Bob MacDonald’s Seeing the Psalter is Released!

Bob MacDonald has been a liturgical singer and cantor for over 50 years. It is both as musician and software expert that he has approached the Hebrew Psalter. In Seeing the Psalter, he used database techniques to reveal the inner workings of the recurring words in the Hebrew poetry. These patterns allow us to see into the construction of the poetry in a new way and to hear the ancient sounds of the poets in performance. All the charts are in full color.

These 150 poems are at the heart of the faith of Israel and of Christendom. In this book, each poem is laid out in a very easy to read form. For the English reader, the translation is close and concordant, as far as that is possible. The concordance has been managed through a sophisticated database analysis of the glosses chosen. Seeing the Psalter includes a complete Hebrew-English and English-Hebrew glossary of all words used in the Psalter. The list of all uses of a Hebrew root in the Hebrew glossary enables an in-depth study of word usage. For the Hebrew reader, or for one who wants to learn Hebrew, the text is laid out in a form that enables memorization and the learning of the intricacies of translation. The poetry is phrase by phrase side by side with the English.

Each major section of Seeing the Psalter contains brief summaries outlining and highlighting inter-poem relationships and enabling the memorization of the whole. The Psalms are the dialogue between God and his people. It’s not a conversation one would want to miss. You will love this book and reading it will show you the love that is before all things.

Bob MacDonald was born in Montreal, Canada in 1945. He was educated at Bishop’s College School in Lennoxville and at McGill University where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics in 1967. Bob spent his working life in data processing, working first for IBM, then at the BC Systems Corporation, and then self-employed as a teacher of systems across North America. In 1984, he helped re-establish Anthony Macauley Associates, a software firm which over the last 30 years has been recognized in Canada and around the world as a provider of Financial Management and Performance Measurement software.

Seeing the Psalter is now available through EnergionDirect (20% off pre-order pricing applies until the first copy actually ships, which should be about the middle of next week) and Amazon.com (should be in stock in a few days).