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.

God's Majesty! Crashing waves! We will read this Psalm as depicting a narrative of chaos and rupture in the face of an ordered and harmonious world.

What is the connection between this Mizmor and Shabbat?

This Mizmor expresses absolute protection in God.

In fact, it is a conversation between a teacher and a student about reliance on God's thorough protection. At the close of the Psalm, God Himself adds his reassurances.

"The span of our life is seventy years, or, given the strength, eighty years." This is a meditation about human mortality and making life joyous and worthwhile.

This Mizmor contains a direct, audacious accusation of God - that he has betrayed his covenant with the Jewish People and with the House of David.

When was this Psalm composed? Under what circumstances?

Did God renege on his commitment?

This Mizmor is the soliloquy of a person crying out in pain and suffering, feeling close to death. The Malbim says: "from start to finish, it offers no comfort, only the cry of brokenness and despair... This is also a metaphor for the Jewish People in exile."

A remarkable hymn to Jerusalem! - Yes - the city of God; but also, every Jew finds his or her roots in Jerusalem and can feel that it is the city in which they belong.