In the month of November, we will be doing a series called The Heart of a Psalmist. The goal of this series is to dive into the Psalms and develop an authentic heart for God like we read throughout this part of scripture. This book was put together in the Second Temple Period (around 5th century B.C.E). The collection of this book is divided into 5 sections (1-41, 42-72, 73 – 89, 90 – 106, 107 – 150) which is indicated by a prose doxology of praise to God (except the 5th book).
Psalms is a book of poetry but not in a rhythm sense rather in its drawing of parallelism. It is often hard to translate due to Biblical Hebrew being a synthetic language opposed to analytic languages like English. A synthetic language combines multiple concepts into each word, while an analytic language breaks up concepts into separate words. The poetry of this sacred book finds away to still speak to us regardless of the translating difficulties.
Psalms seems to speak to our hearts and is often a book we search in times of trouble, sadness, anger, and exhilaration. May we learn to speak to God in an authentic way and develop The Heart of a Psalmist. Knowing that, “If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.” – Psalms 139:8 NRSV