Feature Article: Summer 2005

Beyond Words

Lessons from the Psalms

By Wilma Ann Bailey

A few years ago, at the Folk Life Festival in Washington, D.C., I was drawn to an exhibit where a church group from the Mississippi Delta was re-enacting an Easter Eve celebration called the “Easter Rock.” At the heart of this traditional ceremony was the “cross,” a circular banner made up of a variety of colorful cloth streamers. One person led a procession of worshippers dressed in white, carrying the banner aloft on a pole. Singing, clapping, and “rocking” in a circular motion, the group moved around a table at the center of the room. As they approached the table, they laid symbolic objects upon it, including twelve lanterns representing the twelve disciples.

I realized that what I was observing was something I had been reading about for years: the “ring shout.” The ring shout was a carry-over from Africa that was maintained in secret in slave communities, and then adapted in the church to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Although only a few African American churches in the rural south still practice the Easter Rock, rhythm and bodily involvement in song, preaching, and symbol do remain strong in African American worship today.

To observe or enter into such styles of worship is to understand something of the culture of the Psalms. When we read the Psalms in private, as many of us do today, we are doing something that would have been unusual in the ancient world. Solitary reading was unheard of in ancient Israel. In a time and place where few people could read, and even fewer had access to reading materials, reading was a public activity, not a private one. In fact, qara, the word for “read” in biblical Hebrew, more often means to call, to shout, or to announce.

The Bible affirms whole-body worship

The Psalms were therefore a communal prayer book in ancient Israel. As the superscriptions of many psalms suggest, they were also songs. These prayers were not only sung in the temple but also enacted and accompanied by musical instruments and dance. These non-verbal elements are often mentioned in the psalms themselves. Psalm 150, for example, mentions a variety of percussion, string, and wind instruments: trumpets, lutes, harps, tambourines, strings, pipes, and cymbals. In the psalm, the use of these instruments is commanded: “Praise him with the sound of the trumpet!” (v. 3). The only time when instruments were dropped from worship in ancient Israel was during the time of Israel’s exile in Babylon (see Psalm 137:1-4)—as an expression of mourning.

Over the years, musicians have attempted to recreate the music that originally accompanied the psalms. Biblical Hebrew is written with accent marks of various kinds in addition to the words of the text. These are thought to reflect the chanted pronunciation of the words. Suzanne Haik-Vantoura, in The Music of the Bible Revealed, has even suggested that some of the accent marks show musical notations used during the biblical period.

Later, when synagogues replaced the temple as the place of worship, prayers became longer and more complex. They also served a pedagogical function as texts of Scripture became a part of the prayers. Still, they continued to be chanted. Melodies were taken from tunes of the day as well as from older sources.

At least some of the psalms were accompanied by physical movements (Psalm 150:4). Several different words for “dance” appear in the Hebrew Bible: mahol (Psalm 150), mekharker (2 Samuel 6:14), and raqad (Job 21:11). They indicate movement such as dancing, whirling, and leaping. David danced before the Lord in a worship ceremony that accompanied the ascent of the ark into Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:1-5).

Israel’s worship also included enactments of what was sung. Read Psalm 107 and imagine the ancient setting: Faithful Jews have come from all corners of Israel and perhaps beyond Israel’s borders. Following a call to give thanks for the Lord’s goodness, four different scenarios are presented that show the kinds of trouble in which humans find themselves from time to time. Some were lost, and God brought them to a secure place; some were imprisoned, and God freed them; some were sick, and God healed them, some were overconfident and got into trouble, and God rescued them.

One can imagine the worshippers gathered into the four groups based on their life experience. As their situation is named, they come forward bringing their sacrifice to the priest. In the presence of the congregation, they thank God for meeting their need before returning to their original places. In each section we hear the same pattern: 1) The problem is identified; 2) The people are troubled; 3) They cry to God, and God responds and gets them out of trouble; 4) They are enjoined to thank the Lord for divine help. This constitutes a re-enactment of their life situation and resolution, all in the context of worship.

Recovering holistic praise

The singing of psalms has always had a venerable history in branches of the Christian Church. Psalms continue to be sung on a daily basis in monasteries. Catholic, Orthodox, and other highchurch traditions feature the singing of Psalms in Sunday worship. In the free-church traditions, many hymns are based on the Psalms.

Other artful ways of praising God, however, are only now finding their way back into worship in many church traditions. While movement has long been part of worship in congregations with African roots, liturgical dance is now also being incorporated into many worship services rooted in European traditions. Enactment of the Scriptures through processions and drama is also finding appeal in many churches. It’s as if the original call of the Psalms to praise God with shouts, instruments, and dance are being heeded once again.

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Wilma Ann Bailey is Associate Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic Scripture at the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, and attends the city’s Shalom Mennonite Church.