Simple Songs for Psalms

Why sing the Psalms?

     The world is full of advocates for studying the Psalms, praying the Psalms, meditating upon the Psalms, even paraphrasing and updating the Psalms. A quick scan of the world’s bookshelf reveals Bonhoeffer’s Prayerbook of the Bible, Merton’s Praying the Psalms, books and commentaries on the Psalms relating to worship, liturgy, Hebrew poetry, history, structure, form-criticism, and message. There is no point or indeed validity in arguing against any of these approaches, for the Psalms are an immensely rich and profound source of theology, inspiration, liturgy, truth, wisdom, prophecy, and all those things that one looks for in spiritual food for living the Christian life, the life with God. The Psalms do indeed justify the closest examination and deepest study. For, the Author of the Psalms is the Spirit of God, as witnessed to by Christ Himself, in an offhand remark in the course of an argument with the Pharisees, as He quotes Ps. 110:1,

     [Jesus:] “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?”
     “The son of David,” they replied.
     He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.”’ If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?”—Matthew 22:42-45 (NIV)

     That the Psalms contain prophecy is witnessed to in Luke 24:44, Acts 1:16; 4:25-28. That they contain theology and spiritual instruction is plain from numerous citations in Paul’s letters and the other epistles. That they contain praises and prayers is obvious from their form and content. Thus, all the modalities of consumption advocated above—studying, praying, and meditating upon the Psalms—are well justified. And of course, the devotional use of the Psalms has a long history and tradition.
     The one modality that is greatly overlooked is singing the Psalms. While there are several traditions of chanting the Psalms (Anglican, Catholic, Jewish, Orthodox), perhaps very few people use this method in their private devotions, or in any setting apart from a formal church service as part of the liturgy. There are some reasons for this, arising from the way Western Protestants do Bible study and liturgy today. But the motivation and method for singing the Psalms in a systematic way should be re-assessed.
     In the canon of Scripture, the Psalms are placed after the histories and followed by the other writings and prophets. The histories are largely narrative, containing only a handful of examples of Hebrew poetry—Moses’ song, the songs of Miriam and Hannah, and a couple of poem/prayers from David and Solomon. The Psalms (setting aside Job, which is less poetry than a play in verse) are the first large body of Hebrew poetry one encounters in the Scripture. Following the Psalms, canonically and historically, there are many books that consist largely or entirely of poetry. The precise reason for this pattern has never been satisfactorily explained, and it will not be explained here either. But there is nevertheless something to be learned from this literary feature of the Scriptures.
     In order to properly discern these matters, let us ask and answer some basic questions.
     What are the Psalms?

 
Copyright, 2010-2011, by Robert McAnally Adams,
        Curator, Christian Quotation of the Day.
Logo image Copyright 1996 by Shay Barsabe, of “Simple GIFs”, by kind permission.
Send comments to curator@cqod.com.

Last updated: 3/6/11

Fun stuff