Daily Psalms - Classical Psalms Every Day

Psalm 45: A Song of Loves
After the long darkness of Psalm 44, the curtain lifts on a wedding. The poet can hardly contain himself: "My heart is inditing a good matter… my tongue is the pen of a ready writer." He has been to a royal wedding, and the king at the center of it is so radiant — "fairer than the children of men," garments fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia — that the song nearly breaks under the weight of its own joy. And then comes the line that has startled every careful reader for three thousand years: "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever." The bridegroom is addressed as God himself. The writer of Hebrews seizes on this verse to describe Christ, and once you have heard it that way, you cannot read this psalm again without seeing the great wedding behind every earthly one. Here is a king who is also God, riding out in truth and meekness, and here is a bride being told gently to leave her father's house and come away with him. It turns out the Bible's last image is not a courtroom but a marriage feast — and Psalm 45 is one of the early invitations going out in the mail.
00:00 My Heart Is Inditing a Good Matter
00:15 Fairer Than the Children of Men
00:30 Gird Thy Sword Upon Thy Thigh
00:50 Thy Throne, O God, Is Forever
01:10 Garments of Myrrh and Aloes
01:30 Hearken, O Daughter, and Consider
01:50 The King's Daughter, All Glorious Within
02:10 Thy Name Remembered in All Generations

Psalm 44: The Strangest Complaint
This is one of the most theologically daring prayers in the whole Psalter. The sons of Korah begin by rehearsing the old stories — how God's right hand drove out the heathen, how the fathers won no land by their own sword. "In God we boast all the day long." And then, halfway through, the psalm pivots so sharply it almost gives you whiplash: "But thou hast cast off, and put us to shame." What makes this complaint so strange is that it is offered by the faithful. "All this is come upon us; yet have we not forgotten thee, neither have we dealt falsely in thy covenant." They cannot reach for the usual explanation — that suffering is the wages of sin — because the books, in this case, do not balance. The covenant has been kept on their end and the sky is still closed. And so they pray the only honest prayer left to them: "Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?" Paul will quote this psalm in Romans 8 to describe the church itself: "For thy sake are we killed all the day long." Apparently faithful suffering is not a glitch in the system. It is sometimes the very shape of belonging to God.
00:00 We Have Heard With Our Ears
00:25 Not By Their Own Sword
00:50 Through Thee We Push Down Our Enemies
01:15 But Thou Hast Cast Off
01:45 A Byword Among the Heathen
02:10 Yet Have We Not Forgotten Thee
02:40 Sheep for the Slaughter
03:00 Awake, Why Sleepest Thou, O Lord

Psalm 43: Send Out Thy Light
Many manuscripts treat this little psalm as the third stanza of Psalm 42, and once you read it that way you cannot un-hear it. The same refrain returns — "Why art thou cast down, O my soul?" — but the prayer that precedes it has narrowed to a single, beautiful petition: "O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill." The exiled man does not ask first for vindication, or comfort, or even rescue. He asks for two messengers — Light and Truth — to come down and personally walk him home. It is the prayer of someone who no longer trusts his own sense of direction. And the destination he longs for is not just safety; it is the altar, where God himself is named "my exceeding joy." Joy, here, is not a mood the worshipper manufactures. It is a person waiting at the end of the road. Send out thy light, and let it bring me there.
00:00 Judge Me, O God
00:15 Why Hast Thou Cast Me Off
00:30 Send Out Thy Light and Thy Truth
00:45 Unto God My Exceeding Joy
01:00 Hope In God

Psalm 42: The Hart and the Waterbrooks
There is no thirst quite like the thirst of an animal that has run too long without finding water — sides heaving, tongue out, head turning desperately toward any glimmer of a stream. The sons of Korah reach for that image, and they will not let it go: "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Notice that this is not the prayer of a man enjoying religion. It is the prayer of a man who has lost the meeting place — who remembers leading the festival crowd to the house of God and now hears only mockery, "Where is thy God?" The waves and billows of God himself have passed over him; he is drowning in the very ocean he set out to drink. And yet, three times in this psalm and the next, he turns and addresses his own soul like a friend he must coach back to its feet: "Why art thou cast down? Hope thou in God." Faith here is not the absence of grief. It is the stubborn refusal to let grief have the last word in the conversation.
00:00 As the Hart Panteth
00:20 My Tears Have Been My Meat
00:40 The Multitude That Kept Holy Day
01:00 Why Art Thou Cast Down
01:20 Deep Calleth Unto Deep
01:40 The Lord Will Command His Lovingkindness
02:00 Hope Thou In God

Psalm 41: The Friend at the Bed
David begins this psalm with a strange beatitude — "Blessed is he that considereth the poor" — and only by the end do we understand why he opens there. He is, himself, on a sickbed. He is the poor one now. The friends he once trusted are huddling at the foot of the bed asking how soon they can get on with things. "Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me." There is a peculiar loneliness reserved for those who fall ill in a crowded room — a loneliness Jesus would later borrow this very line to describe. And yet David's prayer is not for vengeance but for mercy: "Lord, be merciful unto me: heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee." He knows that the truest measure of God's favor is not the absence of enemies but the presence of God himself, holding him upright when even his own body has stopped cooperating. "Thou upholdest me in mine integrity, and settest me before thy face for ever." If you have ever been the one in the bed, you know how much that single sentence is worth.
00:00 Blessed Is He That Considereth the Poor
00:20 The Bed of Languishing
00:35 Heal My Soul, For I Have Sinned
00:50 The Whisper of Enemies
01:00 The Familiar Friend Who Turned
01:20 Raise Me Up
01:40 Set Before Thy Face For Ever
01:55 Blessed Be the Lord, Amen and Amen