Praying the Psalter

 

The Psalter is at the very heart of the Daily Office.  It is the inspired collection of prayers which the Church prays with and in Christ and which the individual Christian prays as a member of the Church, the Body of Christ.  Today, few Christians have been taught how the Church has used the Psalms over the centuries.  For many Christians, the only encounter with the Psalms is as a gradual being read between the Epistle and the Gospel.  Modern Episcopalians only encounter the Psalter through the ten or so verses if one psalm between the Old and New Testament readings.  The dynamic equivalency and inclusivist translations, which are in recent Prayer Books as well as in the New Revised Standard Version and other recent English versions of the Bible, make it almost impossible to Pray the Psalter.

 

We do not use it as if it were only an ancient Jewish book of prayers to be said or sung in the temple.  There has been a lot of valuable work done on establishing the nature of the Hebrew poetry, which uses a variety of parallel arrangements of lines, as well as in associating particular psalms with specific festivals in Israel.  It has been used within the Church to aid her Liturgy and the prayers of her members.

 

However, Christians have consistently used the Psalter formatively, following the way in which the Jews themselves used it before and in the time of Jesus.  In Hebrew, Psalms are called Tehillim, “songs of praise”;  in Greek they are called Psalmoi, “songs to be sung to the sound of the harp.”  Since they are inspired by God, they have a timeless quality.  Devout Jews thought of the psalms as prayers which were always relevant and always contemporary.  They were and are always the prayer of Israel, or of the individual Israelite.  They saw in the inspired verse of the psalms not only their praises and thanksgivings, laments and complaints, petitions and intercessions, hopes and joys, but also their prayer for the Messiah, the Deliverer of Israel.

 

Jesus, the Jew, entered into this tradition of daily praying the “songs of praise” which the Spirit of the Lord had inspired King David and others to compose.  The Psalter was the Prayer Book of Jesus for the whole of his life.  He quoted it in his public ministry, and He prayed from Psalm 22 as he died on the Cross   He quoted the 6th verse of Psalm 31 as he died.  After his resurrection, he taught the disciples how the books of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms described his life, death and resurrection.

 

The church added a number of aids to facilitate our use of Psalms in our worship.  A heading has been added to indicate the theme of the psalm.  They have been arranged in groupings to allow their use in Morning and Evening Prayer such that they are completed in a 30 day cycle.  The front of the 1928 BCP has a list of themes and the Psalms that fit that particular theme.  Psalms are used in our versicles, antiphons, canticles and collects.

 

Today the Psalter is the Jewish holy book and religious poetry of a pre-modern, near-eastern patriarchal society.  It seems irrational to pray its contents in a wholly spiritual and Christ-centered manner as the Body of Christ in the twenty-first century.  Still it fits the needs of this century because it was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  God knew the greater purpose to which he would put it even though King David and other writers could not see into the long-term plan of God, when they expressed their faith and convictions in Hebrew centuries ago.

 

Certainly in the 150 Psalms are mirrored:

  • the ideals of religious piety and communion with God
  • sorrow for sin and the search for perfection
  • walking unafraid in darkness by the lamp of faith
  • obedience to the law of God
  • delight in the worship of God
  • fellowship with the friends of God
  • reverence for the word of God
  • humility under the chastening rod
  • trust when evil triumphs and wickedness prospers
  • serenity in the midst of storm.

Considering the comprehensiveness of that list, it is not surprising that the psalms of praise and lament can so easily become the prayer of honest, believing people today.  The Psalms inform our minds, warm our hearts and direct our wills towards the knowledge of God.  In spite of this practical use of the Psalter, they can provide even more if prayed through, in and with Christ.  Apart from expressing our deep religious convictions and feelings:

  • they are also memorials of and appeals to former mercies and deliverances from God.
  • They are acknowledgments of prophecies fulfilled.
  • They point out the connection between the old and new dispensations.
  • They teach us to admire and adore the wisdom of God displayed in both covenants.
  • They provide an inexhaustible variety of the noblest matter that can engage the meditations and contemplations of man.

 

The Psalter in the 1928 BCP was translated into English by Miles Coverdale from the Latin Vulgate Psalter, which was translated into Latin from Hebrew by the great scholar, Jerome, in the fifth century.  It is of course possible to find modern translations of the Psalms which are superior to the Coverdale version in terms of technical accuracy;  and it is also possible to find versions which communicate the power and beauty of the Hebrew poetic style in a clearer manner.  Yet for Christian use, in order that the Gloria may truly be said in reverence and truthfulness at the end of each Psalm, we need a version which captures the authentic Christ-centered nature of this Jewish and Christian Prayer Book.  Happily the 1928 Psalter can still do this for us;  in contrast, the 1979 Psalter is ill suited for this holy purpose because of the modern, feminist ideology which informed its content.  In considering the fitness of the Psalter for the modern world, we must remember, Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

 

In practice, Christian believers who read and pray the Psalms each day interpret them in the light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and his teaching.  Many psalms praise God the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.  Many of the psalms relate the history of the people and tribes of Israel.  The Exodus from Egypt included the deliverance from bondage, the receiving of the Law at Sinai, the wilderness wanderings, and the final entry into the land of mild and honey.

 

Prayed in and with Christ, the Exodus points forward to the mighty act of God in the deliverance of his people through the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus.  As the old covenant was brought into being by the Exodus so the new is created by the new Exodus of Calvary.  The giving of the Law as the expression of the covenant relation at Sinai points to the giving of the new Law by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus is the new and greater Moses.  The wandering in the wilderness is the symbol for the journey both of the Church as the people in covenant with God and the Christian soul in a personal relation with God on the way to the kingdom of God in the age to come.  And finally, the promised land of milk and honey points to the goal of the earthly journey, the fullness of everlasting life.

 

The devout have always found difficult to fit the imprecatory Psalms into Christian use.  These are the psalms that call upon God to execute vengeance upon the enemies of Israel.  Some modern editions omit these psalms or bracket them to be skipped.  We must remember that we are praying these Psalms in and through Christ – the One whose sacrificial self-offering and Atonement absorbed the wrath of God against wickedness and evil.  To pray these Psalms in Christ is to pray them through the very One whom God the Father “set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.”

 

 

For more details, read “Worship without Dumbing-down” by

The Rev. Dr. Peter Toon, M.A., D.Phil.

(Preservation Press of the Prayer Book Society of the USA 2004