Generally considered to be one of the most notable of the sacred hymns contained within the book of Psalms, Psalm 139 is perhaps one of the most sublime declarations of the omnipresence of God found in the Bible. Attested to David, Psalm 139 is classified as an “Individual Hymn of Thanksgiving” 1 a genre in which God is praised for the singers’ delivery from oppression and various life-threatening illnesses while also acting as a “Wisdom” psalm, celebrating the creative goodness of God. While the actual date of the text remains unclear as it is notoriously difficult to determine a date and historical context for every psalm, most scholars agree that the hymn was written during the time of King David’s reign, there is however, some dispute among…
The book of Psalms is a clear acceptance of wisdom and poetry unto God, the Creator of heavens and earth. David, his Sons, and others expressly write their human’s emotions in prayers and hymns to convey a message from their hearts in many ways. The book of Psalms is also equivalent to the New Testament as well, the Old Testament , example, Psalm 22:1 where David cries in agony, just as Jesus Christ did in the Gospel of Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 collectively describing in Scriptures a separation from God. Nevertheless, God is only prayer away in every…
The main idea of Psalm 23 is how it says that God will always provide everything a person needs, and also take care of us, as long as the person seeking help from him does good to the world. There is a part where it says that the speaker walks thru the valley of the shadow of the dead, but not alone as he walks thru it with the guidance of God and his shepherd. This is telling us how we should never fear anything, not even…
The temptation for the lay reader is to read this passage in light of the New Testament and read Jesus back into the words of the psalm. This is very easy to do because of the striking similarity between the words of the psalmist and the events that transpired during the passion of Jesus. However, to do this is to build a house without first building a proper foundation. The proper approach is to lay the foundation by examining the passage in its grammatical-historical context while acknowledging that there is more to responsible interpretation of the Bible. It is only then, that the rest of the house may be constructed.…
Chapter 7 starts off with the explaining of Hebrew Poetry, in which you are able to classify lines in four types; synonymous parallelism, antithetical parallelism, constructive parallelism, and climatic parallelism (Ehrman, Pg.166-167). The book of Psalms is the best known book of poetry in the Bible (Ehrman, Pg.168). The word Psalm is originally from the word “psallo” which means to pluck the string of an instrument, but eventually came to mean “to sing with accompaniment” (Ehrman, Pg. 168). Psalms is divided up into five books each ending with a doxology, or a “word of praise” (Ehrman, Pg.170). The book of Lamentations is a series of laments in which the prophet complains about life or certain situations and begs for God to help (Ehrman, Pg.…
“Psalm” is the longest book in the bible and is written in prayers, poems, and hymns. It is about God and His creation, war, worship, wisdom, sin, evil, judgement, and the coming of the Messiah. “Psalm 89” talks about Ethan’s realizations about God, the great things that God has done, and the promises that He has made. It also explains that God is angry with the Israelites for sinning, so a psalmist asks The Lord to have mercy on them. After he asks for mercy, he says, “Remember how short my life is, how empty and futile this human existence! No one can live forever; all will die. No one can escape the power of the grave” (Psalm 89.47-48). The people wanted forgiveness but nobody knew how long they would have to live and they knew that death will take over eventually. In other words, they wanted to be forgiven before they…
In 1 Samuel 13:13-14, the prophet Samuel tells Saul, “The Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever, but now your kingdom will not continue; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart...” (419). By this, Samuel pronounces that because Saul chose to take matters into his own hands instead of trusting the will of God, his reign over the Israelite people would end. This establishes a prominent metanarrative within the Bible; the conflict between humans following their desires, contrary to carrying out God 's will, and the repercussions that result. This metanarrative can be seen throughout the Bible in stories from Genesis, Exodus, 1 Samuel and 1 Kings. Psalm 40 also alludes and responds to this conflict which is repeatedly encountered by humanity. Through exegesis of Psalm 40 's theological theme and literary structure, instruction on how humankind should respond concerning the biblical narrative of human desire conflicting God 's will is found.…
The Bible includes 150 psalms. These psalms are a collection of prayers, poems, and hymns that focus on the worshiper's thoughts about God in praise and adoration. David wrote 73 of the psalms. Other psalmists include Moses, Solomon, Asaph, and Sons of Korah. Fifty of the psalms are anonymous.…
The theme of these verses is the humble and selfless act of Jesus’s death and the way that God exalted Him because of it. These verses start out by saying we should have the same attitude as Jesus.…
Furthermore, the changing society and new developments began to shift people’s access to the Bible, as well as their perspective of it. “One result of those new developments was the growing awareness of lay people of their place in the economy of God, and the growing awareness of Christians of the source book of the faith, namely, the Bible” (p.192). Martin Luther (p.192) and John Calvin (p.196) both used the Psalms extensively and wrote commentaries on the Psalms. This use of the Psalms would go on to form and shape the perspective of the proper use of Psalms in the Reformation churches that developed from the Reformation…
In the first section of this book, Monica Rose Brennan talks about what our true identity is in Christ and how we need to remove our masks and stop being fake and be real with people. Psalms 139 sheds light on what our identity in Christ is and tells us that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” She breaks down Psalms 139 into 4 unchanging truths about who we are in Christ. The first unchanging truth is that God has a perfect knowledge of us. The second unchanging truth is that God is omnipresent which means He is always with us. The third unchanging truth is that God is our designer who uniquely and purposefully created us and she also reminds us in this truth that we are not an accident. The fourth unchanging truth is that God loves us and also He cares for us and we are always on His mind and He never forgets about us.…
The poem that I chose to be too hard is titled “Psalm 150” by Jericho Brown. I chose this as my hardest poem because I simply could not grasp where the author was going with it. From the title, the author seems to be referring to a Bible verse. I don’t know much about the Bible, which is probably why I couldn’t make much sense of it. The poem begins with “Some folks fool themselves into believing,…
Psalm 23 can be regarded as a psalm of high praise of God. It is one of the shortest psalms, but it gets its point across very directly and clearly. It makes use of the extended metaphor which is a metaphor that develops at length and includes several points of comparison. This psalm also uses the idea of parallelism that gives an idea in the first lines and keeps on repeating and elaborating in the later…
To the Overseer, for Jeduthun. -- A Psalm of Asaph. My voice [is] to God, and I cry, my voice [is] to God, And He hath given ear unto me.…
Colonists were not eager to leave England, it was considered the greatest government in the world. This was not a decision that was made lightly. Most of the assemblies in the colonies were worried to ask for a vote about independence. Rhode Island for example simply didn’t.³ The reasoning of this was that it would be a bad idea to show ununited colonies when the war was very much in full swing. There were events during the winter of 1775 that swung public opinion to pro-independence though. These events were first the Prohibitory Act and second the hiring of German mercenaries to fight the colonists.⁴ It is known that these were deciding factors due to the fact that they were cited as reasons for independence in smaller declarations.…