"Exalted Manna": The Psalms as Literature

Dorothy Parkander

Article Type: Perspective

Publication Date: 4/1/1985

Issue: The Psalms (Vol. 5, No 2, Spring, 1985)

The 150 psalms which comprise the Book of Praise vary in literary type, in mood and tone, in purpose, and in persona. But every reader of the psalter recognizes immediately two things: the matter of the psalms is God. He is present everywhere—in the dark, in the light, before the worlds were made, in the action of history, and from everlasting to everlasting. The manner of the psalms is energy, in the shouts of joy and in the groans from the abyss. God in the psalms who is addressed, described, searched for, or revealed is real; real too the human voices which call upon him.

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