms "there is nothing wanting which relates to the knowledge of eternal salvation."

In the psalms, the believer can find the words to speak to God in a way that communicates faith, hope, and love. There is a clear vertical dimension to the psalms. The psalms show us, through the words of ancient spiritual leaders, how we relate to our God.

Just like we find that vertical aspect of the psalms, there is also a horizontal aspect. We use the psalms as a manual to teach each other to pray. The psalm give us prayers, but they also give us a format or manual for passing on our faith to others.

The book of Psalms is a collection from multiple authors that probably spans from the time of David to after the exile, which means that we get a wide range of thoughts, feelings, expressions, and life situations to guide us. The psalms are prayers, but more than prayers; they are poems and songs and wisdom and praise. When we read them and use them, we get language and beauty and faith combined into deep and meaningful expression. We learn language to express our own faith to God.

Throughout Christian history, the psalms have been used as a discipline. Many people are read the psalms repeatedly. Some have journaled through the psalms. Some have memorized the psalms. These structured ways of approaching the psalms have proven themselves to have value to the person trying to develop a deeper faith.

In his book Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis said this:

"Most emphatically the psalms must be read as poems, as lyrics, with all the licenses and all the formalities; the hyperboles, the emotional rather than logical connections, which are proper to lyric poetry."

I think Lewis is right in that anytime we read the Bible, we have to understand the genre of what we're reading. We read Paul as a letter from one to another. We read the gospels as stories. We read Leviticus as a legal document. And we read the psalms as Hebrew poetry. Hebrew poetry uses some different devices than modern poetry, so I want to briinig attention to a couple that can help us understand what we read.

1. A very common poetic device is repetition. Its where one line makes a statement and the next line repeats the same idea in different way. When the writer seems to be repeating the same thing over again, its just parellelism. In a slight twist on it, sometimes the writer will say the opposite instead of the same.
   Psalm 147
   v 5 God has gone up with a shout.
         The Lord with the sound of a trumpet
   v. 7 God is king over the nations.
          God sits on his holy throne.

2. Some poetic devices don't show up in English translations, like allitertion, word play, and acrostic.  Psalm 119 is the longest psalm and, its so long that sometimes it seems like its drowning in itself. But what doesn't show up in English is that its one massive acrostic using the Hebrew alphabet. In Hebrew, its a masterful artistic accomplishment about the law of God in our lives. But in English, it just seems long.

3. The authors often use personification, just like English poetry. Personification is when the author gives human qualities to something that isn't human.
   Psalm19
   v. 1 The heavens are telling the glory of God. And the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

4. Also, like in English, hyperbole... Hyperbole is when the writer overstates or exaggerates to emphasize his point.
   Psalm 51
   v. 4-5 Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
and blameless when you pass judgment. Indeed, I was born guilty,
a sinner when my mother conceived me.
   The psalmist is not making a case for original sin, but he is emphasizing how thoroughly sinful he feels. Its not a theological statement; its a statement of how he feels.

When it comes to categorizing psalms, there are some traditional categories that psalms are placed in: there are psalms of praise that gives us the words to tell God that we worship him or praise him; there are psalms of lament that express when the psalmist is not happy, with the state of his life or with the people around him or even unhappy with God; psalms of wisdom pass on knowledge about life as a servant of God, and there are royal psalms that express life under the reign of God or life under God's chosen king.

Walter Breuggemann is a widely respected Old Testament scholar who has written a book about the psalms. In his book, he discards these older categories of psalms to try to come up with a paradigm for the psalms that incorporates current scholarship of the psalms into the life of the church.

And here's the categories that he lays the psalms out in:

Orientation

Disorientation

New Orientation

These three correspond to stages in the spiritual life. Life starts in a place of stable orientation to God, then something happens, an event, that upsets our apple cart and disorients all of life. After the experience of disorientation, we find ourselves in a state of new orientation with our faith life. Our faith is still there, but its not the same as it was before. Breuggemann organizes them this way because this is often times the experience of the believer. Our life transitions from stable to unstable, then back to stable. These transitions deepen our lives and make us stronger in the end.

So orientation psalms reflect a life that is happy, satisfied, and stable. They recognize the structure that God imposed on his orderly and maintained universe.

Disorientation psalms express the tragedies of life: pain, hurt, suffering, death. The feelings and events that make us ask the hard questions of God about his own nature or the nature of life.

Psalms of new orientation deal with the newness of life after tragedy. The relief, the joy, the newness of hope.

Here's a couple of examples from Scripture:

1. Phillipians 2 - This passage tells the story of Jesus' life as a servant.

Orientation - "In the form of God..." v.6

Disorientation - "Emptied himself, taking the form of a slave..." v.7

New Orientation - "God highly exalted him.." v.9

2. Psalm 30 - This psalm would be categorized as a new orientation psalm because of where it ends up, but the psalmist takes us through all three stages.

Orientation - 6 As for me, I said in my prosperity, "I shall never be moved." 7 By your favor, O Lord, you had established me as a strong mountain;

Disorientation - you hid your face; I was dismayed. 8 To you, O Lord, I cried, and to the Lord I made supplication: 9 "What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? 10 Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me! O Lord, be my helper!"

New Orientation - 11 You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, 12 so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.

We can also see the transition of the stages in the act of baptism. Baptism takes us from the orientation to disorientation because baptism is described in disorientation terms: mourning for sin, repentance for the old life, death to self. Post-baptism is a new orientation because it begins our new life in Christ.

This idea of orientation seems pretty common to the believer's experience. Most of us, if not all, have been through something that changes our lives and makes us come out different.

Brueggemann spends the largest amount of his book focusing on the psalms of disorientation. Its his position that we shy away from the psalms of disorientation because of the negative way that they present faith and the way that they sometimes question God. Or how they call for vengence or demonstrate extreme repentance. But ignoring these psalms, not only neglects a huge segment of the psalms, but also neglects a large part of our lives. What's more common is do deny our failures, or hide our underlying anger, or repress any hard questions about God.

"Much Christian piety and spiritality is romantic and unreal in its positiveness."

Breuggemann

From my experience, its the times of pain that bring about the greatest change. Peaceful times can be good and faith building, but I don't know if they produce the kind of change and God-seeking that suffering does.

"The psalms will not quit. They have not quit. And they keep inviting broken people into the wholeness that comes in embraced brokenness."