week 3 blog 2
I wanted to talk about something that I feel was under emphasised in class and that is the spiritual factors that are involved in the psalms. We did acknowledge that there was a spiritual aspect to the Psalms and that spirituality defiantly plays a part in the psalms, but I think that spirituality is an essential part of the psalms and without this spiritual aspect many of the Psalms wouldn't exist. When reading them I noticed that many of them have the trend of starting right off the bat with a spiritual statement or start with something spiritual. Just a few examples are, psalm 4, "When I call out, answer me, my righteous God." psalm 5, "Hearken to my speech, O Lord, attend my utterance." psalm 7, Lord, my God, in You I sheltered." and psalm 11, "In the Lord I sheltered." There are many more, but I used some that were in such close proximity to show how this is not just a trend, but takes place in a lot of the Psalms. I think that the spiritual aspects of the psalms is where they hold their power. It is the ability for individuals to connect with the messages and the words in the Psalms that allow them to function as well as they do. Without this personal, spiritual, connection they would not be able to serve people and create connections for people as well as they do with the spirituality. I think the fact that the spiritual aspects are usually put right up front at the beginning of the psalms helps reinforce my argument. The writer(s) want to have that strong hook to get peoples attention and make people interested and it is the spirituality that serves this purpose. Leading with ideas of close connection to God could be a strategic method to help people pay attention to the Psalms and really feel passionately about them. I believe without the spirituality the psalms would just be poems about God, rather than in their own category.