I feel prompted to post part of Psalm 2 this morning
1 Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
That is one of the most fruitful questions I've asked of this familiar Psalm.
As I explained about a year ago, the book of Psalms is not 150 prayers and hymns in random order. It's sometimes hard to know exactly what conclusions we should draw from the order the Psalms are in, but that they have been carefully arranged is beyond doubt. … Read more about Why is Psalm 8 in Book 1
As I look at Psalm 6, in preparation for this coming Sunday evening, I went back to visit a blog post by Adrian Reynolds over at The Proclaimer.
He says this, which is very helpful indeed: … Read more about Psalms as Christian Scripture
I love this quotation from Gerard Wilson. He's commenting on Psalm 5.
By relentless goodness I mean that from the beginning, God’s only intent was and still is to bless his creation. Judgement and mercy, therefore, are not two competing characteristics of Yahweh but are two inseparable consequences of his holiness. Relentless goodness is the flip side of incompatibility with evil. (Page 167)
Psalm 95:1-7c inverts the categories of creation and salvation. Roughly, the pattern of the Psalm goes like this:
- Come, let us shout joyfully to the Lord, the rock of our salvation (1-2)
- For, he is a great God who holds, owns and formed everything (3-5)
- Come, let us bow and kneel before our maker (6)
- For he is our God, and we are his people, under his care (7a-c)
I thought it might help if I wrote down my thoughts so far on the Psalms: What kind of literature are they? How are they to be read and interpreted today? … Read more about Introducing the Psalms
We are forever looking for things God has done for us for which we can give him thanks. Things he has done for us and for no other people. That could be a temporal thing - we want things he has done for our generation and not for previous ones. That could be a spatial thing - we want things he has done for our village / town / county / nation and not for others. It could be both at once - things he has done for me and me alone.
Psalm 105 is a total contrast. It starts
Oh give thanks to the
Lord ;
call upon his name;
In the next week or two, The Well, the magazine that the church produces and distributes free of charge to all 5000 residents of our two parishes, will land on people's doormats.
As usual, page 4 has a letter from me:
Dear friends,
We’ve just come through the most unpredictable General Election for many years; people are talking not only of there being a new government but of a whole new way of doing politics. Time will tell what difference these changes will make, and whether they are great or small.
Anyone wanting to learn how Anglican Chant works as a musical style for the Psalms could look at a couple of introductory webpages.
There is a helpful one on the BBC website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A15716595.
There is a helpful one on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_chant, where I particularly like the example given - with a colour-coded musical stave that can be matched up to the text of part of the Magnificat printed in the same colours. Nice. … Read more about Psalm chants
They are not uncommon metaphors in the Psalms, but one after the other they offer a wonderful barrage of imagery portraying the security, shelter, help and support that God's people can find in their God. This was the shelter that Jesus availed himself of, first and foremost, and by extension is available to all who are in Christ. … Read more about Enjoy the metaphors in Psalm 61
