The Book of Psalms

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  • Psalm 144

    (of David) * * * Psalm 144 has as many jump cuts as a film montage or trailer. Splicing may be its most important technique: within verses, between verses, and between the first eleven verses with their mottle of quotations and the strikingly visionary poetry of the final four verses. To a greater degree than Read more

  • Psalm 143

    (lyric, of David) * * * Psalm 143 is a valuable reminder that defining reason and emotion in mutual opposition— a common practice in popular understandings of poetry, music, scriptural traditions, and whatever we mean when we say “religion”— has no basis in either the body or the Bible, whose texts and cultures did not Read more

  • Psalm 142

    (didactic, of David when he was in the cave, a prayer) * * * The dual experience of a psalm of lament is to stand in two places at once. As we read, we are the petitioner, reciting and reliving, identifying with another’s cry we make our own. And yet as we listen, we are Read more

  • Psalm 141

    (lyric, of David) * * * Nothing in the formulaic first verse of Psalm 141 prepares the reader for the distinctive voice and tone of the poetry to come. Not a word in the first verse is unique; every move is typical. But in verse 2, things change: Let my prayer be steady | the incense at Read more

  • Psalm 140

    (director: of David, lyric) * * * Psalms of vengeance have range because revenge itself has range. It stretches from cries for rescue with very little interest in penalties (e.g., Pss 20, 22, 26) to the call for an ordered and just society (e.g., Pss 5, 11, 94), to the cool utilitarian logic that roots Read more

  • Psalm 139

    (director: of David, lyric) * * * Whether authored by one person at once or by dozens over time, Psalm 139 coheres around a single broad theme— the inescapable length and breadth and depth and height of God’s knowing— and by a handful of stitch-words. Because its most confusing seams occur two-thirds to three-quarters of Read more