The Book of Psalms

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  • Psalm 41

    (director: lyric, of David) * * * Psalm 41, the last psalm of the first section of Psalms, begins just as the first psalm did: ‘ashrei, “all set” (1:1, 41:1). Instead of simply opposing good and bad, however, the concluding psalm of this collection opposes sickness and health, good nursing of the sick versus terrible Read more

  • Psalm 40

    (director: of David, lyric) * * * Psalm 40 in English is smoother than it is in Hebrew. This is largely because cadence and abstraction make a psalm seem more cohesive than it is. It’s not a coincidence that the band U2’s version, “40,” achieves its power by taking only verses 1-3 and making Psalm Read more

  • Psalm 39

    (director: of Jeduthun, lyric, of David) * * * As the first book of the Book of Psalms nears its end— Psalms 40 and 41 are its final pair— things get bleak. Psalm 39 is as dark as it gets, a protest psalm, a prayer of outrage. The physical suffering and psychological torment of Psalm Read more

  • Psalm 38

    (lyric, of David, to keep in mind) * * * Psalm 38 is a lament as vivid in its depiction of bodily suffering as it is elusive about the causes. The speaker sees her pain first as a result of divine wrath: “your arrows | have come down into me / and your hand | Read more

  • Psalm 37

    (of David) * * * With Psalm 119, this may be the book of Psalms’ most accomplished acrostic. Its basic unit is the quatrain, offset by a few tercets (dalet in 7, kaf in 20, and qof in 34), and a few longer stanzas that seem to have been expanded (nun in 25-26, samech especially Read more

  • Psalm 36

    (director: of the servant of the Lord, of David) * * * From its first line, Psalm 36 surprises. It starts with the hallmark of the prophetic oracle, the word ne’um, which is usually followed in the Bible by the divine name— “the word of the Lord”; “thus says the Lord”—and only rarely, by another Read more