Keep in mind that the psalms are poetry and must be read as such. If you coldly analyze them, you’ll miss the flavor. They’re full of emotion, art, beauty, and figurative language. The psalmists were trying to draw forth not just an intellectual response, but also an emotional one. John Calvin wrote of the Psalms, “I have been accustomed to call this book … ‘An Anatomy of all Parts of the Soul’; for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn to the life all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated.” (Commentary on the Psalms [Baker], pp. xxxvi-xxxvii).