For David. To You, O LORD, I lift up my heart. Psalm 25:1 Robert Alter translation To You – Lamentations and Psalms use a form of poetry called acrostic. In poems of this type, each new line begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In this psalm, every letter is represented except the…
To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul. Psalm 25:1 Lift Up – Some things are required. Some things are voluntary. I am obligated to acknowledge God’s sovereignty with my tithe. After all, I owe Him everything, including life itself. That He only requires a tenth is a demonstration of His grace. And, by…
“By David. To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul.” Psalm 25:1 Praying Life, Breathing Soul Soul – Hebrew is a language of concrete images. It is not like the Western European languages that we use; languages full of abstract terms without physical references like “time” or “omnipotent” or “omniscient”. Hebrew deals with tangible…
“By David. To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul.” Psalm 25:1 The Context of Prayer Lift up – “To You, Yahweh, I lift”. The Hebrew verb is nasa. It has three categories of meaning: to lift up (literally), to bear or carry (used especially of carrying away guilt and sin) and to take…
“By David. To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul.” Psalm 25:1 The Intimate Dialogue By David. To You – David’s poem must become personal before you can understand it completely. The power in his poetry is discovered only when his emotional intimacy stirs familiar feelings in us. Perhaps the first step is to…
