The Book of Psalms

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  • Psalm 120

    (a song of steps) * * * Lyrics pulse between the exacting specificity of a poem’s occasions and the possibilities that open it as an experience for others. Juniper coals and tents of Kedar are almost certainly not your lived experience nor mine, but they are a valuable, even necessary part of Psalm 120. They Read more

  • Psalm 119

    * * * Psalm 119 turns and turns in a kind of rondelet. The longest of psalms, it clicks around and around through images and keywords like an old slide projector carousel. To some it’s a slog. To others, in keeping with its themes, an obsessive’s delight. To read a psalm like this, stamina, patience, Read more

  • Psalm 118

    * * * Something happens over the course of this psalm, a remarkable change that’s easy to miss by those who know only excerpts. “The Lord is on my side,” untold millions say, seeking soothing, quoting the King James translation of Psalm 118:6, “I will not fear.” Verse 22, “The stone | the masons scorned Read more

  • Psalm 117

    * * * Within the sequence of liturgical psalms that runs from Psalms 113 to 118, now practiced as the Hallel, Psalm 117 offers a fleeting counterpoint. Psalms 113 and 116 emphasize the inclusion of the poor with the wealthy, an inclusiveness shared in the rest of these chapters only by Psalm 115:13, “he adores Read more

  • Psalm 116

    * * * Psalm 116 is less disjointed than might seem on a first or fifteenth reading. It begins with fractures and quotations, but by the end becomes something its own, the way crumbs gather to a short crust. Its main concern is to pay the Lord the liturgical price owed for his rescue. Instead Read more

  • Psalm 115

    * * * For all its shifts of perspective and varied liturgical work, Psalm 115 coheres around a pair of emphatic oppositions: the horizontal separation between “us” (1, 18) and “others,” the goyim (2) who worship appearances; and the vertical poles of skies (3a, 15b-16a) and earth (15b-16). These oppositions cross, creating quadrants: we under Read more