A collection of essays by Brueggemann mostly on the Psalms with special considerations for the value of the Psalms to the faith of the church.

Essays range from the language of the Psalms to the psalms as prayer, stages of life, grief, lament, glad abandonment, prayer as dance, covenant, impossibility in the OT, psalms as canon, and explanations of Psalms 9-10, 37, 77, and 109.

The first essay is an analysis of the language of the Psalms using Ricoeur's theory of language, a powerful discussion of how the language of the Psalms evokes and does not merely describe. In later essays he explores the various genres of the Psalms, how Israel praises and why, the logic of the lament as working through disorientation from complaint to expression of faith in dramatic form, how the Psalms work and deal in the real world and not as we might hope things would be. He points to how Israel dealt with grief as recorded in the Psalms in ways consistent with Kubler-Ross and yet in many more effective ways through their faith and confidence in YHWH. His essay on how the loss of lament has diminished the faith of believers is extremely powerful and important, wrestling with the very different portrayal of God, not only in terms of who He is but also in terms of how to approach Him, that is seen in the Psalms as compared to modern conceptions. His canonical interpretation seeing the Psalms move from obedience to praise is also compelling as are his interpretations of individual psalms.

The work is not entirely coherent but has many great thoughts to commend it. Worth consideration in a study of the Psalms. ( )

Walter Brueggemann's unique gift of joining historical-exegetical insights to penetrating observations about the traumas and joys of contemporary life both personal and social is here forcefully displayed. Everyone who is familiar with his work knows the power of his speech about "doxological, polemical, political, subversive, evangelical faith: and about the ways such faith is enacted in the praise of ancient Israel and in the church.Readers of this book will find fresh insight into: the Psalms as prayer and praisethe categories of the Psalmsthe social context in which psalms were prayed and sungthe theology of the Psalmsthe dialogical character of the Psalmsjustice and injustice in the Psalmsthe study and "use" of the Psalms by the churchpraise as an act of basic trust and abandonmentthe impossible wonders of God's activity that overturn conventional ways of thinking and acting