How to read a psalm
Most of us were handed the Psalms as a comfort book. A large share of them are complaints, and reading them as poems rather than promises changes everything.
The Psalms are the part of the Bible people reach for first and understand least. They get read the way fortune cookies get read: one line at a time, out of order, for reassurance. They are poems, and poems have shapes. Learning the shape is most of the work.
Find the turn
A great many psalms of lament do the same structural thing. They open in the dark, they stay there longer than you expect, and then somewhere near the end they pivot (often on a single word) into trust. Psalm 13 is the cleanest example in the book. It runs four verses of complaint, and it does not soften the complaint.
How long, Yahweh? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
Then the turn arrives, and it arrives without an explanation. Nothing has been resolved. The circumstances are identical. What has changed is where the poet has decided to stand.
But I trust in your loving kindness. My heart rejoices in your salvation.
Read the whole psalm and mark where the turn happens. In some there is no turn at all. Psalm 88 ends in the dark and stays there. That one is in the canon on purpose, and noticing its absence of resolution tells you something the comfort-book reading never will.
Ask who is being addressed
Psalms swing between speaking to God, speaking about God, and speaking to the poet's own soul. Track the pronouns for one psalm and you will see the argument move. Take the line that recurs three times across Psalms 42 and 43: “Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me?” (Psalm 42:5). It is not a doctrine. It is a man talking himself down, out loud, and the Bible thought that was worth keeping.
Let the ugly parts stay ugly
The Psalms contain exhaustion, rage at enemies, accusations of divine absence, and physical misery described in detail nobody would choose for a greeting card. The instinct is to hurry past it toward the nice verse. Don't.
I am weary with my groaning. Every night I flood my bed. I drench my couch with my tears.
If that language is permitted in prayer (and it is, it is right there), then whatever you are carrying is also permitted. Most people find this more useful than any consolation they were offered.
Read it out loud, and read it whole
These were sung. Read a psalm aloud, start to finish, in one sitting; it takes under two minutes and you will hear repetitions and reversals that the eye skims. Then read it again tomorrow. The second reading is where the shape shows up, and the shape is the meaning.
