06.11.06

The Psalms (1): The Psalms as Literature

Posted in The Psalms at 9:25 am by dowboy

In 1850, the first Europeans settled on a remote hillside in Queensland, Australia, and formed a community called ‘Mount Morgan’. These settlers scraped a meagre living from the land through farming. But in 1874 a certain William McKinlay discovered gold, and since then 247 tonnes of gold, 40 tonnes of silver and 247 tonnes of copper have been mined out of Mount Morgan. For 24 years, the settlers were scraping away a living when, if they had dug a bit, they would have found gold and never had to plant another potato. The 1850 settlers on Mount Morgan literally didn’t know the riches they were sitting on. We are a bit like that, for we, with our exclusive Psalm singing heritage think that our praise is barren rock and desert – but all the time we haven’t realised and appreciated that when we sing a psalm, we are singing gold itself. And what I want to do over the next few weeks is to open up seams of gold in the Psalms so that you will begin not just to cherish your heritage and stop being apologetic about singing the Psalms, but also so that you may be able to find new wonders of worshipping God in this marvellous book called the Psalms. After all, in the original language of the Old Testament – Hebrew – these psalms are called “The Tellihim” – which literally means, “the Praises”; this is God’s praise book!
I want tonight to lay out the tools necessary for us to understand the psalms. In some ways I’m not very happy with what I’m going to do tonight, because I’m not going to preach as such; rather, I’m going to teach you what you need to know in order to understand the psalms. These are the first songs we sang – in fact, I’m sure that many of us heard them in while we were still in our mother’s womb – and yet, we take it for granted that we understand how the psalms work – but in my experience both of myself and of others in the Free Church, we really don’t have that good a grasp on the Book of Psalms. So before we start in a couple of weeks to look at examples of themes in the psalms, I want this week, and next week, to tell you what you should have been told when you were 12 years old. This week therefore, I want to give you an introduction to the Psalms as literature – to look at the Psalms as pieces of literature in their own right. Next week, I want to address the topic of the message of the Psalms. So then, this week, I want to address the topic of the Psalms as literature under 5 headings: first, Hebrew poetry – we have our English modes of poetry, how did the Hebrews write their poetry; second, authorship – who wrote the psalms; thirdly, the structure of the book of psalms; fourthly, superscriptions - that is, those introductions in italics at the beginning of the psalms and lastly, genre – working out the various types of psalms and their respective themes.
1. Hebrew Poetry – whereas artists paint with paints and canvas, poets paint with words. Poetry is an art form dedicated to expressing truth and its perception in words. There are many different forms of poetry depending upon the culture from which you come – the Japanese use a form called Haiku, we tend to use rhyme and rhythm. The Hebrews also had a distinctive form of poetic form called parallelism – that is to say they would say one thing in two different or parallel ways – and this is the form of poetry we find most often in the psalms. For example, in Psalm 6:2 we find the words – “Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am faint; O LORD, heal me, for my bones are in agony” – you see one prayer being given up to the LORD but said in two different or parallel ways. So next time you are singing a verse of the psalms, see if you can find the parallel thought between the two clauses which make up the verse. But Hebrew poetry is a bit more complex than just the use of straight parallelism – in fact, the great Reformed commentator E.J. Young has identified 3 different types of parallelism which we find in the Psalms:
·         Synonymous Parallelism – this is the most common, where the same thought is repeated in almost the same words. For example, in Psalm 49:1 we read – “Hear this, all you people; listen, all who live in this world”
·         Antithetical Parallelism – this is where a thought is expressed by means of a contrast with its opposite, i.e. the first line says – snow is white, and the second line says snow is not black. An example of this is in Psalm 63:8 where we read, “My soul clings to you (that is to say that I am holding on to God), your right hand upholds me (that is to say that God is holding on to me).”
·         Synthetic Parallelism – this is where the second member or clause completes or fills out the thought of the first – a good example of this is in Psalm 9:1 where the first line reads “I will praise you, O LORD, with all my heart;” and the question which we all have is – how do I go about praising the LORD – to which the second member of the verse gives us the answer – “I will tell of all your wonders”. It is as we tell others of the wonders of God’s salvation of us that we praise the LORD.
There are other poetic devices used by the Hebrew poets in the Psalms, but parallelism is by far the most common. And there is a great advantage in this form of poetry. If you think about it, if you translate English poetry into French or German, it looses a great deal of its poetic appeal because you can’t carry the rhyme nor many of the other poetic tools, like alliteration, across the language barrier. But that’s not true of Hebrew poetry with its parallelism where it is the thought which is the poetic unit and not necessarily merely the language or rhyme – God chose this form of poetry to express Himself because it looses little or nothing across the language barriers – the thoughts mean the same in the Hebrew language, the English language or the Gaelic language. In this way, not only the Hebrews who wrote the psalms are able to praise God through them, but also every person in the whole world is able to worship the Lord of the Psalms. And of course, God used poetry in these psalms because poetry does not only appeal to the intellect – not merely to the mind as we know it – but to the heart and to the emotions.
2. Authorship – for one book, the psalms have a remarkable range of authors. I want to talk first about the authors themselves and then about the collector of the psalms. The earliest psalm is Psalm 90 – written by Moses around 1200 BC. The last among the psalms is Psalm 126 written about 400 BC by someone returning from the exile in Babylon. And so, you see, the psalms themselves were written over a period of some 800 years – that is like saying we are just now in the process of completing a book which was started 100 years before the battle of Bannockburn! Some of the psalms aren’t attributed to a particular author, but for those that are we have the names of several – the most famous being, of course, King David. The majority of the psalms were written by him – and why not – we know that he was a musical man and played the harp. We know from the Book of Chronicles that King David took very seriously the praise of God in Psalm – he it was who assigned musical duties to Levites such as Asaph and the Sons of Korah. He designated the times when the Levites were to perform their musical duties and he also directed the manufacture of musical instruments for the temple.
King Solomon, David’s Son, wrote both Psalm 72 and 127. Then we have the Sons of Korah, Levites whose job it was to praise God with the psalms, writing Psalms 42-49, 84-85 and 87-88. Asaph, who was the chief musical director of the temple wrote Psalms 50 and 73-83, a man called Heman wrote Psalm 88 and Ethan Psalm 89. I think it may also be true that some psalms were added to later – for example Psalm 69 was written by David, and the vast majority of it is couched in very David-type language – but then we run across the last 3 verses which seem to be from a different age – the age of the captivity – 3-400 years later. It would seem as if another writer, we don’t know who, has added to David’s original psalm the last 3 verses.
So the psalms come from the pens of many different people – and as such, as we shall see next week when we look at the theological message of the Psalms, God reveals Himself to these authors in slightly different ways, filling out the vision of the Glory and love of God we see in the Psalms.
The next question is, however, who brought the Psalms together. The Psalms didn’t just appear from 1-150 – there were very many more Psalms sung by the people than that – who chose these 150 and who arranged them into the book that today we know as the Book of Psalms? Most commentators think that the answer is Ezra the Priest. We know that at the time of Ezra – about the same time as Psalm 126 was written – circa 400BC – the Jewish people were interested in the Scriptures once again. God had just delivered them from bondage in Babylon and they wanted to return to basics with God – and that meant being interested in the Scriptures God had given them. So, according to a commentator like E.J. Young, “in all probability the Psalms were gathered by Ezra and those who immediately followed him.”
So when you are reading the psalms look carefully at who is said to have written them and then remember that they have been included in the Psalter by Ezra the priest, the contemporary of Nehemiah.
3. Book Structure – the Book of Psalms itself is made up of 5 different books. Book 1 contains Psalms 1-41; Book 2 Psalms 42-72; Book 3 Psalms 73-89; Book 4 Psalms 90-106 and Book 5 Psalms 107-150. Each book is completed with a doxology of praise to God – for example Psalm 41:13 – “Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and Amen.” The same kind of doxology can be found at the end of the other books too. It is thought that the Book of Psalms is split up into 5 separate books to mirror another book which is split up into 5 separate books – a very special and key Jewish Book – the Torah or Pentateuch containing the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
The most notable difference between the books is the way God is addressed – for example, in Book 1, 4 and 5 God is rarely called Elohim (or God), but is rather called Yahweh (or the LORD), whereas in Book 2 He is normally called Elohim (or God) and in Book 3 He is half and half called Yahweh and Elohim. Nobody really knows why this is so other than perhaps psalms from Book 2 have been taken from a different source by Ezra – after all, if you compare Psalm 14 from Book 1 with Psalm 53 from Book 2, the only real difference is that in Psalm 14 God is called Yahweh, whereas in Psalm 53 He is called Elohim.
Apart from these two separating factors – the one being the doxologies at the end of books and the other being the different ways God is addressed, nobody really knows of any good theological reason why Ezra put the Psalms into 5 books.
4. Superscriptions – many of the Psalms have superscriptions – that is to say they have titles. In our English translations these titles are written above the Psalm in italics. There are 4 different things said in these titles:
·         Authorship / Dedication – this tells us who wrote the psalm, or who it was written for. For example in Psalm 51 we read that the psalm is of David – that is to say it was written by King David. But we also read that it was dedicated by David to the director of music. The problem comes when we realise that the word which we translate as ‘of’, as in ‘A psalm of David’, could also mean ‘to’ or ‘for’ – so these psalms, rather than being written by King David could rather be dedicated to David. However, in the Reformed tradition of Biblical interpretation, we tend to see these as not referring to dedication but to authorship.
·         Type of Psalm – this tells us the kind of psalm we are singing. The most common title, which is translated by the English word ‘Psalm’ is the Hebrew word ‘mizmor’ which means a poem to be sung to the accompaniment of a musical instrument. But there are other kinds of psalm – for example a miktam (Psalm 56), a maskil (Psalm 54) or a shiggaion (Psalm 7). We don’t know what these latter three correspond to. Again, in the Reformed tradition, when we talk about singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, as we read in Colossians 3:16, we commonly understand psalms to be mizmor and hymns/spiritual songs to be the other forms of Psalm.
·         Tune – these poems were created in order that they could be sung or chanted. We don’t have any recordings of ancient Hebrew singing so we don’t know how they sounded when they were sung by the priests in the temple which is where the Psalms were predominantly used. But what we do know is that contemporary tunes were used – for example Psalm 60 was to be sung to a tune called “a lily of the covenant”, presumably a tune which was known to the Hebrews of the day. Surely this gives us today the responsibility to set the psalms to contemporary tunes – tunes which as many people in today’s world know – that’s what the Hebrews in the Old Testament did!
·         Situation – this tells us into what kind of situation the psalm was written. For example, going back to Psalm 51, we read that the psalm was written “when the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba”. Knowing the situation helps us to understand why certain things are written and presented the way they are. It helps us to understand why David starts the Psalm with the immortal words “have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.”
One final thing about the superscriptions of the Psalms to note is that they are not strictly original – David didn’t write the superscription and title to Psalm 51 – rather they were written later on. Now that has caused many commentators to doubt their trustworthiness, but given the fact that in a Hebrew Bible these titles often comprise the first verse of the psalm, I think we are on safe ground suggesting that they are reliable witnesses to where the Psalm came from. I’m not saying that they have the same weight as the text itself, but broadly they can be trusted. In Mark 12:35-37 Jesus is debating with the Pharisees and He uses Psalm 110 to talk about Himself. And in these verses Jesus attributes Psalm 110 to David – it’s clear that Jesus considered these titles as being genuine, as did the apostles in their later speeches in Acts.
But its also important to remember that one of the lasting appeals of the Psalms is that they fit into any situation in any time and place – and we must be careful not to straightjacket them into one particular historical situation – these titles aren’t there to straightjacket the psalms and therefore to render them irrelevant to us today – rather they exist to guide us and to flesh out the possible situations in which they may be used and therefore to give us the freedom to express ourselves in their language.
5. Genre – genre is a vitally important theme in all correct reading of literature. Supposing you go to a library, you will find all different genres of literature – from murder mystery, to biography; from recipe books to fantasy – and it doesn’t take long when you are reading a piece of literature to figure out its genre. For example, if I was to read out the following sentences to you, try and work out what genre it is: “he lay on the ground, blood pouring from a head wound; his body convulsing with pain as his assailant laughed mercilessly” – well, on one hand this is the genre of murder mystery – as you read it you can imagine the assailant holding a gun after having shot his victim. But on the other hand, this is the genre of the newspaper sports journalist describing a particularly vicious game of rugby. What I’m saying is that you will read and understand the text differently depending upon what genre it is – if it’s a sports journalist’s reporting you will read it one way, if it is a murder mystery, you will read it another.
In the book of Psalms, there are several different genres of literature – several different types of reading. These genres will form the basis for our future studies of the psalms, since what I intend doing is to study one psalm from each genre of literature. There are different ways of dividing the psalms according to their genre, but I’m going to follow the American theologian Tremper Longman in his division of the genres of the psalms. Longman divides the psalms into 7 different genres:
·         The Hymn – an example of this is Psalm 98 – it is a joyful exuberant psalm of praise to the Lord.
·         The Lament – an example of this is Psalm 13 – it is the cry of the psalmist when in a desperate situation he feels he has nowhere else to turn but to God.
·         Psalms of Thanksgiving – an example of this is Psalm 32 – it is a response to an answered lament. The psalmist has prayed for deliverance, and the LORD has answered and the psalmist responds with thanks.
·         Psalms of Confidence – an example of this is Psalm 121 – it is where the psalmist asserts his trust in God though threatened by evil men or difficult situations.
·         Psalms of Remembrance – an example of this is Psalm 136 – it is when God’s past acts of redemption and salvation are the focus of attention.
·         Psalms of Wisdom – an example of this is Psalm 1 – it is a psalm contrasting the way of righteousness with the way of wickedness and showing the consequences of both ways of living.
·         Kingship Psalms – an example of this is Psalm 21 – it is when Kingship, either the human kingship of King David, or the Divine Kingship of God, is mentioned with thankfulness and prayerfulness.
Within these 7 different genres of psalm, we can also talk about different themes – for example, we can talk about messianic psalms, where the focus is upon the coming Messiah, e.g. Psalm 110; or imprecatory psalms, where the focus is upon vengeance, e.g. the last few verses of Psalm 137. And again, I want to devote an individual study to both these topics.
In conclusion, if there is one thing I want you to take away from tonight’s study, it is that the Psalms are more wonderful than you had previously imagined – although you’ve always sung them and always known them, there is always more to know in them. In themselves they are amazing pieces of literature. No other piece of ancient literature speaks so powerfully to contemporary culture – little wonder, since these Psalms are the inspired Word of God. They are the heart of the Bible because they speak to us of the God who has loved us and of the God who redeemed and delivered us. They may not mention the name of Jesus, but He’s there in every word and line. And the Jesus you find there is worthy of your life’s praise – and my closing question is this – do you realise that these Psalms are gold! AMEN

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