Overview: Psalms

The Book of Psalms. It is a collection of 150 ancient Hebrew poems, songs, and prayers, drawn from various periods of Israel's history. Many of these poems relate to King David, 73 of them to be exact. He was known as a poet and harpist. But behind these poems there are many different authors. There are poems by Asaph, the sons of Korah, and some of the other worship leaders in the temple. Even Solomon and Moses have their own poems and almost a third of them are by anonymous authors. Many of these poems began to be used by the choirs that sang in the temple of Israel.

But the book of Psalms is not exactly a book of hymns. At some point in the period following Israel's Babylonian captivity, these ancient poems were gathered together and deliberately placed in the Book of Psalms before us. And the book has a unique design and message that you may not notice unless you read it cover to cover. To see how the book of Psalms is designed, it would be very helpful to start from the bottom. The book concludes with five poems of praise to the God of Israel, each beginning and ending with the word "hallelujah," which in Hebrew is a command to tell a group of people to praise him "Jah," short for divine . name Jehovah.

This is a pretty good five-part setup and it feels like someone is giving us a conclusion to the book here. The question arises: "Does the book have other signs of deliberate design?" If you pay attention to the titles of the poems, you will notice that in five places, your Bible translators put the titles: "book one", "book two", "book three", "four", and "five" at different points. , which divide the book into five large parts. The reason for this is that the last poems in each of these parts have a similar ending, which seems like an editorial addition. It goes something like this: "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, forever and ever, amen and amen." So the book has a conclusion, it has an internal organization in five main parts, which naturally leads to the beginning of the book, to look for the introductory part.

And what do we find here? Psalms 1 and 2, which are left out of Book One, because most of the poems in Book One have to do with David, except for Psalms 1 and 2, whose authors are anonymous. Psalm 1 celebrates the fact how happy a person is who meditates on the Torah, reading it in prayer day and night, as well as obeying it. The word "Torah" simply means "teaching" and more specifically refers to the five books of Moses, found at the beginning of the Old Testament. And here, in fact, the word seems to be used with both meanings in mind, which explains why the book has five main parts.

The book of Psalms is offered as a new Torah that will teach God's people the lifelong practice of prayer as they strive to obey God's commandments given in the first Torah. Psalm 2 is a poetic reflection on God's promises to King David in 2 Samuel, chapter 7, that one day a Messianic King would come and establish God's kingdom over the world, defeating evil and rebellion among the nations. Psalm 2 concludes by saying that all who take refuge in the Messianic King "shall be blessed," the exact same word used to open Psalm 1. Thus, together these two poems show us that the Book of Psalms was designed to be the prayer. book of God's people as he strives to be faithful to the commandments of the Torah and as he waits and waits for the coming Messianic Kingdom.

After introducing these two themes, we can begin to see how smaller books are also designed around these ideas. For example, Book One, right in the center, has a collection of poems, Psalms 15-24, that begins and closes with a call to covenant loyalty. Then, in Psalms 16 through 18, we find a description of David as an example of this faithfulness. Then, he cries out to God to deliver him, and God raises him up as King. In the series of related poems Psalms 20-23, the David of the past becomes the figure of the Messianic King of the future, who will also cry out to God, be delivered, and be given a kingdom over the nations.

And then, at the center of this collection is a poem, Psalm 19, dedicated to praising God for the Torah. Here it is: Two themes from Psalms 1 and 2 are closely related here. The Second Book opens with two poems that unite them in their hope for a future return, to the temple of Zion and this is the vision, which is closely related to the hope of the Messianic Kingdom. Book Two closes with a poem describing the coming reign of the Messianic King over all nations. This poem is truly magnificent because it echoes all the other passages of the prophets about the Messianic Kingdom and ends by saying that the reign of this king will bring about the fulfillment of God's ancient promise to Abraham, to bring God's blessing to all people. nations.

The third book also ends with a poem reflecting on God's promises to David, but this time in light of Israel's captivity. Thus, the poet remembers how God said that he would never abandon David's descendants. But now he is seeing the rebellion of Israel in its consequences and its destruction, the captivity and the ruin of the seed of David. The poet ends the poem by asking God to never forget his promise to David. Book Four is designed to respond to this crisis of captivity. So the opening poem goes back to the roots of Israel with a prayer from Moses, and he does what he did on Mount Sinai after the Golden Calf incident, which is to cry out to God for mercy.

The center of Book Four is dominated by a group of poems proclaiming that Jehovah, the God of Israel, reigns as the true king of the world and of all creation (the trees, the mountains, the rivers), all called to celebrate that day when God will bring his justice and his kingdom over the whole world. Book Five begins with a series of poems confirming that God hears the cry of his people and will one day send his future king to defeat evil and bring about the kingdom of God. This book also contains two larger collections, one called "Halel" and the other "Song of Migrations." Each of these collections ends with a poem about the coming Messianic Kingdom.

And these two collections together contain the hope of an exodus-like work of God to redeem his people. Right in the middle of them is Psalm 119. It is the longest poem in the book. It is an alphabetical poem, each verse begins with a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and explores the wonder and gift of the Torah as God's Word to his people. And that is. The themes of Psalms 1 and 2, the Torah, and the Messiah are combined here in Book Five, bringing us back to the conclusion of the five poem. In the central poem, Psalm 148, all creation is called to praise the God of Israel, for he "has lifted up the rib of his people." The rib here is a metaphor for the bull's rib raised in victory.

And this figure echoes the same figure used in the song of Hannah, 1 Samuel chapter 2, but also in Psalm 132 above. The rib symbolizes the coming of the Messianic King and his victory over evil. It is a fitting conclusion to this magnificent book. There's one more thing you'll probably miss if you don't read this book in turn. There are many different types of poems in the book of Psalms, but they all pretty much fall into two broad categories: poems of lament or poems of praise. Lamentation poems express pain, bewilderment, and anger at how terrible the world is and the terrible things that are happening to the poet.

Therefore, these poems draw attention to what is wrong in the world and ask God to do something about it. There are many such poems in the book, which tells us something important: this lament is an appropriate response to the evil we see in our world. But what you will notice is that the lament poems predominate earlier, at the beginning of the book, in parts 1-3. Pay attention, because you will also see praise poems from time to time. Praise poems are poems of joy and celebration and direct our attention to what is good in the world. They retell the stories of what God has done in our lives and thank God for it.

In the fourth and fifth books you will notice that the poems of praise manage to outnumber the poems of lamentation, and the whole culminates with the conclusion of the five-part hallelujah. Thus, this change from lament to praise is something profound and tells us about the nature of prayer. As we hoped for the Messianic Kingdom, as the book teaches us to do, this will create tension as we look at the tragic state of our world and our lives. Thus, the

psalms

teach us not to ignore the pain in our lives, but at the same time, biblical faith looks forward to the promises of God's future messianic Kingdom: that is, the Torah and the Messiah, lamentation and praise, faith. and the hope.

This is what the Book of Psalms is about. Contact us: [email protected]