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Course 3 · Lesson 2.3

How to pray the Psalms: lament, praise, trust, wisdom and imprecation

10 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 3 outline

Module 1: The Idea of a Rule

  1. What a rule of life is, and what it is for
  2. Pachomius and the first written rule
  3. Basil of Caesarea and his Rules
  4. Benedict: the Rule as a school of the Lord’s service
  5. Adapting a monastic rule for ordinary life

Module 2: The Hours and the Psalms

  1. Origins of fixed-hour prayer in Jewish and early Christian practice
  2. The Divine Office in the West and the hours in the East
  3. How to pray the Psalms: lament, praise, trust, wisdom and imprecation
  4. Building a simple office for one person

Module 3: Scripture and the Prayer of the Heart

  1. Lectio divina: reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation
  2. Meditative reading compared with study and with Ignatian imaginative prayer
  3. The Jesus Prayer: its words, its history and its Eastern setting
  4. Practicing the prayer of the heart, with its cautions

Module 4: Fasting, Giving, Rest and the Year

  1. Fasting in Scripture and tradition, and its safe limits
  2. Almsgiving and care for the poor
  3. Sabbath rest and the Lord’s Day: how traditions differ
  4. The church year: Advent to Pentecost and the ordinary weeks

Module 5: Conscience, Confession and Worship Alone

  1. Examination of conscience: methods old and new
  2. Confession in the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant traditions
  3. Repentance, confession to God and to a trusted person when no minister is available
  4. What worship alone can include: prayer, Scripture, song, the hours
  5. What the traditions say requires a church or ordained minister

Module 6: Seasons and Ordinary Duties

  1. Silence as a discipline and its dangers
  2. Planning a day, a weekend and a longer retreat
  3. Work as part of the rule: ora et labora
  4. Hospitality, family and neighbor

Module 7: Dryness, Perseverance and Review

  1. Dryness and the dark night: what the tradition teaches
  2. Acedia: Evagrius, Cassian and the noonday demon
  3. Doubt and perseverance
  4. Accountability for a rule of life
  5. Reviewing and revising a rule at thirty days, ninety days and one year

All courses

Program / Course 3: The Rule of Life / Lesson 2.3

What you will learn

  • Name the main kinds of psalm and give one example of each.
  • Explain why Christians call the Psalms the church’s prayer book.
  • Describe three ways the traditions handle the harsh psalms of imprecation.
  • Practice praying a psalm slowly in a simple method.

The big idea

The Book of Psalms holds 150 prayers and songs, and Jews and Christians have prayed them for over two thousand years. The Psalms speak in many moods: praise, thanksgiving, trust, sorrow, anger, repentance and instruction. They give words to people who do not know what to say. Christians read them as prayers Christ himself prayed and the church prays in him. A few psalms call down harsh judgment on enemies, and the traditions offer careful ways of reading them.

Key terms

Psalter
The book of Psalms, or a copy arranged for prayer.
Lament
A psalm of complaint or grief brought to God, such as Psalm 13 or Psalm 22.
Imprecation
A prayer calling on God to judge or punish enemies, as in Psalms 58, 69, 109 and 137.
Wisdom psalm
A psalm that teaches how to live, such as Psalm 1 or Psalm 37.
Gloria Patri
A short Christian praise of the Trinity, Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, often added at the end of a psalm.
Septuagint
The ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Orthodox Christians use its numbering of the Psalms, which differs from most English Bibles.

Background

The Psalms were the hymn book of ancient Israel and the temple, and the New Testament quotes them more than any other Old Testament book. Jesus quotes them in his teaching and on the cross. In Luke 23:46 he says, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit, from Psalm 31:5. In Mark 15:34 he cries out the opening words of Psalm 22. Christians therefore pray the Psalms in the belief that Christ prayed them before them.

Readers should know that the numbering of the Psalms varies. Most Protestants and Jews number them as in the Hebrew text. The Septuagint, followed by Orthodox Christians and by older Catholic books, combines some psalms and divides others, so that many psalms between 10 and 147 are numbered one lower. Psalm 23 in an English Bible is Psalm 22 in a Septuagint-based book. Modern Catholic Bibles generally follow the Hebrew numbering, but older prayer books may differ.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The main kinds of psalm

Scholars sort the Psalms by type, and the sorting helps a beginner. Praise psalms, such as Psalm 100 and Psalm 150, celebrate God’s goodness. Thanksgiving psalms, such as Psalm 30, tell what God has done for the speaker. Laments, such as Psalm 13, bring pain, fear or anger to God. Psalms of trust, such as Psalm 23 and Psalm 121, rest in God’s care. Wisdom psalms, such as Psalm 1, teach the way of life. Royal psalms, such as Psalm 2 and Psalm 110, speak about the king, and Christians read them as pointing to Christ. Penitential psalms, traditionally seven including 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143, confess sin.

Laments are the largest group. A person who thinks prayer must always be cheerful will find the Psalms surprising. They teach that sorrow and honesty are acceptable forms of prayer, and they usually turn toward trust by the end. Psalm 88 is the exception, ending in darkness.

Step 2: The church’s prayer book

The early church used the Psalms constantly. Athanasius, in a letter to Marcellinus, wrote that the Psalms act as a mirror in which a person sees the movements of his own soul. Augustine preached on the whole Psalter. Benedict arranged for the whole Psalter to be sung every week. Orthodox services are full of Psalms, and the Reformers kept them: Luther loved the Psalter, and Calvin called it an anatomy of all the parts of the soul.

Christians often add the Gloria Patri to the end of a psalm and so read it in the light of Christ. In this way an old text becomes a Christian prayer. Reformed churches also sing the Psalms in metrical versions, which preserves the practice in a different form.

Step 3: The harsh psalms

Some psalms ask God to destroy enemies, to dash infants against rocks (Psalm 137:9) or to leave a person’s children fatherless (Psalm 109:9). These are hard to pray. The traditions respond in three main ways. One is to read the psalm as the voice of the oppressed, who place vengeance in God’s hands rather than taking it. Paul says that vengeance belongs to the Lord (Romans 12:19). A second is to read the enemies as sin, evil or the powers that oppose Christ, a reading common among the church fathers. A third is to treat such psalms as honest expressions of rage that God allows to be spoken, so that rage is handed over instead of acted out.

Some modern lectionaries leave out the harshest verses, and others keep them. A beginner may skip them at first, and a teacher of the tradition may help later. No tradition holds that a Christian should wish harm on others in a literal way.

Step 4: A simple method

A practical way to pray a psalm is to read it slowly, aloud if possible, and to pause at each verse or stanza. Ask three questions: who is speaking, what does the speaker feel, and how could this be my prayer or the prayer of someone I know. Then pray the psalm in the voice of Christ, of the church, or of a person in need. Close with the Gloria Patri or the Lord’s Prayer.

A person who wants to begin might choose one psalm for the morning and one for the evening for a week, and then take a different type each week. The Psalms can also be prayed in order, five a day, to cover the whole book in a month, a plan used in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

  1. Which mood among the Psalms do I find easiest to pray, and which hardest?
  2. When have I brought anger or grief to God in prayer, and what happened?
  3. Do I tend to avoid lament, praise or confession, and why?
  4. How do I feel about the harsh psalms, and what do I do with the feeling?
  5. Who might I pray for in a psalm of sorrow?
  6. What does it mean to pray words that Christ himself prayed?

Examples

Psalm 13 for a bad week

A woman who has lost her job reads Psalm 13: How long, O Lord. She reads it slowly three times and says the last verse about trust aloud, though she does not feel it. She reads it again the next day. (A constructed example.)

Psalm 1 for a morning

A student reads the opening of Psalm 1 each morning for a month, and asks each time which of his choices that day will be like a tree by a river and which like chaff. (A constructed example.)

Different perspectives

The Catholic view

Catholics treat the Psalms as the core of the Liturgy of the Hours. The Church teaches that in the Psalms the voice of Christ and the voice of the church are heard together. The revised Liturgy of the Hours omits a few of the harshest verses from the regular cycle.

The Orthodox view

Orthodox Christians sing or read the Psalms in nearly every service, using the Septuagint text. Monks traditionally know much of the Psalter by heart. Many lay Orthodox read a kathisma in the evening.

The Protestant view

Protestants prize the Psalms as God’s own words to pray. Luther and Calvin both wrote on them at length. Reformed churches sing metrical psalms, and many Protestants read a psalm each day. Some read them in light of Christ and others emphasize their original setting.

The Jewish view

Jews recite the Psalms in daily prayer, in the sabbath services and at times of sorrow. Jewish readers see the Psalms as the prayers of Israel and of King David, and Christians share the text but read some psalms differently.

The scholarly view

Scholars sort the Psalms into types and study their setting in temple worship. They debate authorship and dating, and note that the titles mentioning David may be later editorial notes. These debates do not change the use of the Psalms in prayer.

Why it matters

A beginner often asks what to say to God. The Psalms give a vocabulary that has been used by prophets, apostles and ordinary believers for millennia. They also teach honesty, since they allow lament and anger, and humility, since they begin and end in praise. Learning to pray them is the single most useful skill in this course.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: The Psalms are mostly happy songs.

Correction: Laments are the largest single group. The Psalter holds sorrow, anger and doubt as well as praise, and Psalm 88 ends in darkness.

Misunderstanding: Praying a harsh psalm means wishing harm on people.

Correction: The traditions read these psalms as the cry of the oppressed handing vengeance to God, as a reference to spiritual enemies, or as honest rage given to God and not acted on. None teaches that Christians may take revenge.

Misunderstanding: The Psalms are numbered the same in every Bible.

Correction: Hebrew-based Bibles and Septuagint-based Bibles differ by one number across much of the book. Check the numbering of your edition.

Knowledge check

Name four kinds of psalm and give one example of each.

Examples: praise (Psalm 100), thanksgiving (Psalm 30), lament (Psalm 13), trust (Psalm 23), wisdom (Psalm 1), royal (Psalm 2) and penitential (Psalm 51). Any four, with correct examples, answer the question.

Why do Christians call the Psalms the prayer book of the church?

Because the church has used them for prayer from the earliest centuries, in services and in private. The New Testament quotes them often, and Christians read them as prayers that Christ himself prayed and that the church prays in him. They cover lament, praise, trust and instruction.

How do Christians handle the imprecatory psalms?

Three main readings are used. They are the cry of the oppressed handing vengeance to God, a reference to spiritual enemies such as sin and evil, and honest rage given to God and not acted upon. No tradition teaches that Christians should seek harm for others.

Why does the numbering of the Psalms vary?

The Hebrew text and the Greek Septuagint divide and combine some psalms differently, so many psalms between 10 and 147 are numbered one lower in Septuagint-based books. Orthodox books and older Catholic books follow the Septuagint, while most English Bibles follow the Hebrew.

Think it through

  1. Which psalm would you want read at your own funeral, and why?
  2. How might the Psalms help someone who does not know how to pray?
  3. What does it say about God that the Bible includes prayers of anger?

Independent assignment

A week of psalms

In your notebook, write 300 to 450 words. Choose one psalm of each of three types (for example praise, lament and trust). For each, pray it once a day for two days. Then write two sentences on what the psalm asked of you and one sentence on what it gave you. Note the numbering used by your Bible. Do not post it.

Further study