Anyway, reading all the Psalms over and over again has given me an appreciation, not only for individual psalms but also for the person or persons responsible for the Psalter in its final form. I am impressed, and blessed, by the rhythm of the collection: the way psalms with similar themes are grouped together, but also the way that we are not allowed to wallow in lament, complaint, or praise, but move back and forth between the varying moods and emotions that we all relate to at one time or another. John Calvin puts it well in a famous passage:
I have been accustomed to call this book, I think not inappropriately, “An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul;” for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn to the life all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated. The other parts of Scripture contain the commandments which God enjoined his servants to announce to us. But here the prophets themselves, seeing they are exhibited to us as speaking to God, and laying open all their inmost thoughts and affections, call, or rather draw, each of us to the examination of himself in particulars in order that none of the many infirmities to which we are subject, and of the many vices with which we abound, may remain concealed. (Preface to A Commentary on the Psalms)
One thing I note every time through the Psalter is that Psalm 22 and 23 are always read together. Psalm 23 is the psalm we all run to, especially at a time of death; Psalm 22 is the psalm we tend to stay away from, except on Good Friday—and even then, we’re not too comfortable with it. But the compiler of the Psalter helps us to see that forsakenness and trust can exist side by side: in the same church, in the same family, even in the same person. Psalm 22, with its excruciating opening cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ends with words of hope, leading us into the reassurance of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” 23 is all the more powerful when read in company with 22. It’s probably worth noting that both are attributed to David. Whether David actually wrote both or not, they witness to the kind of faith we see in David.
Most of us get to read the 23rd Psalm more than we’d like, since it gets chosen a lot for funerals. Sometimes the reasons for that are pretty shallow--e.g. “it’s the only passage of Scripture I can identify”--but sometimes they are profound. I did a funeral this morning for an 81-year-old woman whose Confirmation passage was Psalm 23, and it fit her like a glove. Thanks be to God.
