Once a week I get to meet with Old Testament scholar Joe Henderson and a group of students to study one Psalm for one hour. We’re up to Psalm 56. Whenever we gather around one of these psalms, I’m aware that we’re not the first believers to get our grubby hands on it. There’s a long history of interpretation streaming off of these beloved old texts.

For instance, there is an iconographic tradition for many of the Psalms. This illustration is taken from the remarkable 12th century Anglo-Saxon book called the St. Alban’s Psalter. Inside of a giant letter M (from the word “miserere,” the first word of the Psalm in Latin: “Be gracious to me, O God”) a poor monk is getting kicked and beaten by an enemy (”man tramples on me; all day long an attacker oppresses me”). His response, as he falls to his knees, is to point to the Lord above (”When I am afraid, I put my trust in you”), who sees it all (”You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?”). These medieval illustrations are insightful commentaries on the psalms; a picture is often worth a thousand words of exegesis.

But there are other readers as well. Cyberhymnal.org has a great “scripture reference” index that lets you see if this Psalm has inspired any hymns. It has. The best (as usual) is by Isaac Watts:

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