Psalms : Volume 2 (Teach the Text Commentary Series)

Psalms 73-150

C. Hassell Bullock

• Publisher: Baker Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781493411795
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Bibles

The Teach the Text Commentary Series utilizes the best of biblical scholarship to provide the information a pastor needs to communicate the text effectively. The carefully selected preaching units and focused commentary allow pastors to quickly grasp the big idea and key themes of each passage of Scripture. Each unit of the commentary includes the big idea and key themes of the passage and sections dedicated to understanding, teaching, and illustrating the text.

Notes

Psalm 73

1. See Bullock, Encountering, 77–79.

2. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 224–26.

3. See Bullock, Encountering, 200–212.

4. Using Scott’s list of wisdom vocabulary (Way of Wisdom, 121–22; also Bullock, Encountering, 204), the common wisdom terms are quite replete: “understand” (bin, 73:17); “stupid” (ba‘ar, 73:22; NIV: “senseless”); “to think” (hshb, 73:16; NIV: “tried”); “to desire” (hpts, 73:25); “to know,” “knowledge” (yd‘, 73:11a; de‘ah, 73:11b [NIV: “know”]); “to rebuke” (ykh, 73:14; NIV: “punishments”); “heart” (lebab, 73:7 [NIV: “imaginations”], 13); “trouble” (‘amal, 73:5; NIV: “burdens”); “counsel” (‘etsah, 73:24); “wicked” (resha‘im, 73:3).

5. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 225–26.

6. Walter Brueggemann and Miller, “Psalm 73,” 45–56, esp. 63.

7. For the prophetic elements of the Asaph psalms, see 50:7–15, 17b–23; 75:2–5; 81:6–16; for the historical, see 74:1; 77:20; 78:52; 79:13; 80:1.

8. See Bullock, Encountering, 76–79.

9. The rhetorical voice of the Psalms is like the voice of an excellent choir when the individual voices become the corporate voice of the choir. A good choir director will emphasize that it is not the individual voices that should be heard but the sum total of the individual voices that make up the “choral” voice. The titles of the psalms, especially “to/for David,” are among the individual voices that blend into the rhetorical voice of the Psalms, as well as the placement of psalms within the book, plus the distinctive and interrelated vocabulary of the psalms. All of these are contributors to the rhetorical voice. The difference between the choir and the Psalms, however, is that we have to be concerned about two “listenings”: the individual voices—which is primary—and then the blend of those voices in order to hear the rhetorical voice.

10. Hakham, Psalms, 2:130.

11. Hakham, Psalms, 2:130n4.

12. Anderson, Psalms 73–150, 533–34.

13. Hakham, Psalms, 2:137.

14. In private correspondence John Walton suggests that the word “glory” is an adverb rather than a noun. In this case it would refer to an anticipated acquittal by God (lqh) “honorably” (see 18:16, where the verb “took” [lqh] is used similarly). The following question, “Whom have I in heaven but you?” (73:25a), sounds very much like Job’s contention that he had a “witness . . . in heaven” (Job 16:19).

15. Anderson, Psalms 73–150, 535–36. See also von Rad’s statement on the afterlife in Old Testament Theology, 406–7.

16. Anderson, Psalms 73–150,...