This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 541: Read the Bible for Yourself 8: How to Read the Psalms by Sean Finnegan

This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode.

00:08
Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan. And you are listening to Restitutio podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today.

00:24
The Book of Psalms is an eclectic collection of poetry that you can use to connect to God.

00:31
In today's episode, you'll learn about the different kinds of psalms who wrote them, and how Hebrew poetry works. The goal, as always, is to equip you to read and understand on your own whether you've been reading the Psalms for years or are brand new to them. This episode should empower you to get more out of them than ever before.

00:52
Julie says my hope also I conclude by recommending a method of reading called Lectio Devina which you can use to meditate on the Psalms.

01:01
Here now is Episode 541, part eight of our read the Bible for yourself class how to read the Psalms.

01:17
#8 how to read the salms in the Old Testament there are 39 books we've been looking at the poetic section in the middle, which makes up five books. Last time we looked at four of those five books.

01:33
And today we're just going to focus on Psalms.

01:38
Psalms is awesome. You're going to love it. Probably many of you have already read it, but psalms is incredible. It's a great place to go for devotional reading. Sometimes we just want to connect with God. We don't necessarily want to learn history or doctrine or.

01:57
How to live? We just want an emotional connection.

02:01
Psalms is there for this purpose. It does a lot more than that, but it's it's a go to place for that emotional connection.

02:09
I think of the Psalms as a comprehensive prayer book.

02:13
150 Psalms in here. And by the way, there are there are no chapters in Psalms.

02:21
It's the only book of the Bible that has no chapters, even like the single chapter books. Still, I think you could argue are technically still have a chapter. The Psalms has no chapters. It has psalms.

02:31
Each of the Psalms is an independent document that's collected together, so we never say Psalms. Chapter 50, verse four, we say Psalm 50 verse.

02:44
That's just a very minor point now. Now you know, a Psalm is a Hebrew poem, song or prayer. There are many different authors in the songs. David has 73 attributed to him Asaf, 12, the sons of Korah, 11 Heman, the Ezra Heights, one Ethan the Ezra height.

03:03
One Moses 1, Solomon, 2 and 49 are anonymous.

03:10
Adding them all together and you get 100 and 5000 and 50 salms massive by far the biggest book in the entire Bible. Very significant, and it breaks into five books.

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And you'll see this in most Bible translations, we'll say book one, book two, book three, book four, book 5.

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Book one has 41 psalms, Book Two has 31.

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Books 3 and.

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Four only have 17 psalms in each, and then book five has 44.

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If you're going to ask me why that is, I have no idea.

03:43
But on the question of why they would have 5?

03:48
Books of the Psalms.

03:50
Generally, it's understood that that's to imitate the Torah, that as the Torah has five books, Genesis X is the biggest numbers Jeromy and that's the totality of God's law to his people Israel. So the Psalms have five books as well.

04:06
There are congregational songs and individual songs, and much of the Book of Psalms goes back to the event. When David brought the Ark into Israel, it was a time of great rejoicing. They had a parade of singers, musicians and dancing. They had horns, trumpets, symbols.

04:26
Larps and liars. Can you just imagine for a moment a parade with the Ark of the Covenant in the front and the Levites bringing it up, and there's David out front in his linen ephod dancing around, and you know all this rejoicing a song.

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And this is the time when David decided to appoint the Levites as singers and leaders of worship.

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We read about this at first chronicles 16 verse four. It says he David appointed certain of the Levites as ministers before the Ark of the Lord to invoke to thank to praise the Lord or Yahweh, the God of Israel. Asaf was the chief and 2nd to him was Zechariah jail.

05:10
Shimmer ramov.

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Jahil Matathia, Lyab banaya, Obudu M and GL with harps and liars. Asaf was to sound the symbols and the priest. Benaiah and Jahaziel were to blow trumpets regularly before the Ark of the Covenant of God. Verse 41 with them. We're Hemen and Jeduthan and the rest of those chosen and expressly named to render thanks to Yahweh.

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For his steadfast love endures forever. Heman and Jeduthun had with them trumpets and symbols for the music instruments, for sacred song, the sons of Jeduthan were appointed to the gate.

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So you know, these are some of the names that we had already seen earlier. This is the origin of so much of the Psalms. David wrote many of the Psalms.

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Before he became king.

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But when he became king, he brought that Ark of the Covenant in and he really established a a culture of writing and preserving and performing the Psalms.

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Now, this phrase here in verse 41, it says with them where humanoid, Ethan and the rest of those chosen expressly named 2.

06:20
To render, thanks to the Lord for his steadfast love endures forever, especially this part here, where it says for his steadfast love endures forever. I want to take a I want to take a moment and consider that phrase in Hebrew. It reads Killam Hasto kill Ulam, hasto.

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That's what it says for his Hasid is forever.

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Or the longer version of it is Hodu Latonya kitov kilo. Olam. Kusto give thanks to Yahweh for he is good for his Hasid, is forever. So this word, Hesiod.

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I'm not translating, I'm just leaving it.

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Transliterated you see that, right? This is a keyword for the Psalms. If there's one thing the psalmists are obsessed with, they sing about. They love to talk about and write poems about. It's God's. That's it.

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And so I have this definition for you from John Golden Gay in his third volume on the Psalms commentary. He writes English versions, translate Hesiod by expressions such as steadfast love and constant love. So this is this is these are good translations for it, OK.

07:37
It is sometimes described as covenant love, though in the Old Testament it rarely appears in the company of the Word Covenant. It is used in two connections when someone makes an active commitment for which there is no reason in terms of prior relationship and when someone keeps their commitment when they might be expected to abandon it.

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Egg because the other person has done.

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So it is the Hebrew equivalent to the Greek agape. Or if you want to hear that word the way the Greeks say it.

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Working.

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Agape.

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So the first idea of it right here is.

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When someone makes an active commitment for which there is no reason in terms of prior relationship, that perfectly fits what God did with.

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Israel.

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They did not deserve him.

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There were better nations out there, more sophisticated, more intelligent, more faithful. And yet he chose them.

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There was no reason why he should choose. There's actually places in Deuteronomy where God says. Do you think you were the best of?

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The nations. You think that's why I chose you?

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Like, no, you weren't.

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Our second reason for understanding acid when someone keeps their commitment when they might be expected to abandon it, do you see that with God in Israel, where they go worship idols and instead of just annihilating them?

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In a moment which God is certainly capable of doing, he holds on and he's like, alright, well, let's send let's send a prophet over there. Maybe a prophet will be able to get their attention and he doesn't give up on him. Hess it is this idea of not just a kindness or a graciousness, but of a persistence too.

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A commitment is another way to say that.

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And the Psalms love to sing about God's steadfast love.

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So how do you know when to read the right kind of song? This is an important question for you. You have 150 psalms and most of them are probably not appropriate for you right this minute to read.

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You can still.

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Read them but.

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There's an Old Testament scholar called Walter Bruggeman and what he noticed is that Christians tend to read Happy Psalms when they're sad.

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And he thought to himself, this is weird. Why would you do that? If you're sad, you should read a sad Psalm, because then you're synchronizing with it. It's giving voice to your experience. You're not in denial about how you feel, and if you're happy, you should sing a happy song, not start reading psalms of lament or something. That doesn't make any sense. And so he came up with this idea.

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Of three kinds of psalms orientation, disorientation, reorientation, and his idea was you should synchronize your your emotional state with the Psalms that you're reading and meditating and praying with and singing.

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So orientation Psalm is a Psalm celebrating order in creation and order and morality. Orientation is the book of proverbs. Orientation is when you do the right thing and a good result happens. That's an ordered oriented world.

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The sky is blue, the birds are chirping.

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You're working hard and it's paying off. That's orientation. #2 is disorientation. That's where the world is broken and you're complaining and there's injustice. And you're saying to God, why don't you do something?

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And there's so many psalms of disorientation in this in the Book of Psalms. So many.

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And then #3 is reorientation, where you have a renewed sense of trust.

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Thanksgiving for deliverance.

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And Bruegger's point is like in your life, you're gonna go through these phases. This is normal for any person. You have times of orientation where everything is fine and and. And we have psalms that express that the the ordered Ness of Creation.

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And then you go through some trial or some difficulty or sickness or you lose a loved one and you're disoriented.

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And so you need to feel that when you're in it, obviously you want to get out of it eventually, you don't want to stay there forever. But then once you're out of it and you get your deliverance, you're in a situation of reorientation. You don't necessarily go back to orientation, but you're in a position of reorientation where.

12:13
You're now thankful and you're saying, God, I was in distress. I cried out to you and you delivered me. Those are those kinds of psalms.

12:22
Now, because I am somewhat of an overachiever, I decided to categorize the Psalms myself. I don't think bregman's categories are all there is to say about the Psalms, so I found 14 categories of the Psalms, and I think they're even more helpful. But maybe you just want to stick with Bregman.

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Three, I understand you got to figure out what you're going to do.

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So.

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If I put all 14 here in front of you on this slide, you can see I have praise, historical Torah creation, royal enthronement, Wisdom, Prophecy, Trust, petition, complaint, repentance, imprecatory, and Thanksgiving. One through 8. Here our orientation psalms.

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These are all psalms when things are going right in the world.

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I'm going to look at each one of these in a in a minute with you, but.

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I.

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Just want to show you how I'm structuring this and then eight through 13.

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Are disorientation psalms, so I have I have 8 both as an orientation and as a disorientation. OK, so that the 8 #8 is the prophecy Psalm so prophecy Psalm is the Psalm where the psalmist isn't necessarily speaking, but God speaking and sometimes God will be speaking to somebody that's in a situation of great distress.

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And sometimes God's speaking, and it it's not that kind of thing. Everything's fine. The Prophecy Psalms will work either way. And then we have Thanksgiving psalms, and those are psalms of reorientation.

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So I kind of superimposed brueggemann's three cons and broke it into 14 that I think might be even more helpful for you to consider. So let's let's go through these first up praise Psalms.

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You know these. These are psalms that are extolling God for his character, for his deeds, for the qualities that make God awesome, right? These are praise, Psalm.

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Then we have historical psalms. These are overviews of interactions of God with his people. It's just like what you think it recounts a period of history going through chronologically and talking about how God was during that time, or how Israel was during that time. Something like that. We have a a number of these in the Salter, but Psalm 104105.

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It's really like a classic place to look for historical psalms, because or maybe it's 105106. It's it's one of those.

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Pairs where one they kind of go through the whole history and one focuses on how God is gracious and the other one focuses on how Israel is terrible and.

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They're right next to each other.

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It's pretty funny. Alright, Torah psalms, I want to show you one of these because you you might not be as familiar.

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Torah psalms are psalms about the law and the benefits of obedience to Torah to the law.

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The longest Psalm in the Book of Psalms is 1/19. 1:19 is a torus Psalm. It is the Torah, psalms. There are others too, but this is the biggest, most incredible one of all. Psalm 119, one through 6 says happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law.

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Of the Lord happier those who keep his decrees, who seek him with their whole heart.

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Who also do not wrong but walk in his way.

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Yes.

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You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently. Oh, that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes. Then I shall not be put to shame.

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Having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.

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Psalm 119 is a little bit difficult to read because it doesn't have a narrative flow. It's not like one thought builds on the next thought, it's more just like a whole bunch of thoughts.

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All saying the same thing.

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OK. And what does this set? What is the main point of Psalm 119? The tour is awesome. You got it. You gotta follow the Torah. That's. That's the the word Torah translated law here. So look at verse one. It talks about the law. Verse two talks about those who keep his decrees. Verse three talks about those who walk in his ways. Verse four talks about his precepts.

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Verse five talks about his statutes. Verse six talks about his commandments. There's artistry here. They're not just saying.

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Law Law Law Law Law Law law.

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Its its law, decrees, ways, precepts, judgment statutes commit. You see, you see how they're doing this. But wait, there's more.

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Psalm 119 has 22 sections.

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Of eight verses.

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So you have 8 verses and then another 8 verses and then another 8 verses times 22 is 176 verses. The longest Psalm by far.

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Now, as it turns out, there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, or, as they call it, alphabet.

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Every one of those eight verse sections begins with the same Hebrew letter, so I have for you on the screen here verses one through 6.

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Everyone of these you cannot see this in English. It's invisible to us, right? But every one of these verses begins with the Hebrew letter Alif.

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So guess what the the 1st letter of the Hebrew word for happy.

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Is.

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Olive, right? Then you have another olive, another olive, another olive. So if you were reading this in Hebrew, you'd be like, OK, these are the A's, and then the B's, and then the C's and the D's of.

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Obeying the law.

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It's an ordered, structured statement that the Psalm is making, that if you follow God's Torah, you will have an ordered, structured good life.

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There's a lot going on behind the scenes too. In a Toro Psalm, like Psalm 119 and and there are other psalms that do that that aren't Torah psalms. I should say that have the acrostic where the the 1st letter of each sentence or verse is the next letter of the alphabet, and there's that structure to it. And and most Bible translations will tell you about that.

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All right, #4 creation psalms. These are psalms about how well ordered creation is.

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So Psalm 19, verse one through 6, the heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. day-to-day pours for speech and night to night, declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words. Their voice is not heard yet. Their voice goes out through all the earth.

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And their words to the end of the world, in the heavens. He has set a tent for the sun which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy. And like a strong man, runs its course with joy. It's rising as from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them. And nothing is hid from its.

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Eat.

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So this is what a creation Psalm looks like. It's it's taking different aspects of creation. In this case, we started with the heavens in Hebrew, the word for heavens is shamayim means sky.

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Right. So it's like you're looking at and and and this is something else that I haven't really covered in this class, but when you're reading about descriptions of creation in the Bible, it's always from the perspective of someone standing on the earth. OK. So the heavens are always up.

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The sun rises, the sunsets, our perspective. A lot of times in our age is to think of ourselves as being off world and watching the earth rotating or something like that or revolving. They don't have that concept yet, so they're just OK from this perspective.

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The skies are telling the glory of God day-to-day port and the sky includes not just the clouds in the air and the atmosphere, but also the sky includes the stars, the constellations, the planets that seem seemingly wander around and throughout the sky. And so the the psalmist is just commenting on how this.

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All.

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So.

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Gives glory to the creator who made it alright. Then we also have Royal Psalms, also called Messianic Psalms. These are psalms about the king.

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And we call them Messianic psalms too, because the Psalms about the the king.

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Prefigure the Ultimate King, which would be the Messiah.

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So they they kind of a lot of them serve or most of them serve this sort of double meaning not to be confused with enthronement, psalms, enthronement, psalms are talking about God sitting on his throne. And the genre works like this. If God is on his throne and the world is running well, the wicked are punished. The righteous are rewarded.

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That's the this kind of genre of a Psalm. Let me give you an example, Psalm 99, verse one.

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Yahweh is king. Let the peoples tremble. He sits and throned upon the cherubim. Let the earth quake. Yahweh is great in Zion. He is exalted over all the peoples. Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he.

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It's a nice and thrombin song. Then you have wisdom psalms. These are psalms extolling wisdom and disparaging folly. These psalms, they're not and they're not that many. There's only a few of these fit nicely. And with the book of Proverbs. So there is wisdom within the Book of Psalms as well, although I think it's debatable whether you say.

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Comes as wisdom literature.

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Because it's just so many different things.

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Then we have prophecy. Psalms. These are psalms in which God is speaking.

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Sounds like a prophecy as opposed to the psalmist to speak almost all the Psalms are a psalmist who is speaking to God, either praising him, asking for something, expressing trust, something like that. Whereas these prophecy psalms are are these rare moments where God speaks to the psalmist.

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So it's really fascinating to read those only a couple of those in the Salter. Then there are trust salt.

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Oops.

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These are psalms where Psalmists might be like in a lot of trouble, but instead of like a typical petition Psalm which is our next category, which is like God help me. Help me. I'm I'm in so much trouble. Right. Trust songs are are like this. I'm in so much trouble but God.

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Will help me.

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So they're very similar to the petition Psalms, but instead of asking for help, they're just they're just utterly confident. God's got this. We're going to be.

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And sometimes that's somebody that's in distress, sometimes somebody that's not in distress. Life is good and there's confidence in God. So I just have this idea of a trust Psalm for that, whereas petition psalms are, you know, the wheels have fallen off. Can you do something, please?

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Help me.

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And they're very similar to complaint Psalms.

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OK, these are psalms that are asking the question why.

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God, why don't you do something? How long are you going to wait until?

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You fix this.

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So these are psalms of lament or complaints, and they're very similar to petition psalms. Very similar. But I I like to put them in their own category because they they are kind of like a specified genre where they're they're sort of like focus more on God's response rather than just asking for help. And then we have repentance, psalms you probably are familiar with those the most.

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Payments is Psalm 51, where David says create me a new.

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Heart cleanse me of his sinfulness and and so I'm purge me. Clean me with his up and so forth. You know this. This whole idea of repenting of sin, asking God for forgiveness. There are a few of those. And then we move to Imprecatory Psalms. This is wishing God to harm your enemies.

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So these are a little controversial in my opinion. I'm just going to go ahead and say that right now, let let me just show you what I'm talking about. Psalm 35, verse four. Let them be put to shame and dishonour who seek after my life.

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Let them be turned back and confounded, who devise evil against me. Let them be like the chaff before the wind, with the Angel of the Lord driving them on. Let their way be dark and slippery with the Angel of the Lord pursuing them. An imprecation is a curse. So these are psalms that are praying down a curse upon your enemies.

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And I say they're controversial because.

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Jesus said in Luke 627, but I say to you who are listening, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. And I don't think when Jesus says this, he means pray for them to have a miserable life.

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And suffer and die early.

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Like, I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and just suggest that's probably not the spirit of what Jesus means by saying pray for those who mistreat you. And I think we have to recognize that there is development within the Bible that the New Testament brings things up to a higher level than what they have been. And even within the Old Testament itself, there's development.

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There wasn't a law and then there was a law.

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The people were disobeying and and idolatry. They got taken out of the land. They got brought back into the land, no more idolatry. So there's there's moral development throughout the Bible.

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And so I think we have to be careful about imitating and praying the Psalms, the imprecatory psalms against our coworkers, against our relational enemies, whoever that might be. But I want to suggest to you that there might still be a.

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Way to.

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Do it righteously.

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And I get this from Keith Daniel Keith. Daniel is a South African old time repentance preacher very.

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And one time someone came up to Keith and said I really want you to preach to my brother. I remember was a brother or some some sort of relative.

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You know, he's totally lost and and you know, Keith Daniels is a professional evangelist. He he's kind of like a Billy Graham of South Africa. So he says alright, I'll go to his work and I'll I'll go talk to him. So he goes to this guy's work.

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And as soon as a guy figures out what Keith Daniel is up to that he's there to evangelize him, tell him about Jesus, the guy freaks out, he starts caring, eyes starts cursing right in front of the in, in the office, in front of everyone, and he starts pushing Keith backwards towards the door. He gets him behind the door and he goes to slam the door in his face and say I don't.

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Want any of this Jesus stuff?

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And Keith sticks his F.

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To block the door from closing and he says to him.

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Just want you to know I'm gonna pray for you.

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I'm going to pray that no matter what you do, it falls to pieces that nothing gives you joy, that all of your work endeavors fail, that nothing in your life gives you sense that your food doesn't taste good, that the songs you you love are miserable now until you come to Christ.

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And he took his foot out of the door and the door closed.

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That's about the closest thing to an see, but The thing is, the reason why it still works for me is because.

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It's still ultimately for that person's good that they would repent, that he's praying these. It's not just that he would be miserable is that he would be so miserable that he would repent and be forgiven and become a brother in Christ and that actually, that's what happened later in the story. The guy says to Keith, he finds him some time later and he says you can stop.

27:57
You can stop praying for me now.

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I became a Christian just.

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Stop. Stop praying for me, brother.

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So that that might be an example of a way to do it, and then you have the Thanksgiving psalms and this is pretty easy. You just are expressing to God your gratitude for what he has done for how he has delivered you.

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Want to say a few things about Hebrew poetry just to equip you to read on your own?

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And then transliterated terms which are always fun, and then I want to talk about a method of meditation and that will be it for today. So Hebrew poetry.

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There's a lot of word play in Hebrew poetry and, sad to say.

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In an English translation, we miss most of it if not.

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All of it.

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The Hebrew sensibility for poetry loves to hear how similar words sound.

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Loves repetition. A lot of times a verb and a noun will pair together in Hebrew in a way that just sounds awkward in English and not pretty to our ear.

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I talked about the acrostic psalms. It's not just Psalm 119. There are several others also.

29:10
That have that structure in them, which you also miss out in English but.

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The the key element to recognize with Hebrew poetry is this idea of thought rhyming. They don't necessarily rhyme. The last word of every line like we do in English, but they've rhyme thoughts. There's less structure. All poetry has structure. But like, there's two lines and they're like parallel to each other. And the question is.

29:35
Like what are they doing with respect to each other? And there are three moves synonymous parallelism, antithetical parallelism, and synthetic.

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Parallelism and when once you understand these three moves, poetic moves of Hebrew poetry, you're gonna spot them everywhere and you'll be like, oh, that's just synonymous parallelism. So here's an example of synonymous parallelism, Psalm 2 four and five says he who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord has them in division.

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So line one, line 2. Did you see that set the same thing twice?

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There are some differences right in the first line, it says that he's sitting in heaven. OK, what's that in parallel with Yahweh or the Lord? In the second line? And in the first part, it says, he laughs. What's that in parallel with? Has them in derision. So it's saying the same thing twice. And that is rhyming the thought.

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You see what I mean by thought rhyming as opposed?

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To rhyming the.

30:35
Word verse five. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his.

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3.

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So speaking to them and his wrath terrifying them and his fury saying the same thing twice, that's synonymous parallelism. It's not because they're dumb and they don't realize they just said the same thing twice. It's because they're creative and artistic, and that was an accepted way of beautiful speech and of beautiful poetry.

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Alright, antithetical parallelism. Guess what? It's exactly the opposite of what we just looked at.

31:10
Psalm 1/6.

31:11
For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

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So here we have the righteous and we have the wicked with respect to the righteous God's watching over them with respect to the wicked. They're going to perish. So rather than having God protecting you and looking out for you, you are suffering perishing. So the lines are in parallel with each other, but they mean the opposite. That's antithetical.

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Parallelism and then our last one is synthetic parallelism and that's where you synthesize or put together build.

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Playing through multiple lines. So we'll see that in Psalm 1. Great place to look for this. Psalm 11 says happier are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or take the path that sinners tread or sit in the seat of scoffers.

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So in the first line here is talking about not following.

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And then it's not taking the path and then not sitting in the seat.

32:12
And and one after the next, after the next is just building on the next one. Show you again in verse three. They are like trees planted by streams of water which yield their fruit in its season. So what's the relationship of these two lines?

32:27
They're not saying the same.

32:28
Thing.

32:29
It's building on the next thing, so a tree that's planted by streams of water.

32:35
There. Well, what's the next stage in that in that? Well, the next thing that would happen is it would bear fruit.

32:42
In its season and their leaves do not wither. Let's add on a little more and at all they do they prosper. So the idea with synthetic parallelism is that you're building, which with each of your lines as you go or to say it another way, you're filling in a picture using all the lines together.

33:04
All right. Transliterated terms, these can trip you up when you're reading the Bible. Let me tell you.

33:09
You're reading along a Psalm all of a sudden you run into the word, say LA, and you're just like what? I don't know what that means, say LA 71 times. This shows up in the songs, and it may mean a pause, perhaps for a musical interlude. But I'm here to tell you nobody really knows what the heck it means.

33:28
I've looked at the commentaries and they're just like, yeah, could be this.

33:34
We don't know.

33:36
Or how about all these other ones? Maskell, 13 times mickum 6 times getteth three times Alamo one time pigeon one time and shiggy young one time? We're probably all musical instructions of some sort now. Musicians kind of get this.

33:54
Because in modern music, the way it's composed and written on the page, you know how, like the notes are written out and everything, they have other markings that do not get translated into English, and that's what transliterations are. Transliterations are when you're writing a foreign word with English letters.

34:11
You're not translating it, you're transliterating it. You're actually writing the foreign word, and in modern music we have this. We have the word crescendo and we have Forte and staccato. These are Italian words. These are not English words, but musicians learn these foreign words because they understand this means get louder. This means.

34:33
Softer and so forth. So these are terms nobody really knows what they mean.

34:40
Don't worry about them. Worry about the words that are translated into English. Leave these ones to some super nerd in Phallology to figure out with his dictionary and you know The thing is too.

34:56
This maybe seems counterintuitive to you, but as time goes on, we learn more Hebrew words.

35:03
Because we find stuff and the archaeologists are always digging and like the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, they were discovered in, I think it was like in the 60s when they started getting the 40s or the maybe the 40s. They were starting to get discovered. They were published until the 90s.

35:21
How and and has there been a new Hebrew dictionary since the 90s? No, there there, you know the the Halo is still the standard so.

35:29
You know, we could, as the years roll on, learn what some of these words mean from an archaeological discovery or from something from the Dead Sea Scrolls that nobody noticed, and now they're using that same word. So as time goes on, we we do have a chance at figuring some of these things out. So don't despair.

35:46
Now I want to move to meditation. I want to recommend to you a particular meditation strategy for reading the Psalms called Lectio Divina.

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This is an ancient Christian meditation practice.

35:59
I don't really know where it started. I looked it up and they said they didn't know either.

36:04
But you know, so it's like, take it or leave it. If it works for you, use it, but if not, don't worry about it. But I found it to be pretty helpful. This is where you're going to read a Psalm. Meditatively. You're not just, like, reading for distance. You're trying to really squeeze, chew it and get the juices out of it. OK. So on the first reading.

36:25
You read the Psalm or a section of it twice.

36:30
Pause to reflect on what you read, so that's the first reading through you. The first reading through, you read it twice. I'd be like that. Maybe not the best way to say it.

36:38
But.

36:39
Whatever I want to make another point, if you're gonna, if you're going to do lectio divina, it should really only be like 5 to 8 verses somewhere in that range. If you're trying to do this on Psalm 119 with all 176 verses, and you're going to start by just reading it twice.

36:54
You know, it's just not. That's not what it's for. So like chunk, the salms that are longer, if you have a shorter Psalm, you can just read the whole thing. So first of all, read the whole thing twice. Most people, when they read the Psalm the first time, they don't understand anything, read it a second time, read it out loud if you can. All right. Then on the second reading, you read the text.

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Once, which means this is your third time reading it and you look for a verse while you're reading it. This third time you look for a verse or phrase that sticks out to you.

37:25
Then you pause and reflect on that phrase, turning it over in your mind. You're giving yourself space in between each of these readings, the first reading, the second reading, the third reading you pray before you pray during, you pray afterwards, right? This is a meditative experience of reading. Then, on the third reading, you read the text.

37:46
Again, the whole text, the whole section of whatever you started with and you ask God what he wants you to do in relation to the phrase you have been contemplating. Then you stop and you listen for a response.

38:03
And I think by doing it this way, you'll get more out of.

38:06
The psalms.

38:08
One other suggestion is.

38:11
Not to just read.

38:13
Don't read a lot of psalms in a row.

38:16
You know what I mean? Like, don't read like 5 Psalms in a row because.

38:21
Like by the time you get to the third Psalm, you forgot the first one. By the time you get to the 4th one, you forgot everything. You know what I mean? It's just not really. I mean, if that works for you, fine. I'm not saying don't ever do it. Like, if you can retain it, that's fine. Like, if you're very familiar with it and you're you're. This is well worn territory for you.

38:39
I think Billy Graham read 5 psalms a day. Just gonna throw that out, but he did it every month, so he got through all 150 every month, just like he got through a proverb every day as well. So, you know, I'm not gonna say you can't do it, but I think really the better approach is to read a Psalm deeply. And to really understand it and really think about you.

38:59
Know.

39:00
Slow it down. There's my life relate to this. Can I pray this, pray the whole Psalm to God, put it in your own words. Use this psalms as a prayer book or sing them. If you're musical, sing the Psalms.

39:15
Let's review.

39:17
The Book of Psalms contains 150 poems, songs and prayers written by several different authors, broken into five books.

39:26
More psalms are associated with David than anyone else 73.

39:31
He was responsible for tasking the Levites with praising God through music.

39:36
A key reason to praise God in the Psalms is because of his hesed or steadfast love endures forever.

39:45
Psalms of Orientation celebrate the orderliness of creation and the moral universe. Psalms of Disorientation Cry out for help amidst times of injustice, persecution, and suffering.

39:58
Psalms of Reorientation thank God for his deliverance in the situation.

40:03
The many kinds of psalms are for you to use when you go through similar blessings, trials, doubts, and deliverances.

40:14
Lectio Divina is an ancient meditative practice that you can use to get more out of the Psalms you read.

40:22
All right. Well, that concludes our look at history in the Old Testament and wisdom literature and the poetic literature.

40:31
Was left.

40:32
Prophecy.

40:34
Prophecy we're going to go to prophecy next time we've got 17 books of prophecy. Some of the hardest of all the Old Testament, but also the most beloved insider. Look into the heart of God that the prophets will give us as we continue through our course. Read the Bible for yourself.

41:00
Well, that brings this session to a close. What did you think? Come on over to restitutio.org and find Episode 541 how to read the Psalms and leave your feedback there. I would love to hear your thoughts and.

41:13
Questions now after I taught this session, I finished going through all 150 psalms. I had made my way through a lot before teaching it, but I wanted to be thorough and I classified all 150I searched online before doing this and asked AI but couldn't find any free resource that categorized.

41:34
All 150 songs. So anyhow, I did it myself and I made that into a blog post on restitutio.org.

41:41
You can go to the site and search for all 150 psalms categorized if you want to find that blog post. Also, while going through all 150 songs, I added a 15th category that was not in this teaching here, which I only mentioned 14 categories. So the 15th category I decided to add in was.

42:01
Zion, Psalms, or pilgrimage psalms. These are psalms that talk about Jerusalem or Zion, or travel.

42:07
In there so you can check those out if you're curious. In addition to listing all 150 and putting one or two categories for each, I also made a list of all the different categories and then put what Psalm numbers correspond to each of those categories so that you can figure out what kind of Psalm you want to read, and then have a list of the Psalms that.

42:27
Fit that category and I think that would be really helpful for you as you go through the ups and downs of life. So anyhow, check out that resource, it's on restitutio.org, it's like the word restitution with no n.org and I've got a link to this in the show notes for this episode.

42:43
Well, well, we've also got a new review.

42:52
Someone named Susan 949699 wrote an Apple Podcast review with the title one of my favorite podcasts. She writes the lessons and interviews are always super interesting. Sean does a great job preparing meaningful material. This podcast has helped me deepen my understanding of God.

43:10
And Jesus highly recommended. Well, thanks so much, Susan 949699. So appreciate you going through the hassle of writing a.

43:20
View and getting that in Apple Podcasts so far we have 128 ratings in Apple Podcasts, but only 39 reviews. So. So yeah. So if you can do the review in addition to doing the rating, it does help. And I certainly do appreciate it. The goal once again ladies and gentlemen.

43:41
Is to restore authentic Christianity. How do we do that? We read the Bible for ourselves. That's why we're doing this class and I hope you are enjoying that.

43:51
Process I did also want to mention another event coming up couple of events actually one is family camp. This is an awesome event that I have attended every year for decades and decades. Pretty much my whole life from being a little kid there to a teenager, to a young adult and now.

44:11
A middle-aged man with four kids of my own who also go. This is a great event in the summer time to get away from the world for a week and just the hustle and bustle of daily life and obligations to a very serene location.

44:27
And we have this event at Silver Bay on Lake George in New York. And look, I know most of you listeners do not live in New York, but guess what? There are these things called planes and you should take one this year to family camp. It's going to be a great year. We've got a number of awesome speakers. There's lots of free time. There's lots of music.

44:48
There's lots of programming for the kids, and if you don't have kids, you won't feel awkward because there's lots of singles that go to this event. We've already got over 50 or 60 registered so far. I think it's going to be a big year for us. Last year was one of our biggest years ever. Certainly our biggest year in the.

45:04
10 So we're hoping to continue that trend anyhow. If you're interested, it's June 30th to July 6 and you can find out more about that event on lhim.org stands for Living Hope International ministries, lhim.org if you want to hear and learn.

45:24
About family camp and coming, they do have a lot of outdoor activities. There's a gym, they have a fitness center, there's a lake obvious.

45:33
Actually. And they have boats that you can rent for free sailboats, row boats, canoes, kayaks, all that kind of stuff. All your meals are included. We have meetings in the morning and in the evening, but the afternoons are totally free for you to recreate.

45:48
And revitalize. So take a look at that if you're interested. Would love to see some of you if you can make it there. Also the UCA, the Unitarian Christian Alliance has finally released.

46:02
Least I shouldn't say finally, but it has been a long time in coming. They finally released details about this year's conferences, and yes, that's a plural. We are having conferences in at least two locations this year. We're having a UK international conference held just outside of London in Windsor.

46:22
England, right in the same town as the famous castle, and that's going to be July 25th to the 27th. If you live in England. If you live on the continent, wherever it is you live.

46:35
If you're live nearby, please come to this conference. It's going to be such an awesome time. I heard that even Dale Tuggy is going to be able to come over from the United States and they're getting Andrew Perriman, who I interviewed on this podcast recently on his book about flipping his two fantastic book in the form of a God. He is going to be speaking there so.

46:56
This is something that if you can make it, especially if you live over there.

46:59
You should definitely check it out if you want to know more about it, go to unitarianchristianalliance.org. The registration is live and it is very affordable, so if you live anywhere near England please check that out. Also, the UCA USA conference is coming up and this year there's a big change. Instead of having that.

47:19
In Ohio and then asking people to get their own hotels and figure everything out themselves, we found an all inclusive Conference Center.

47:28
Just outside of Little Rock, AR. So it's going to be a big change for us, but I think this is going to make it possible for people who attend the event to be able to spend a lot more time together, just like in the evenings and in between things because we're all going to be sleeping at this place and eating our meals there.

47:49
And having our sessions there as well. Anyhow, that registration is now also online.

47:55
And there's a call for papers, I believe, at least for the first one. If not for both of these events. So if you're a theologically minded person, then it's time to start thinking about what you would want to write on and getting that research project underway. It would be great to get some new.

48:15
Faces up there. Take a look at the Unitarian Christian alliance.org if you want to learn more about these two conferences, take a look at lhim.org. If you want to learn about family camp and that's going to be it for me today. Thanks everybody for tuning in. I'll catch you next week and remember.

48:33
The truth has nothing to fear.