The Book of Psalms

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  • Psalm 150

    * * * In the final Hallelujah Psalm, the final psalm of the entire Psalter, pattern is all. Nine “Laud him” imperatives are preceded by one “Laud God” imperative (1b) and followed by one third-person jussive “let it laud the Lord” expression (6a). All of this is framed by two hallelujahs, “Laud the Lord” (1a, Read more

  • Psalm 149

    * * * Reading Psalm 149, every reader assumes that the “timbrel and lyre” (3) are real, that they are literal objects touched and sounded and heard. So, too, “the fresh song” sung “in the crowd of the caring” (1) readers take as literal, though with an added sense of performance: that this song being Read more

  • Psalm 148

    * * * In his Anchor Bible commentary, the scholar Mitchell Dahood describes what he calls the “tripartite structure” of Psalm 148, treating verse 7 all by itself as the second of three sections, and translating its word ha’arets as “the nether world” rather than as “the land” or “the earth.” The psalm itself disagrees. Read more

  • Psalm 147

    * * * Psalm 147 is a barrage of quotations from all over what was becoming— what the psalm’s own work helped become— the Hebrew Bible. It excerpts or alludes to other psalms, poetry from Job to Jeremiah and the latter chapters of Isaiah, and important passages from Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. While not exactly Read more

  • Psalm 146

    * * * The Book of Psalms concludes with a coda of five psalms of Hallelujah (lit. “laud the Lord”), Psalms 146-150. Five books of the psalter, five final psalms, and in Psalm 146, five lines in a row that name and describe the Lord with noun + participle phrases, phrases simultaneously adjectival and absolute, Read more

  • Psalm 145

    (a psalm, of David) * * * The only psalm that calls itself a psalm (in verse 21 as well as the superscription), Psalm 145 is essential for both Judaism and Christianity, foundational for Jewish worship and daily prayer as well as for the key theme of Jesus’ teaching in the Synoptic Gospels: the realm Read more