Ancient Israelite Prayer

Ancient Israel, like its neighbors in the ancient Near East, left us prayers and hymns. The Bible recognizes only one legitimate God, and so biblical prayers mention, or are addressed to, the God of Israel, YHWH. Members of other nations, who worshiped multiple gods, wrote prayers for specific gods; on occasion, they addressed groups of gods or any god who would listen. In the Bible, formal prayers for public occasions are in poetry, whereas spontaneous prayers by individuals are in prose.

Most of the Bible’s formal hymns and prayers are found in the book of Psalms. Outside the book of Psalms, poetic prayers appear within prose narratives, like Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 2 and Jonah’s prayer in Jonah 2. These prayers resemble psalms; they may have existed independently and been inserted by the authors of the narratives, or they may have been created on the model of psalms. Prose prayers are also found within narrative. They seem more spontaneous than poetic prayers in that they are specifically designed for the occasion on which they are uttered rather than based on a generic psalm-like model. By the Persian period, prose prayer was used for formal, public occasions, although poetic prayer continued as well (many psalms date from the Persian period). This was also the time that penitential prayers became more common. There is some overlap among Prayers, Blessings and Curses, and Poetry.