Granted that the Book of Psalms occupies a large amount of space in the middle of Christian Bibles. And granted that Christian worship services, especially in liturgical churches, reserve a place for the reading of psalms. Why should the Christian pay special attention to this part of the Old Testament? Wouldn't one's time be better spent studying the New Testament?
The best answer to those questions comes from looking at what the Book of Psalms has meant to God’s people throughout history.
And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself (verse 27).
Later when they realized who had been with them, Luke reports:
Jesus "opened the scriptures" to them. That is, he interpreted the Old Testament in the light of his understanding of his own mission. As we examine the quotations from the Psalms in the New Testament, we see that they are read Christologically. Jesus taught, and the writers of the New Testament believed, that the Psalms taught them about Christ. The Epistle to the Hebrews is almost a running dialogue with the Psalms. It uses the quotations to demonstrate the uniqueness of Jesus as God's supreme and final provision for our salvation.They said to each other, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?" (verse 32).
In Western Christianity the church's worship developed liturgically into
a form that is still recognizable in the liturgies of the Roman,
Anglican, and other liturgical churches. A Psalm is normally
included in the central eucharistic service. Other services for
the Hours also featured the Psalms prominently.
For centuries the churches deriving from the Protestant reformation of
the sixteenth century made the Psalms an important part of their
worship. Within Reformed circles alone, many editions of Psalters,
especially Metrical Psalters adapting the Psalms to western music,
were published in order to make the Psalms accessible to the average
worshiper. In most Presbyterian churches the music consisted
exclusively of Psalms well into the nineteenth century, and there are
still a few Presbyterian or Reformed churches where Psalms are sung to
the exclusion of all other types of worship music.
Present day members of liturgical churches such as Anglicans may be less
aware of this, since the Psalms still enjoy an assigned place in
the liturgy they experience on Sunday morning, but even there it is
true. In Anglican circles, for example, the Prayer Book has receded
somewhat from the central place it formerly occupied in Anglican spirituality,
and people have become less familiar with services like Morning Prayer,
Evening Prayer, and other Daily Office services that used to place the
Psalms constantly before the worshiper. Anglicans who employ
the Book of Common Prayer and its Daily Office lectionary for their own
private daily meditations will recognize how devoid of the Psalms is
the current liturgical life of the church.
Perhaps another marker of the relative eclipse of the Psalms in modern
Christianity is the answer to this question: When did you last
hear a sermon based on a Psalm?
Many western Christians, especially in North America and Europe, live in relative comfort. One prominent feature of the Psalms is that they deal with life in all its parts, including the bad times. As one reads through the Psalms, he is confronted with the full range of human experience, and especially by spiritual poverty and need. The single most prominent type of Psalm is the Lament, a prayer in which the worshiper complains to God because he has been afflicted in some way, either physically, or psychically, or by tormentors and enemies. At the other end of the emotional spectrum, there are Psalms which are exuberant and express joyful praise to God.
The wide range of human experience that is reflected in the Psalms explains
why, in times of suffering and oppression, Christians have always
instinctively turned to the Book of Psalms to find hope. I
suspect that the level of familiarity or popularity of the Psalms may
be a function of our level of comfort with this present world that
we live in. When Christians become too much at home in this world,
we no longer realize our spiritual poverty and need. We are comfortable,
so why do we need to lament or praise? In this state of spiritual
torpor, Christians need to be taught anew how to pray and how to praise
God.
All too often people are unaware of their desperate spiritual need. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young German theologian who was executed by Hitler only a month before the end of World War II, wrote a brief but powerful introduction to the Psalms [Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible, 1973, Augsburg Fortress Publishers] in which he makes a number of cogent points about our need for the Psalms:
. . . it is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself. For then we confuse wishes, hopes, sighs, laments, rejoicings - all of which the heart can do by itself - with prayer. And we confuse earth and heaven, man and God. Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one's heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty. No man can do that by himself. For that he needs Jesus Christ. [Pages 9-10.]
The child learns to speak because his father speaks to him. He learns the speech of his father. So we learn to speak to God because God has spoken to us and speaks to us. By means of the speech of the Father in heaven his children learn to speak with him. Repeating God's own words after him we begin to pray to him. [Pages 9-10.]
It does not depend . . . on whether the Psalms express adequately that which we feel at a given moment in our heart. If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray. If we were dependent entirely on ourselves, we would probably pray only the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer. But God wants it otherwise. The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart” (p.14-15).
Consider the example of King David, who wrote many of the Psalms: He lived the entire range of human experience, high and low. He knew what it was to be rejected and hunted, to be victorious and riding high, to fall into the depths of moral guilt and sin, and to be forgiven of the worst kinds of sins. The Book of Psalms contains the distilled wisdom and richness of these kinds of human-divine interactions.
The Psalms reveal the character of God. As we read them, we learn of:
The Psalms reveal the character of Man as a creature:
The Psalms grab our whole person and engage us in a way that some other parts of Scripture may not. This is because they use multiple methods of communication that appeal to different aspects of our nature.
Like all of Scripture, the Psalms contain Torah, which is often translated "Law" but is really broader than that. In many cases "Instruction" is a better translation. God's instruction is directed to our minds. It informs us about God's nature, his ways, and his moral demands on us. It is also directed to our will. God's instruction exhorts, urges us, commands us. In this way, the Psalms are much like other parts of Scripture.
(Later we will examine more closely the nature of the poetic language found in the Psalms.)
Originally the Psalms were composed to be sung or chanted in the temple worship of ancient Israel, and this practice is widely attested in the Old Testament. It was continued later in Judaism and in the early Christian Church. The Book of Psalms has aptly been called "the hymnbook of the Second Temple," since its final canonical form was utilized in the temple worship of the first century A.D. We could also call it the hymnbook of Christ, since he participated in the synagogue and temple worship where the Psalms would have been sung.
Because the Psalms engage us in such rich and varied ways, appealing to our intellect, will, and emotions, they can speak to us powerfully when we are in great need. This explains why those who are suffering have always turned to the Psalms for comfort and help. Does this relate to the relative absence of the Psalms in American worship? Perhaps when American Christians experience suffering, they too will turn more frequently to the Psalms.
If one reads the writings of great Christians of the past, he will find that the Psalms were an important part of their religious life. Many of these saints apparently memorized the entire Book of Psalms and were able to recite it from memory. But how did they appropriate this book? Evidence indicates that they did so primarily by reading or singing the Psalms repetitively in cycles.
Monastic practice was often to memorize all of the Psalms.
Some monastic orders recited the entire Psalter on a daily basis as
part of the Liturgy of the Hours. This monastic tradition may explain
how the Church Fathers were able to make such liberal use of the Psalms
in their writings.
In Eastern Orthodoxy there are a number of approaches to using the Psalms,
but frequently the entire Psalter is read on a weekly cycle.
During the reformation of the English church, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer instituted a 30 day cycle of reciting the Psalms that is still printed in the Psalter of the Book of Common Prayer, with indications of Psalms appointed for Morning or Evening Prayer. The Daily Office Lectionary in the current Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church in the USA provides a 7 week cycle. Both of these developed out of the earlier monastic practice. By following them, one will read through the Psalms either monthly or on a 7 week cycle. After a few years of observing this practice, the Psalms begin to become close friends that are constantly with one, ready to provide help in time of need.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of the importance of building the Psalms into one's life through constant exposure to them:
In many churches the Psalms are read or sung every Sunday, or even daily, in succession. These churches have preserved a priceless treasure, for only with daily use does one appropriate this divine prayer book. When read only occasionally, these prayers are too overwhelming in design and power and tend to turn us back to more palatable fare. But whoever has begun to pray the Psalter seriously and regularly will soon give a vacation to other little devotional prayers and say: ‘Ah, there is not the juice, the strength, the passion, the fire which I find in the Psalter. It tastes too cold and too hard’ (Luther)
Therefore, wherever we no longer pray the Psalms in our churches, we must take up the Psalter that much more in our daily morning and evening prayers, reading and praying together at least several Psalms every day so that we succeed in reading through this book a number of times each year, getting into it deeper and deeper. We also ought not to select Psalms at our own discretion, thinking that we know better what we ought to pray than does God himself. To do that is to dishonor the prayer book of the Bible. In the ancient church it was not unusual to memorize “the entire David.” In one of the eastern churches this was a prerequisite for the pastoral office. The church father St. Jerome says that one heard the Psalms being sung in the fields and gardens in his time. The Psalter impregnated the life of early Christianity. Yet more important than all of this is the fact that Jesus died on the cross with the words of the Psalter on his lips.
It appears that the Church Fathers, the monks, Archbishop Cranmer, and Bonhoeffer were correct: constant exposure to the Psalms is the means to assimilating them. As we shall see, the Psalms' own prescription for knowing God lies along these same lines.Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure vanishes from the Christian church. With its recovery will come unsuspected power. [From Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible, pages 25-26.]
We will complete our first lesson on the Psalms by looking at Psalm 1,
which has some counsel for those who would seek to follow God:
1Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers.
2But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And on his law he meditates day and night.
3He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
4The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff which the wind drives away.
5Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
It is generally agreed that the first Psalm is not positioned accidentally, but rather serves as an introduction to the entire Psalter. As such, it recommends a particular way of life and warns of the consequences of departing from it.
A prominent motif in Psalm 1 is the theme of the Two Ways. This
notion of Two Ways that confront one as he journeys through life is
common in Wisdom literature, so much so that it is considered to be
a typical Wisdom theme. Here are some examples from Proverbs, the
premier work of wisdom literature in the Bible. First, Proverbs
2:10-15:
Similarly, Proverbs 2:20-22:10 For wisdom will come into your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
11 discretion will watch over you;
understanding will guard you;
12 delivering you from the way of evil,
from men of perverted speech,
13 who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness,
14 who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil;
15 men whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways.
20 So you will walk in the way of good men and keep to the paths of the righteous.
21 For the upright will inhabit the land, and men of integrity will remain in it;
22 but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.
The similarity between these passages and Psalm 1 is obvious. The
Two Ways theme dominates the psalm, as the following outline reveals:
Verses 1-3 — The Way of Life
Verses 4-5 — The Way of Doom
Verse 6 — Their Separate Ends
Psalm 1 opens the Psalter by celebrating the blessed state of the person
who has made the right fundamental choice in life. In contrast
to those who waste their lives by paying heed to and joining those who
live in rebellion against God's moral law and scoff at it, the one who
has chosen the right way immerses himself in the task of knowing God. And
that task is centered around God's instruction, his Torah. The
one who has chosen the right way has not done so out of coercion, but because
he delights in God's instruction, so much so that he is constantly ("day
and night") meditating on it. God's will as revealed in Torah is
always on his mind. He orders his life in this way "not because he
has to, but because he wants to" (Bruce Waltke). He has chosen wisely,
and the result of that choice is a fruitfulness in all aspect of his life
(v. 3).
The Psalmist sees only two categories of persons: the righteous and
the wicked. Having described the former as the one who founds his life
on God's instruction, he turns in verse 4 to a contrasting picture of the
wicked - those who have chosen wrongly, who are the opposite in every respect
of all that he declared "blessed" in verses 1-3. The wicked, he tells
us, do not prosper. Instead, they are rootless, they are like the chaff,
the dry, outer husk of grain that is removed during the threshing process.
It has practically no weight and is simply blown away by the wind,
while the valuable grain remains behind to be ground and made into food.
Thus in language chaff has come figuratively to mean any trivial
or worthless thing. The wicked, those who reject God's way, are as
impermanent and ephemeral as chaff: here now, only to disappear with
the next wind. Lest anyone misunderstand, however, in verse 5 the fate
of the wicked is explained in more concrete terms that also explain the apparent
discrepancy in the assertion that the wicked do not prosper. After
all, we all know that sometimes the wicked do, in fact, prosper. Even
the Psalms acknowledge this (e.g., Ps. 73). However, they also
know that such prosperity is temporary (37:1-2), and here in Psalm 1 their
ultimate end is in view: they will not be able to stand, they
will be laid low, as it were, at the Judgement. Another way of expressing
this, the other side of the coin, is that these "sinners" (another term for
the wicked) will not be be able to stand in the congregation of the righteous.
That is, they have no place in that company of God's faithful followers.
Psalm 1 concludes by contrasting the end of the journey, the telos,
of the two ways. For the righteous, the LORD
"knows" their way. This is probably more than just an acknowledgment
of God's omniscience. If it were merely a reference to cognition,
it could also be said that God knows the way of the wicked. But here
God's knowing of the righteous is parallel to an opposite: The way
of the wicked will perish. So God's "knowing" of the righteousness
must be a positive good in this context, perhaps in a relational sense.
In order to determine this with greater certainty, we should examine
other references to God "knowing" the righteous and see what help they might
give us. For the purpose of today's lesson, we will leave that exercise
to the future.
As mentioned earlier, Psalm 1 is a wisdom psalm. It's lesson is that wisdom is rooted in the Law, the Torah, that is, the instruction, of the LORD. The wise person delights in God's instruction and saturates his every waking moment with reflection on it. Why is this particular theme highlighted in the introduction to the Psalms? In this connection, it is instructive to compare St. Paul's exhortation in Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” St. Paul calls on his readers to undergo a process of transformation that comes about through the renewal of one's mind. The process begins with the mind and then affects one’s whole life. Going back to the beginning of the Psalms, we see that Psalm 1 is positioned at the beginning of the entire collection of Psalms as an invitation to the reader to immerse himself in the Psalter, thereby transforming his life and coming to delight in God’s will and his Word. Psalm 1 is commending a Word-based spirituality. Thus, the various practices we saw in church history for frequently reciting the Psalms is an entirely appropriate and necessary response. They are a means for one who delights in God's word to meditate on his instruction and thereby renew the mind. As the Psalm tells us, such people will be fruitful.
At this point our next task is to begin getting to know the Psalms, and
the best way to do this, as we have seen, is to begin a program of reading
Psalms each day. The object is to read through the entire Book of
Psalms at a rate that will permit the process to be repeated with sufficient
frequency to begin embedding the language, the patterns, the rhythms of
the Psalms in one's mind. The student is free to devise his own plan
for doing this, if desired, but I recommend instead that he follow one of
two approaches that can be found in the Book of Common Prayer. The first
follows Cranmer's divisions in the Psalter contained in the Book of Common
Prayer. The Psalter is divided into thirty days of readings, with
Psalms for the morning and the evening. This allows one to read sequentially
through the entire Psalter in a month, twelve times a year. Another
approach is to use the Daily Office Lectionary found in the Book of Common
Prayer. This provides daily Psalms for both morning and evening, but
it follows a seven week instead of a thirty day cycle. Also, rather
than reading the Psalms sequentially as with Cranmer's thirty day cycle,
there is some attempt to fit the readings to the season of the church calendar.
Christians from non-liturgical traditions may be unfamiliar with the
various seasons of the traditional church calendar (e.g., Advent, Epiphany,
Lent, Easter, etc.) and might find it more difficult to catch on to this
approach initially. The main point is to embark on a journey, a process
that will over time impress the Psalms onto one's mind and heart. In
keeping with this, the Psalms should be read reverently, thoughtfully, and
prayerfully, and not hurriedly. Try to shut out the clamor of the world
and concentrate your attention on the Psalms you are reading. At the
same time, do not spend a huge amount of time on each Psalm. Reflect
on it, but do not approach it as an exegetical Bible study lesson.
I recommend that you read each Psalm aloud. Why aloud? Because the affective element comes through the sound of the words, so it is desirable to read (or even sing) the Psalms aloud in order for them to have the fullest possible impact on you.
As you read the Psalms, briefly note the type of each. In later lessons we will cover the various types of Psalms, but for now use these major categories:
Lament Psalms, including Penitential Psalms.
Praise Psalms, which are of several types:
- Declaring what God has done for someone, thanking him.
- Describing God and his creative activity.
- Royal psalms, about God’s anointed servant through whom God’s rule is established.
- Wisdom: insight into living life the right way.
Also, record brief observations, insights about God, about us, our condition, our hope, etc.