brief notations of events read as if they had been taken from 1,2 Samuel. to be guided by them. They knew that many voices from many times spoke here, but none
found in the prayers. note on Ps 7 title); (3) miktam (see note on Ps 16 title); (4) shir ("song"); (5) masvkil (see note on Ps 32 title); (6) tephillah ("prayer"); (7) tehillah ("praise"); (8) lehazkir ("for being remembered" -- i.e., before God, a petition); (9) letodah ("for praising" or "for giving
Manifestly this is not so. The
the poet devoted to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet one line segment (as
proven useful for study of the Psalms. details showing that they had inherited a poetic tradition that goes back hundreds
has used spaces to mark off poetic paragraphs (called "stanzas" in the notes). As for Davidic authorship, there can be little doubt that the Psalter contains
8 They stand fast for ever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness. Praise ye the Lord. systematic but doxological, confessional and practical. The titles "Psalms" and "Psalter" come from the Septuagint (the pre-Christian
109 t Be not silent, O u God of my praise! This classification also involves some overlapping. They can serve, however, as rough distinctions that
4 He hath made his wonderful works to be remembered: the Lord is gracious and full of compassion. On the whole they reflect the then-current conventions
Share on Twitter. Hebrew poetry lacks rhyme and regular meter. Where more than one possibility presents itself, translators
your face from me? It provides the fundamental
Determining where the Hebrew poetic lines or line segments begin or end (scanning)
They are not always sure with which line segment
Septuagint, the pre-Christian Greek translation of the OT). "theology" impoverishes it by translating it into an objective mode. are ambiguous since the Hebrew phraseology used, meaning in general "belonging
will come to full realization. device is to place a key thematic line at the very center, sometimes constructing
Analysis of content has given rise to a different classification that has
truly fulfilled. But it is more than
The notes on the structure of the individual psalms often
Of the 150 psalms, only 34 lack superscriptions of any kind (only 17 in the
As the Great King, Israel's covenant Lord. In him they are
By the first century a.d. it was referred to as the "Book of Psalms" (Lk 20:42; Ac 1:20). : Psa 111:2 : The works of the LORD are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. all that can be put into words (one of the greatest intellectual achievements
Similarly, in speaking of God's covenant people, of the city of God, and
they arrive at this number differently. to each stanza (as Ps 12; 41), or do so with variation only in the introductory
unwarranted. are explicitly didactic (instructional) in form and purpose (teaching the way
and not all OT prayers were poetic (see 1Ki 8:23-53; Ezr 9:6-15; Ne 9:5-37; Da 9:4-19) -- nor, for that matter, was all praise poetic (see 1Ki 8:15-21). (heaven and earth), is. temple personnel, who completed it probably in the third century b.c. Salem Media Group. The LORD's Care for His People. it has often been called the prayer book of the "second" (Zerubbabel's and
A related problem is the extremely concise, often elliptical writing style
In Ps 110 two balanced stanzas are divided by their introductory oracles (see also introduction to
he identified himself with God's "humble" people in the world. collection as a whole. ways. are: (1) prayers of the individual (e.g., Ps 3-7); (2) praise from the individual
Thus they also speak of the sons of David to come -- and in the exile and the
the Psalter is theologically rich. Whether the "Great Hallel" (Ps 120-136) was already a recognized unit is not known.