Elizabeth Robar

Southwestern Journal of Theology 2024 Book Award (Discipleship / Spiritual Formation)The psalms endure. Throughout the centuries, Christians have read, prayed, and sung this rich collection of poems. But in our current age of distraction, the daily rhythms of modern life revolve more around screens than biblical texts. This book argues that the psalms are poetry for the soul, poetry that shapes us. Beyond highlighting the poetry of the Psalter, the book attends to the theological freight of these poems. As such, we learn to read Scripture more attentively and love God and the world well. The first part of the book explores how we can read the psalms amid the pull of modern distractions. The second part highlights the various features of several psalms, showing what these poems can teach us about living in a more focused, attentive way. This engaging book demonstrates how our thoughts, emotions, and worship of the triune God are sharpened and deepened through the psalms. In an era of dimly lit faces and multitasking, the poetry of Psalms remains ready to train our ears, steady our hearts, and teach us to pray so that we might flourish in Christ. The book includes a foreword by Elizabeth Robar.

"Research on the function and semantics of the verbal system in Hebrew (and Semitics in general) has been in constant ferment since McFall’s 1982 work The Enigma of the Hebrew Verbal System. Elizabeth Robar's analysis provides the best solution to this point, combining cognitive linguistics, cross-linguistics, diachronic and synchronic analysis. Her solution is brilliant, innovative, and supremely satisfying in interpreting all the data with great explanatory power. Let us hope this research will be quickly implemented in grammars of Hebrew." Peter J. Gentry, Donald L. Williams Professor of Old Testament Interpretation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY. In The Verb and the Paragraph in Biblical Hebrew, Elizabeth Robar employs cognitive linguistics to unravel the notorious grammatical quandary in biblical Hebrew: explaining the waw consecutive, as well as other poorly understood verbal forms (e.g. with paragogic suffixes). She explains that languages must communicate the shape of thought units: including the prototypical paragraph, with its beginning, middle and ending; and its message. She demonstrates how the waw consecutive is both simpler and more nuanced than often argued. It neither foregrounds nor is a preterite, but it enables highly embedded textual structures. She also shows how allegedly anomalous forms may be used for thematic purposes, guiding the reader to the author’s intended interpretation for the text as it stands.