One-third of the Old Testament is poetry: worship, lament, thanksgiving, wisdom, warning. The poetry has a different purpose from the narrative and the law portions of Scripture. Poetry’s main purpose is not to instruct or inform but rather to invite people into an experience of life. They accomplish it by all the tricks and techniques of the trade: everything that makes them poetry and not prose.

“These poems deserve careful treatment so that the real beauty and power of the original can be felt, and the complete message can be experienced, rather than simply understood. If we reduce poetry to prose, the biblical message may lose its effect and, in a very real way, be robbed of some of its truth. Consistently translating poetic lines into flat prose is not being faithful to the text. It does not provide a dynamic, literary, or functionally equivalent translation.” (Wendland and Zogbo 2020:8)

Our materials explore the native beauty and power of the Hebrew poetry in psalms so that today’s audience can experience the poetry, both understanding and feeling the message.