All Episodes
Displaying 81 - 95 of 95 in total
Episode 81: In a dry and parched land
Psalms 42 opens with a line made famous by a contemporary worship song: “As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after thee.” The language of the psalm, ...
Episode 82: Hope in a season of drought
In Psalms 42 and 43, the psalmist is longing desperately for God’s presence. Nevertheless, the psalmist cultivates hope by choosing to remember past times of God’s fai...
Episode 83: To sing and be sung
Psalms 42 and 43, taken together, gives us a portrait of someone feeling neglected by God and praying earnestly to know his love and care again. The psalmist anticipat...
Episode 84: Hear me, heal me (part 1)
Psalm 1 seems to promise a peace-filled life to all God’s faithful—but the trials we all experience seem to suggest that the truth is more complicated. That complexity...
Episode 85: Hear me, heal me (part 2)
When people tell their story of suffering, they need to feel heard. In Psalm 6, the psalmist pours out an intense complaint of physical and emotional suffering. At the...
Episode 86: On a first-name basis
God revealed himself by name to Moses at the burning bush; in English translations of the Old Testament, that name is rendered as “the LORD.” But when we read that in ...
Episode 87: Why should God act?
Psalms of lament often include reasons as to why God should grant the psalmist’s prayer. Psalm 6 gives two reasons. The first one is straightforward: God should do thi...
Episode 88: But I’m innocent! (I think…)
Earlier, we saw how Psalm 51, attributed to David after he had been confronted by the prophet Nathan, was filled with words of remorse and repentance. But other psalms...
Episode 89: Giving birth to sin
In Psalm 7, the psalmist prays for an end to violence in a way that itself sounds violent. And along the way, the psalmist describes sin in a way that suggests a perve...
Episode 90: Boomerang
Throughout the Psalms, the psalmists' enemies are portrayed as godless people who lie, scheme, and use violence to get their way. But the psalmists give us a vision of...
Episode 91: Sometimes, you want to scream
It’s one thing to complain to God about our personal troubles like persecution or illness. But it’s another to see beyond these to the sorry and broken state of humani...
Episode 92: Spoiled rotten
The psalmists clearly display negative emotions in their writing, but seldom name those emotions, leaving them open to interpretation. Often, their words seem to expre...
Episode 93: Beyond us and them
The poet who wrote Psalm 14 (and perhaps Psalm 53 as well) says that there isn’t a single person in the world who does good—but also suggests that God is present among...
Episode 94: Waiting, waiting, waiting
“How long, LORD?” It’s a common complaint in the Psalms. We’re not always told what the psalmists are suffering, nor how long they’ve had to prayerfully endure, waitin...
Episode 95: With friends like these…
Some scholars, in reading Psalm 55, have found it to be incoherent. At first, the psalmist seems to be complaining about being persecuted by enemies. But there’s a sud...