Psalm 27

Psalm 27: A Psalm of David Psalm 27 comes to us in the middle of the book of Psalms. Psalms is like a book of poems. These scriptures paint a picture and gives us hope, strength, or informs us of God’s love whenever we need some encouragement. Psalm 27 is entitled “The Lord is My Light and My Salvation” and hails from story of David. This Psalm is a Psalm follows a pattern that goes back and forth between praising the Lord, and crying out to him for help before ending with a strong statement of praise to the Lord and a phrase encouragement. Throughout the entire Psalm, there is an idea of reassurance of the author’s belief and that the Lord is with his people. Each stanza of the Psalm focuses on either praising the Lord, his reassurance, or pleading to the Lord. Psalm 27 starts off strong with praising the Lord; “The Lord is my light and my salvation” (Psalm 27:1 NRSV). This first quotation gives a small example of pictorial wording. By using the word light, we know the author is not living in darkness. From there it moves to asking a rhetorical question “Whom shall I fear?” (Psalm 27:1) This is considered a rhetorical question because the audience already knows to fear the Lord. Verse 2 again reassures praise to the Lord by stating that the Lord is a stronghold. The author repeats the rhetorical question whom shall I fear to end the first stanza. The first stanza clearly states praise to the Lord before moving on to the second stanza. The second section of Psalms again is giving praise to the Lord, but in a different way. This stanza gives more a pictorial description of praise by using startling examples. The first line in stanza two states “When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh -.” By using the word devour, it gives the audience a visual that is shocking. Immediately following that author states, my foes shall stumble and fall reassuring that the Lord is always with his people. Moving on to the third stanza,