THE PSALMS - Week 2
Two weeks into our adventure through the Psalms and already we are starting to get a flavour of the variety that can be found in this collection of texts! There are all sorts of emotions flying about – gratitude and fear, anger and joy. Some seem to speak to specific situations, others are more general. There is great colour to be found in the diversity of the Psalms.
But how are we to understand them critically? Where do we put them in our mental catalogue of different parts of the bible? Particularly coming off the back of reading through John’s Gospel, where it feels more natural to ask critical questions of the text like who wrote it and where and why, should we approach the Psalms with these same questions and, if so, how? Do we treat the Psalms as one text, as we find it, with different chapters? Or 150 texts, each with it’s own provenance and purpose? Or somewhere in between?
Well, we get some help from the text as we find it. The Psalms are, for example, broken up into five ‘books’.
Book 1 – Psalm 1 to 41
Book 2- Psalm 42-72
Book 3 – Psalm 73-89
Book 4- Psalm 90-106
Book 5- Psalm 107-150
Each of those ‘books’ concludes with a doxology – a short hymn or expression of praise to God focussed on a declaration of the glory of God. The whole of the collection of Psalms also concludes with a collection of doxologies (Psalms 145-150).
There are some biblical scholars, including Walter Brueggemann (who has written extensively on both the Old Testament and the Psalms specifically), who believe that these five ‘books’ within the Psalms have been arranged to reflect the five books of the Pentateuch. The case for that goes as follows;
Book 1 of Psalms (Psalms 1-41) is seen as corresponding to the book of Genesis. Both emphasize foundational themes such as creation, humanity's relationship with God, and the establishment of the covenant.
Book 2 of Psalms (Psalms 42-72) is seen as corresponding to the book of Exodus. Both emphasize themes of deliverance, redemption, and God's presence among Their people.
Book 3 of Psalms (Psalms 73-89) is seen as corresponding to the book of Leviticus. Both emphasize themes of holiness, worship, and the priesthood.
Book 4 of Psalms (Psalms 90-106) is seen as corresponding to the book of Numbers. Both emphasize themes of wandering, disobedience, and the faithfulness of God despite human frailty.
Book 5 of Psalms (Psalms 107-150) is seen as corresponding to the book of Deuteronomy. Both emphasize themes of covenant renewal, instruction, and praise for God's faithfulness.
That certainly offers an interesting framework within which to understand the Psalms and the grouping of the Psalms. I won’t dare suggest that you read the corresponding books along with the Psalms, but bare those ideas in mind as you read through and see whether you can see a connection. Particularly if you read through Exodus with us recently, the second book of Psalms might portray something new to you this time around!
Aside from their arrangement, there are other categories into which the Psalms are placed by those who study them. These are based on themes;
1) Liturgical (ie. 120-30)
2) Messianic (ie. 2,16,22,25,69,110)
3) Penitential (ie. 6,32,51)
4) Personal (ie. 23,27,37)
5) Historical (ie. 78, 105-106)
6) Praise (ie. 95-100,146-150)
7) Alphabetic (ie. 25,111-112, 119)
8) Prayers of the Righteous (ie. 17,20,40,55)
These ideas of categories give us a little more direction as to the type of Psalm we’re reading. The themes can offer a context in which to make sense of the writing, in the same way that knowing a song is a love song helps clarify the tone and the imagery.
So, with a few extra bits of information, we can approach many of the Psalms with an overarching theme in mind and a corresponding, or at least relating, other text to flesh out the meaning and message. That all helps, but what about interpretation?
There have been varying views over time about how to interpret the Psalms.
One option has been to try to situate each Psalm in a particular historical context. The trouble with that approach is that so few of the Psalms can be situated historically. Brueggemann goes as far as to say that ‘it is likely that only Psalm 137 can, with any reasonable certainty, be connected to a particular circumstance.’ He notes that attention should be given to the ‘superscriptions’ (short introductory inscription at the beginning of the Psalm) when they relate to historical events (Psalm 51, for example).
It is suggested that the use of these superscriptions that place Psalms in specific contexts shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but instead offer a guideline for interpretation and a reference point for where one might apply the contents of the Psalm. Some scholars go on to add that the idea of named authorship is misleading sometimes. ‘A Psalm of David’ for instance, potentially should be translated as ‘A Psalm for David’, or for the King or use in a royal environment.
Some others have thought to interpret the Psalms christologically, or as relating to Jesus. Jesus might be suggested as the speaker of a Psalm (like Psalm 22) or as the subject of the Psalm (like Psalm 2). This is harder to dismiss as an interpretation as it is more subjective, but the likelihood is that the writers of the Psalms would not have known to have Jesus in mind. That isn’t to say that God couldn’t have worked it to communicate something through these Psalms, or even that the layered meaning offers us something that the writers didn’t even recognise, but it seems as though it’s most fair to say that the Psalms are most accurately interpreted in their own Old Testament context. That still accounts for Messianic expectation as seen in some Psalms.
Prominent scholar of the Psalms, Hermann Gunkel (that name absolutely sounds like someone who should be a scholar of the Psalms…), suggests that we might find a finite number of recurring patterns in the Psalms, which result in the Psalms being largely stylized, predictable and repetitive, and Gunkel suggests that this is because the Psalms might have come out of community usage.
The Psalms, in this understanding, are a collection of hymns, songs and poems that have arisen in community life and out of the practice of community, and speak to general themes which are useful in different contexts over different periods of time.
This, to me, makes sense of what I tried to express in the first reflection last week – the Psalms seem to communicate something powerful to us, even thousands of years on. If they were for a specific historical event, then they would not resonate quite so clearly with us. If they were just focussed on Jesus, the other richness of human experience found in the Psalms wouldn’t connect with us as it does.
So how do we understand the Psalms?
Well, I think a good starting place is to consider what other texts and topics they might relate to, what the central themes are and a freedom to acknowledge that the Psalms may have been written to be openly interpreted and for use in a variety of contexts, including our own.
That approach seems to both open up this collection of Psalms, but also directs our reading so that we aren’t completely alone in finding meaning in their messages.