Life is filled with boundaries and divisions. These are good. According to the creation account in Genesis, creating boundaries was a crucial part of how God brought order out of chaos. God first created a boundary between light and darkness. He then separated between the waters above and the waters Read more…
In this post I wrote about the phrase, “incline your ear” as an idiom meaning “please pay attention!” I said that this frequent expression in the Psalms reminds us that it’s okay to feel desperate in the Christian life and that God expects us to call to Him for help Read more…
The phrase “incline your ear” appears in the Bible approximately seventy-six times. As is relatively evident, it generally means “pay attention!” It appears a lot in the book of Psalms when the psalmist asks God to incline His ear to the psalmist’s complaints or request for deliverance. It’s also a Read more…
Most of the time, people read the Psalms as independent poems that have been gathered together (rather haphazardly) through history to make up a collection, or anthology of poems, prayers and praise hymns. People tend to read it almost like a mainstream Protestant hymnal. There certainly is a benefit to Read more…
Psalm 1 (along with Psalm 2) introduces the book of Psalms as a whole. It does so by implying a comparison of the five books of the Psalms (Book 1: 1–41; Book 2: 42–72; Book 3: 73–89; Book 4: 90–107; Book 5: 107–150) with the first five books of the Read more…
Psalm 19 is one of my favorite psalms. Among scholars it’s known as a wisdom psalm as it focuses on the particular topic of revelation (like Psalm 1, and Psalm 119). The central point of the Psalm is to remind God’s people that their God is distinctly the Almighty Creator. Read more…
During the season of Lent, we should be praying more. Many people are intimidated by prayer because they have never been taught how to pray. Most people know that praying means talking to God, but strangely enough, it is very seldom that people are taught how to do it. Occasionally Read more…
This psalm serves as an introduction, or prologue, to the collection of the Psalms in its final form. It is a teaching, or wisdom, psalm advising the readers to dedicate themselves to the study of the Law of God, the Torah, and warning them of the consequences if they don’t. Read more…
Psalm 113 is the first psalm in a six-psalm collection called the “Egyptian Hallel” (113–118). It is tradition for Jews to recite (or sing) these six psalms around the time of Passover to commemorate the deliverance from Egyptian slavery. This explains why when Jesus was entering Jerusalem on a donkey Read more…
Psalm 1 answers a very simple question, “How can one be happy?” (the Hebrew word translated “blessed” in most English translations in Psalm 1:1 is “asher” which means “happy”). The first thing the psalmist does in answering that question is talk about what not to do. That is, he starts Read more…