The Tanakh Podcast

This chapter celebrates God's capacity and proclivity to forgive his people. Academics have studied the language of this chapter and identify it as a Second Temple Psalm. This gives extra meaning to this celebratory Mizmor as a song of thanks for God having renewed Israel, forgiving us, and giving us a new lease on life - a fresh start.

This Mizmor starts with a desperate call for help. What is the problem? What's wrong? Soon we can deduce that the poet is in exile, and yearns for the land, even the stones and dust of the Land of Israel. This Psalm is about religious yearnings even in the depths of Exile.

What happens when we cannot trust the integrity of public officials? In this chapter David expresses his desire to be surrounded by and to implement a public culture of "temimut" - honesty, rectitude, virtue, integrity, and trust.

Does Judaism have a mitzva to be happy? Is there a relationship between gratitude and happiness?

Mizmor 99 gives us a window into the paradoxical and dialectical encounter with the Divine Presence. Music. Naor Carmi - Longing

The nations all burst into song when they appreciate God's salvation of the Jewish People

God is coming to establish justice, order and decency in the world. God's arrival i surrounded by clear delight along with melting and quaking mountains, fire, cloud and darkness - features that mirror God's revelation at Mount Sinai. God's presence establishes a clear choice between good and evil.

Today we identify a deliberate structure of Psalms 95-100 which form them into a self-contained unit.

This chapter is familiar to most of us as the opening of Kabbalat Shabbat. But there is a strange shift from the first segment to the second. Why does the chapter transition from joy to rebuke and warning?

How does faith respond to suffering? - In a variety of ways. This Mizmor gives us several vantage points on the experience of suffering - protest, rebuke, faith, a call to divine retribution and justice. This is a sophisticated multifaceted treatment of injustice and evil.