This week’s “Wednesday Word” is a summary of an introduction to the book of Psalms by Dr. Wellum from Sunday June 15, 2008.

The book of Psalms, like any other book of the Bible, must be interpreted with a view to its place in the overarching storyline of Scripture if one is to grasp its full significance. While each Psalm is, in a sense, a self-contained literary work, the book of Psalms is not merely a collection of disparate poems, strung together without rhyme or reason. Neither is the book itself without particular salvation-historical significance in relation to the other books of the Bible.

A study of the Psalms reveals that the book was given its final and canonical form during the post-exilic era. Included are songs as early as that of Moses (Ps. 90) and as late as that of the exiles who “sat down and wept” “by the rivers of Babylon” (Ps. 137:1). The latter reveals the book’s post-exilic arrangement, meaning that the first people to actually use the Psalter to which we now have access were those who were either suffering in exile at the hands of the Babylonians, or by those who had returned to Judah under Persian rule (making them in effect exiles in their own land). When this is understood, the strong Messianic overtones of the Psalms may be read with a greater sense of the urgency with which they were first sung. Post-exilic Jews were anticipating God’s return to His people, His defeat of their enemies, His reestablishment of the Kingdom of Israel, and His reinstatement of Israel’s Davidic king. It is no wonder, then, that these themes dominate the Psalter.

That these themes are important for the book as a whole may be seen in the fact that they appear in the first two Psalms, songs that serve as a programmatic introduction to the book. Psalm 1 distinguishes between the righteous and the wicked. There is “the assembly of the righteous” (v. 6, a reference to Israel) and there are “sinners” (v. 6, a reference to enemy nations and those within Israel who rebel against Yahweh). Psalm 2 then asserts God’s sovereignty, His choosing of Israel, and a warning to the nations to pay homage to Israel and Israel’s God lest they be destroyed by the true King.

In singing through the Psalter, a post-exilic Jew would recount the glory days of the Kingdom under David and Solomon and God’s deliverance in times past. He or she would also sing of their present distress and need for deliverance in the present, and look with great anticipation to the day when God would, once again, place His King on Israel’s throne. It should come as no surprise that when this King arrived, His followers appealed to these songs frequently as testimony to the fact that God’s promises were being fulfilled. The One of whom Israel sang had appeared. The Son of David had come. The object of Israel’s praise had taken on flesh and blood.

Audio from this week’s lesson: Overview of the Psalms.

~DGG