We often read Old Testament narratives as if people were ignorant and trying to figure out things from scratch. But Israel’s saints didn’t live in a vacuum. They had God’s written word, and when life collapsed around them, they called to mind the things they had been taught. Psalms were especially useful to God’s people. Long before they became the Church’s prayerbook, the psalms were already shaping the faith and speech of God’s people. Well known psalms gave faithful saints vocabulary and phrases for fear, guilt, hope, repentance, and praise. Jonah is a prominent example. Trapped in the darkness of a fish’s belly, with no plan and no hope, Jonah does the one thing a helpless sinner can do: he prays. And when he prays (Jonah 2), he doesn’t merely vent emotion; he borrows lines, images, and theology from specific psalms. His spontaneous prayer is saturated with Scripture, demonstrating how…