Why I need the Psalms as I read Daniel

As I try and understand Daniel's view of the world I feel drawn to revisit the Psalms. Could they be a key piece in helping me to really understanding what it is like to be a Jew in Daniel's day?

So often I've read the Psalms as part of my daily devotions, believing that some how they are there to aid me in my intimacy with Jesus. In reality I've very often been confronted with the feeling that I need to skip whole sections because they don't seem to doing what I thought they should. In fact at times many of the emotions of fear, desertion and vengeance seem extremely abstract. Praying that God will break the teeth of my enemies has at times left me searching for a suitable application as I sip my morning coffee and think about the day ahead with my colleagues!!!

Now I'm drawn back there to discover what this poetry and song tells me about how it feels like to be a Jew in a period of history where the Kingdom sits precariously in the balance of reaching its promise on one hand and falling off the face of the earth altogether on the other. Is there anywhere that I'll find a better vista into the big themes that dominated the mind of a man like Daniel? Although many of the psalms are penned by David I feel confident that his words are reliable in representing the issues that all Jews of this period were contending for. His words became a treasured language that helped the jews collectively express their story. As Daniel's contemporaries looked back at David's life and the Kingdom that he birthed, it will have been remembered as the penultimate pinnacle in their journey. Now they are anticipating a day when a more complete and lasting expression of David's time will come at last.

The more you begin to piece together Daniel's world the smaller the old testament begins to feel. Books of law, history, poetry and prophecy converge to construct a view of the world that suddenly brings the text alive. The bible isn't a long meandering road of ideas that takes great intellectual mastery to bring together into a coherent set of doctrines. The books of the bible are a series of layers that can be placed over each other to create a picture of increasing intensity, colour and clarity. It reminds me of skiing holidays - when you first arrive in the resort it feels enormous and you quickly become disorientated and feel nervous navigating the slopes. By the end of the week you quickly realise how all the runs are connected and before you know it you start to feel at home racing all around the mountains.

I'm excited that the bible is inviting me into a drama where the landscape can quickly become familiar as I endeavour to make connections between the various forms of literature.