Description
Preview
What you get in the Psalms Bible Atlas:
- 30 high definition maps in 3D
- All created just to illustrate the stories behind the songs of Psalms
Sample map in the Psalms Bible Atlas
Psalms was the Jewish playlist in Bible times
When Jews wanted a worship song to sing at the Jerusalem Temple, or alone at home, or on the road to Jerusalem, or at a celebration honoring the king, they could find one in this collection of 150 Hebrew poems.
These were poems written in lyrical styleโfit to sing, chant, or think about while humming for those who couldnโt carry a tune.
There are songs:
โof joy and thankfulness to God.
โof complaint, about people, God, and life in general. The blues.
โof dismay, confusion, and disappointment. Fear, too.
โthat tell about Jewish history
โcelebrating the Jewish Law.
โof Wisdom, in the ancient style of Wisdom literature
Repetition, the Hebrew style of poetry
Whatever the songs say, they say it as Hebrew poetry. Itโs easy to recognize Hebrew poetry when we read it. Hereโs the clue. One line says whatever it says, and the next either repeats that idea, contrasts it with an opposite idea, adds more to the idea, or in some other way builds on the bedrock of that first line.
For example:
โBe kind, LORD, because Iโm sick. Heal me, LORD, for I hurt all overโ (6:2).
The second line says pretty much what the first line said.
Some English poetry is easy to spot because it rhymes. But as far as anyone has been able to tell, ancient Hebrew poetry didnโt rhyme at all. It did the rerun thing instead, working with parallel ideas compared, contrasted, or extended. Sometimes, to make the parallelism work, the writer uses different names for a place to avoid repeating the name. So, Jerusalem became Zion and Jacob (whose 12 sons produced extended families that became the 12 tribes of Israel) became Israel.
Knowing this can come in handy when weโre trying to figure out what to do with the lyrics the songwriter wrote. If itโs poetry, we might be less inclined to take the writer literally and more inclined to recognize the writer was driving with a poetic license.
Perhaps the most famous song of all is one we recite as someone approaches โthe valley of the shadow of death,โ Psalm 23. We remind ourselves that โthe LORD is my shepherd.โ
Jews call this songbookย Tehilim, Hebrew for โsongs of praise.โ Thatโs half right.
Certainly there are a lot of praise songs in this 150-song playlist. But nearly half of the songs are complaints. People are calling on God for help because theyโre sick, under attack, disappointed, or lonely.
Feelings
You name the feeling, they sang it.
Some songs rip God a new face, expressing angry dissatisfaction with him:
โWhy did you leave meโฆ For all of my life, you have been my Godโ (22:1, 10).
Yet by songโs end, in most cases, the writer is back on good terms with God.
The lyrics often reflect life, telling the story of a faith journey with highs and lows, and of a God who is always there and always on the side of goodness.
In addition to the Psalms Bible Atlas
You might consider the atlas for
Best resource for comparing other Bible translations:ย Bible Gateway. This isnโt an ad. Itโs a recommendation from the Casual English Bible.
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