The Power of Ancient Hebrew Worship

The Psalm is one of the wisdom books of Hebrew literature (Tanakh), along with the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon) Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. Much of the language of the Psalms is metaphorical and symbolic; the language of the poet and it is quoted by the New Testament more than any other book. The Psalm is a sacred treasure revered by Christians and Jews everywhere. It is individualistic, personal, and emotional and possesses some of the most inspiring meditations on a multiplicity of topics.

If you want to experience worship as the ancient Israelites did, then you must go to the Psalms for it is there where we meet the Hebrew children in sacred worship. Yes, the prophets give us more than glimpses of the temple and their practices which helps us to perceive the worship environment, but the Psalter takes us inside the sacred sanctuary to listen to Israel’s hymns, prayers, songs, laments and praise. The main personality of all Scripture is God, and the psalms rejoice in calling on all creation to praise its divine Creator.

Being endowed with the gift of music, both vocal and instrumental, the psalms of Israel witness to the place that music served in her worship experience. When the Babylonians captors requested of the Hebrew exiles, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion,” they were requiring them to express themselves in their customary manner of praising God. But the Israelite’s replied that they could not “sing the Lord's song in a strange land.”

We cannot read the Psalms without feeling the intense sense of devotion to the temple. It was there in the temple where the psalmist went to seek Yahweh’s presence, to dwell in the tabernacle of the Most High. He called upon the “gates to lift up their heads that the King of glory may come in.” His soul longed for the courts of Yahweh. He rejoiced with the crowds who went to the House of God. His one consuming passion was that he “dwells in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” Through the offering of sacrifices, administration of the priests and liturgical responses, the psalmist experienced comfort and joy. He was able to unburden himself of the heavy load of sorrow, trouble, and guilt and despair.

The presence of God was an intense reality in the temple, and the experience was infinitely deepened by the character of Israel’s God. For Yahweh was personal. He entered into relationship with those who called upon Him. He was One whose will and purpose were crucial for human life. His compassion, kindness, faithfulness, justice, truth, and goodness were available to all who called upon Him in sincerity.

The nearness and reality of God’s presence and personality are recorded in numerous anthropomorphic (attributing to God human physical features) and anthropopathic (attributing to God human emotions) expressions. For example, God remembers and God forgets, reprimands and rewards, searches the heart, ascends to His royal throne, sees with His eyes, hears with His ears, calls with His voice, and loves His children. God is Judge, King, Keeper, Shepherd, and Redeemer. In all these ways and many more God is near to those who seek Him with their whole heart. Yet, we note that it is characteristically within the covenant bond that the psalmist calls upon his God and within this bond the covenant God answers. It could be said that the Book of Psalms is a covenant book.

It is notable that it seems the psalmist never tires of speaking of the goodness of God. The remarkable poem dealing with the problem of God’s justice, Psalm 73, begins by affirming, “Surely God is good to Israel.” “For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” Psalm 136 is completely devoted to the faithfulness and love of God. It describes God’s wonders in creation and in history in a great succession of lines, but each is followed with the emphatic affirmation for “His love endures forever.”

Our modern day conception of nature is alien to the Psalter, as to the whole of the Old Testament. God reveals His majesty in the processes of nature: in the rising and setting of the sun, the waxing and waning of the moon, and the myriad stars, in the stormy seas, the thundercloud, and in the thunderstorm. Every natural event occurs by His will and purpose. Yahweh is the world’s Source and is Self-sufficient unto Himself apart from the world of which He is Owner.

The Psalms also reinforces Scripture’s appreciation of man. Man’s status, though insignificant when compared with the vastness of universal time or space, is yet important. The purpose of man, as for the totality of creation, is to glorify God. In earth life, man is but a sojourner, a resident alien with the Lord, but his goal is to attain to God’s own life of sanctification.

In the experiences of worship and devotion the psalmists recall the wonderful works of the Lord in the past, and they are meticulous in recording these events in great detail. One of the central words of the Psalter “to remember.” The piety of Israel is given power by the things that are remembered. Out of these memories Israel forges her expectations. She grounds her trust in the future in the reality of past covenant events.

But it was not only history but also prophecy that influenced the devotional life of Israel. The prophetic polemic against sacrifice which we have read in Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah has left its stamp on more than one psalm. Also we detect appearances, though not frequently, the law. This is remarkable considering so many of the psalms are believed to have been composed in the time when legalism reigned supreme in Israel. But overall, there are not many psalms in praise of the law.

Nature, history, prophecy and law, all form part of the texture of Israel’s worship. Also incorporated into the thinking of the psalmist was sin. That God punished sin and rewarded righteousness was the foundation of Israel’s religious ethic. So when affliction and sorrow and pain came, when the unjust persecutor got the better of his victim, when the dark spells of uncanny forces laid the sufferer low on his deathbed, the mind and spirit endured tortures deeper than any physical pain could impose. While reading certain psalms we hear many a cry breaking through out of nights of despair. The large number of such psalms illustrates how real this problem was, as real as it was to Habakkuk and Jeremiah and Job and real to us. In Psalm 73, the greatest of all the psalms on this issue, a lonely man reveals the depth and the stress of the problem which tortures him, yet he finally comes to think and live by his faith and his awareness of the presence and fellowship of God:

Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (73:25-26).

Of course, the consciousness of sin is present throughout the Psalms. God is the Judge of all men and all nations, and to Him we are accountable. Yet the awareness of sin is seldom as deep as in Ezekiel. The most moving of the psalms which center in man’s sin are the so-called penitential psalms. Here the awareness of sin is very deep and the psalmist sees no hope for escape from his dilemma except in the forgiving mercy and love of God. He sees the terrible effect that sin has in alienating man from God’s presence. That is the most grievous of all his ills. And so he prays for an event from God within his being as great as the redemption from Egyptian bondage in history.

It was out of experiences such as these that the psalmists came to know the great resources of comfort and joy. These psalms express the deepest passions of humanity. We can hear them pouring out their souls in confession, but, also, bubbling over with joy! The psalms lead us through the valleys and peaks, of human experiences; but, in the end, they guide us to the praise and glory of our loving Creator.

When all is said and done, what remains after the psalms have been read repeatedly is a sense of joy and triumph and inner peace. Often such gifts of grace came after the storm and stress of pain and travail, after a night of utter darkness with no apparent answer but the echo of a lone cry, “weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.”

The Psalms have been called the “praises of Israel.” “Hallelujah, praise the Lord,” rings like an exultant shout of triumphant again and again. The spontaneity, exuberance, and full submission of the worshiper shows that here his deepest self is being revealed. No history of the religion of Israel is either complete or reliable which does not consider the central role and power of Israel’s praise and worship.

At last, the Psalter moves in its closing poems into a magnificent crescendo, a universal and ecstatic paean of praise, the grand finale:

Praise the LORD.

Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens.

Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness.

Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, praise him with tambourine and dancing, praise him with the strings and flute, praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals.

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.

Praise the LORD.