This book offers a refreshing new look at the Book of Psalms, presenting an analysis of the postmodern elements found in its poetry, and, as such, will be of special interest to scholars in the field of literature and Bible studies. The book highlights the continued relevance of the Book of Psalms as a source of sustenance and comfort, and as an enduring practical handbook for life.

In Theopoetry of the Psalms Cas J.A. Vos explores the beauty of the Psalms and examines their meaning within the context of exegesis, homiletics and poetry. By investigating the structure, literary genre, history and theology of the Psalms he traces the ways in which they continue to be relevant to contemporary readers and to modern worship. Vos scrutinizes the Psalms as a volume of poetry and a work of art; considers hermeneutical approaches and difficulties, providing not only a verse-by-verse analysis but also a contextual history; outlines a comprehensive homiletic theory for preaching the Psalms; and concludes with a study of the Psalms in liturgy. Theopoetry of the Psalms is valuable to those Biblical scholars who wish to explore the theological and exegetical interpretation of the Psalms as well as to those readers who are interested in liturgics and practical theology for preaching and worship.

Uniting the lyrical songs of Israel with their literary legacy, this book comprises renditions of the Psalms by 25 renowned poets from the 16th to the 20th century.

Reverential, celebratory, antagonistic, and even erotic, this remarkable collection of essays interprets the Psalms as a collection of poetry. Written by 14 acclaimed poets, the essays approach the Psalms from a personal, often autobiographical perspective, demonstrating how relevant they remain for today’s readers. Alicia Ostriker examines the Psalms’ glory and their terror in a moving essay that revels in their moods of joy while acknowledging the brutality they invoke, linking their violence to events such as 9/11, the Palestinian uprisings, and the Rwandan massacres. Weaving autobiographical anecdotes with scholarly introspection, Enid Dame provides a Jewish explanation of Psalm 22, while editor Lynn Domina contemplates the pastoral life as she connects the everyday with phrases from the Psalms. From a former nun to a self-described left-wing Jew, from a Midrashic scholar to a Texas rancher, the contributors mirror the wide swath of humanity interested in, and affected by, the Psalms.

What does it mean that the Psalms are the prayer book of the people? Rocking Like It’s All Intermezzo: Twenty-first-Century Psalm Responsorials is one such person’s prayer book. Using familiar refrains as their starting points, the poems attempt a balance between how the psalmist understood God’s faithfulness and how the poet’s lived experience requires revised understanding in some places, renewed commitment in others. In addition to an insightful foreword by acclaimed poet Sofia M. Starnes, these sixty-four poems tell of an intimate, honest reorientation to God’s promises.

Professor Sylva has written a major book in what Clifford Geertz terms "blurred genres." By that Geertz means a study that refuses to stay slotted in a specified scholarly discipline, but reaches across such distinctions, in order to face real and complex human issues. As biblical scholarship moves out of its more positivistic modes, it is able to make contact with human dimensions of the text that "objectivist" criticism had long precluded. In this book, Sylva with painstaking research and urbane articulation reflects upon how the Psalms touch fractured human conditions in healing ways. This is no surface interpreation of scripture for the sake of "an easy religious fix", and it is no "pop psychology", because the author has thought with great steadfastness and is informed on both sides of the interface. The power of his argument is in the detail of human stress and in the effective nuance of the poetry. For his interface he employs the intriguing term "theotherapy". I have no doubt that this book will become a major resource for bringing back together text and human reality that our recent interpretative past has rent asunder. Sylva invites us to a new conversation as we "blur" our safer points of reference. Walter Brueggemann Professor of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary This book seeks to uncover the serious and deep ways in which the Psalms speak to the human situation. Few works that I know of have sought to bring the Psalms to bear on the stresses and strains, the functions and dysfunctions of the family as has been done here. Professor Sylva endeavors to show how the Psalms create a fundamental trust in God, a trust that moves out into all other relationships starting with the family. This is something that happened to me as a child and that I came to realize only much later. In this work, The Pslams are clearly not simply a springboard to say some things about family therapy. They are the heart of this book, and it is only as they are heard in detail that one then moves or is carried by them into a more secure family relationship. I hope very much that this work will enhance the reading and appropriation of the Psalms within the family as a source of family health and strength. Patrick D. Miller Professor of Old Testament Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary Dana Sylva is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Saint Francis Seminary in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is the editor of "Reimaging the Death of the Lukan Jesus" (1990), and he has published articles on Old testament and New Testament exegesis.