The Book of Psalms

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  • Psalm 48

    (lyric, the Qorachites) * * * Psalm 48 celebrates Mount Zion. God’s mountain is cast as a center of power. Topically the song falls neatly into five stanzas: (a) an overview of “the city of our God,” “the bliss of all earth” (1-3); (b) a short narrative of kings running away in terror (4-6); (c) Read more

  • Psalm 47

    (director; lyric of the Qorachites) * * * There should be a name for the kinds of ambiguity that Psalm 47 presents, ambiguities impossible to preserve in translation. An overview of the psalm is simple: it celebrates the rising of the Lord, the Israelite God, as “a great king | over all the land” (2). Read more

  • Psalm 46

    (director: Qorachites: song tuned high)          * * * All the Qorachite psalms (Pss 42-49, 84-85, 87-88) are strong, structurally and musically. They rely on stanza-and-refrain patterns to help the psalm mean. There is the two-part structure of Psalm 45, king and bride, for instance, and there’s the three-part shape of Psalm 42/43 and of Psalm Read more

  • Psalm 45

    (director: on “The Lilies”; of the Qorachites: skilled, a song of love) * * * What are we doing, reading Psalms? Taking part in a worship tradition? Or overhearing, out of historical curiosity or aesthetic purposelessness? What do we expect and what do we find? A text like Psalm 45 confronts us the way the Read more

  • Psalm 44

    (director: of the Qorachites, instructive) * * * By contrast with the preceding double psalm, which mentions God’s name 27 times, Psalm 44, which is longer, names Elohim only 5 times. The effect is to highlight God’s absence. In Psalm 42, it was the speaker’s enemies who asked, “where is your God?” (42:3, 10). Here, Read more

  • Psalms 42/43

    (director: instructive, of the Qorachites) * * * The red deer that begins this double psalm, and with it the second collection of the book of Psalms (Pss 42-72), draws our attention first. Yet every other word in the first verse matters more. The rare verb ta`arog, to cry or pant for, conveys bodily longing. Read more