The Message the Book of Psalms (First Book Challenge) - Softcover

Honest. Fearless. Prayer.
Stop tiptoeing around in fear of offending God. With him, there are no secrets. Animate your prayers with the depth and honesty of your whole heart?from joy and awe to shame, fear, and even inconsolable rage.

The Message of Psalms will show you how. Eugene Peterson?s fresh rendering of this ancient book of prayers reveals how, like a child with a parent, people have always come to God?and God invites you to do the same.

In most English translations, the Psalms sound smooth and polished. Elizabethan rhythms and style dominate. As literature, they are beyond compare. But as prayers—expressions of anger, praise, and lament toward God—a vital feature of them is often overlooked.

“Prayer is elemental, not advanced, language,” writes biblical languages scholar Eugene H. Peterson. “It is the means by which our language becomes honest, true, and personal. In the original Hebrew, the Psalms are not genteel—they’re earthy and rough. They are not the prayers of nice people, couched in cultured language. But they have an immense range of gut-level honesty and passion that provides them with terrific energy.”

Peterson brings these ancient prayers to life for modern readers by translating the rhythm and idiom of the original Hebrew into American English, all while maintaining the song-like meter and lyrical quality of your favorite translations. If this is your introduction to the Psalms, you will understand them instantly. And if you are a longtime student of the Word of God, you're invited to read the Psalms again—for the very first time.