MY FAVORITE BOOKS ON THE PSALMS

This book has probably influenced my understanding and use of the Psalms more than any other. First, the author helps us see Jesus in every psalm and imagine how Jesus might have prayed the psalms. It revolutionized the way I pray the psalms knowing that I am praying them with Jesus. Second, he provides a keyword for each psalm, and this has helped me remember the central theme of each psalm. This entire website is organized around images based on Kriegshauser’s keywords.

Edited by Edwin Robertson, this is a collection of sermons, meditations and letters referencing the Psalms by German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer from 1926 until his death in 1945. His application of the Psalms in the context of the horrors unleashed in Nazi Germany is powerful and insightful. My favorites are his sermon on God’s Righteous Anger (Psalm 58) where he connects this imprecatory psalm to the cross, and Psalm 74 upon which he commented in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, the beginning of the open persecution of the Jews. Bonhoeffer would later be arrested by the Nazis for his involvement in an assassination plot on Hitler and was executed days before the War’s end.

I’m a fan of anything by C.S. Lewis so when I found this little known book of his reflections on the Psalms, I was excited. Lewis comes at the Psalms from the perspective of a literary analyst and apologists and that gives him some unique insights. My favorites are the first couple of chapters on the imprecatory psalms (he wanted to tackled the hardest ones first!) and his chapter on beauty (“Sweeter than Honey”) where he discusses one of my favorite psalms, Psalm 19.

I can say the same thing about Peterson that I say about Lewis. Read anything you can find by him! This is a classic exposition of the Songs of Ascent (Psalms 120-134). As pilgrim songs he unpacks these fifteen psalms as songs for the journey that is the Christian life. You’ll get solid application of each of them in lots of surprising ways.

With so much poetry in the Old Testament it’s critical that we have an understanding of the unique characteristics of Hebrew poetry. While the examples he cites take him well beyond the Psalms, Alter’s classic work gives us some great tools for interpreting them.