ABSTRACT
Kierkegaard’s language is saturated with phrases and images drawn from the Psalms. This is not surprising, for the use of the Psalms in the liturgy and hymnody of the Lutheran church made the internalization of their vocabulary almost inevitable. Although Kierkegaard seldom engaged in an extended reflection on a specific passage from the Psalms, he did derive much of the linguistic framework in which he thought and wrote from this biblical source. Sometimes his use of the Psalms would be casual, with their phrases used as nothing more than literary embellishments. Sometimes he would use them critically to express sentiments that he wanted to reject. Sometimes he would use them positively to reinforce and intensify the life of faith. At times he would appropriate their words and use them in ways that were at odds with their original employment. At other times his writing would accurately reflect the mood and rhetorical force of a particular passage. In short, he used the language of the Psalms in a wide variety of ways, for many different purposes.
