SOURCE: “Mary Rowlandson and the Psalms: The Textuality of Survival,” in Early American Literature, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1997, pp. 169-86.

In the following essay, Henwood explores how Rowlandson uses the Psalms in her text and the importance of them in Puritan religion.

[God] gave [David] the “shield of his salvation,” and girded him with strength to battel; and gave him the necks of his enemies, that he destroyed those that hated him. Therefore he gave thanks unto the Lord among the nations, and sang praises unto his name, awaking up his glorie, awaking up his Psalterie and Harp, awaking himself early, to praise the Lord among the peoples, and to sing unto him among the nations.

Henry Ainsworth, Annotations upon the Book of Psalmes (1617)

And here I may take occasion to mention one principal ground of my setting forth these few Lines; even as the Psalmist says, To declare the...