The Psalms

"A clarion call to those who read and repeat the words of the Psalms, to receive and understand them as marching orders in the campaign for human rights and dignity. Only in this way can [their] full meaning be grasped and appropriated in our day."--David Noel Freedman

"By bringing together this urgency for justice and the gains of genre analysis, Pleins offers a reading of the Psalms that is responsive to the socio-political impulses all around us, which require theological-liturgical response. His is an important reading of this ancient/contemporary poetry."--Walter Brueggemann

This stirring new translation of the ancient hymns and prayers of the psalter provides on new perspective on their meaning for both individuals and communities, from biblical times to the present. Pleins reveals in the Psalms the core of a liberating worship that grasps the realities of individual suffering as well as the stern demands of social justice.

J. David Pleins is professor of religious studies at Santa Clara University, California. His other books include The Social Vision of the Hebrew Bible and The Evolving God: Charles Darwin on the Naturalness of Religion.