Basketball megastar Michael Jordan once spent a season playing Baseball. It did not go well. Sometimes people need to ‘stay in their lane’.
I feel a little bit like that with this commentary on the Psalms. I know Dale Ralph Davis from his narrative commentaries on Samuel and Kings. They are phenomenally helpful in guiding the reader through some pretty grim periods of history and do so with confidence and colour. On the Psalms though, I find myself a bit lost. I hear Davis’ distinctive voice, I marvel at his ability to collect fascinating illustrations and I’m emboldened by his confidence in God and the gospel but by the end of the chapter, I’m not sure I understand the specific psalm any better than I did before.
That said, me criticising him is like me criticising Michael Jordan. When it comes to illustrative stories, Dale Ralph Davis can be magnificently helpful. There is an illustration early on in the book that was so powerful it nearly made me cry. I used it in church on the Sunday after I read it and again in conversation somewhere else. As with all his books, there is plenty here that makes reading him worthwhile.
