Part 1 is on the Specialties page

Psalms 101:

What You Never Knew About the Middle of the Book, Part 2

By David McArdle

Genre

"One should think of this aspect of interpretation as being like the

Olympics, a grand occasion made up of a variety of sports. Though it is all sport, each game is played by its own rules and has its own expectations about how to play the game. The variety of literature is the same way. It all has a message, but it conveys that message in a variety of ways and with a variety of expectations. To try to play basketball with soccer's rules will never work, though both use a ball and require foot speed. Or think of musical instruments, they all make music, but in different ways with different sounds. One cannot play the violin like a piano or drums; nor should one expect a violin to sound like either a piano or the kettledrum!  In the same way, to read the poetry of the Psalms like a historical book is to miss the emotional and pictorial impact of the message, though both genres convey reality about people's experience with God. To transform the imagery and setting of the Psalter into mere theological proposition is also to take the passion and lifeblood out of its veins."  [Darrell Bock]

The psalms are Hebrew poetry. The major characteristic of Hebrew poetry is parallelism (of thought more than sound). The most frequent types of parallelism are the following.

In synonymous parallelism the writer repeats the thought of the first line in the following line (e.g., 24:1-3). Antithetic parallelism is the reverse; the second line expresses a contrasting thought compared to the first line (e.g., 1:6; 37:9). In synthetic parallelism the second line explains or expands the thought expressed in the first line (e.g., 19:7-9).

When the second line completes the thought of the first line, we have climactic parallelism (e.g., 29:1). It is important to observe parallelism because failure to do so can result in erroneous interpretation. For example, one might conclude that the writer is making an important distinction when all he is doing is restating the same idea in different words, in the case of synonymous parallelism.

Types

The messianic psalms are perhaps the most commonly known type. They predict the coming of a messiah. Traditionally interpreters have considered a psalm messianic if, having little or no relationship to its historical context, it anticipated the Messiah or predicted the Messiah.  Franz Delitzsch broke these psalms down into five kinds. The first is the purely prophetic, which predicts that a future Davidic king would be the Lord (Ps. 110). Second, the eschatological psalms predict the coming of Messiah and the consummation of His kingdom (Psalm 96—99, et al.). Third, we have the typological prophetic in which the writer describes his own experience but goes beyond that to describe what became true of the Messiah (e.g., Ps. 22). Fourth, there are the indirectly messianic psalms composed for a contemporary king but having ultimate fulfillment in Messiah (Psalm 2: 45; 72). Fifth, we have the typically messianic in which the writer was some way typical of Messiah, but all he wrote in the psalm did not describe Him (e.g., Ps. 34:20; 109:8 as used in Acts 1:20).  The following seem to be messianic psalms in whole or in part: 2 (cf. Matt. 3:17; Acts 13:33; Heb. 1:5; 5:5; 7:28; 2 Pet. 1:17); 8 (Matt. 21:15-16; Heb. 2:6-9); 16 (Acts 2:25-28; 13:35); 22 (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34); 34; 40; 41; 45 (Heb. 1:8-9); 68; 69 (John 2:17; 15:25); 72; 96—99; 102; 109; 110; and 118 (Matt. 2 1:42). 

Some interpreters think of the imprecatory psalms as a distinct type on the basis of their subject matter.  These psalms contain imprecations, or curses, on God's enemies. They have created a problem for some Christians since Jesus Christ taught His disciples to bless their enemies and not to curse them (Matt. 5:43-44; Luke 6:27-28; cf. Rom. 12:14).

In the progress of revelation it was not easy for the writers of the psalms to see the details of the future distinctly. They could not feel the peace about God's ultimate establishment of justice that modern believers who know their Bibles do. Consequently when they witnessed injustice and oppression they did not usually know how God would deal with it, so they called on Him to vindicate Himself immediately. With the coming of Jesus Christ and the added revelation He provided, believers now have a fuller picture of how God will balance the scales of justice. It is therefore inappropriate for us to pray imprecations of the sort we find in the Old Testament. God has recorded them for our benefit, not as examples to follow in their wording but in their spirit of zeal for God's glory.  I am inclined to believe that the psalmists sometimes (not always) went "over the top" and said things they really should not have said in their anger and zeal. We have other examples of such language in Job. The fact that Scripture records what people said and did, even though this went beyond God's will does not mean that God approved their words and deeds.

Most of the imprecations in the psalms occur in only one or two verses in a given psalm. However there are a few psalms that are almost entirely imprecatory (e.g., Psalm 35, 69, and 109). Hassell Bullock, wrote that there are at least seven psalms that fall into this category: 35, 55, 59, 69, 79, 109, and 137. Of these, 35, 69, and 109 are the most intense.

What is now the most common way of classifying the psalms originated with the German scholar Hermann Gunkel (1862-1932) at the beginning of the twentieth century.  He was one of the founders of the form critical school of scholarship that sought to understand a given portion of Scripture by analyzing the form in which the writer composed it.

Scholars then compared that form with other biblical and contemporary literature from the ancient Near Eastern countries that were Israel's neighbors, particularly Egypt and Mesopotamia. Gunkel classified the psalms into various categories or types by trying to identify the general situation in life that brought them into existence rather than by their content. He proposed seven types: hymns, community laments, songs of the individual, thank offering songs, laments of the individual, entrance liturgies, and royal psalms. Gunkel concluded that most of the psalms were postexilic. Many scholars have followed this form critical approach in their study of the Psalms as well as in other portions of the Old Testament.  Sigmund Mowinckel followed Gunkel but took a more radical approach and proposed that virtually all of the psalms were composed for liturgical or cultic purposes.  Claus Westermann, following Mowinckel, took a more mediating position and simplified the types of psalms into two: psalms of lament and psalms of praise. He further subdivided the psalms of lament into either communal or individual, depending on the speaker, and he subdivided the psalms of praise into declarative (communal or individual) or descriptive, depending on the subject matter.  Walter Brueggemann refined this form critical approach further.  He divided the psalms into those that express orientation to the status quo, those that express disorientation with it, and those that present a new orientation to a better, future life.

Most form critical scholars speculated about the origins of the various psalms and concluded that priests wrote most of them late in Israel's history. This has led many conservatives to reject form criticism completely. Nonetheless this school of interpreters has given us some helpful information, namely, the various literary types of psalms that appear in the book.

Some of the more important types of psalms by literary form are the following.  Individual laments are psalms by individuals calling on God for help from distress.  National or communal laments are similar but voice a corporate cry for help in view of some national situation. Typically laments begin with a complaint, contain a statement of trust, and end with praise of God.

"Laments outnumber every other kind of psalm in the Psalter; almost a third of the psalms belong to this category."  [Edward Curtis]

Thanksgiving psalms—sometimes also called psalms of declarative praise—center on some act of deliverance God granted His people. Descriptive praise psalms offer praise to God for Himself or for His general working rather than for a specific instance of His working. The poets wrote the pilgrim psalms, also called songs of ascent, for singing by the Israelites as they made their thrice-yearly pilgrimages up to Jerusalem for the required festival observances there. Royal psalms are those in which the king of Israel is the chief character. Some event in his reign is being described, such as his coronation, wedding, or departure for battle. The enthronement psalms speak of the Lord as the great king fulfilling His role in some way such as reigning or coming to judge.

Another type of psalm, based on the form in which the writer set it rather than on the subject matter, is the acrostic. In these psalms each verse, or group of verses in the case of Psalm 119, begins with the succeeding letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The psalmists adopted this style so the Israelites could memorize and remember the psalm easily. This form also suggests a complete or exhaustive expression of the psalmist's mind on his subject. The acrostic psalms are these: 9, 10, 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119, and 145.

Quotations

The New Testament writers quoted the Book of Psalms more frequently than any other Old Testament book. The "Index of Quotations" in the United Bible Societies' fourth edition of the Greek New Testament lists just over 400 quotations from the Psalter, including phrases as well as complete verses. In comparison, this New Testament identified 47 quotations from Isaiah, the second most frequently quoted Old Testament book. Of the 150 psalms, the New Testament quotes 35 of them.

Values

"If God's people before the Incarnation could have such a faith in the Lord, witnessing to his greatness and readiness to help, how much more should this be true among twentieth-century Christians? The Book of Psalms can revolutionize our devotional life, our family patterns, and the fellowship and the witness of the church of Jesus Christ."  [VanGemeren]

"We are in danger of losing the Psalter in our churches; indeed, many have already lost it, and so it is no accident that many people in our congregations do not know how to pray."  [Elizabeth Achtemeier]