A valuable resource for pastors and students, second volume in the HOTE series begins by explaining the nature of Hebrew poetry and the purpose of the Psalms. Old Testament scholar Mark Futato next explores issues related to properly interpreting Israel's songbook, and concludes with a sample of moving from interpretation to proclamation. A glossary is included.

It is in the conviction that the Psalms belong both at the center of the life and worship of Christian congregations and in the midst of the personal pilgrimage that each of us makes under the shadow of the Almighty, that I have written this book. Part 1 of the book is designed to help interpreters of the Psalms find entree into them in various ways, to hear their theological claims and to discern their point of contact with human life. Part 2 of this volume consists of ten expositions of Psalms. Here many of the points made in Part 1 are illustrated, though not mechanically, I hope, or in a way that suggests there are certain moves one always makes to appropriate the communication of the Psalms for preaching and teaching. Some annotated bibliographical suggestions are given at the end. - Preface.

The Psalms have a double identity. They are scripture and liturgy. They compose a book of the Bible and are found in our hymnals and books of worship and prayer. When we think of them in historical perspective, another identity emerges. They are the liturgical poetry of ancient Israel, texts with a history of composition and use before they became scripture. A commentary in this Interpretation series needs to keep all three identities in view. That puts some strain on the commentator's task. The attempt to interpret the Psalms in awareness of the depth in their identity explains some things about the commentary and its writing. - Preface.

Editors David Firth and Philip Johnston help academic readers understand current approaches and issues in study of the Psalms, while also giving them a deeper appreciation for these poetic texts.

Biblical texts create worlds of meaning and invite readers to enter them. When readers enter such textual worlds, which are often strange and complex, they are confronted with theological claims. With this in mind, the purpose of the Interpreting Biblical Texts series is to help serious readers in their experience of reading and interpreting, by providing guides for their journeys into textual worlds. The controlling perspective is expressed in the operative word of the title—interpreting. The primary focus of the series is not so much on the world behind the texts or out of which the texts have arisen as on the worlds created by the texts in their engagement with readers. The focus of the volume moves from the smallest to the largest of scales, from an examination of poetic segments to considerations of God and the world through the psalmists’ eyes. The author will present new slants and questions that equip the reader with various tools of interpretation while leaving issues open for the reader’s further exploration. Included are discussions of Psalms as Hebrew poetry, species, performance, corpus, anthropology, and theology.

This book discusses the theory that the Psalter was compiled with the specific intention that it should be used as a book for private spiritual reading. It is argued that if this were so, the work of the final editors would not have been confined to arranging the psalms in a particular order but would have included additions and interpolations intended to give the whole book a new orientation. An investigation of selected psalms shows that although the Psalter may have become a book for private devotion not long after its compilation, there is little evidence that it was compiled for that purpose.

Introduces literary, historical, and theological issues found in the Book of Psalms

Professor Sylva has written a major book in what Clifford Geertz terms "blurred genres." By that Geertz means a study that refuses to stay slotted in a specified scholarly discipline, but reaches across such distinctions, in order to face real and complex human issues. As biblical scholarship moves out of its more positivistic modes, it is able to make contact with human dimensions of the text that "objectivist" criticism had long precluded. In this book, Sylva with painstaking research and urbane articulation reflects upon how the Psalms touch fractured human conditions in healing ways. This is no surface interpreation of scripture for the sake of "an easy religious fix", and it is no "pop psychology", because the author has thought with great steadfastness and is informed on both sides of the interface. The power of his argument is in the detail of human stress and in the effective nuance of the poetry. For his interface he employs the intriguing term "theotherapy". I have no doubt that this book will become a major resource for bringing back together text and human reality that our recent interpretative past has rent asunder. Sylva invites us to a new conversation as we "blur" our safer points of reference. Walter Brueggemann Professor of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary This book seeks to uncover the serious and deep ways in which the Psalms speak to the human situation. Few works that I know of have sought to bring the Psalms to bear on the stresses and strains, the functions and dysfunctions of the family as has been done here. Professor Sylva endeavors to show how the Psalms create a fundamental trust in God, a trust that moves out into all other relationships starting with the family. This is something that happened to me as a child and that I came to realize only much later. In this work, The Pslams are clearly not simply a springboard to say some things about family therapy. They are the heart of this book, and it is only as they are heard in detail that one then moves or is carried by them into a more secure family relationship. I hope very much that this work will enhance the reading and appropriation of the Psalms within the family as a source of family health and strength. Patrick D. Miller Professor of Old Testament Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary Dana Sylva is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Saint Francis Seminary in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is the editor of "Reimaging the Death of the Lukan Jesus" (1990), and he has published articles on Old testament and New Testament exegesis.