A main function of the Psalter in our modern church is to show the raw emotion that the writers’ prayers to God embody. Because of the depths of emotion that are present in the Psalms, they help Christians to see the relational aspect of the faith in a different way. In the Psalter, Christians see that God wants us to share our whole being with him; the Psalms show Christians that they can express the diversity of emotions that humans have with God.
The study of psychology can be useful in giving further insight to the authors’ minds and how the human element of the authorship effects the Psalter. Looking at the Davidic Psalms, one sees a variety of the emotions and genres; The field of psychology can be used to give deeper insight into the nature of the Psalms when looking at the range of emotion present there. Therefore, a psychological analysis of the Davidic Psalms gives a full picture of the different emotions and genres and their nature as it relates to the Psalter.
In looking at the Psalms, the importance of language is extremely prevalent. The study of psycholinguistics, the psychology of our language as it interacts with the human mind, is particularly interesting when it comes to the Psalter because the Psalms involve an individual pouring out their heart to God (Sternberg 361). The Davidic Psalms manifest themselves as personal prayers and corporate hymns; They have a significant personal human element, but they are also part of the Christian cannon, which is considered to be the Word of God.
Because of this dichotomy, should the language of the Psalms be attributed to a human emotional response to earthly situations that they direct towards God, or should the language be understood as God giving the authors of the Psalms the words to write down to instruct believers how to present their emotions to God? The answer to this quandary depends on the individuals interpretation of “divine inspiration”, but this debate is beyond the scope of this paper.
Because psychology and the study of psycholinguistics cannot hope to understand the mind of God, this paper will focus on the use of language as understood from the perspective of the language being attributed as originating from the mind of the human author and being directed towards God. Another aspect to keep in mind when looking at the language of the Psalms is to recognize the ever changing aspect of language. Psycholinguistics focuses on the fact that nature of language is dynamic (Sternberg 363). Language evolves as new words are created, words take on new meanings, and new ways of presenting language are created.
We now have texting, email, and blogs that radically change how language is used. “IDK” and “LOL” are parts of language that were created by the evolution of how language is communicated. Also, words and phrases like “spam” and “shut up” have taken new meanings over the years (369). “Spam” was originally a strange meat in a can, but now it refers to a folder for unwanted emails. In the same way, “shut up” originally meant to stop talking, but now it maintains that meaning while also having the other meaning of an exclamation of shock or surprise.
Also, language shifts not just in the denotation of a word but also in its connotation. Words can have the same definition, but the semantic meaning that each one holds can be severely different (Sternberg 374). An example of this is the difference between famous and notorious. Notorious comes from the same root as notable, which means worthy of being known for a particular trait, but notorious has come to have the connotation of being unfavorable known, while famous does not have that connotation (“Notorious”). Another example is the difference between “smell” and “odor”.
They both refer to the stimulation of our olfactory sense, but the word “odor” is more likely to be used when it is referring to something negative. This fact must be keep in mind when reading the Psalms, which rely so heavily on language to convey particular meaning. Our modern reading of them may understand them very differently because they were written in another language, time period, and culture. Each one of those factors effects the evolution of the meaning of language; therefore, when reading the Psalms, it is necessary to be aware that the semantic meaning that we give to words is not culturally universal (407).
With specific reference to the difference in language, this can create a difference in understanding of what the authors meant by their choice of language. An example of the differences in connotation in language can be seen in an experiment done by Boroditsky. This experiment involved having bilingual participants whose second language was english. Half of the participants’ first language was spanish and half was german. The experiment was conducted in english, and the participants were asked to describe the word “key” with four properties. The word key is feminine in spanish and masculine in german.
The participants whose first language was spanish tended to say properties that were more feminine such as golden, intricate, little, and lovely. The participant’s whose first language was german tended to use more masculine properties such as hard, heavy, jagged, and serrated (Prewitt-Freilino 274). This experiment evidenced that differences in languages effect our thoughts and actions. Christians must try to read the Psalms without bringing in their own cultural biases concerning language. Another effect of language can be seen in the Praise and Trust Psalms.
It is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which refers to the idea that language determines or influences people’s thoughts and behavior. This relates to Psalms of Praise and Thanksgiving in that, in the Davidic Psalms, David gives praise and thanks to God even in the hardest circumstances. In the first book of the Psalter, David is being pursued by Saul, who is trying to kill him. In spite of the hardships David is facing, he gives praise to the Lord. In Psalm 8, David asks God, “what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? ” (NIV Psalms 8:4).
David is praising the Lord for even thinking of humans as worthy of his notice. This is during a time in David’s life where he was promised that he would be king, but instead, he is being chased by Saul and forced to live in the wilderness. It is impossible that David was never angry with God or felt abandoned as he lived in fear of Saul’s wrath. David writes these Psalms not just to express his praise when he is feeling it, but also as a way of solidifying this knowledge in his mind so that it will affect his thoughts and actions in the times to come when he doubts God’s faithfulness.
In this way, David uses language to influence how he thinks and acts in relation to God. This can be seen in some Lament Psalms as well. In Psalm 22, we see David crying out to God for help because he feels abandoned, but the Psalm ends with an affirmation of God’s love and power. David is using language to alter his thoughts and emotional state by remembering the character of God. We see this evidenced further in the idea that language affects perception. When David wrote that God had “established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger”, he had not seen God provide a secure place for him to be safe from Saul.
By writing this, he was writing what he knew about God that he was faithful to his children, and by writing it down, it effected his perception of his surroundings. This idea can also be seen in Psalm 23; David is affirming that God is his provider and will take care of him, even though he is in the midst of a difficult struggle with Saul. In David’s Psalms of Trust, Praise, and Thanksgiving, we see the self-reference effect, where events are better remembered and recalled when they are in relation to the individual that is remembering.
Many of the events and items that David praises God for or is thankful for are specifically related to himself. David does thank and praise God for his work in creation and events that are outside of David’s life, but the majority are directly related to David. Many of the events that David thanks God for are rescuing him from his enemies and bring justice on those that are wicked and oppose him. He also is thankful for God rescuing him from sin and forgiving his trespasses (Psalm 30). Christians see this in our own lives.
We are quicker to thank and praise God for the wonders he has done in our lives rather than in the lives of other or the world. This also shows that is is important to remember the blessings that God have given us. We should continually be thankful for the gifts from God. Additionally, we see the effect of flashbulb memories on these genres of Psalms. Flashbulb memories are memories that happen around a emotionally charged event, and they are often very vivid (Sternberg 254). David is most likely to remember these memories when writing his Psalms.
Although these memories have lots of detail in them, they are often not entirely accurate. When reading the Psalms, it is important to remember that they are made up of human memories that are susceptible to mistakes because of the level of emotion that is involved and they rely on the memory of the author. Turning to the Imprecatory Psalms and Lament Psalms, we see the effect of the fundamental attribution error. This is when an individual will attribute their own failures or mistakes to external causes, like the circumstance, ut attribute other’s failures or mistakes to internal causes, like their personality and characteristics. We see the first half of this error in the Lament Psalms; in Psalm 22, David is asking God why He has abandoned him. He tells God that people despise and mock him, but God still feels far from him (Psalm 22:6-7). David is implying that the people who are scorning him are doing so without any fault of his own. We see this also in the Psalms of Imprecation. David cries out to God and curses his enemies, while declaring himself as guiltless (Psalm 35:7-8).
In Psalm 56 and 209, David asks God to curse his enemies. In this desire, we see that David is attributing all his enemies actions to internal blame. He is desiring their destruction because they are unrighteous people. While David’s enemies may be unrighteous and to blame for many of David’s problems, the reader of the Psalms must be aware that David is human and susceptible to biases that cause him to view situations incorrectly. Christians cannot accept David’s Psalms as unbiased truth. They are emotional, and, therefore, prone to errors.
We see this sensitivity to errors in an empirical study done by Andrew Bauer. He performed an experiment that investigated the effect of emotion on response time to either respond or inhibit a response. The experiment involved showing the participants a shape that they had to identify as either a circle or a square. For one part of the experiment, the subjects were asked to inhibit their response when an emotionally charged face was inside of the shape, but in the second experiment, they had to identify the shape regardless of whether a face was present or not.
The faces were either happy, angry, or neutral. He found that when the participants in his study were exposed to faces that were emotionally charged, they had slower response times and were less able to inhibit their responses. This shows that processing strong emotions, and mostly likely feeling strong emotions, uses up resources and decreases our ability to do other things. As can be seen, the Davidic Psalms are full of beautiful memories that give glory to God and cries of despair that lead to the desire for cursing one’s enemies.
When reading the Psalter, the field of psychology gives depth to the understanding of David mental state and how his human authorship effects the text that Christian’s have now. It is important to be aware that because of the array and intensity of emotions in the Davidic Psalms, they are vulnerable to errors and must be read with that understanding. Work Cited Bauer, Andrew, et al. “Interactions Between Cognition And Emotion During Response Inhibition. ” Emotion 12. 1 (2012): 192-197.
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