The Lord is my Shepherd. (Ps. 23:1)
Enter his gates with thanksgiving. (Ps 100:4)
As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God. (Ps. 42:1)
The striking images of the Psalms make some of its verses well-remembered and loved. But I suspect many of us read right through God’s psalter with less understanding than we think. Finding many images and passages outside our cultural context, we skip right over them and miss opportunities to experience God. Do you read the Psalms and get a sense of its emotional depth, yet wonder often, What does this mean?
In any language or time, poetry takes more work to interpret than prose, and at the end of all that work, the reader still swims in a pool of ambiguity and mystery. But that mystery serves the point of poetry: its dense imagery flows around us like water, adding buoyancy to our souls, letting us explore corners and depths of our world with a prism perspective, while always just eluding the firm grasp of our hands. That fluidity gives poetry its beauty, its invitation to us to drink it in slowly through reflection rather than gulp it down all at once.
How Hebrew Poetry Works
Containers help shape bodies of water; poetic rules and standards help shape meaning. Understanding the grammatical and lexical structures into which the Hebrew poets poured their content will help us examine its fluid layers. The structures help us hold the content in our hands and look at it from many angles without needing to force its meaning to become as solid as prose.
Hebrew poetry employs a distinct form of parallelism. Each poetic line contains “one complete parallelistic expression of thought,”[1] usually made up of two or more parts. These parts, or cola (plural of colon), join together to create meaning as a whole for the poetic line. You might think of it as someone swimming with arm floaties. Each floatie is a separate unit, but if you take one off, part of you starts to sink, and you will struggle to stay above water. You need both to accomplish their purpose. Usually these cola come in pairs (a bicolon), but they can also come in sets of three or four. Modern translations generally indent the second colon under the first. A third or fourth colon making up one poetic line will have the same indentation level as the second.
Sometimes these cola act as synonyms or antonyms; other times the second colon adds more to the idea of the first or gives explanation for an image (emblem). You can read about the many ways cola might parallel each other in Mark D. Futato’s Interpreting the Psalms[2] and Ronald B. Allen’s And I Will Praise Him.[3] What’s most important to remember, however, is that the cola must work together.
Ancient Hebrew poets also liked to create acrostics, a composition form that aids memory by beginning each bicolon (or larger unit) with a successive letter of the alphabet. Psalm 34 is an acrostic with a missing letter and an extra line at the end, outside the acrostic. They also loved word plays, through both sound and sense, which can be hard to catch in translation but are rewarding drops of meaning that you can discover with a bit of investigation. Looking for inclusios, places where a concept or refrain frames a section, and chiasm, parallel constructs with inverted order such as ABB'A' or ABCB'A', will often help you discover how the poet has grouped the content.
Psalm 34, Our Example
Let’s look at the first half of Psalm 34 to get an idea of how these aspects of Hebrew poetry allow us to absorb more of its meaning. For brief context, the psalm’s inscription indicates that David wrote the song after he feigned madness among the Philistines to avoid capture (1 Sam. 21:10–22:1). I have divided the discussion into three sections that coincide with the poet’s thought units (strophes).
Bless the Boast of My Soul
David starts with a joyful exclamation of praise:
1 I will bless the LORD at all times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
2 My soul makes its boast in the LORD;
let the humble hear and be glad.
3 Oh, magnify the LORD with me,
and let us exalt his name together!
What does it mean to bless the Lord? The second colon of verse 1 corresponds, indicating that the blessing mentioned in verse 1a (barak) includes giving God verbal praise. Verse 2 connects to this idea of praise. The word translated “boast” in verse 2a is the same root word as “praise” in verse 1b, hallel (as in “hallelujah,” the “jah” being a short form of Yahweh). So the praise in verse 1 that is always in my mouth is also the boast (praise) of God in my soul. While we think of praise in our soul as internal and hidden, David encourages us to give voice to it. Through poetic song, he makes his inner life known. The humble hear this boasting of the soul toward Yahweh, and it gives them joy (2b).
Even there, David makes a play on words between “boast” and “humble.” The humble are those who submit themselves to the Lord, rather than boasters of self. And the soul that is boasting, boasts in the Lord. The prophet Jeremiah lived after David and picked up on this theme, writing,
Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 9:23–24 ESV)
In the story behind this psalm, in 1 Samuel, it looks as though David’s cunning and acting skill created his escape. But here David reveals that he attributes the escape not to himself but the Lord. He calls to the hearer of the song to magnify Yahweh’s reputation (his name) together with him (3b).
Reflect God’s Delivering Radiance
In the next movement, David begins to explain his reason for praising God:
4 I sought the LORD, and he answered me
and delivered me from all my fears.
5 Those who look to him are radiant,
and their faces shall never be ashamed.
6 This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him
and saved him out of all his troubles.
7 The angel of the LORD encamps
around those who fear him, and delivers them.
How did David seek the Lord? Through prayer that expressed his fears. It’s perhaps unfortunate that our English translations use the same word fear both here and in later verses (7, 9, 11) because this one differs from the others. The translators try to capture the connection of those Hebrew expressions, but in doing so, they wash over the distinction. In Hebrew, the word in verse 4 is megorah while the words in verses 7, 9 and 11 come from the root verb yareʾ. Megorah gives the sense of “object of dread,”[4] while the forms of yareʾ include the idea of awe in worship.[5] The ideas of fear and deliverance form an inclusio for this movement: seeking God’s presence through prayer brings deliverance from terror (v. 4) while the presence of Yahweh (“angel of the LORD”) delivers those who have a proper awe of him (v. 7).
The image of verse 5 might seem odd. In what way are the people radiant and unashamed? Remembering back to Moses’s encounter with God’s glory might give us a clue. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Law, his face shone with God’s radiant glory. In the time between his meetings with the Lord, the radiance would fade, and Moses would cover the fading glory with a veil (Ex 34:29–35; see also 1 Cor 3:13–18). Yet each time he would speak with God in the tent of meeting, that radiance would resume. So here in our psalm, those who look to God in prayer for deliverance will encounter his glory and be radiant. As they continue to look to God, their faces will never “be ashamed,” or lack his radiance. Verse 5 is an astonishing image highlighting the intimate prayer relationship. As we seek God and meet with him, we reflect his glory.
And as we seek and reflect God, he will add to us his radiance, even though we might be impoverished and in trouble (v. 6). While David eventually became installed as Israel’s king, at this time, he was indeed a poor, vulnerable man running from King Saul, and perceived as a threat by the Philistines he camped with. But it’s God’s presence that will surround us (v. 7a) and fight for us, not the poor man who must fight the battles of the King.
Rely on God’s Goodness
The movement that follows creates a new layer to this sense of fearing Yahweh:
8 Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
9 Oh, fear the LORD, you his saints,
for those who fear him have no lack!
10 The young lions suffer want and hunger;
but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.
Consider the importance of the parallelism in verse 8. The first colon uses sensory imagery to invoke experiential knowledge of Yahweh, calling the hearer to proving to his or herself God’s goodness by partaking of it. The second colon declares that the person who seeks protection from Yahweh will find happiness. (The Hebrew word underlying blessed in this verse is ʾashre rather than barak as in verse 1.) When we put the two cola together, the connection point is the experiential knowledge. We can read about the sweetness of honey, but we don’t know it intrinsically until we taste it; we can understand that making God our shelter and protection will bring happiness, but we won’t be happy until we actually rely on his protection.
Verses 9–10 continue to expound on that experience. David exhorts God’s holy ones (saints) to indwell their awe of Yahweh (9a) to live in it, implicitly indicating that we can somehow claim to be God’s people and yet lack an authenticated awe of him that leads to blessing (9b). Conversely, God’s people who throw themselves fully into worship and seek experiential relationship with Yahweh will “lack no good thing” (9b, 10b).
In the midst of these lines, the psalmist makes an important metaphorical contrast about those who will suffer lack: the young lions. What does he mean here? The psalmist uses a specific word, kefir, that means “a juvenile male lion,” recognizable by his mane and that he has started hunting for himself.[6] In the ancient world, the lion was “the epitome of proud self-sufficiency,”[7] yet young lions often fail. They fail in the hunt; they fail to defeat other lions; they fail to gain territory and lionesses. They suffer because they rely on their sense of self-sufficiency but are neither skilled not strong enough to fully succeed. God’s people will also suffer if we rely on our own power, knowledge, and skill. But those who pursue Yahweh to grasp his goodness with their hands and hearts, he will supply with every good thing we need.
Apply What You Learn
Reading the Psalms is delightful in itself, but true refreshment comes only as you apply God’s Word to thoughts and action.
How are you approaching your writing or artistic endeavors like that young lion? Are you driven or stymied by dread? Or does your awe of God spill from your lips and hands, adding to all you create?
Where is the boast of your soul today? I pray it is in the Lord, for he tastes as sweet as honey, and as you pursue him, you will lack no good thing.
And I pray that you will continue to create, that we might exalt God’s name together.