• Laments, continued:
    • Element 1: Invocation
    • Element 2: Complaint
    • Element 3: Petition
    • Element 4: Conclusion
    • Key features:
      • Besides “lament,” what other terms could be used to describe this type of Psalm? A plea or prayer.
      • Is it to try to “reason” with God to convince Him to do something?
        • Yes, it is. This happened several times in the Old Testament. Moses did this in Exodus 32:11-14, for example.
        • “For”: reasons in the Psalms
        • Examples of people who tried to convince God to act in a certain way:
          • Genesis 18:20-26,32,19 – Abraham interceding for Sodom and Gomorrah.
            • Reason: punishing the righteous with the wicked would be unjust
            • Outcome: God qualified His decision
            • Outcome: God did not relent, but did preserve Lot
          • Exodus 32:12-14 – Moses interceding for Israelites
            • Reason 1: Protesting God’s name among the Gentiles
            • Reason 2: Remembering the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
            • Outcome: God relented
          • Matthew 15:22-28 – The Canaanite woman
    • Examples
      • Psalm 22
        • Speaker and addressee
          • Individual point of view to God
          • Addresses those who fear the Lord
          • General declaration (refers to God in third person)
        • Specific events under consideration
          • Not in context
        • Setting of the Psalm in Hebrew worship
          • To the choir director
        • Use of divine names and descriptions of the relationship between the speaker and God
        • Repeated terms of phrases
        • “Loaded” or powerful terms
        • Figures of speech
        • Parallelism
        • Word play