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22. Prayer of Many Hearts: Reading Psalms
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22 Prayer of Many Hearts Reading Psalms Primary Reading: 1 Samuel 1–2; Psalms 1, 3, 6, 14, 15, 24, 53, 118. What Is Psalms? The English title “Psalms” comes to us from the Septuagint, the venerable Jewish translation of the Bible into Greek. It rendered the word mizmor (romz$m1), which features in many superscriptions (chapter titles) in this book, as psalmos. Both the Hebrew and Greek words mean “a song sung to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument.” In other words, this book consists of song lyrics—about 150 separate songs (largely, but not exactly, identical with the chapter headings). Many of them strike us as familiar, either because of their important role in contemporary religious life, or because we have encountered them as classics of world literature (e.g., “The LORD is my shepherd . . .”; Ps. 23). A “psalm” is a poetic prayer composition that is not necessarily in the Book of Psalms, although that book contains most of the known psalms. Psalms is an unusually intimidating book. Weighing in at 150 chapters, it is easily the longest book of the Bible. The poetry of its lyrics is rarely straightforward . Its superscriptions are usually obscure or ambiguous. Time and again, upon even a cursory reading, we encounter sudden shifts in tone and focus— often within the same psalm—which compounds the challenge that this book poses. How are we to read the individual psalms? How are we to understand the book as a whole? Here I do not mean “read” as an act of contemporary personal devotion; that may be important to many of us, but it is not the task at hand. Rather, the historian’s role is to view this book and its elements in terms of the ancient milieu in which they arose. The present chapter will show that Psalms is an ordered collection of col219 lections, comprising different genres from various places and times. To establish this claim, the best place to begin is outside of Psalms—specifically, at the beginning of 1 Samuel, which contains two prayers: one in prose, the other in poetry. The poem is one of those psalms that the Book of Psalms did not incorporate.1 Prayer in the Bible: What Samuel Teaches Us The first prayer found in Samuel is that of Hannah, who had been desperately wanting a (male) child. She prayed: O LORD of Hosts, if You will look upon the suffering of Your maidservant and will remember me and not forget Your maidservant, and if You will grant Your maidservant a male child, I will dedicate him to the LORD for all the days of his life; and no razor shall ever touch his head (1 Sam. 1:11). Like almost one hundred other biblical prayers, this one is prose.2 (It lacks parallelism and figuration, and it employs plain language.) Its three-part structure is clear: an invocation of God, a long request, and a motivation—why God should heed this request). The following table shows these elements:3 Invocation “O LORD of Hosts” Request “if You will look upon the suffering of Your maidservant and will remember me and not forget Your maidservant, and if You will grant Your maidservant a male child” Motivation “I will dedicate him to the LORD for all the days of his life; and no razor shall ever touch his head.” Stated differently, after calling upon God (perhaps getting His attention), this prayer offers a deal. Hannah says that if God gives her a child, she will return it to God. The reason why Hannah would want this deal is quite clear from biblical conceptions of biology: if she has one child, then her womb has been opened by God (Gen. 29:31; 30:22), and she will be able to have more children (see 1 Sam. 2:21). One could imagine someone in Hannah’s situation coming to the local temple and spontaneously composing such a prayer. Altogether different is Hannah’s second prayer. After she gives birth to a son, weans him, and brings him to the sanctuary,4 she prays: (1 Sam. 2:1) My heart exults in the LORD; / I have triumphed through the LORD. / I gloat over my enemies; / I rejoice in Your deliverance. / (2) There is no holy one like the LORD, / Truly, there is none beside You; / 220 How to Read the Bible [54.84.65.73] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 05:44 GMT) There is no rock like our...