{"id":5183,"date":"2023-11-29T05:38:03","date_gmt":"2023-11-29T11:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=5183"},"modified":"2023-11-29T05:38:03","modified_gmt":"2023-11-29T11:38:03","slug":"devotional-on-the-psalms-63","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-the-psalms-63\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on the Psalms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-MulK8PdBghg\/X1_dx6fDPkI\/AAAAAAABGeU\/5ZK_kTJc6lwqqj9t8BduG7mxem0p5_c-gCPcBGAsYHg\/s400\/28rky_mtn_park.JPG\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2001 &#8211; Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\n\u201cA\u201d is for \u201cApple\u201d<br \/>\nPsalm 119: Every word you give me is a miracle word.<br \/>\nEven with the excellent effort of Eugene H. Peterson in bringing us the paraphrase that is The Message we don&#8217;t have much chance of grasping what\u2019s happening in Psalm 119 without some outside help.  This is the longest psalm, having, I\u2019m told, 22 parts.  If the shorter psalms are called ancient praise and worship choruses, this one might be called a full blown cantata!  Now I\u2019m only repeating what I\u2019ve been told as I\u2019m no expert in Hebrew (or English, for that matter) but the reason we miss the neat thing that\u2019s happening here is that this psalm is all about the Hebrew language.  The 22 parts of the psalm are based on the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.   Each section is built around one of those letters, working through the alphabet.  Then, in each section, there are eight lines, each beginning with that letter.  So, what we have happening here is along the line of &#8220;&#8216;A&#8217; is for &#8216;apple'&#8221; and &#8220;&#8216;B&#8217; is for &#8216;boy'&#8221; and so on.  Then eight lines of verse, each beginning with the letter &#8220;A&#8221; before moving on to &#8220;B&#8221; and right on through the alphabet.  Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with writing a devotional.  Well, not much really!  It does, though, cause me to better appreciate the creativity of the psalmist.<br \/>\nTake Away: Often knowing the back story of a passage of scripture makes all the difference in the world in our understanding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cA\u201d is for \u201cApple\u201d Psalm 119: Every word you give me is a miracle word. Even with the excellent effort of Eugene H. Peterson in bringing us the paraphrase that is The Message we don&#8217;t have much chance of grasping what\u2019s happening in Psalm 119 without some outside help. This is the longest psalm, having, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,7],"tags":[148],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5183"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5183"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14822,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5183\/revisions\/14822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}