Psalms: New Insight

 For the past three weeks in Come Follow Me, we have been reading the Psalms.  I was (I thought) assigned to teach the only class we would have on the Psalms and in preparation I decided to listen to all 150 over the course of the three weeks.  I also decided to write down my favorites in different categories: Hope against opposition, Praise, Prayer for Mercy, Promised Faithfulness, and Lament.  I only found out the day before that we were not having a lesson due to training about the new Sunday Schedule. I was a bit disappointed, but it wasn't all for nothing. I did gain some new insights from the process.  

First, many of the podcasters I listened to talked about the Psalms as songs, like an ancient hymnal.  They talked about how they were sung as feast days and in the temple.  I think this is an important an valuable idea to remember, but it wasn't a new idea to me.  The new insight I heard from Rabbi Grover on "The Scriptures are Real" podcast. He said, "Of course the psalms were sung, but so was the rest of the Hebrew Bible." Of course I learned that when I was studying Hebrew, but it hadn't really registered.  The Hebrew Bible has every verse marked with musical notation so the Cantor and sing them correctly. Every time Hebrew Scripture is presented in synagogue, it is sung or at least chanted with a consistent intonation that is marked in the text.  So to say the Psalms were a hymnbook only makes sense to a Christian who isn't familiar with Jewish worship. 

The thing that was helpful for me this year, was to think of the Psalms as prayers instead of hymns.  All through the Old Testament up to this point we have been reading the history of a civilization as a whole.  Except for a few prophets, we haven't yet gotten a sense of what an individual's relationship with God its like. That is what the Psalms offer, a glimpse into ancient individual Hebrew's relationship with God. So, if we look as Psalms as personal prayers instead of hymns, what do we learn?

First we learn that the psalms represent communication to God about the whole range of emotions.  Some are exultant, and some depressive. Some are full of anger and thirst for vengeance, and some are full of faith in the creator. I think we can gather from this that we need not tone down our emotions when we pray.  It is not as if God doesn't already know what we are feeling and thinking. Hiding strong emotions from him is futile and only results in failure to acknowledge them in ourselves. If we confess to God all our feelings, we will process them better and improve our emotional connection with God. 

Second, we must remember that when we read the Psalms we are only getting the part that the people are saying to God.  We aren't getting his response. So when people pray that God will destroy their enemies, that doesn't mean that God wants to destroy anyone.  It only means the person praying wishes their enemies would go away. 

This is a totally natural feeling, especially for the people in the time of the writing of the Psalms.  They had no sense of security.  At any time an enemy might overrun their home, take all their possessions, and even capture or kill family members. If you lived in constant threat like that, you would probably want your enemies destroyed as well.  

We have to remember that Jesus taught "Love your enemies." Reading the Psalms we see what a revolutionary teaching that was for the Jewish people. How much of the Old Testament gives us examples of loving our enemies?  Not much.  That is why Jesus was seen as such a revolutionary, and such a threat to the established Jewish religious beliefs and practices. In summary, when there are ideas in the Psalms that go against what Jesus taught, remember where they come from and give the ancient Israelites a little grace.  Just because they are in the Psalms, doesn't mean they represent God's view of right and wrong.

So there are my insights.  I hope they are useful for someone (since my class isn't going to hear them. Ha ha.)