Reading the Psalms as Scripture E-Book

James M. Hamilton Jr.

• Herausgeber: Lexham Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 211

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

The psalms cultivate a life of prayer grounded in Scripture. In Reading the Psalms as Scripture, James M. Hamilton Jr. and Matthew Damico guide the reader to delight in the spiritual artistry of the psalms. Psalms is a carefully arranged book saturated in Scripture. The psalmists drew from imagery and themes from earlier Scripture, which are then developed by later Scripture and fulfilled in Christ. The book of psalms advances God's grand story of redemption, and it gives us words to pray by drawing us into this story. When we meditate on the promises and patterns in the psalms, we can read, pray, and sing them with faithfulness.

Leseprobe

READING the PSALMS as SCRIPTURE

JAMES M. HAMILTON JR. & MATTHEW DAMICO

Reading the Psalms as Scripture

Copyright 2024 James M. Hamilton Jr. and Matthew Damico

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

LexhamPress.com

You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at [email protected].

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are the author’s own translation or are from the from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Print ISBN 9781683597766

Digital ISBN 9781683597773

Library of Congress Control Number 2024935080

Lexham Editorial: Derek R. Brown, Lynsey Stepan, Katrina Smith

Cover Design: Jim LePage

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins

by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father,

to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

—Revelation 1:5b–6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

I.Reading the Psalms as a Book

II.Reading the Psalms with Their Superscriptions

III.Reading the Psalms as Individual Compositions

IV.Reading the Psalms in the Psalter

V.Reading the Psalms in Light of Earlier Scripture

VI.Reading the Psalms and Messianic Typology

VII.Reading the Psalms as Interpreted by Later Old Testament Authors

VIII.Reading the Psalms as Interpreted by New Testament Authors

IX.Singing the Psalms as Christians

Seven Theses on How to Read the Psalms

Works Cited

Subject & Author Index

Scripture Index

BLESSED IS THE MAN … BUT HIS DELIGHT IS IN THE LAW AND LORD. (PS 1:1–2)

BLESSED ARE ALL WHO TAKE REFUGE IN HIM. (PS 2:12)

… HOW MAJESTIC IS YOUR NAME IN ALL THE EARTH. (PS 8:1, 9)

AND THOSE WHO KNOW YOUR NAME PUT THEIR TRUST IN YOU, FOR YOU, O LORD, HAVE NOT FORSAKEN THOSE WHO SEEK YOU. (PS 9:10)

… IN YOUR PRESENCE THERE IS FULLNESS OF JOY … (PS 16:11)

THE FRIENDSHIP OF THE LORD IS FOR THOSE WHO FEAR HIM, AND HE MAKES KNOWN TO THEM HIS COVENANT. (PS 25:14)

THERE IS A RIVER WHOSE STREAMS MAKE GLAD THE CITY OF GOD … (PS 46:4)

BE EXALTED, O GOD, ABOVE THE HEAVENS! LET YOUR GLORY BE OVER ALL THE EARTH! (PS 57:5, 11)

… MAY PEOPLE BE BLESSED IN HIM, ALL NATIONS CALL HIM BLESSED! (PS 72:17)

NO GOOD THING DOES HE WITHHOLD FROM THOSE WHO WALK UPRIGHTLY. (PS 84:11)

MAKE US GLAD FOR AS MANY DAYS AS YOU HAVE AFFLICTED US … (PS 90:15)

HE DOES NOT DEAL WITH US ACCORDING TO OUR SINS, NOR REPAY US ACCORDING TO OUR INIQUITIES. (PS 103:10)

NOT TO US, O LORD, NOT TO US, BUT TO YOUR NAME GIVE GLORY … (PS 115:1)

THE LORD IS MY STRENGTH AND MY SONG; HE HAS BECOME MY SALVATION. (PS 118:14)

IT IS GOOD FOR ME THAT I WAS AFFLICTED, THAT I MIGHT LEARN YOUR STATUTES. (PS 119:71)

THE SUM OF YOUR WORD IS TRUTH, AND EVERY ONE OF YOUR RIGHTEOUS RULES ENDURES FOREVER. (PS 119:160)

FOR THE LORD WILL VINDICATE HIS PEOPLE AND HAVE COMPASSION ON HIS SERVANTS. (PS 135:14)

THE LORD IS GRACIOUS AND MERCIFUL, SLOW TO ANGER AND ABOUNDING IN STEADFAST LOVE. (PS 145:8)

LET EVERYTHING THAT HAS BREATH PRAISE THE LORD! (PS 150:6)

INTRODUCTION

I believed, even when I spoke:

“I am greatly afflicted.”

PSALM 116:10 (SEE 2 COR 4:13)

The Psalter is many things. It’s divinely inspired Scripture. It’s art. It’s a collection of songs. It’s a book. It contains history, prayers, laws, and promises. And there is no piece of literature like it. Why would the Spirit of God inspire such a unique work to go into the heart of the canon? We might think of a number of reasons: to fuel the praise of God’s people, to instruct them, and to ignite their prayers. And these would all be true. But other purposes remain. All art is crafted to build culture and fortify the identity of the community for whom the art is made. So it is with the psalms.

The people of Israel were, before anything else, a people redeemed by the Lord their God. They had been slaves in Egypt, “the fewest of all peoples” (Deut 7:7). But God brought them out with “a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” (Deut 4:34; 5:15; 26:8; Ezek 20:33, 34) and planted them in the land of promise. He was their God, and they were his people. From such an identity flow benefits innumerable, benefits they were not to forget (Ps 103:3). Indeed, the path of blessing was not found merely in not forgetting, but in actively meditating on these truths day and night (Ps 1:2). But how does one internalize all these benefits, all these truths, in such a way as to avoid forgetting them? One unfailingly effective way to make an idea memorable—and thereby to make it accessible for meditation in any circumstance—is to put it to melody. Taking history, prayers, laws, and promises, and putting them in lyrical form will enable those truths to dwell richly in those who sing them.

Israel received a book made up of one hundred fifty psalms so that, in whatever situation they might find themselves, they could recall the unchanging realities of who they were. They were objects of the Lord’s steadfast love and faithfulness, and no enemy or exile would ever change that. No matter what befell the people of God, their hope was as unchanging as their God.

This same Psalter has been handed down to the people of God today, and it serves the same purpose. The new covenant people of God do not exist as a nation with an ethnic identity living in a geographic land of blessing, but the same promises given to Israel have come to us. We too were once in bondage, slaves to sin, but have been redeemed by the outstretched arms of Christ crucified, brought into his rest to live forever. No matter where we find ourselves in the days of our sojourn, we belong to almighty God and remain objects of his steadfast love and faithfulness.

The fact that the people of God today are neither physically marked off, like they once were, nor located in a certain place, make it a greater challenge to remember who we are. We are surrounded by self-conceptions that lead to folly and destruction. Prevailing cultural narratives invite us to think of ourselves as individuals whose primary aim in life is to give expression to our every desire, whatever the cost. According to such a worldview, our feelings are sovereign and must be obeyed. Other narratives invite us to think of ourselves primarily as people held down and victimized by oppressive figures and systems. In this way of thinking, our perceived suffering is sovereign and must inform every aspect of life. In yet another narrative, we are invited to conceive of ourselves as sexual beings whose every whim is legitimate. Within this narrative, our sexual impulses are sovereign, and to deny them is to deny our very selves. These narratives are lies, and the identities they seek to build will lead us to death and hell.

The psalms point in an altogether different direction. Not to destruction, but into the presence of God (Ps 16:11). The Psalter is given to fortify our identity as God’s people. It gives us songs for our sojourn, songs that will not let us forget who we are and whose we are. So when we find ourselves “by the waters of Babylon,” which we often will as strangers and exiles, we need not hang up our lyres and remain silent (Ps 137). Every land in which we find ourselves is a foreign land, but the psalms are the songs that lead us homeward. And as we read and sing and treasure these psalms, the way of life will open before us, and we will see the path of eternal delights for what it is, and the way of sin and folly for what it is.

Like all good art, the psalms operate on a number of levels. God did not inspire a series of bullet points for us to receive and remember, and it is not an instruction manual he summons us to sing. He inspired poetry. Like the best art, the Psalter contains depths neither fathomed nor imagined from the surface. We must be willing to dive down deep to discern the Psalter’s layers. The psalms are individual compositions, and yet there are clear subsections within the Psalter. And these subsections reside within the five books of the Psalter. And those five books combine to make one coherent book. There are a variety of literary devices at work, within individual psalms and across multiple psalms. There are typological insights to be gleaned and scriptural allusions at seemingly every turn.

We believe there are culture-building, identity-fortifying treasures in the Psalter, and our hope in this book is to help you trace your way to these treasures. We’ll do that as we find the clues within the Psalter that lead to the conclusion that this is no haphazard collection but an intentionally arranged anthology. The more we grasp this truth and see how it works at the various levels of the Psalter’s organization and content, the more access we have to these glorious treasures.

We will begin our search in chapter one by drawing attention to a number of features of the Psalter that tie it together as a book, give it discernible shape, and guide our investigations. We will continue in this direction as we look at the superscriptions of several psalms in chapter two, before considering how best to study the psalms as individual, self-contained poems in chapter three. We trace the impressionistic storyline of the Psalter that unfolds across its five books in chapter four, and then we consider the way the psalms engage earlier Old Testament Scripture in chapter five. Chapter six continues to examine how the Psalms use earlier Scripture and looks particularly at typological patterns that point to the expected Messiah. In chapter seven we look to parts of the Old Testament that were written after the book of Psalms to see how those later Old Testament authors interpret Psalms in their writings. We continue in this vein in chapter eight as we consider the interpretation of the book of Psalms in the New Testament, before concluding with how we as Christians sing the Psalms today in chapter nine.

Our desire is to understand and embrace the way the biblical authors understood the world, themselves, life, death, and the hope that God’s promises gave to them. We want to see how the Psalms are designed so that we can understand how they are intended to function in our lives, pointing us to the future king from David’s line, teaching us to call on the Lord in every distress, and giving us words to use as we respond to the Lord with praise and thanks.

As God’s people, we need to grasp who we are: sojourners and strangers with a hope immovable. We belong to the King from David’s line, our blessed hope who will keep his own. And these songs—this intentionally arranged anthology—will ensure that we do not forget this. What was true for the psalmist of Psalm 119 will prove true for all those who come to the book of Psalms frequently and prayerfully: “Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my sojourning” (Ps 119:54).1

I

READING THE PSALMS AS A BOOK

The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.

PSALM 72:20

This chapter invites readers to embrace the Psalms as a Christian book. The full force of the Psalter swells when we perceive its profound unity, a unity established by the features of the book we examine in this chapter. Jesus claimed that the Psalms were about him (Luke 24:44), and in this chapter we begin to explore the unified message of the Psalter.

If you listen attentively to a grand work of art like Les Misérables—especially if you listen repeatedly—you will begin to discern the relationship of the parts to the whole. Lyrical and melodic themes appear and reappear, and each subsequent listen reveals yet more coherence. There are no insignificant lines, but all contribute to the tale being told. The Psalter, the one hundred fifty psalms in the Christian canon, should be read as a book. That is, we should not read these one hundred fifty psalms merely as one hundred fifty separate compositions having nothing to do with one another. We wouldn’t read the verses of a song that way, we wouldn’t read the chapters of a book that way, and we wouldn’t listen to the songs of a musical that way. The book of Psalms is a literary musical, and a number of the book’s features demonstrate that the individual psalms have been strategically arranged to create an impressionistic movement of thought. One of the joys of Bible study is finding the clues left by the authors, clues that give us leads to solving the mystery. Are there breadcrumbs on the path if we know what to look for?

We want to suggest that certain features of the Psalter were deliberately dropped to help us find our way, and these features include the doxologies at the end of each of the Psalter’s Five Books, the way each book opens with a different author in the superscription, the arrangement and distribution of the superscriptions across the Psalter, and the link words between individual Psalms creating a coherent and cohesive feel as we move from one psalm to the next. In addition, Psalms 1 and 2 function like an inspired overture, introducing the whole book and its big ideas. Understanding the way these features work together is like noticing the ways that repeated melodies and rhythms link the numbers in a musical. The artist obviously intended to create the repetitions, and once we see or hear them, we begin to think about what they are meant to communicate to us.

What mystery is being solved? To what solution do the clues point? The psalms were intended to be read against the backdrop of earlier Scripture, which tells the true story of how God’s image and likeness, the first man and woman, rebelled against him and transgressed his commandment, bringing sin and death into God’s pure world of life. God, however, spoke words of judgment over the serpent in Genesis 3:15 that promised a seed of the woman, and in that promise is the suggestion that sin and death will be overcome, that the defiled will be made pure, that God will accomplish his purposes. Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise of the seed of the woman, and the Psalter pervasively anticipates his coming in the same ways that the other Old Testament books do. The Old Testament, we might say, is a messianic document, written from a messianic perspective, to sustain and provoke a messianic hope. Read as a book, this is the story sung in the Psalms.1

We turn to the aforementioned indicators that give the Psalter a “bookish” feel. We can categorize them as “seams” and “themes”:

THE SEAMS

Often the psalms at the end and beginning of the Psalter’s Five Books are referred to as the Psalter’s “seams.” What we find as we read closely is that these seams are not arbitrary but indicate shifts in the Psalter’s narrative. The better we know the contents of the book, the more we sense these shifts as they occur. What clues do these seams contain? First are the doxologies at the end of each of the Psalter’s five books.

THE DOXOLOGIES

Perhaps you’ve noticed that the Psalter is divided into five books as follows:

Book 1: Psalms 1–41

Book 2: Psalms 42–72

Book 3: Psalms 73–89

Book 4: Psalms 90–106

Book 5: Psalms 107–150

All but the last ends with a doxology, and each doxology is composed of at least four elements (in some ways the fifth book is concluded by a doxology that begins in Psalm 146 and continues through Psalm 150). The four consistent elements at the end of Psalms 41; 72; 89, and 106 are statements that (1) bless (2) the LORD (3) forever (4) amen. Here are the statements, with the common elements in bold font:

Psalm 41:13, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! Amen and Amen.”

Psalm 72:18–19, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things. Blessed be his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory! Amen and Amen!”

Psalm 89:52, “Blessed be the LORD forever! Amen and Amen.”

Psalm 106:48, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’ Praise the LORD!”

That these doxologies, containing these common elements, conclude each book of the Psalter can be no mere accident. For this to have been a haphazard quirk—apart from someone consciously choosing to design it this way—would be a happenstance too perfectly coincidental to be plausible. It seems far more likely that these doxologies stand like punctuation marks at the end of major sections of the Psalter, a conclusion that becomes more likely when we see the other features that indicate that someone put the Psalter together in a certain way on purpose.

Natural questions arise, such as: who arranged the Psalms this way, and when did they do it? It is often suggested, sometimes assumed, that a later editor added these features to the individual psalms. This may have been the case, but the following points should be considered. First, these doxologies are not random postscripts tacked on but rather essential components of the literary structure of the particular psalms in which they occur. Second, the book of 1 Chronicles provides evidence that the doxologies have been part of the psalms from the start. When the author of Chronicles quotes the end of Psalm 106 in 1 Chronicles 16:35–36, he includes the doxology. This indicates that the form of Psalm 106 known to the Chronicler included the doxology. Third, the psalms are attributed to the authors named in their superscriptions (some of which, you’ll see below, form the second significant feature of these “seams”) in both the Old and New Testaments and by the Lord Jesus himself (see, e.g., 2 Chr 29:30; Acts 2:25; Mark 12:36–37).

Our working hypothesis is that David started this process of organizing the Psalter into an intentionally arranged collection, and because there are psalms that seem to come after David’s life, it seems that people who came after David completed it. In order for the Psalter to be received into the canon of Scripture by the believing community, however, whoever put it into its canonical form was most likely recognized by that community as having prophetic authority. In other words, for the believing community to receive a book as Scripture, the person(s) responsible for that book would need to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. Apart from such divine authority, it is unlikely that the Psalter would have been recognized as Scripture by those who understood Scripture as the word of God. Perhaps someone like Ezra was responsible for the final canonical form of the Psalter.

How might this process have developed? If David began the impressionistic story seen in the book of Psalms, it is conceivable that he himself had written Psalms that intentionally contained these common doxologies. The psalms at the end of Books 1 and 2, Psalms 41 and 72, are both Davidic: Psalm 41 names David in the superscription, and Psalm 72 concludes with a reference to the end of the prayers of David. As noted above, the last psalm in Book 4, Psalm 106, is quoted with its doxology in 1 Chronicles 16:35–36, and 1 Chronicles 16:7 associates the material there with David: “on that day David first appointed that thanksgiving be sung to the LORD by Asaph and his brothers.” The explanation preferred here holds that David drafted the superstructure of the Psalter, and that the author of the last psalm in Book 3, Psalm 89, understood what David was doing, composed Psalm 89 to function as it does in the Psalter, noticed the doxologies at the end of Books 1, 2, and 4, and understood that he needed to include such a doxology at the end of the psalm he was composing for the end of Book 3. Whether the process worked in precisely this way or some other, the history of interpretation has overwhelmingly attributed the Psalter to David. We would also maintain that those who joined in the work on the Psalter with David would have understood what he was doing, agreed with it, and been inspired by the same Spirit of God as they carried the work to completion.

A NEW AUTHOR AT THE BEGINNING OF EACH BOOK

In addition to the doxologies at the end of each book, we find changes in ascription of authorship at the start of the next book. Such changes ought to grab our attention.

At the beginning of Book 1, we find two unattributed Psalms. Neither Psalm 1 nor Psalm 2 has a superscription attributing it to a particular author. Then from Psalm 3 forward, every psalm in Book 1 except Psalms 10 and 33 have superscriptions that name David. This means that thirty-seven of the forty-one psalms of Book 1 have superscriptions that attribute them to David, and David is the only person to whom the psalms of Book 1 are attributed.

The heavily Davidic character of Book 1 makes the attribution of Psalm 42—the first psalm in Book 2—to “the Sons of Korah” all the more striking. Psalm 43 lacks a superscription, but after that Psalms 44–49 are all attributed to “the Sons of Korah.” Psalm 50 is then attributed to Asaph, before a return to David in Psalms 51–65. The superscriptions of Psalms 66 and 67 name no author, then 68–70 have David again. Psalm 71 has no superscription. The final psalm in Book 2, Psalm 72, bears the superscription “Of Solomon,” which could indicate that Solomon wrote the psalm. Because Psalm 72 prays for “the royal son” (Ps 72:1), however, and because the last words of the psalm read, “The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended” (72:20), it could also be the case that David wrote Psalm 72. If David wrote Psalm 72, the superscription could indicate that the psalm is a prayer for Solomon. In Book 2, seven of the thirty-one psalms are attributed to “the Sons of Korah,” and eighteen of the thirty-one name David in their superscription.

At the beginning of Book 3, in Psalm 73, once again we begin with a different author, this time Asaph, to whom Psalms 73–83 are attributed. The Sons of Korah reappear in the superscriptions of Psalms 84–85 and 87–88, then Psalm 89 is attributed to Ethan the Ezrahite. After fifty-five of the first seventy-two psalms (Books 1 and 2) had David’s name in their superscriptions, the only psalm attributed to David in Book 3 is Psalm 86. More on this below, as here we continue our focus on the seams.

Another new author appears at the beginning of Book 4, where we find the only psalm in the Psalter attributed to Moses, Psalm 90, which bears the superscription, “A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.” Of the seventeen psalms in Book 4, after the one attributed to Moses (Ps 90), two are attributed to David (Pss 101; 103), and the other fourteen name no author.

To summarize: Book 1 opened anonymously; Book 2 began with psalms of the Sons of Korah; Book 3 began with Psalms of Asaph; Book 4 with a Psalm of Moses; and when we arrive at the first Psalm of Book 5, Psalm 107, we again meet an unattributed psalm. Of the forty-four psalms in Book 5, fifteen are attributed to David and one to Solomon (127). The other twenty-eight psalms in Book 5 name no author. For the whole of the Psalter, seventy-three of the one hundred fifty psalms name David in their superscription.

Each new book of the Psalter, then, begins with a different author. To put it another way, no successive Book of the Psalter begins with the same author. This does not look like a coincidence but seems to be a consistent pattern that results from the conscious choice of a designer. And once again it is conceivable that David initiated this pattern in Books 1 and 2, with others who understood the architecture he had framed in completing the project.

The five Books of the Psalms conclude with similar doxologies, and the doxologies at the end of each book are complemented by a change in authorial attribution when the next Book begins.

THE THEMES

The clues that indicate the book-like nature of the Psalter are not confined to its chapter breaks but are hidden in the content of the psalms themselves. We look to the superscriptions, common vocabulary, and the first two psalms for further evidence.

THE ARRANGEMENT AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE SUPERSCRIPTIONS

We saw above that Books 1 and 2