Good Morning! (or good evening, depending on what time of day you are reading this!) And welcome back to Bible Study! If this is your first time with us, we welcome you as well. I'm so excited you have decided to join me in this journey through Psalm 119. As we make our way through the Psalm, I'll be giving some assignments and asking some questions. You may want to keep a notebook or journal for your personal use. The Comments section will be our "discussion" place. We're not set up for live chat, so if you would like to give an answer to a question, ask a question, or make an observation about the Scripture we are studying, the Comments section will be the place to do that.
So, are you ready? I've been praying for us this morning, once again asking God to show us wonderful things in His Word. So let's get started.......
As you read through Psalm 119, did you notice anything interesting about the way it is structured? You may already be aware that this is the longest of the Psalms. One of the interesting things about it is that is is broken down into 22 paragraphs, or stanzas, of 8 verses each. In most Bibles, each stanza is labeled with a Hebrew word.......aleph, beth, gimel, etc. These are the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. So, there is one stanza for each of the 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Another interesting feature is that this is an acrostic poem (in Hebrew, not in English) and each line (in English, that would be each verse) of each stanza begins with the corresponding letter of the Hebrew alphabet. For example, in verses 1-8, which is the aleph stanza, each line of the poem begins with the letter aleph.
If you're feeling particularly creative, you might want to create your own acrostic poem or song or psalm using the English alphabet. Rather than stanzas, you could just use one line per letter of the English alphabet. Or if you're very creative, do stanzas!! This is a purely optional assignment, but if you decide to try it, we would love for you to share!
I asked you yesterday to read through the entire Psalm and see what you could learn about the author. Do you know who the author is?
Many Psalms tell us who the author is with a heading at the beginning. You will see the Psalm number and under that you will see "a Psalm of David" or "a Psalm of Asaph", for example. This Psalm doesn't do that. Also, in many Psalms there will be some information in the form of a Scripture reference that you can find in the side or center column references, if your Bible has those, that will refer you back to another Scripture that will give you the context in which the Psalm was written. Look at Psalm 3 as an example. Just before the cross-references for the first verse, there is another reference....2 Samuel 15:13-17. This tells us what was going on in the Psalmist's life (in this case, David) when he wrote this Psalm. Again, Psalm 119 doesn't do this. So, do we know who the author is? The short answer is no. If you were to do some research you would find that many scholars believe it is David, although there are some different opinions as well. I'm not sure it really matters who wrote it as much as it matters what we can learn from the clues in the text about what was going on in his life when he wrote.
So, that's your first assignment. Read Psalm 119 again and note what you learn about the psalmist. Here's an example if you're stuck. Look at verse 86..."they have persecuted me with a lie." You may be wondering why this is important. Well, think about it this way as you make your list of facts you learn about the psalmist. As you see the circumstances of his life, in this case being lied about, compare that to your own life......have you ever been lied about? How did you respond? How did the psalmist respond? What can you learn from the psalmist's response that you can apply the next time you find yourself in that circumstance? Or how can you use that knowledge to help someone else?
One more assignment for today........as you read Psalm 119, did you see words or phrases being repeated? If you had to give a title or a theme for the Psalm, what would it be? Read it one more time and look for those repeated words and phrases. If you're a colored pencil kind of a person, you might want to mark the words (along with their synonyms) in a distinctive way. This will be helpful to our learning process as we go along.
As a starting point for this assignment, did you notice that the entire Psalm seems to talk a lot about God's Word......using a number of different synonyms to refer to the Word......the law of the Lord, statutes, and precepts are examples. This is a Psalm in the middle of God's Word that is about God's Word! How exciting is that? So, what I would like for you to do as you are looking for those repeated words and phrases is to make a list, particularly of the words that refer to the Word. And look for the benefits that come from God's Word. We'll dig deeper into that next time.
That's all for now. I'll be back on Monday to discuss what we've learned from this assignment as we are getting the big picture (or overview) of this Psalm. Then we'll start looking at it stanza by stanza.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave those in the comments section or send me an e-mail (susanssittingroom@hotmail.com). And if there are any prayer concerns that I can be praying with and for you about, feel free to leave those in the Comments section, or if they are too private to leave in such a public place, e-mail me about that as well.
I'm so excited that you are on this journey with me, and I can't wait to share with you all the wonderful things that God will be showing us in His Word!
No comments:
Post a Comment