The Design of the Psalter


Book Description

Good poetry is like a good painting: the more you linger over it, the more it reveals. It is a deep well that never runs dry. And that is why the Psalter, like a good painting, keeps giving. In the last four decades, Psalms scholarship has found remarkable fruitfulness in reading the Psalter as a book—that is, in reading the Psalms as a unified composition with a metanarrative across its 150 poems. Pivotal questions associated with this approach really boil down to two questions—how and why? How are individual psalms sequenced, if at all, and what is the design logic behind that macrostructure? This volume seeks to answer those questions. In essence, the Psalter unfurls the story of the Davidic covenant. While interest in the editing of the Psalter remains high in recent Psalms scholarship, this interest has not led to clear consensus. The specific and timely contribution of this volume is twofold. First, it consolidates the results of studies on groups of psalms. Second, it integrates poetic and thematic approaches that are typically separated in Psalms scholarship. Readers will find results of this study surprising and their implications sobering.







An Intertextual Commentary to the Psalter


Book Description

When reading the Psalter, the sequencing of individual psalms is often overlooked or taken for granted, and it is easy to assume that the psalms’ placement results purely from happenstance. The present volume, however, assumes that strategic approaches to juxtaposition, which editors and arrangers apply elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, were similarly adopted in the arrangement of the Psalter. Furthermore, the Intertextual Commentary illuminates the vast array of biblical texts employed by the psalmists. In addition to the commonly recognized literary tool kit available to biblical poets (parallelism, metaphor, anthropomorphism, chiasmus, etc.), the poets relied heavily on inner-biblical allusion and exegesis to construct their compositions. Primarily adopting a diachronic approach, Emanuel isolates literary sources employed by the psalmists, and further postulates how the psalmists wove specific words and phrases into the fabric of their compositions.




The Conflict Between Faith and Experience, and the Shape of Psalms 73–83


Book Description

Stephen J. Smith enters the lively field of editorial-criticism of the Hebrew Psalter or Psalterexegese with this detailed investigation into the final form of Psalms 73-83. In the book, he engages scholarly disagreements over this collection's structure, the degree and nature of its literary unity, and the primary theological message(s) it communicates. Smith argues that the sequence of Psalms 73–82 - and possibly 83 – has a deliberate design that reflects a sustained focus on addressing, and resolving, a multidimensional collision between “faith” (i.e., core Israelite beliefs about God) and “experience” (i.e., the individual/community's lived experience of God) that was precipitated by God's prolonged absence in the Temple's destruction (c. 586/587 BCE). Parting ways with previous scholarship, Smith contends that a recursive organizing principle rooted in biblical parallelism structures the collection. Over the book's nine chapters, he makes the case that the editor(s) grouped its psalms into two major blocks (74-78; 79-82) of two sub-groupings each (74-76, 77-78; 79/82, 80-81) in order to develop a single topic in multiple dimensions: the severe threat that God's prolonged absence in the temple's destruction posed to the ongoing viability of various core Israelite beliefs about God, most fundamentally God's goodness. Smith makes the case that the collection is shaped to resolve this crisis by bolstering the reader's confidence in, and commitment to, these beliefs in the face of their apparent failure.




The Message of the Psalter


Book Description

What's really going on in the Psalms? Is it just an anthology of old Israelite songs? Or is there more to it than anyone ever guessed? This evergreen classic is the book that first proposed, in 1997, a messianic metanarrative in the Psalms. It explains how someone arranged the Psalms to outline a program of future events like in Zechariah 9-14. There is an appendix of apocalyptic midrashim, translated into English for the first time. A bridegroom-Messiah gathers exiled Israel. He sets up a kingdom, but dies a violent death. Israel are scattered in the wilderness of the nations. Then they are gathered again in troublous times. Finally, they are rescued by a king from the heavens. He sets his throne on Zion and receives the homage of the nations. 160,000 words. Read all about it!




Reading the Psalms Theologically


Book Description

The Psalms as Christian Scripture. Reading the Psalms Theologically presents rich biblical-theological studies on the Psalter. Reading the Psalter as a Unified Book: Recent Trends (David M. Howard and Michael K. Snearly) The Macrostructural Design and Logic of the Psalter: An Unfurling of the Davidic Covenant (Peter C. W. Ho) David's Biblical Theology and Typology in the Psalms: Authorial Intent and Patterns of the Seed of Promise (James M. Hamilton) A Story in the Psalms? Narrative Structure at the "Seams" of the Psalter's Five Books (David "Gunner" Gunderson) Does the Book of Psalms Present a Divine Messiah? (Seth D. Postell) The Suffering Servant in Book V of the Psalter (Jill Firth) Excavating the "Fossil Record" of a Metaphor: The Use of the Verb nasa' as "to forgive" in the Psalter (C. Hassell Bullock) The Art of Lament in Lamentations (May Young) The Psalms of Lament and the Theology of the Cross (Rolf A. Jacobson) "In Sheol, who can give you praise?" Death in the Psalms (Philip S. Johnston) Psalm 32: More Accurately a Declarative Praise than Penitential Psalm (Daniel J. Estes) Theology of the Nations in the Book of Psalms (Ryan J. Cook) Psalm 87 and the Promise of Inclusion (Jamie A. Grant) YHWH Among the Gods: The Trial for Justice in Psalm 82 (Andrew J. Schmutzer) Reclaiming Divine Sovereignty in the Anthropocene: Psalms 93–100 and the Convergence of Theology and Ecology (J. Clinton McCann) A Theology of Glory: Divine Sanctum and Service in the Psalter (Jerome Skinner) Perceptions of Divine Presence in the Levitical Psalms of Book 2: The Paradox of Distance and Proximity (J. Nathan Clayton) Psalm 110, Jesus, and Melchizedek (David C. Mitchell) The essays interpret the Psalms as a carefully-composed book. Each study focuses on a biblical or theological topic, drawing insights from past interpreters and current scholarship.




The Illuminated Psalter


Book Description

The 150 Psalms of the Old Testament were the most important work of devotional literature in the Middle Ages. The Book of Psalms came to be transmitted not only as part of the Bible, but also, in the form of the psalter, as a text in its own right. The psalter came to be illustrated-often profusely-as an aid to devotion at an early stage in is history, and it was a book which was frequently found in the possession of lay people. This volume brings together 28 contributions dealing with the 800 years between the mid-eighth and mid-sixteenth centuries, a period in which the psalter was increasingly owned and used by the laity in the form of richly illuminated manuscripts. As early as the Carolingian period, the illumination of psalters went beyond a mere textual illustration, and developed a narrative iconography with biblical or hagiographical content, and it was largely this autonomous iconography which connected the Old Testament texts with the tenets of the Christian faith. Also the frequent scenes or cycles of King David do not present illustrations of the psalms, but rather of events told elsewhere in the Old Testament. Renderings of individual Christian believers can also be found from the Carolingian period onwards, and represent some of the most original achievements of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century psalter illumination. This book includes an index of psalter references, a topographical list, 460 illustrations, and a register of some 800 manuscripts.




The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms


Book Description

An indispensable resource for students and scholars, The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms features a diverse array of essays that treat the Psalms from a variety of perspectives. Classical scholarship and approaches as well as contextual interpretations and practices are well represented. The coverage is uniquely wide ranging.




The Formation of the Hebrew Psalter


Book Description

"This volume, which is based on the papers given at a panel at the 2019 SBL International Meeting in Rome, represents current discourses in Psalms research. The past decades have been marked by the paradigm shift from form criticism to different exegetical approaches which consider the Book of Psalms as the literary context of the individual Psalms. More recently, it has been pointed out that the complex evidence given by the manuscripts from antiquity to the Middle Ages does not support the notion of a fixed canonical text as presupposed by some approaches. The present volume combines contributions about such basic considerations with studies of individual groups of Psalms. With different methodological and hermeneutical approaches, they open up perspectives on the interrelation between the origin, composition and reception of the Psalms." --




Psalms 1-50, Volume 19


Book Description

The Word Biblical Commentary delivers the best in biblical scholarship, from the leading scholars of our day who share a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation. This series emphasizes a thorough analysis of textual, linguistic, structural, and theological evidence. The result is judicious and balanced insight into the meanings of the text in the framework of biblical theology. These widely acclaimed commentaries serve as exceptional resources for the professional theologian and instructor, the seminary or university student, the working minister, and everyone concerned with building theological understanding from a solid base of biblical scholarship. Overview of Commentary Organization Introduction—covers issues pertaining to the whole book, including context, date, authorship, composition, interpretive issues, purpose, and theology. Each section of the commentary includes: Pericope Bibliography—a helpful resource containing the most important works that pertain to each particular pericope. Translation—the author’s own translation of the biblical text, reflecting the end result of exegesis and attending to Hebrew and Greek idiomatic usage of words, phrases, and tenses, yet in reasonably good English. Notes—the author’s notes to the translation that address any textual variants, grammatical forms, syntactical constructions, basic meanings of words, and problems of translation. Form/Structure/Setting—a discussion of redaction, genre, sources, and tradition as they concern the origin of the pericope, its canonical form, and its relation to the biblical and extra-biblical contexts in order to illuminate the structure and character of the pericope. Rhetorical or compositional features important to understanding the passage are also introduced here. Comment—verse-by-verse interpretation of the text and dialogue with other interpreters, engaging with current opinion and scholarly research. Explanation—brings together all the results of the discussion in previous sections to expose the meaning and intention of the text at several levels: (1) within the context of the book itself; (2) its meaning in the OT or NT; (3) its place in the entire canon; (4) theological relevance to broader OT or NT issues. General Bibliography—occurring at the end of each volume, this extensive bibliographycontains all sources used anywhere in the commentary.