For more than three thousand years, the people of God have come to the Psalms not merely to read about prayer but to learn how to pray. The Psalter was Israel’s prayer book, the songbook of the Second Temple, the words on the lips of Jesus, and the steady companion of the church through every century since. When believers have not known what to say to God, they have opened the Psalms and discovered that the words were already there, waiting for them.
That is the conviction behind this book. The Psalms give us a vocabulary for the whole of human life lived before God. They teach us to praise when our hearts are full and to lament when they are broken. They give voice to gratitude and to grief, to confidence and to confusion, to the cry for justice and the quiet of trust. The psalmists did not hide their fear, their anger, or their doubt; they brought all of it into the presence of the Lord. In doing so, they show us that there is no part of our experience that cannot be turned into prayer.
My aim in these pages is to help you pray each of the one hundred and fifty psalms as your own. For every psalm I have provided a brief reflection rooted in the Hebrew text and the world in which it was first sung, attending to the words the psalmists chose and the situations out of which they prayed. I have written not for the specialist but for the believer who longs to pray with greater honesty and depth. Each reflection closes with a prayer, so that the words of ancient Israel may become the words of your own heart today.
The Psalms were never meant to be admired from a distance. They were meant to be prayed. It is my hope that, as you make your way through this book, you will find in Israel’s prayer book your own voice, and that through these ancient prayers you will draw nearer to the God who has always been pleased to hear them.
Below are a few excerpts from the book.
Praying the Psalms: Finding Your Voice in Israel’s Prayer Book
The Soul’s Deep Longing (Psalm 84)
The Fountain of Life (Psalm 36)
Bowing Before Our Shepherd (Psalm 95)
Praying the Psalms: Finding Your Voice in Israel’s Prayer Book contains a devotional on all 150 psalms. If you enjoyed this post, you will enjoy the other 149 devotionals in the book.
You can order the book from Ancient Path Press.
Dr. Claude Mariottini - Professor of Old Testament 