David John Marotta gives an introduction to How to Study the Psalms for yourself. This talk was the first of five in recorded live in an Adult Sunday school class.
Your Assignment: Choose a Psalm and a Partner
By the end of the five weeks, the goal is to have chosen one or more psalms to study over the summer and to have a partner.
For this week, read in the Psalms and come back with three or four ideas for a psalm you might want to study this year.
Find a partner. When our children’s ministry moved from a solo teacher to a team, the teaching improved because a team brings accountability. I taught under both methods. With a team, you are far more likely to prepare well.
Meet every couple of weeks by phone or over lunch. Ask, what have you learned? Share it. When I learn something, sharing it solidifies it. Often you solve a problem simply by explaining it.
Living With Your Psalm
I have studied a few passages intensely for six months at a time. Every time it is rich. Living with a passage lets it touch every area of life.
Here are some practical ways to live with your psalm:
- Audio: Record your psalm and loop it. After 50 listens, you will know it without trying. Record multiple translations back to back. You can play them while driving or working.
- Visual: Print your psalm in large font. Cut it verse by verse and tape them around your house. The verse on the fridge will become “the eating verse.” The mirror verse will become “the shaving verse.” You form a mental map of the psalm.
- Screensaver: Make a rotating screensaver with your verses.
God’s Word seeps in slowly. For me, osmosis requires calendar time more than intensity. Eight days with small daily reminders often does more than eight hours in one sitting.
Over the summer, study your psalm. Read commentaries. Use online resources. Let the text sink in.
By the end of summer, package your psalm into a talk. In the fall we will gather and listen to each other teach. You will receive friendly feedback. That practice will prepare you to teach elsewhere in the new year.
If You Do Not Plan to Teach
Audience: Not everybody wants to teach. Some of us just want to study.
David: That is great. Still, pick a psalm. You may never teach it formally, but studying with the intent to teach deepens your study. As you learn, share it in ordinary conversations. Teaching can become a habit.
We are all called to be teachers in some sense. Not all of us stand up front, but all of us are called to share our faith and what we have learned about God.
Suggested Resources
Walter Kaiser’s group study guide on the Psalms is excellent. Many weeks cover two psalms; some cover one. If several of you want to choose from that guide, you would have a built-in study plan.
On your handout under Resources:
- How to Read the Psalms by Tremper Longman
- Christ-Centered Preaching by Bryan Chapell
- The Cry of the Soul by Dan B. Allender
The Book of Psalms: Structure and Authors
The 150 psalms are grouped into five books, reflecting five scrolls. Some have suggested loose correspondences to Genesis through Deuteronomy. Themes sometimes align, though not rigidly. Some psalms span book divisions, so do not over-read the breaks. Aim to include psalms from each of the five books across a teaching series.
David is the most common author. A heading that reads “A Psalm of David” can mean by David, for David, in the style of David, or attributed to David. Many clearly reflect his life.
Other authors include Solomon and Moses. Psalm 90 is by Moses. Psalm 91 is probably his as well.
Why the Psalms Matter
The Psalms help us relate to God honestly and emotionally. Faith sometimes looks like bringing our anger to God. If you find yourself shaking your fist at God, you are still turning to Him rather than idols or self-reliance. That can be an act of faith.
Watch for progression. A psalm may begin with complaint but ends nearer to trust. The Psalms guide us from where we are to a better place.
Poetic language matters. Sometimes unfolding a metaphor too clinically loses what the poet is doing. Song of Songs speaks frankly about sexuality through beautiful imagery to make it both clear and fitting. Some psalms require similar care. In places, being too blunt is less faithful to the text than staying poetic.
The Psalms also make us participants in the story. We say, You brought us out of Egypt, though we were not there. Christians see themselves as the same people of faith across time. That is part of the genius of the Psalms.
They are also a guide to worship. Many psalms trace the same pattern as our worship services: adoration, confession, assurance, thanksgiving, and petition. Pray a psalm by taking a verse at a time and applying it to your life. You do not need to pray the whole psalm each time.
Reflection and meditation are essential. Studying the Psalms requires calendar time.
I once met the strangest man. In Palo Alto he flagged us down, dressed in an old-fashioned suit, like a leprechaun, holding a pot with a dead poinsettia. We gave him a ride. He told us stories. He had lived in a monastery with a vow of silence. Working in the fields alongside Brother John, each broke the vow briefly.
Brother John said, “Isn’t God our Father?”
He answered, “Yes.”
Brother John said, “Then that would make Christ our brother, wouldn’t it?”
The next day this strange little man left the monastery to do what God had called him to do.
We dropped him at a flower shop whose window was full of dead poinsettias. He was either touched by God or just touched. I still think about his stories. There used to be a greater appetite for contemplation than our fast information cycle allows. A verse on your refrigerator for six months acquires layers of meaning. God’s Word has that power.
We are called to be bizarrely different. We have warned our kids that being raised on the gospel means they will not fit neatly into the culture. They will have to choose whether to keep living this way or write it off as a warped childhood. Reflection helps anchor that choice.
The Psalms take us from wherever we are and move us closer to God. Though they contain deep doctrinal truths, they move us intuitively. They do not always yield their deepest meanings at first glance. My study arc usually goes from I think I know this, to I do not know this at all, to clarity beyond what I had at first. When you hit that low point, persevere. The Psalms need time.
How Hebrew Poetry Works
Hebrew poetry is built on parallelism, not rhyme and meter as we know them. There is meter in Hebrew, but it rarely carries over in translation. What carries over is the rhyming of ideas.
A single poetic line is a “stich.” Two stiches often form a pair. The pairs come in many patterns. Common ones include:
- Synonymous: the second line repeats the first in different words.
- Antithetical: the second line contrasts with the first.
- Climactic or step: the second line advances the idea.
- Chiastic: elements cross in an ABBA pattern.
See: Understanding Hebrew Poetry
Open to Psalm 1. Verse 1 reads: How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. That is a climactic progression: walk, stand, sit. It also moves from the foolish to the entrenched, with scoffers the worst of the three.
Verse 2 is synonymous: His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. Delight and meditate are related but not identical. The nuance matters.
Antithetical parallelism appears in verse 6: For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Chiastic parallelism appears in Psalm 7:16 in the English Standard Version: His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his skull his violence descends. The order crisscrosses.
Any two ways ideas can relate, Hebrew poetry can use. What a line is paired with can change its meaning. If the same line appears later with a different pairing, the sense may shift.
You do not need to know Hebrew to study the Psalms. Learning Hebrew helps a little, but having four or five English translations often helps more. You benefit from the work of dozens of scholars. Differences between versions will show you the translation choices. A good commentary will also walk through key word studies.
Structure and Breaking the Pattern
Structure matters. A psalm may establish a pattern and then break it to draw attention.
Think of music in film. Score shapes emotion. If the music drops out at a key moment, the silence intensifies it. The Psalms sometimes do that with structure.
A limerick that breaks its form is funny because you know the form:
There once was a bard from Japan
whose limericks never would scan.
When folks told him so,
he said, Yes, I know.
It is because I try to fit as many syllables into the last line as I possibly can.
In Scripture, Jesus leaves the older brother’s response open in the Prodigal Son to press the Pharisees.
In the story of Elisha and the widow’s oil, debts are paid but the husband remains dead. Not everything is restored in this life. God wants faith, and some restorations await the life to come.
Types of Psalms
There are many types: laments, thanksgiving, praise, wisdom, trust, kingship, and more. Imprecatory psalms are often misunderstood.
We taught Psalm 109, sometimes labeled a vengeance psalm. It sounds as if David is calling down curses and also claiming not to be vengeful. Studied closely, the middle section is likely the words of his enemies quoted against him, not his prayer against them. Peter cites it regarding Judas, so it layers David’s experience and Christ’s betrayal.
Another difficult line appears elsewhere: Blessed is he who dashes your little ones against the rocks. That phrase appears in Isaiah in the context of Israel’s restoration from captivity. The psalmist may be invoking God’s justice and the promised restoration rather than indulging personal vengeance. It is like saying, Blessed will be the day when Christ returns and sets things right, though judgment is terrible.
When you meet a hard line, hold it loosely until you understand it better. So far, I have not found a psalm I would call purely vengeful. I have found raw anger brought to God, which the psalms then move toward faith.
Studying Together: A Look at Psalm 119
Here is one section of Psalm 119 from the NIV:
Teach me, O Lord, to follow your decrees;
then I will keep them to the end.
Give me understanding, and I will keep your law and obey it with all my heart.
Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight.
Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain.
Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word.
Fulfill your promise to your servant, so that you may be feared.
Take away the disgrace I dread, for your laws are good.
How I long for your precepts; preserve my life in your righteousness.
Notice the structure. Most lines ask God to act, then state a response. The pattern breaks in the last verse. That draws attention. The punch line is, How I long for your precepts; preserve my life in your righteousness.
See the progression:
- Teach me.
- Give me understanding.
- Direct me.
- Turn my heart.
- Turn my eyes.
- Preserve my life.
- Fulfill your promise.
- Take away disgrace.
- Preserve my life in your righteousness.
God teaches, then gives understanding. Understanding leads to direction for living. Then comes heart change. Then a change in what we look at and love. Then preservation and restoration.
Verse 38 is worth lingering over. Translations vary:
- Establish your word to your servant who is devoted to fearing you.
- Confirm to your servant your promise, that you may be feared.
- Establish your word to your servant as that which produces reverence for you.
However you render it, the theme is clear. This section is a prayer for growth. It asks for what really matters. It carries confession and the good news that God is sovereign over our transformation.
Psalm 119 as a whole is an acrostic. Each eight-verse section begins with the same Hebrew letter. Each section has its own theme. For example, beginning at verse 25, My soul cleaves to the dust; revive me according to your word, outlines what to do when you are in the dust. When I feel in the pits, I return there.
Closing Prayer
Lord, thank you for being a God who has spoken in His Word. Thank you for the Psalms, for their clear and beautiful doctrine, and for the way they reach our hearts. May our study not be merely academic, but result in real change. Make us men and women of your Word whose eyes are open to what you are doing, that we might join you in it. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Please listen to the podcast for more detail and explanation.
Next: 02 Living the Psalms
Series: How to Study Psalms
Resources: Psalms
Understanding Hebrew Poetry
For more: Bible Study 101
Photo used here under Flickr Creative Commons.