A Psalm a Day Keeps Satan Away: The Podcast

Psalm 35 – Righteousness/Justice/Peace Occasionally, in attempting to bring some theological clarity to the text, my mind drifts. That happened while reading verse 21: “They gape at me and say, “Aha, Aha!” The question I asked myself is, how does one decide to translate such an utterance? The Hebrew phrase is הֶאָ֑ח הֶאָ֑ח and is pronounced ‘hay-YAH, hay-YAH.’ All the major English translations go...

Psalm 34 - Community Fun fact about Psalm 34: it is the fourth acrostic psalm (each line beginning with a consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet) that we have read. EXCEPT there is no line for the ‘vav’ which is the sixth letter of the alphabet! There are very few Hebrew words that start with a ‘vav.’ Fun fact #2 about Psalm 34: the superscript at the beginning is quite lengthy and recounts an...

Psalm 33 – Transcendence and Immanence This psalm declares itself to be a new song (v. 3) to be sung by the congregation of YHWH believers. Fittingly then, the predominant metaphor employed by the psalmist uses Creation language and images from Genesis 1 and the worshipers singing this hymn re-orient themselves as a community to a perfected Creation filled with His righteousness and justice and ru...

Psalm 32 – The Sequence We start our commentary today on Psalm 32 (another top fiver) in the most logical place, which is Genesis 15. A frustrated Abram (he was not yet Abraham) was lamenting to the LORD that the life YHWH had promised him if Abram would “go, go forth to the land I will show you” (Gen. 12:1) had not yet materialized. Where were the children and where was the blessings of a great n...

Hello Again, Psalm-a-Dayers! It’s been 35 days since my last devotional entry. As mentioned in the podcast portion from January 31, Noelle and I journeyed to NZ and Australia for the better part of February. Since returning, and having gotten out of the habit of writing and recording, I have struggled to return to my normal spiritual formation disciplines. And that’s the faith lesson for today: if...

Psalm 31- Rabbis and Disciples “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.” These are some of Jesus’s last words as he died on the cross, praying from Psalm 31:5 (confer with our discussion on Psalm 22, the other psalm that Jesus prayed as he died). Remember the rabbinic mantra that we discussed with Psalm 22: learn the text, live the text, teach the text, pray the text, die the text . As discip...

Psalm 30 – Tenacity, Thanksgiving, Confession On February 11, 1986, a Ukrainian born Jew named Natan Sharansky stood on the tarmac at Bykovo Airport outside of Moscow. He was about to board a plane that would take him to East Germany where he would be part of a well-publicized prisoner exchange between the then Soviet Union and the West. Sharansky, a dissident of Soviet authoritarianism, had been...

Psalm 29 Fun fact about Psalm 29: Scholarly consensus is that the source of this psalm is a Canaanite hymn to Ba-al, the storm god of whom much is written about in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. This makes many Christians squeamish: why would the ancient Israelite psalmists use a ‘secular’ song and violate the purity of our belief in the One True God? The reality is that the Scriptur...

Psalm 28 This psalm follows the classic lament structure of complaint/petition, deprecation against enemies, and affirmation/trust in YHWH. How many times have we seen this pattern just in the first 28 psalms? The psalmist in verse 1 begs G-d to not be silent lest he n(the Psalmist) be “like those who have gone down to the pit.” This implies others have gone down in the pit and as verse 3 says, th...

Psalm 27 - Be Strong and Courageous In our reflections we have talked about passages of orientation/re-orientation towards YHWH which affirm our trust and confidence in G-d, and we have talked about passages of disorientation which describe times of trouble and suffering (and these passages often show the psalmist shouting at G-d and shaking his fist at G-d). We have also noted that in the psalms...

Psalm 26 - Blameless Psalm 26 gives us our first opportunity to circle back to a question that I raised in our Psalm 15 reflection: what is the difference between being blameless and being sinless? The Hebrew Bible (what we call the Old Testament) speaks of many blameless people (i.e., Job and Noah), but no one that I recall who was sinless. Today’s psalm is a lament. The psalmist needs vindicatio...

Psalm 25 - The ACT of Remembering Today is a good day for another lesson in Hebrew. Psalm 25 is our first example of an acrostic psalm (each line starts with a consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet – in English, it would be line 1 starts with “A,” line 2 starts with “B” and so on). Sadly, that structure is lost in most translation/interpretations. I have attached a picture from my Hebrew bible...

Psalm 24 – A Big, Big God! Imagine being a Jewish slave in ancient Egypt, arguably the greatest empire ever to exist. You and your people work tirelessly to build great monuments to the gods of the empire like the Edfu temple in the attached picture (notice the height of the gate, which was built to accommodate the greatness of Horus, the Egyptian “protector god” of Pharaoh). You cry out to the un...

Psalm 23 Close your eyes and create a mind picture of the iconic opening verse of Psalm 23: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.” Bask in the vision that you have created internally in your spirit. How would you describe that painting to someone? Having grown up in a very rural area replete with acres upon acres of beautiful pastureland and hay fields...

Psalm 22 – Learn the Text, Live the Teach, Teach the Text, Pray the Text … And Die the Text The core of Jewish religious life centers on “the text” (the Hebrew Bible – what Christians call the Old Testament) and on the Rabbi-Disciple relationship. Disciples dedicate their lives to knowing G-d better and deeper and they do so by following a rabbi, “sitting at his (or her) feet” as the rabbi expound...

Psalm 21 Psalm 21 must be read in conjunction with Psalm 20 (another small “mini-series”). We recognize the same superscript from Psalm 20 in this Psalm. We have the same translation issue regarding whether the psalm is ‘ of David’ or ‘ for/to David.’ We noted that Psalm 20 is a prayer asking for the king to be blessed before going into battle (and we made the bridge to the battles in our realitie...

Psalm 20 – The Blessing Psalm 20 is categorized as a Royal Psalm (meaning that it is directed to the King of Israel). It is clearly a prayer of blessing, dedicated to a non-identified king who is ready to go off into battle to face Israel’s enemies. The superscript reads in every translation “For the leader; a psalm of David.” But given that David was the king who often went to battle and remember...

Psalm 19 – The Heavens Declare … His Commands Are Radiant Psalm 19 is in my top five. Its style and structure create a theological statement that is awesome and inspiring to me. The structure is pretty evident. After a standard superscript “For the leader; of (for/to) David” (remember our preposition discussion from yesterday), we have two interconnected sections: the first is a Creation Hymn (v.1...

Psalm 18 – My Rock, My Fortress, My Deliverer The superscript informs us that the psalm is “ For the director (of music); of David the servant of the LORD.” Here is that text in Hebrew: לַמְנַצֵּ֤חַ׀ לְעֶ֥בֶד יְהוָ֗ה לְדָ֫וִ֥ד Noteworthy is the preposition לְ (and its variant לַ ) Hebrew is read and written right to left. See if you can find the first and last uses of לְ and לַ. The first appearan...

Psalm 17 – The Apple of His Eye We have our first translation decision right in verse one. One of our favorite Hebrew words, צֶ֗דֶק ‘tza-DEEK’ appears. Remember from Psalms 7 and 9 that the primary translation is ‘righteous,’ or ‘righteous one.’ The secondary meaning is ‘just/justice or just one.’ The word appears again in the last verse (v.15). In Hebrew, this inclusio (the bookend use of a word...

Psalm 16 – The Outcome: Trust and Peace In our Psalm 1 discussion, I mentioned that the first two psalms lay out a quasi-thematic outline for the psalter. Psalm 1 describes the benefits of a life lived according to Torah (the law/instruction/guidance/education of G-d’s Word); Psalm 2 mandates that we, the representatives of G-d in an often-hostile world, be a witness and testimony to all that is g...

Psalm 15 – The List Yesterday’s Psalm 14 starts out mocking “the fool” whose deeds are corrupt. YHWH searches the planet for anyone seeking G-d (Ps. 14:2). And the psalm ends with an exclamation of desire that salvation “would come out of Zion” (the Holy Hill that is Jerusalem). And what is the first verse of Psalm 15? A pair of questions (remember, the theology is always in the questions) in refe...

Psalm 14 - Fools Well, guess what? Psalm 14 is NOT in my top 5 yet! I have been doing this exercise for four years now (it started as a COVID project). My practice when reading and meditating (remember our Hebrew word ‘ha-GAH’?) is to read and meditate with pen in hand; my Bibles are full of notes, underlines, circles, exclamation points, etc. It strikes me that after four and a half years (9 read...

Psalm 13 – I Trust, Rejoice and Sing Psalm 13 is in everyone’s top 5. It merits a term paper of commentary despite it being just 6 verses (don’t worry, I will resist the urge!). It exhibits the classic lament psalm structure and clearly conveys the psalmist’s disorientation in his relationship with YHWH. He blasts YHWH with four rhetorical questions blaming G-d for all that is wrong with life (rem...

Psalm 12- Lips, Tongues and Lies This one should be entitled “Lips, Tongues, and Lies” and seems like it was written exactly for our times. There are so many voices and opinions and words uttered forth with reckless abandon these days. And which one of us has NOT uttered oaths against Facebook, IG, TikTok and all the other media outlets that shout in our face. The psalmist is correct: “Everyone li...