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Course 15 · Lesson 6.1

Lament and the Psalms

12 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 15 outline

Module 1: Stating the Problem

  1. The ancient problem: Epicurus, the Psalms and Augustine
  2. The logical problem: is God’s existence compatible with evil?
  3. The evidential problem: Rowe, the fawn and gratuitous evil
  4. Defense and theodicy: what each tries to do

Module 2: Moral Evil and the Free-Will Defense

  1. Moral evil and human responsibility
  2. Augustine on evil, privation and the will
  3. Plantinga’s free-will defense
  4. Objections: horrendous evils, determinism and the freedom of the saints

Module 3: Natural Evil and Soul-Making

  1. Natural evil, the laws of nature and animal suffering
  2. Traditional accounts: the fall, fallen powers and the groaning of creation
  3. John Hick and soul-making theodicy
  4. Objections to soul-making: excess, injustice and who benefits

Module 4: Providence and the Limits of Explanation

  1. What providence means: creation, sustaining and governing
  2. Providence in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant thought
  3. Divine sovereignty, human freedom and open theism
  4. Skeptical theism and the limits of human knowledge

Module 5: Job, the Cross and Silence

  1. The Book of Job: Job, his friends and the rejection of easy answers
  2. God’s answer from the whirlwind and the ending of Job
  3. The crucifixion and suffering: Christ’s cry and the meaning of the cross
  4. Divine hiddenness and the silence of God
  5. Unanswered prayer in Scripture and in Christian life

Module 6: Living with Grief and Writing a Response

  1. Lament and the Psalms
  2. Christian accounts of grief: Lewis, Wolterstorff and the tradition of consolation
  3. Caring for those who suffer: presence, patience and what not to say
  4. Writing a reasoned response to the problem of evil

All courses

Program / Course 15: The Problem of Evil and Suffering / Lesson 6.1

What you will learn

  • Define lament and identify its usual parts in the Psalms.
  • Read Psalms 13, 22, 44 and 88 and describe how each handles complaint and trust.
  • Explain how the church has used the Psalms and Lamentations in worship and in grief.
  • Discuss the difficulty of psalms that call for vengeance and how traditions read them.

The big idea

Lament is prayer that tells God plainly that something is wrong. The Psalter, the Bible’s prayer book, contains more laments than any other kind of psalm, and the book of Lamentations is wholly given to grief. These texts show that complaint can be an act of faith, since it is spoken to God and not away from him. Jewish and Christian worship have kept this tradition alive. Some laments end in praise, some do not, and some ask for harsh things. A mature use of the Psalms means reading them in their full range.

Key terms

Lament
A prayer of complaint, grief or protest addressed to God, found in many psalms and in the book of Lamentations.
Psalter
The Book of Psalms, a collection of 150 prayers and songs used in Jewish and Christian worship.
Individual and communal laments
Laments spoken by one person (Psalm 13) or by the whole people (Psalm 44).
Imprecatory psalm
A psalm that calls down judgment or harm on enemies, such as Psalm 109 or 137.
Vow of praise
The promise, common at the end of a lament, to thank God when help comes.
Divine Office
The daily prayer of the church, in which the Psalms are sung or read through a cycle. It is also called the Liturgy of the Hours.
Reorientation
A term used by some scholars for the turn in a lament from complaint to trust or praise.

Background

About a third of the Psalms are laments, according to most scholars. They are not rare exceptions but a central form of Israel’s worship. They are also the prayers Jesus used. He quoted Psalm 22 on the cross (Matthew 27:46) and Psalm 31 as he died (Luke 23:46). The church has prayed the Psalms from its first days and has used them to bury the dead and comfort the sick.

Many modern worshippers find lament uncomfortable. Hymns and songs often leap to praise. Some scholars, among them the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, have argued that the loss of lament leaves the church without words for real pain, and that the Psalms offer a corrective. This is an argument and not a settled fact, but it is widely discussed.

This lesson begins the final module, which turns from the argument over evil to the practice of living with it. It deals with the faith of those in pain, and it is read at the student’s own pace.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The shape of a lament

Many laments follow a pattern, though not all contain every part. There is an address to God. There is a complaint, which may be about God’s absence, an illness, an enemy, or the people’s defeat. There is a request for help. There may be a statement of trust. And there is often a vow to praise God when help comes. Psalm 13 is the model, since in six verses it moves through all of these: “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever?” (Psalm 13:1), and ends, “I will sing unto the LORD, because he hath dealt bountifully with me” (Psalm 13:6).

The pattern matters because it shows that the complaint is made inside a relationship. The psalmist says you. He does not talk about God from a distance. And he makes a claim on God’s character: you are the one who keeps covenant, so act. Lament assumes that God is good and powerful, and for that reason complains.

Step 2: Four psalms

Psalm 13 moves from how long to trust in the space of a few lines. Psalm 22 begins with the cry of abandonment that Jesus uses, describes the speaker’s torment in vivid images, and turns in verse 22 to praise. Psalm 44 is a communal lament: the people say that they have been defeated although they have not forgotten God, and they accuse God of casting them off (Psalm 44:17-24). It is notable that the people claim innocence, a claim much like Job’s, and God does not reply with a rebuke.

Psalm 88 is the darkest. It prays to “the LORD God of my salvation” and describes the speaker’s life drawing near the grave. It has no turn to praise. Its last line says that the speaker’s acquaintance is in darkness (Psalm 88:18). That a psalm with no consolation is part of the canon is significant. The church has not removed it, and some use it at the services of Holy Week.

Step 3: Lamentations

The book of Lamentations mourns the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 587 or 586 BC. Tradition ascribes it to Jeremiah, though the text does not name an author. Its five poems are laments for the city, the dead and the exiles. Its center is a statement of hope: “It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23). But the hope appears in a book of grief, not in place of it. The book ends with a question, whether God has utterly rejected his people (Lamentations 5:22).

Jews read Lamentations on Tisha B’Av, the day of mourning for the destruction of the temple. Christians read it in Holy Week. In both, the text gives words to grief that is not resolved.

Step 4: Hard psalms

Some psalms ask for harm to enemies. Psalm 137 ends with a blessing on those who would dash the Babylonian infants against the rocks (Psalm 137:9). Psalm 109 calls for the enemy’s children to be orphans. Christians have long struggled with such texts. C. S. Lewis, in Reflections on the Psalms, called them terrible and thought they should be read as showing the human heart, not as a pattern. Others read them as honest hands-off prayer: the psalmist gives his rage to God and does not act on it himself, leaving vengeance to God (Romans 12:19).

Traditions differ in practice. The Catholic Liturgy of the Hours omits or brackets some of the harshest verses. The Orthodox and Reformed traditions have often read them as spoken by Christ or as applying to spiritual enemies. In every case the question is the same: how can honest anger be prayed without becoming violence? The Psalms suggest that it must be spoken to God.

Step 5: Lament in the life of the church

The church has used the Psalms to bury its dead. Catholics sing Psalm 130, De profundis, for the departed, and Orthodox funerals draw on Psalms and on the Trisagion prayers. The Genevan Psalter set all the Psalms to music for Reformed congregations. Worshipers who pray them learn a vocabulary for grief, and do not need to compose their own.

Pastors note that lament can be a way of caring for others. To say that someone’s pain is wrong, or that God is angry, or that all will be well, is often unwelcome. To sit and pray a psalm with them may be a gift. Lament does not claim to solve the problem of evil. It is the language of those who live inside it, who refuse to stop speaking to God.

  1. What are the parts of a typical lament, and how do they work together?
  2. Why do you think the Bible includes Psalm 88 with no consolation?
  3. How is complaint to God different from turning away from him?
  4. What should be done with prayers for vengeance such as Psalm 137:9?
  5. Why do you think many modern worshippers avoid lament?
  6. Which psalm would you want read to you in a time of grief, and why?

Examples

Psalm 13 at a bedside

A nurse in a palliative care ward reads Psalm 13 aloud for a dying man, at his request. The man says the psalm says what he cannot say. He asks her to read it again. (A constructed example, reflecting common practice among chaplains.)

The people’s lament

After an earthquake, a congregation gathers in the ruins of its church and prays Psalm 44 together. The prayer does not explain the disaster. It lets the people say before God that they are in pain and ask where he is. (A constructed example.)

Imprecation turned to prayer

A woman who was badly wronged says that praying Psalm 109 helped her. She did not seek revenge, but she was able to say aloud what she felt and leave it with God. Reflective traditions have often said that this is one honest use of the harsh psalms.

Different perspectives

Catholic

The Psalms are the core of the Liturgy of the Hours, prayed daily by clergy and religious and by many lay people. The Catechism calls the Psalter the masterwork of prayer in the Old Testament and teaches that Christ prays in the Psalms. Catholics also use the Psalms in the rite of funerals and the Anointing of the Sick.

Orthodox

The Psalter is read through every week in Orthodox monasteries and is the heart of the church’s daily services. Orthodox Christians hear in the Psalms the voice of Christ and of the church. Lament is bound up with the hope of resurrection, so that funerals combine mourning with the Paschal hymn.

Protestant

Calvin called the Psalms an anatomy of all the parts of the soul, since no emotion appears that is not represented in them. Reformed churches have a strong tradition of psalm singing. Luther prized the Psalms as a little Bible. Some contemporary Protestants have worked to recover lament in worship.

Jewish and scholarly readings

Jewish tradition has recited the Psalms daily, and in times of persecution and mourning. Scholars classify laments as one of the major forms and compare them with laments from Mesopotamia. Some argue that biblical laments differ in that they are addressed to one God whom the speaker holds responsible and trusts at once.

Why it matters

Lament gives a practical, biblical answer to the question of how to speak to God when the world is wrong. For a student of the problem of evil, it shows that the tradition has never relied on argument alone, and that the most honest response to suffering may be a prayer of protest.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Complaining to God is a sin.

Correction: The Psalms and Jesus’ cry on the cross show that complaint is allowed. The Bible does condemn grumbling that turns from God, but lament is addressed to him in trust.

Misunderstanding: Every lament ends in praise.

Correction: Most do, but Psalm 88 does not. The Bible keeps both, and the church has taught that prayer without resolution is also prayer.

Misunderstanding: The harsh psalms are a model for Christian behavior toward enemies.

Correction: Most traditions read them as honest expressions given to God, and not as permission to do harm. Jesus teaches love of enemies (Matthew 5:44), and Paul quotes the call to leave vengeance to God.

Knowledge check

What are the usual parts of a lament psalm?

An address to God, a complaint, a request for help, often a statement of trust, and frequently a vow to praise. Not every lament has every part. Psalm 13 has all of them in six verses. The pattern shows that the complaint is spoken within a relationship with the God the speaker still trusts.

Why is Psalm 88 important?

It is a lament that never turns to praise or consolation, ending in darkness. Its presence in the Psalter shows that the Bible allows prayer in unresolved pain. It is used in the services of Holy Week in some traditions, and many sufferers find it honest.

What does Lamentations 3:22-23 say, and where does it stand?

It says that the Lord’s mercies are new every morning and his faithfulness great. It stands in a book of grief for the fall of Jerusalem, in the middle of laments, and does not remove them. The book ends with an unanswered question. The hope and the grief are held together.

How can the harsh psalms be read?

Some traditions read them as honest expressions of anger given to God and not acted on, leaving vengeance to him. Others read them as spoken by Christ or against spiritual enemies, or as showing the human heart. Some liturgies omit the harshest verses. All agree they should not license violence.

Think it through

  1. Is there a time when you needed a psalm of lament and did not have one?
  2. What would it mean for your church or community to make room for lament?
  3. How do you balance honesty about pain with the call to trust?

Independent assignment

Write a lament

In your own notebook, write about 350 words. Read Psalm 13 and Psalm 22 in the King James Version. Then write a lament of your own in the same pattern: address, complaint, request, trust, and vow of praise. It may be about a personal matter or about a wider sorrow. If the subject is too painful, write about a historical event instead. Keep the work private.

Further study