There is an analogy to the psalm, consisting in the original poetic form of the lyric. The lyric poem is the confession that the soul itself utters about its innermost and most intimate experience. This most intimate experience is love. Of course, it is in its first sprouting the natural drive of sexual love, but out fo the Aphrodisiac cults the Greek spirit conjured forth eros. Hence, eros became in Plato the general expression for the soul, for all its most deep and tender, all its mightiest creations. What in the Greek spirit is eros is in the Jewish spirit prayer, brought forth and uttered in the psalm.
Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, Simon Kaplan, tr., Scholars Press (Atlanta, GA: 1995) p. 373.
