The article draws a general picture of the Biblical Psalms as religious poetry of the Old Testament, outlining the Psalms of individual lamentation as representative for each Homo Religiosus on the existential path of searching for the Sacred. Though created in a cultural and liturgical context specific to the monarchical psalmist period, their freshness remains unchanged to the modern reader since the vocabulary for invoking God transcends the initial historical boundaries. Supplication, lamentation, disheartening situation, burdened soul turn man into an interlocutor of the divine, and equally into a witness of the redemption that will soon come. This is the essence of the psalms of lamentation: equally anguish and hope of salvation, lament and hymn of praise.
Keywords: Psalms of lamentation, cultural substance of the psalms, the ritual of repentance, alternation between lament and hymn.

LUMINIŢA POP