Encountering the Book of Psalms (Encountering Biblical Studies)

A Literary and Theological Introduction

Bullock, C. Hassell, Elwell, Walter A.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781493414468
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblische Studien

Though the Psalms are perhaps the most familiar portion of the Hebrew Bible, they are also among the most difficult to interpret. In this new, thoroughly updated edition of a successful textbook, a respected evangelical Old Testament scholar offers a guide to the book of Psalms that is informed by current scholarship and written at an accessible level. Designed for the undergraduate classroom, it includes photos, sidebars, and other pedagogical aids and features a new interior design.

PART
1

Encountering the Literary and Hermeneutical Dimensions of the Psalms

“Begin the Music”

1

Introducing the Psalms

Outline

• Names of the Book

• Nature of the Book

• Place of the Book in the Canon

• David’s Place in the Book

• Titles of the Psalms and Special Terms

Author Attributed Titles

Historical Titles

Titles Indicating Literary or Musical Genre

Titles with Musical Terms

Titles with Musical Tunes

• Musical Instruments

• Singing

Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to

1. Give the names of the book of Psalms.

2. Discuss the nature of the book.

3. Summarize the place of the book in the canon.

4. Assess David’s role in the composition of the Psalms.

5. Discuss the titles of the psalms and other special terms.

On some religious festival the congregation of Israel waited expectantly in the sanctuary to begin their worship, summoned perhaps by the musician or a priest to “sing” and “begin the music”:

Sing for joy to God our strength;

shout aloud to the God of Jacob!

Begin the music, strike the timbrel,

play the melodious harp and lyre.

Sound the ram’s horn at the New Moon,

and when the moon is full, on the day of our festival;

this is a decree for Israel,

an ordinance of the God of Jacob.

(Ps. 81:1–4)

It is rare in the Bible to have such a vivid picture of worship with its musical accompaniments as we have here in Psalm 81. The musical setting sets the stage for the awesome sermon that follows in verses 6–16. It is a succinct summary of Israel’s history. In fact, one could cut this page out of Israel’s national journal and have a synopsis of God’s action that brought Israel into being (vv. 6–10), along with Israel’s unfortunate response (vv. 11–16).

The book of Psalms is a record of God’s call and of his people’s response, enacted a thousand times in history. The Psalms are like a spiritual photograph album of ancient Israel in its relationship to God and a mirror of our own relationship and response to God, who summons his people and promises his presence and secures their future. Any time we try to interpret the Psalms, a journal of Israel’s life—so filled with joys and sorrows, inscribed with aspirations and failures—we will find ourselves experiencing a catharsis of the soul.

But before we imbibe deeply of the spiritual riches of the Psalms, we need to deal with some pedestrian matters that will orient us to our study and augment our understanding of those treasures.

Names of the Book

The Hebrew title of this book is appropriately Tehillim (“praises”), for praise is a central feature of the poems that comprise this collection. Yet interestingly, although this word in its singular form (tehillah, “praise”) occurs many times in the psalms themselves, it only occurs once as a title of an individual psalm (Ps. 145, “Praise of David”), suggesting that it came to be used as a “type” of psalm later in the history of the Psalter.

The major Greek versions rendered another Hebrew word, mizmor (“song”), as psalmos, which is found often in the titles of individual psalms, and this term gave the book its title Psalmoi (“Psalms”). This was the title by which the New Testament writers knew the book (Luke 20:42; Acts 1:20). The common English title, of course, is “The Psalms,” and we readily see its derivation from the Greek versions.

Another popular English title, “Psalter,” comes from Alexandrinus, a fifth-century AD copy of the Greek translation known as the Septuagint, which called the book Psaltērion, meaning “stringed instrument.”1 The word actually occurs several times in the Greek text of the Psalms, where it generally translates the Hebrew word kinnor (“lyre”) and sometimes nevel (“lyre”). Alexandrinus elevates this word to the title of the book.

Nature of the Book

The book of Psalms is a diversified collection of sacred poems. While we shall not attempt a description of these poems at this point, the book is an anthology of prayers, worship songs, and poems sung and chanted in public and private worship. The psalmists spoke on their own behalf as well as Israel’s. Perhaps not all of the Psalms were sung in the temple, but some were definitely written for that purpose. Others were likely written for private use and some of them subsequently adapted for public worship. The book, whose composition spans several centuries, was thus a repository of public and private faith.

It is only logical then that in the history of Israel and the Christian church the Psalms have had extensive use in both public and private worship,2 which is very much a reflection of the original purpose of these sacred poems. John Calvin, one of the great commentators on the book, found the Psalms to be a guide for life. He remarked that “in considering the whole course of the life of David, it seemed to me that by his own footsteps he showed me the way, and from this I have experienced no small consolation.”3 Even when David took a wrong turn in the road, he showed us the way we ought not go and then the way to return to the main path (e.g., Ps. 51). There is no book of the Bible that affords such spiritual catharsis as the book of Psalms. Calvin acknowledges this when he calls the book “an anatomy of all parts of the soul.”4

Place of the Book in the Canon

The book of Psalms is contained in the third division of the Hebrew Bible, the Writings (Ketuvim), known in Greek as the Hagiographa. By their varied nature the Psalms belong in this section of the Hebrew Bible, since, in the strictest sense of the terms, they are neither Torah nor prophecy. They have, of course, elements of both. It is rather interesting that some commentators have seen a strong prophetic character in the Psalms. Perhaps that is because the psalmists are interpreters of Israel’s spiritual life, and thus a prophetic strain runs through their words. Calvin referred to the psalmists as prophets,5 and Brevard Childs, commenting on Psalms 89 and 132, recognized the prophetic model that came to characterize much of the Psalter: “To be sure, the psalmist has developed this tradition along different lines from the prophet, but increasingly the prophetic model poured its content into the idiom of the psalmist.”6

In fact, Childs recognized that the major thrust of the collection was prophetic in that the Psalms announced the kingdom of God: “The Psalter in its canonical form, far from being different in kind from the prophetic message, joins with the prophets in announcing God’s coming kingship.”7 We might say that the Psalter was the repository of the prophetic spirit and the archive of the prophetic hope.

David’s Place in the Book

Modern scholarship has raised serious questions about David’s role in writing the Psalms. Some insist that he wrote all of the seventy-three psalms attributed to him, while others doubt that he wrote many, if any. Those who fall somewhere in between acknowledge that he could have written some of them, perhaps a significant number.

The Talmud attributes all of the Psalms to David.8 While only seventy-three psalms actually carry the notation that he was the poet, or that certain psalms are “dedicated” to him, they do so in the larger setting of the poetic reputation that the books of Samuel and Chronicles lay out for us. The writer of Samuel paints a portrait of David the musician, first as one who plays the lyre (kinnor, 1 Sam. 16:14–23), and then as one who composes psalms. The writer of Samuel records David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam. 1:17–27), a poem that has much in common with the laments of the Psalms. However, it is person specific, mentioning both Saul and Jonathan by name, whereas the psalmic laments are not so specific. This lament, according to the superscription, was contained in the Book of Jashar, evidently an ancient collection of poetry. The one other reference to that book is the notation that Joshua’s famous words upon his defeat of the Amorites (these are also poetry) were also included in it (Josh. 10:12–13). The literary link between David’s poetry outside the Psalms and the poetry within, however, is best represented by his song of praise “when the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul” (2 Sam. 22), which is essentially a duplicate of Psalm 18. The other poetic composition attributed to David in Samuel is the Last Words of David, recorded in 2 Samuel 23:1–7 but not contained in the Psalter. Thus the psalmic associations with David are well attested in the books of Samue...