Reading Psalms: 5. A Compilation of Poetry
Unlike other books of the Bible, Psalms and Proverbs are overtly and easily recognisable as compilations of material.
Pastoral
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Reading Psalms: 4. Which King?
As we read Psalms, we've been growing in our understanding of the Messiah: Jesus. In doing so, we’ve jumped quickly from the Psalm to the Psalm-as-about-Jesus. Strictly speaking, however, these Psalms come to us not independent of but through history.
Reading Psalms: 3. Who?
In any text of the Bible one of the foundational questions we have to ask is ‘who is speaking?’ and ‘who is being spoken to?’ Identifying who the pronouns of a text belong to - and where we belong in that, if anywhere at all - is a key aspect to faithful reading.
Reading Psalms: 2. Poets of Rare Words
Hebrew poetry leaves verbs behind. It still has them, but it has them far less frequently than it does in prose. In fact, there was a period of time where some scholars resorted to a statistical analysis of verbs in ratio to nouns to identify poetry vs prose!
Reading Psalms: 1. Hebrew Poetry Repeats Itself
What is poetry? More so, what is Hebrew poetry? While poetry is generally an easy genre to identify, and we tend to know it when we see it, what are the distinguishing features of Hebrew poetry?