Psalms 29

The voice of the Lord is awesome. I do feel a very strong feeling in my heart when I hear a pastor preach and the message directly speaks into my situation.

In verses four through six we see the one petition of the Psalmist “That I may dwell

The author is identified on all but thirty-four of the book of Psalms. The authors include, David; Asaph, David's choir leader; Sons of Korah, a family of Levitical musicians; Jeduthun; a Levitical choir leader; Solomon; Moses; The Ezrahite Ethan; Heman. Jewish tradition says Adam wrote Psalm one hundred thirty nine, Melchizedek wrote Psalm one hundred ten, Abraham wrote Psalm eighty-nine, Moses wrote Psalm ninety. The praise Psalms opens up with a call to praise and then has a reason to praise God. Finally, it has a concluding praise.

The Bible is filled with a variety of images, titles, and descriptions concerning the individuals set aside to serve as spiritual leaders. In the follow section I will explore four biblical texts in which I see fit to serve as helpful descriptors for the role of spiritual leaders. The first text we will explore is the twenty-third Psalm. The key image evoked in Psalm 23 is ‘shepherded’, an image which Jesus returns to in John 10. The Hebrew word for shepherded in Psalm 23:1 is רָעָה which is defined as, “to feed a flock, to pasture, to tend.” The English word “pastor” is derived from the Greek word ποιμήν.

108Cf. Adele Berlin, “Psalms and the Literature of Exile,” in The Book of Psalms: Composition and Reception (SVT 99; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 74, 75; Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 2: A Commentary on Psalms 51-100 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 183-84; Wilson, Psalms: Volume 1, 949. Most scholars agree that the destruction of the Temple and cities of Jerusalem is the background of Psalm 69.

Genre: The genre of Psalm 139 is Hebrew poetry, simply because the psalms were written in Hebrew and are a collection of poems and laments. The first principle of interoperation is that the psalms blend experience, emotion, and theology. This should be taken into account while reading the poem in order that the reader does not simply skip over the theology by only focusing on experience and emotion. The second interoperation principle is that each psalm should be read as a whole. Verses of psalms should not be taken out of context, in doing this the reader may distort the meaning of the psalm. Another interpretation principle to take into consideration is the different genres of psalms such as: laments, thanksgiving, hymns of praise, wisdom, and songs of trust. With that being said, Psalm 139 not only falls under the Hebrew poetry genre, but is also classified as a psalm of trust. Lastly, the fourth interpretation principle is that parallelisms are used. In other words, ideas correlate in many different ways such as: synonymously, antithesis, intensifying, specifying, and synthetically.

Everyday millions of Americans read stories to their children before they go to bed. I often read Dr. Seuss books to my son Seth, who is four years old. He loves the rhythm and rimes that are those books. One of his favorites is Green Eggs and Ham. Seth has begun to answer the questions of Sam, answering him for the other character saying “he does not like green eggs and ham”. It caught my attention that some of the Psalms also have a repetitive nature. Psalm 119 is the longest of all the Psalms and is very repetitive. Many people only read one section of the Psalm because of the repetitive nature and do not look at the chapter as a whole. There is a lack of churches teaching on the Psalms and some a not reading them at all. Psalm 119 is more than a long repetitive Psalm, reading it as one passage there is evidence of determination by the author to show why following the Lord’s teaching is vital to life as a Christian.

The overall structure of the Psalm is that it is broken into two halves. The first half of the psalm is God’s creation. The second half deals with God’s Word. Though they are both different they both share the common theme of god revealing Himself to mankind. Inside of these halves the author uses different parallelism. In the first verse we see synonymous parallelism, using the heavens and skies to make the point that they are telling of God’s Work. In the seventh verse we see synthetic parallelism showing the progression from perfection to restoration of the imperfect.

As mentioned previously, within this psalm, there are three distinct strophes, or stanzas, in view. Bullock (2005) noted that, “at the heart of Hebrew poetry is a device called parallelism” (p. 36). Several instances of parallelism are found in Psalm 24, and especially in the first two strophes. For example, in the first distich, we see David proclaiming that “The earth is the Lord's, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it” (Psalm 24:1, King James Version). These two units are an example of synonymous parallelism, which Bullock (2005) noted as meaning that “the thought pattern in one line conforms to the pattern in the successive line” (p. 36, BULLOCK, PARAPHRASE THIS). Next, in verses three and four, we find the psalmist using a form of synthetic parallelism, which involves the second line solving or completing the thought of the first line (Owensboro Community and Technical College, n.d., para. 7). This can be seen in verse three when David asks the questions “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who may stand in His holy place” and then answers in the next verse with “He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully” (Psalm 24:3-4, King James

The book of Psalms is a metaphorical book of poetry. According to Fee and Stuart, "metaphors are not to be taken literally. For example, if someone took Psalms 23 literally, they might make the mistake of assuming that God wants us to be and act like sheep, or else wants us to live a rural, pastoral life." (216) For that reason, a person must rightly divide the word of God as stated in II Timothy 3:16.

As the longest chapter in the Bible, Psalm 119 is a Psalm of delighting in the Word of God. Psalm 119 is comprised of 176 verses that give adoration to God and the Torah.

This psalm was written by David when he was in a distressful state, being chased by Saul who

With regard to its content Psalm 49 is, by and large, didactic in nature. It does not sound entirely pessimistic, rather, it gives some practical and constructive instructions pertaining to a key reality of life that one has to face, i.e., death. Importantly, Psalm 49 dissipates two types of fear, i) the fear of enemies at the time of death (v 6) and ii) the fear of the wealthy and powerful who think that they may have some merit at the time of death (v 17). The Wisdom teacher destroys the fear factor but does not give an alternative that would explain why we should not fear. Perhaps the whole wisdom tradition and all the wisdom literature teach us that wisdom is found in the contemplation of the reverential fear of the Lord (Prov 1, 7; 9,

In Psalms, we see a collection of lyrical poetry, songs and prayers. Many of these were written by King David himself. The book covers almost the entire gamut of human emotion, from sorrow to joy, from doubt to faith.

The Book of Psalms is the Book of Prayer. Whoever wants to learn to pray let him pray to David and whoever prays with the psalms, David shall be a teacher for him, how he should pray as a father that shall hold his son's hand to teach him how to write. In the Book of Psalms we know ourselves and the weaknesses and pitfalls that are in us and we find in this travel fall and the advancement of prayers of repentance and thanksgiving and praise. Psalms are filled with many prophecies concerning the incarnation, pain and resurrection of the Lord. It is the greatest witness to the life of the Lord Jesus, so Peter said that David is a prophet (Acts 30: 2).