Models for Prayer in Lamentations and Psalms John Goldingay

"Tyndale Bulletin" 62.1 (2011). It originated as the annual Tyndale Lecture in Biblical Theology in 2010.

OT theologians have often noted with some frustration that Lamentations does not easily fit into a theological grid, even one supposedly derived from within the OT itself. Dobbs-Allsopp's comment is reflective of the situation.

Horizons in Biblical Theology, 2004

Scriptura, 2018

Many of us do not see God in our suffering as a result of our notions of who God is and how God interacts with us. But a study of the psalms of lament can help us bring all our emotions – those emanating from pain, frustration, faith, and a need for revenge – to God. In this article, examples are given of lament poems composed by young Zulu 'pain-bearers', after they had come to understand the language of biblical lament, as seen in three psalms. A careful review of these lament psalms gave insight to the participants as to who God is and how we can approach God. They also noted that in the Bible suffering was part of the normal human condition. By composing their own personal laments, the young people were able to process their pain better, and gain a sense of agency, being able to tell their stories and be heard with respect and compassion. Introduction Many of us have naive notions about who God is and of how God interacts with us, and consequently we do not see God in our suffering. In this study, 'pain-bearers' were encouraged to explore God in their suffering, through participating in a workshop where they were given a brief review of some psalms of lament, and then encouraged to write their own laments, following ideas they gained from the biblical pattern. The participants were Zulu youth from the Pietermaritzburg area, and included young women who are part of an AIDS support group, and young men and women from the local LGBT support group. During the workshop (conducted over two days, for three hours per day, for each group separately), they studied Psalms 3 and 13 (personal biblical laments), as well as Psalm 55 (a communal lament). They noted that the biblical poems included complaints (sometimes in the form of rhetorical questions), requests for justice to be done to the perpetrator, expressions of trust, and petitions, and these different forms were often intermingled, revealing the heart of the speaker. The young people then used these ideas to compose their own personal laments, speaking into their particular situations. A few examples follow, with complaints highlighted in grey, expressions of trust in bold, and requests (for justice or other) in italics. Thereafter, a review is made of lament studies in recent years, to place these empirical examples within the frame of the theory of biblical lament.

christian Nwakamma, 2021

It is human to express hatred, anger, lament and even curse our enemies who oppress us. If the authors of the books of Scripture (psalms included), were human beings, then we are bound to encounter such human expressions in what we term imprecatory psalms, (e.g., Pss 58; 69; 83; 94; 108; 137; 139). Imprecatory psalms according to Daniel Nehrbass are technically psalms of praise in disguise, because some of these praise psalms approach God with lament and imprecation. The question for Nehrbass may be, how is it that the Holy Spirit will inspire such dominant spiteful and unforgiving words to express God’s word in human beings? No wonder many see imprecatory psalms as a way of differentiating the Old Testament (OT) and New Testament (NT). They go further to assert that God of OT is revengeful, unforgiving, capricious and tyrannical, while God of NT is gracious, merciful and loving. Consequently, Pope Paul VI decreed that “selection be made of psalms better suited to Christian prayer and that the imprecatory and historical psalms be omitted.” To affirm this statement, 120 verses were omitted from the Liturgy of the Hours text, that is three whole psalms and verses of other nineteen OT books.

Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology, 2023

So surprisingly concludes a psalm that begins with "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me for ever?" (v. 1). This change in mood has been deemed Gewissheit der Erhörung, "certainty of a hearing," 2 suggesting that lament psalms move from complaint to resolution. Canonical readings of the psalter have also emphasized its movement toward orientation and praise in light of the doxologies at the end of Book 5 (Ps. 146-150). Yet readers of the Psalms recognize the vast amount of complaint within it, which raises the question of whether there are also movements away from resolution in the psalter-expressing "uncertainty of a hearing" 3-and whether attempts to subordinate complaint to praise within the Book of Psalms transgresses its basic character. In this essay, I observe the interweaving of complaint and praise in Psalms 89, 27, and 42-43 and argue that this correlates to the character of the Christian life in via, on the way. I then turn to Augustine's expositions on the psalms to describe how the Bishop of Hippo invites 1 Unless otherwise noted, all biblical references are the NRSV translation and use the chapter and verse numbers of the NRSV.