Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: — | Date: July 9, 2023 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

All right, this evening we have a little bit different lesson on the Psalms. We are not going to expound any of the Psalms, but it’s going to be a little more—I don’t know what to say—classroomish, academic. I hope that this will give you a little bit better understanding of the Psalter as we work our way through. But we want to look at this big subject of the shape and message of the Psalter. And we’ll start with 1 Chronicles 16; I will get there in a moment.

So we’re looking at the subject, then, of how is the Psalter put together? How are these 150 Psalms brought together in the book that we know as the Psalter? Have they come to be put together as they are in the arrangement that they are? Is there a reason for it? Is there an explanation? Is there something in that? The Psalms are a compiled work. It’s not like most of the other books that are the works of one author in particular, but we have many authors who have written these Psalms. And the question that we’re going to entertain this evening, then, is: how did all of this come about into this book of the Psalms that we have?

It’s been likened—and I think this is the best way to help understand, the best illustration—it’s been likened to a large river. You have innumerable springs that make their way into brooks and streams, and those streams and brooks make their way into rivers, and finally into a large river like the Mississippi, and it finally empties out into the ocean. Something like that has happened in the compiling of the Psalms, the 150 Psalms that we have. We have individual Psalms, and then there were various collections of the Psalms that were brought together in ancient times, and then finally brought together in its final form that we have with the 150 Psalms that we have in our Bibles.

The vast majority of the Psalms were written during the monarchy period, the time of David and afterwards, during the first temple. Mainly David; David wrote about half of these Psalms. Over time, the number of Psalms kept growing, and over time, the various collections of Psalms grew as well. We’ll see some of that in a minute. And finally, the 150 were brought together. And here we have then, at that point, the work of some editors that were involved. It is something like the Book of Proverbs, which is not entirely all of Solomon, but there’s some others as well, we are told. And so there’s some editors at some point that brought it all together.

Both the Christian community since ancient times, at Jesus’ time and before Jesus, and the Jewish community as well, recognized the work of the editors at this point to be inspired. There’s a strong tradition that Ezra had a hand in that—in the finalizing and the shape of the Psalter. And at that point, this is post-exilic times or exilic times—well, some of them had to be post-exilic because some of the Psalms reflect that. Bringing the Psalms together at that point was an act of faith in some way because many of those Psalms brought together at that point were calling the faithful from around the world even to come and to worship in Jerusalem. And that hope, in turn, of the renewed kingdom and all became a shaping factor in the compiling of the Psalter. We’ll see some of that as we go along.

Discernible Stages and Factors in the Growth and the Development of the Psalter

Stage one was obviously the individual Psalms are written. Don’t get the idea that—this is actually the view that many of the critical scholars have taken—that many of the Psalms were written, in fact most of the Psalms if not all, were written by individuals for their individual use and then finally brought together for public use. That’s not really the case at all. The Psalms were written by individuals, of course, but they’re written by individuals either for use in the temple, or even if they’re away from the temple with reference to the temple. The vast majority of them were written with that in mind.

We have David in exile, we have Israel in exile, but in all of those cases we find there’s an orientation toward the temple in Jerusalem. So David may be in exile away from Jerusalem, but he’s longing to be back in the house of the Lord. Or you find like in Psalm 137 where you have Israel in exile weeping because their captors are mocking them and say, “Sing us one of the Lord’s songs. Sing us one of the songs of Zion.” And how can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? And they’re lamenting that. But even with that, there’s the orientation toward Jerusalem and back toward the house of the Lord. So we have a first stage of it: the individual Psalms are written, and these are both for or away from the temple.

Stage two, we have Psalms written specifically for use in public worship. And the probably leading key indicator for this is in the superscript or the subscript: “To the choirmaster,” “For the director of music,” or however it’s translated in your version. By the way, several of you may ask some questions about that. I’ve mentioned that there are two elements of the superscripts: there’s the authorship and the performance. And the performance always comes first in the superscript, and that is because it’s actually the postscript to the previous Psalm. The performance aspect of the superscript is actually a postscript to the previous Psalm.

A couple of you have asked about that and expressed some great interest in it. You’re wondering why isn’t that reflected, then, in our Bibles? And the short answer is it’s not been recognized yet. The man that I’ve been working with in these studies, Dr. Bruce Waltke, has done the leading research in that area. He’s picked up on the work of a man about 100 years ago who did something similar. In that regard, I think back in the 1930s, and Dr. Waltke has pursued that further and has just nailed the study. We have that in an appendix in our book. If you can read Hebrew, you can make sense of it. I’ve got an abbreviated portion of it in one of the chapters. But he’s really established that, I think, beyond any reasonable doubt. And there’s expectation now that it will be reflected in time to come in new editions of the Bible. That’ll take some time, obviously, to make a big change like that.

Also, there’s another question. I should bring this up. It’s not really the place for it, but I gotta think of somewhere to do it. Someone had asked about if we have the arrangement of the Psalter by inspired editors who are placing the Psalms one next to another for various reasons and grouping them for various reasons and things like that, should we then look in the bigger picture of the biblical canon and understand the arrangement of our books of the Bible in that way as well? And in fact, that’s a new area, a rather new area of study. I’ve not seen anything in it until recent years. I’ve seen a couple of books on it. They use various terminology for it; there’s text and there’s paratext. And the paratext is the arrangement of the books together and all that. And it’s a fascinating study.

The difference is, in the Psalter, we have an inspired editor doing it. In the arrangement of the books of the Bible, we don’t have that. And so you have a different arrangement. For example, in the Hebrew canon, you have the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, but in the Greek, the Septuagint, which is what the English versions follow, you have a different arrangement. You have the Law and History and Poets and Prophecy. Both of those have their own logic to it, and even within that, in some of the Hebrew canon, a couple of the books are flipped back and forth, and there’s a different one ending the canon, and things like that. There’s a logic to that in every case, but in no case do we have an inspired order saying, “This is the way that you should do it.” There’s a profitable study in that to see why the books are arranged the way they are, because they tell the story, and the biblical story, in the big picture. But again, what’s unique with the Psalter here is we have an inspired editor doing the work for us.

All right, so we have the second stage here: Psalms written for public worship, for the director of music. David will write a Psalm. It might be a lament Psalm, like some that we’ve been looking at. And then he’ll hand it off to the choirmaster, and he’s making this now for the people of God to sing. So it might be a Psalm that’s about the king, and about his suffering and his laments and his trust in God and his praise, but it’s given to the choirmasters of the congregation now, and the choirs can sing it together. It’s made specifically for use in public worship.

If you’d like an example of that, keep your hand here. We will be back to 1 Chronicles 16, but look at Psalm 30. Psalm 30 is an interesting illustration of this as the superscript tells us the occasion of writing: “A Psalm of David, a song at the dedication of the temple.” Well, now that’s interesting because David wasn’t there for the dedication of the temple. And in fact, critical scholars will point to this and say, “Yeah, these superscripts don’t mean anything.” But in fact, what we have here is David looking forward to the building of the temple. God has told him that Solomon will do that. And David now has written this Psalm for use at that public occasion in public worship.

And there are a number of others related indications of the fact that the Psalms are written for use in public worship. The Psalter’s full of those. You have the Ascent Psalms where the whole focus of the Ascent Psalms is going up to the temple to worship. You have Psalms written by Asaph, the choir director, or one of the leaders of the musical guilds in ancient Israel. You have the various musical instruments that are used together in congregational usage. You have songs of thanksgiving, which are Psalms that were used in the worship at the temple at the time of offering a thank offering to God. You have the songs of Zion, and you have all kinds of indications in the Psalms that the orientation is toward the house of the Lord, and they’re for use in public worship by the people of God. The leading indicator of that, of course, is the fact that they’re given to the choirmaster, and now it’s for public use. So David, now—interesting way to look at it, I think—we have David, who’s an inspired author. In fact, he’s called a prophet. He speaks for God, and so this is God’s word to us, and now we take that and sing it back to God and it’s our singing God’s word back to God and to one another. The point here, then, is that the Psalms would not originate for private use; they originated for public use. Even Psalms that were written away from the temple were written with an orientation toward it and for use there.

Stage three of the collections is the collection of the Psalms into various groups. So we have individual Psalms, we have Psalms written for public worship, and now books or Psalms that are written are collected into various groups. Now we’ll look at 1 Chronicles 16. Look at verse four again. We saw this way back at the beginning of our studies when David established Psalm singing in Israel. You remember he had brought the ark to Jerusalem and now this is a joyous occasion and he’s established musical guilds and such. And he says he “appointed some of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the Lord to invoke, to thank, and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel.” And remember we pointed out here there are at least three types or three genres of Psalms that David grouped accordingly: “to invoke,” that’s the Petition Psalms or the Petition Lament Psalms; “to thank,” that’s your individual Psalms of grateful praise; and “to praise,” that’s your hymns, your Psalms of descriptive praise, praising God for His greatness, and so on. So grouping the Psalms according to some kind of common commonality, and David himself had done that.

There are also indications in the Old Testament early on that there were collections of the Psalms grouped by author of Psalms. So let’s take a look here. Look at Psalm 72. This is a curious thing. Psalm 72 verse 20: “The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.” Now, a couple of things interesting here. One, this is the ending Psalm concluding Book 2 of the Psalter. But notice the superscript: “It’s a Psalm of Solomon.” And yet the last verse of the Psalm tells us, “The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.” There is some kind of indication that there was an earlier grouping of the prayers of David as Psalms. This is one discernible group of the Psalms, an earlier collection of some kind.

If you’d like another, look at 2 Chronicles, chapter 29. Here this is during the reign of King Hezekiah. Hezekiah, the king, typically has charge of the worship in the temple, or bringing the nation to worship there. 2 Chronicles 29 verse 30: “Hezekiah the king and the officials commanded the Levites to sing praises to the Lord with the words of David, and of Asaph the seer.” So already two collections were already in existence at the time of Hezekiah. The “words of David” might be—I don’t know what grouping they had specifically—but that might be Book 1 of the Psalter, Psalms 1 to 41. The “words of Asaph,” we have them grouped together in our canon as well, Psalm 73 to 83. And there’s also Psalm 50 as well, but they’re grouped together in Psalm 73 to 83. You also have Book 1 of the Psalter. We’ll talk more about that in a minute, but that’s entirely a Davidic—all of them are Davidic Psalms. We have various groupings of Davidic Psalms in each of the books of the Psalter. We have books of the Psalms of the sons of Korah grouped together in various places. So anyway, all of this to point out that there are various early collections of the Psalms already happening during Old Testament times.

Other Psalms were grouped according to genre and theme. That’s what we see in 1 Chronicles 16, which I’ve just pointed out. We’ve also seen that with the Ascent Psalms, Psalm 120 to 134. Book 5 is largely a grouping of praise and Hallelujah Psalms that are brought together. The Hallel Psalms, Psalms 113 to 118. The last crescendo of praise at the end of the Psalter, Psalm 146 to 150, are all Hallelujah Psalms. They all begin with Hallelujah. You want to know a Hebrew word? There it is: Hallelujah. And that’s how each Psalm in Psalm 146 to 150 both begins and ends. The Hallelujah Psalms brought together. So they’re grouped according to author, according to genre, according to theme.

And then finally, we have the fourth stage of the development of the Psalter, and that’s the collection of the Psalms into five books. And I have those listed for you on your outline. You have them in your Bibles as well. You may not have noticed it, but ahead of Psalm 1, you’ll have “Book 1.” Ahead of Psalm 42, you have “Book 2,” and so on through the Psalter. So these are collected into five books: Psalm 1 to 41, 42 to 72, 73 to 89, Psalm 90 to 106 and Psalm 107 to 150.

Now they’re interesting here; there are some various lines of evidence for this five-book arrangement. How do we know that there’s actually these books of Psalms within the Psalter? Well, one is rabbinic tradition, which goes back to before the time of Jesus. But there are other lines of evidence for it, and I’ll just mention them here quickly. Interesting, by the way, this is one of the newer areas of studies in Psalms scholarship. Maybe 30 years ago, a little more, 35 years ago, some smart guy at Yale was writing his doctoral dissertation on the Psalter. Doctoral dissertations, by definition, are intended to make some new contribution to knowledge in some way; some specific field of knowledge is supposed to make a contribution to that. Now, in reality, most of them are not earth-shattering. But once in a while, there’s one that’s a real watershed moment, and that’s what this guy did. Gerald Wilson was his name. He wrote his doctoral thesis, and from that has sprung just an endless stream of studies now to pick up on it. He’s onto something to show the lines of evidence for these five books in the Book of the Psalms.

Some of the evidence for it: each book concludes with a doxology. And I’ve given you those for you. At the end of each book, in the beginning of each book, we have a doxology. So the end of Book 1: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting, amen and amen.” The opening of Book 2—I’m sorry, the end of Book 2: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things. Blessed be his glorious name forever. May the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and amen.” Psalm 89, the end of Book 3: “Blessed be the Lord forever, amen and amen.” Psalm 106, the end of Book 4: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting and let all the people say amen, praise the Lord.” And then you have at the end of the Psalter itself, Psalms 146 to 150, you have the Hallelujah Psalms with the grand crescendo. So at the seams of each of these books, there are these doxologies, and many of them resemble the others.

You also have a change of authors at the seams of the books. Book 1 is all David, then Book 2 opens up with Korah, Book 3 opens up with Asaph, and then Moses begins Book 4, and then Book 5 begins with an anonymous Psalm, Psalm 107.

More importantly is this last one I have for you here: the royal orientation of the Psalter evidently is a shaping consideration, and this I think is the most important, and we’ll see a little bit more of that in a moment. David’s Psalms are not all grouped together entirely as you otherwise might expect, but they are scattered throughout the five books of the Psalms to preserve that Davidic flavor of it. The seams of Books 1, 2, and 3 all recall the Davidic covenant. Book 3—this is very interesting, I think—Book 3 ends with Psalm 89, which laments the seeming collapse of the Davidic covenant. So read Psalm 89 sometimes. It’s just a horrible lament. God has made this great promise to David. It seems to have collapsed. The Davidic house is gone. Israel’s in exile. What’s happened to this promise? That’s the end of Book 3.

Turn the page and you have Book 4, and it opens with Psalm 90, a Psalm of Moses, the only Psalm of Moses in the entire Psalter. And it begins with—I started to quote the wrong, I started to quote Psalm 46. Somebody give me Psalm 90. I’ve forgotten it. “Lord, you’ve been our dwelling place in all generations.” This is a Psalm from which we get “O God, our help in ages past.” God, you are our help in all generations. So forever, God has been our refuge. And even though now, end of Book 3, the Davidic covenant seems to have collapsed, hope remains because we have God as our refuge and strength. And then immediately into Psalm 90 and Psalm 100, we have these enthronement Psalms where God is king, and we look to Him to rule over the nation. So hope remains alive. So this royal orientation of the Psalter seems to be one of the shaping considerations. Well then, stage five, you have the final arrangement of the Hebrew text, which we have today in our Bibles, and its recognized place in the biblical canon.

Significance of the Shaping of the Psalter

All right, quickly then, what’s the significance of the shaping of the Psalter? We’ve got these five books. How is that significant and how are they grouped? What’s the logic behind it? What was their thinking and what can we take from it?

Well, in terms of the big picture, think of the beginning of the Psalter, Psalm 1. Psalm 1, you have this Psalm, which we’ve already talked about, which is sort of an introduction. It’s the gateway to the Psalter. And the question there seems to be, “Who can sing these Psalms? Who can enter into the worship of God?” And the answer is, it’s not for just anybody. It’s for the righteous man, the man who’s blessed because he follows the Lord and not the wisdom of the world. Psalm 1. It’s been recognized since the earliest days of the church that Psalm 1 then is the gateway to the Psalter, answering the question, “Who can sing these Psalms and enter into the worship of God?” Psalm 150, and in fact, Psalm 146 to 150, ends then with praise, this grand crescendo of praise, and so somehow the book has to do with praise.

But there’s more to it than that. As I mentioned earlier, there’s this royal orientation toward the king that’s a shaping concern in the Psalter. We have these five books, and these five books tell the history—or I shouldn’t say tell, reflect the history of Israel from the United Monarchy all the way to the exile. Let’s see how. Books 1 and 2, both of those, are almost entirely Davidic. They represent David’s triumph, often through various kinds of crises that we’ve been seeing in Psalms 1 to 6 already. But he emerges victorious through it and always in those Psalms he gives praise to God despite the circumstances. So Books 1 and 2 are principally Davidic Psalms.

Book 3 then anticipates Israel’s exile. This is often called the “dark book” of the Psalter, Book 3. It’s full of laments, and some of the worst of laments. In fact, the black sheep of the Psalter, Psalm 88, is in Book 3. We will get to that at some point. It is the one exception of the lament Psalms where no explicit praise is given. Book 3 anticipates Israel’s exile. We have Israel’s kings, and the house of David has collapsed. Sanctuary’s destroyed. It climaxes in Psalm 89, as I’ve mentioned earlier, with the lament that Davidic promise seems to have failed.

Then we open up to Book 4, and it’s oriented to Israel in exile. Israel has no king, but there are reassurances. So Psalm 90, with its reflection of Moses, who led us out of Egypt and brought us deliverance, and God is our eternal refuge. There are hints of the Exodus here, and there’s strong affirmation of God’s eternal care for His people. You have then the enthronement Psalms that we’ve looked at as well, Psalm 93 to 99 especially, where we have the God praised as king over the nations and the expression repeated over in those Psalms that “the Lord is king.” So we might be missing our Davidic king. The house of David may have collapsed, but the Lord is king. And there’s that reassurance and that hope remains alive. So despite the seeming failure of the Davidic line, God still reigns, he is still with us, he is our refuge and strength. And so hope is alive that the eternal God is still our king.

And then, Book 4 then ends with the prayer that God will bring Israel back from her exile. Again, Book 4 of the Psalter ends with a prayer that God will bring Israel back from exile. Psalm 106, verse 47: “Save us, O Lord our God, gather us from among the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy name and glory in your praise. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting, and let all the people say amen. Praise the Lord.”

And then Book 5, we have restored Israel now. Book 5 reflects restored Israel, offering praise to God for her restoration from exile. So all is not lost. The Davidic hope remains, and praise is offered to God even from the nations in Book 5, like Psalm 100: “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth,” not just Israel, but all the earth. Let the earth come into the gates of the temple and offer praise to God.

So you have a movement in these five books of the Psalter. We have David struggling to establish the kingdom that God has promised to him. We have David’s success in doing that. Then we have the devastation of the kingdom in Book 3 and then in Book 4 we have the renewed hope that God is king and that he’s the eternal refuge. And then Book 5 of the Psalter, the consummation of praise from the nations for the universal reign of God over all the earth.

The message of the Psalter then centers on David and here’s where it reflects then the message of the entire Bible. God’s covenant promise to David, the future of the Davidic King—it will be realized. There’s still hope for that remaining in Book 5. One writer writes, “The collage of the Psalter is not merely about David’s own life, but God’s purposes in the world and how and where David fits into that wider project.” So in that respect, it fits squarely into the larger canon of Scripture. What is the theme of the Psalter? Well, in a sense, it’s the theme of the whole Bible: the kingdom of God, the establishing of the kingdom of God with the Lord Jesus Christ, the Davidic son, at the center of it.

A Psalter Is a Hymnal, Yes, But…

I think an interesting observation here, I have it on your outline: “A Psalter is a hymnal, yes, but…” What I mean by that is yes, this is Israel’s hymn book, but don’t get the idea that these are just Psalms randomly thrown together into a collection; but there’s a meaning to them. And it is intended to convey this message that I’ve just outlined. And let me read this long quote for you. I think this will be helpful in telling the story, then, of the Psalter—that these five books of the Psalms, arranged the way they are, have a reason to them, and they tell this story:

“The Psalms tell of the Messiah because he loves the Torah and meditates in it day and night, Psalm 1. The Holy One promises to overthrow every opposition to his rule and to establish his throne in Zion, Psalm 2. He comes as the divine bridegroom Messiah to rescue daughter Zion and raise her to honor, Psalm 45. He issues a command to gather Israel, Psalm 50, and sets up a kingdom like Solomon’s which will extend from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth, Psalm 72. However, his kingdom will be attacked by hostile nations, Psalms 73 to 83. He will be surrounded by enemies and fall into the underworld, Psalm 86 and 88. His people, bereft of his presence, lament his death and arraign the Holy One for the failure of his promise, Psalm 89. Israel would be exiled and perish in the wilderness as they were in Moses’ day, as Zechariah foretold, Psalm 90, Zechariah 13. But the king will be delivered from every evil, Psalm 91, to reemerge from the underworld like a triumphant wild ox, Psalm 92. Thereafter, Yahweh is praised in his rule among the nations, Psalm 93 to 99. Eventually, Israel is regathered to the land, Psalm 107, when Messiah will announce his victory, Psalm 108, anathematize his enemies, Psalm 109, and descend from the right hand of power to wage victorious battle, Psalm 110. The deliverance is celebrated in the Hillel Psalms, Psalm 113 to 117, which recall the joyful triumph of the Exodus. Then he ascends to Jerusalem amidst crowds and joyful celebrations, Psalm 118. While the scattered tribes of Israel who have strayed like lost sheep are gathered in, Psalm 119:176. Then the songs of ascents represent Israel and the nations ascending to keep the Feast of Sukkot in Jerusalem when, in fulfillment of the promise of Psalm 2, the Messiah is installed on his throne, Psalm 132. Psalm 135 to 137 are a codetta to the ascents collection. Psalms 140 to 144 feature a final attack upon the Messianic throne. Evildoers threatened the new David with force, stratagems, and pursuits, but the threat is now easily dismissed. Psalm 145 is a hymn of praise for the victory, and Psalm 146 to 150 are the grand coda of praise to the entire collection.”

So there is an overarching sense to the progression of the books of the various Psalms in the Psalter, and I think I have this summarized for you on your outline:
Book one, we have the suffering of the historical David.
Book two, the reign of the historical David.
Book three, the end of the historical Davidic house.
Book four, Moses intercedes for the Davidic covenant.
And book five, the conquest of the future Davidic king.

All right, there’s all of that. I told you this would be a little different from our normal lesson. What value is there in all of this? On one level, for the preacher, for the interpreter, this is enormously helpful. Whatever degree of study you do in the Psalms, it is going to be helpful to keep all of this in mind. Do I expect you to remember all of this? No. I don’t expect you to remember all of this. But I think it will be helpful for you.

Two things. One, remain aware of all of this overall progression. Even if you don’t study it in detail, remain aware that there is this progression in the Psalter. And then with that, number two, keep in mind, as the series of expositions that we do progresses, from time to time at least, we’ll see the significance of that and how it plays in the Psalter. But the big picture of the Psalter, then, is to point to David, the Davidic king that has been promised and the fulfillment of God’s promise to David that his son will rule on the throne and the kingdom of God will be established at last.

All right, that’s a whole lot to try to put into one lesson. Any questions with that before we close?