“A man speaks more or less wisely to the extent that he has become more or less proficient in the Holy Scriptures.  I do not speak of the man who has read wisely and memorized much, but of the man who has well understood and has diligently sought out the sense of the Scriptures.  For there are those who read them and neglect them, who read that they may remember but neglect them in that they fail to understand them.  Those are undoubtedly to be preferred who remember the words less well, but who look into the heart of the Scriptures with the eye of their own hearts.  But better than either of these is he who can quote them when he wishes and understands them properly.” (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, 5.5.7)

“Everything that is not holy is common.  Common things divide into two groups, the clean and the unclean.  Clean things become holy, when they are sanctified.  But unclean objects cannot be sanctified.  Clean things can be made unclean, if they are polluted.  Finally, holy items may be defiled and become common, even polluted, and therefore unclean…It is perhaps because ‘common’ is a category between the two extremes of holiness and uncleanness that it is mentioned only once, in Leviticus 10:10…

Cleanness is a state intermediate between holiness and uncleanness.  Cleanness is the normal condition of most things and persons.  Sanctification can elevate the clean into the holy, while pollution degrades the clean into the unclean.  The unclean and the holy are two states which must never come in contact with each other…Cleanness may be transmitted from some unclean things by contact (e.g., 11:39-40; 14:36; 15:4ff., etc.).  Similarly some holy objects make everything that touches them holy (Exod. 29:37; 30:29; Lev. 6:18, 27).  But cleanness is not conveyed to other things. Cleanness is the ground state; holiness and uncleanness are variations from the norm of cleanness.  The basic meaning of cleanness is purity…But cleanness is a broader concept than purity.  It approximates to our notion of normality…The notion of normality has very wide ramifications in Levitical theology.

Uncleanness is the converse of cleanness…Unlike cleanness, though, uncleanness is contagious and incompatible with holiness.  Things may be unclean in themselves (e.g., some animals, ch. 11; this might be termed permanent uncleanness), or what is intrinsically clean may become temporarily unclean.  Temporary uncleannesses may result from contact with corpses, childbirth, disease, discharges (chs. 11-15), and various sins including illicit sexual intercourse (ch. 18) and murder (Num. 35:33).  All these different types of uncleanness are regarded as in some way abnormal, or at least not quite usual.  The greater the deviation from the norm the greater is the degree of uncleanness and the difficulty in cleansing.  Permanent uncleanness cannot be altered and is not contagious, so no rites are prescribed to cure it.  Unclean animals do not pass on their uncleanness to others: they simply cannot be eaten.  Paradoxically, temporary uncleanness is taken more seriously.  Some types of this uncleanness are contagious and may be passed on to others (e.g., 15:19ff.).  All types of temporary uncleanness require cleansing.  Those who neglect to undergo the appropriate decontamination procedures endanger themselves and the whole community (Num. 19:13, 20)…This insistence on purification of the unclean is a corollary of the idea that Israel, the camp, and especially the tabernacle are holy.  Contact between uncleanness and holiness is disastrous.  They are utterly distinct in theory, and must be kept equally distinct in practice, lest divine judgment fall.

Holiness characterizes God himself and all that belongs to him…Anyone or anything given to God becomes holy…A person dedicated to the service of God is holy.  Preeminently holy in this sense are the priests (Exod. 29:1; 39:30; Lev. 21:6ff.)…In a more general sense all Israel is called out from the nations to serve God is therefore holy (Exod. 19:5-6; cf. Lev. 20:26).  Uncleanness results from unnatural causes (e.g., disease) or human actions (e.g., sin), but holiness is not simply acquired by ritual action or moral behavior.  Leviticus stresses that there are two aspects to sanctification, a divine act and human actions.  God sanctifies and man also sanctifies.  Only those people whom God calls to be holy can become holy in reality.  ‘The man whom the Lord chooses shall be the holy one’ (Num. 16:7).  The divine side to sanctification is expressed in the frequent refrain ‘I am the Lord your sanctifier’ (Lev. 20:8; 21:8, 15, 23; 22:9, 16, 32).  Sometimes the divine part in sanctification and the human side are mentioned together [Lev. 21:8; Exod. 20:8, 11].  Usually, however, the main emphasis of the book is on the human contribution to sanctification, what man has to do to make something holy…

This survey of the use of the terms for holiness, cleanness, and uncleanness has demonstrated the importance of these ideas for understanding Leviticus.  I have suggested that cleanness is the natural state of most creatures.  Holiness is a state of grace to which men are called by God, and it is attained through obeying the law and carrying out rituals such as sacrifice.  Uncleanness is a substandard condition to which men descend through bodily processes and sin.  Every Israelite had a duty to seek release from uncleanness through washing and sacrifice, because uncleanness was quite incompatible with the holiness of the covenant people…Holy means more than separation to divine service.  It means wholeness and completeness…This idea of wholeness or normality [is] the notion implicitly assumed to be essential to holiness and cleanness.” (Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, pp. 19-25)

1 Samuel 15:22—“And Samuel said, “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.”

2 Chronicles 30:15-20—“And they slaughtered the Passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the second month. And the priests and the Levites were ashamed, so that they consecrated themselves and brought burnt offerings into the house of the LORD. They took their accustomed posts according to the Law of Moses the man of God. The priests threw the blood that they received from the hand of the Levites. For there were many in the assembly who had not consecrated themselves. Therefore the Levites had to slaughter the Passover lamb for everyone who was not clean, to consecrate it to the LORD. For a majority of the people, many of them from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover otherwise than as prescribed. For Hezekiah had prayed for them, saying, “May the good LORD pardon everyone who sets his heart to seek God, the LORD, the God of his fathers, even though not according to the sanctuary’s rules of cleanness.” And the LORD heard Hezekiah and healed the people.”

Psalm 40:6-8—“Sacrifice and offering you have not desired, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said, “Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”

Psalm 50:7-15, 23—“Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me. I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me… The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God!”

Psalm 51:15-19—“ O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem; then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.”

Proverbs 21:3—“To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.”

Isaiah 1:11-17—“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. “When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations- I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”

Jeremiah 3:16-17—“And when you have multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, declares the LORD, they shall no more say, “The ark of the covenant of the LORD.” It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed; it shall not be made again. At that time Jerusalem shall be called the throne of the LORD, and all nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the LORD in Jerusalem, and they shall no more stubbornly follow their own evil heart.”

Jeremiah 6:19-20—“Hear, O earth; behold, I am bringing disaster upon this people, the fruit of their devices, because they have not paid attention to my words; and as for my law, they have rejected it. What use to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba, or sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing to me.”

Jeremiah 7:3-24—“Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.’ “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever. Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the LORD. Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel…Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward.”

Jeremiah 11:15—“What right has my beloved in my house, when she has done many vile deeds? Can even sacrificial flesh avert your doom? Can you then exult?”

Hosea 6:6—“For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” (cf. Matthew 9:13, 12:7)

Joel 2:12-14—“Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD your God?”

Amos 5:21-27—“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? You shall take up Sikkuth your king, and Kiyyun your star-god- your images that you made for yourselves, and I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,” says the LORD, whose name is the God of hosts.”

Micah 6:6-8—“With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Mark 12:28-34—“And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.”

Luke 11:37-42—“While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you. “But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.”

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“This is the true King of Narnia we’ve got here: a true King, coming back to true Narnia.  And we beasts remember, even if Dwarfs forget, that Narnia was never right except when a Son of Adam was King.”[1]

Approaching the Psalms: Private Piety or Public Story?

The Psalms are ardently loved by many Christians, treasured for their blunt, captivating depiction of the full-range of human emotion and experience within a framework of total religious devotion to God.  The New Testament writers share this enthusiasm—the Psalms are cited there more often than any other Old Testament document.  Yet my contention is that the intended function of this beautiful collection of 150 poetic hymns and prayers is consistently misunderstood.  Instead of approaching the Psalms as individualistic, a-historical descriptions of private piety vaguely disconnected from Israel’s traditions and the ebb and flow of God’s involvement in redemptive history, I seek to persuade you that the Psalms are—above all else—a story.[2]  The religious fervor and passion of the Psalter is story-shaped through and through, not sentimental or abstract.  And this makes all the difference in the world.

Nothing could be more counter-intuitive, of course.  As a literary genre, the Psalms are quite obviously not presented to us as narrative.  Old Testament scholars such as H. Gunkel[3] and S. Mowinckel[4] pioneered the form-critical approach to the Psalms in the first half of the 20^th century, seeking to trace the pre-histories of each poem and to identify and distinguish various Psalms according to their “types”—lament, thanksgiving, royal, imprecatory, remembrance, doxology, etc.  This paradigm, while helpful, ultimately encouraged a reductionistic reading of the Psalter that was atomistic to the core and which sought to read each individual hymn without reference to the larger body of Psalms surrounding it or to Israel’s sacred history.  Instead, the Psalms became (merely) a memorable written testimony to the bygone religious experience of ancient, anonymous figures in the worship of the temple cult, preserved for us only because of their later usefulness to religious people as examples of personal devotion. As John Walton notes, “The book of Psalms has historically defied attempts to understand its macrocontext.  Each psalm was considered an independent unit, related to those around it seemingly by only an arbitrary editorial process.”[5]

Dissatisfaction with this approach, however, would soon arise.[6]  Brevard Childs, the contrarian Old Testament scholar from Yale, applied his canonical approach to the Scriptures (focusing on the final form of the text rather than its theoretically reconstructed pre-history, which he did not however deny) by tantalizingly suggesting that both the particular shape of the Psalter and its overall location within the Hebrew canon are intentional clues to its correct interpretation.  Childs wrote:

“The modern interpretation of the Psalter suffers from not dealing seriously with the role of the canon as it has shaped this religious literature…The canonical shape of the Psalter offers the modern interpreter a warrant for breaking out of the single, narrowly conceived mode of exegesis which is represented by most modern critical commentaries.”[7]

However, Childs did not elaborate on this potential insight, and it was left to his student Gerald Wilson[8] to take up and develop his teacher’s suggestion.  Since Wilson’s pioneering work in 1985, a veritable revolution in Psalms scholarship has been underway, seeking to read individual Psalms canonically in light of the logic of the macrostructure of the Psalter as a whole.  While this trend has not won over all of its critics[9]—and while practitioners of this approach continue to disagree among themselves over significant details of interpretation—I believe that the remarkable strengths of a narrative (or canonical) perspective on the Psalms deserve to be widely known by those who muse upon these inspired songs.

Signs of Structure

Why would any reader ever come to suspect that the Psalter has an intentional structure in its internal arrangement?[10]  To most readers, the 150 individual Psalms bear no demonstrable order or sense of logical development along the way.  Yet just a little reflection turns up some intriguing evidence of intentionality in the work of the final editors of the Psalter.  First, the various Psalms are broken up into five “books” (Book 1 = Pss. 1-41, Book 2 = Pss. 42-72, Book 3 = Pss. 73-89, Book 4 = Pss. 90-106, Book 5 = Pss. 107-150).  Scholars have long recognized a subtle allusion here to the five books of Moses, the Torah.  Just as Moses is preeminently identified with the Law, so David is identified as the royal leader of Israel’s worship and praise (1 Samuel 23:1, Amos 6:5).  Indeed, on any reading David dominates the Psalms—73 of the Psalms are attributed to him, and another 14 are linked to specific historical events in his life.  This is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that the actual redaction of the structure of the Psalms was almost certainly a product of Israel’s post-exilic period.  Crucially, this was a time when there was no longer any king reigning over Israel, nor any immediate hope for the return of the monarchy.  Why, then, the obsession with David, and why the regular intrusion of “royal” Psalms (Pss. 2, 18, 20-21, 45, 72, 101, 110, 132, 144) when they could no longer serve their original function?[11]

Second, each of the five “books” within the Psalms ends with a doxology (41:13, 72:18-20, 89:52, 106:48, 145:21), each one arguably out of place in the individual psalm it concludes but apparently inserted by a later editor as a capstone to the overall book it finishes.  Third, various “groupings” of Psalms are gathered together in strategic locations throughout the collection: those attributed to David (3-41, 51-70, 138-145), the sons of Korah (42-49, 84, 87; cf. 1 Chron. 6:22-44), Asaph (50, 73-83; cf. 1 Chron. 6:39, 15:17, 25:1-9, 2 Chron. 5:12, 29:30), the “God is King!” hymns (93-99), and the Songs of Ascent (120-134).  This is not the stuff of randomness.  Fourth—and this is perhaps most familiar to sensitive modern readers of Israel’s hymnbook—the overall movement of the Psalter transitions clearly from tones of lament to praise.

Fifth, the Psalter seems to contain both a formal introduction (Pss. 1-2) and conclusion (Pss. 146-150).  Psalms 1-2 are the only two compositions in Book 1 without superscriptions.[12] They introduce two of the dominant themes of the Psalter—the righteous law and the royal king—and they are connected with each other by a host of clear verbal and thematic connections.  For instance, Psalm 1 begins with beatitude (“blessed”) and Psalm 2 ends the same way.  Both boldly separate humanity into two categories—the righteous who delight in the law of the Lord (1) and who pay homage to Israel’s king (2), and the wicked who flout the Lord’s instruction (1) and who rebel against his anointed messiah (2).  Likewise, both Psalms conclude (1:6, 2:12) with a reference to a “way” that will “perish” if human beings commit themselves to it.  Other common verbal links include mention of the internal “plotting” or “meditating” (1:2, 2:1; same word) of human beings, and the ironic association of “sitting” with “scoffing/laughing” in 1:1 and 2:4.  Finally, the first word in the Greek translation (LXX) of Psalm 2 is hina (“so that”), which would seem to indicate continuation, not a new beginning.  The stupidity of the nations that rage against the Lord and His anointed in Psalm 2 can be seen for the folly that it is by meditating upon the prior fate of the wicked mentioned in Psalm 1.  Intriguingly, the Western manuscript tradition of the book of Acts includes a reference to Paul’s citation of Psalm 2:7 in Acts 13:33 as what is “written in the first Psalm.”  This may well indicate that Psalms 1-2 were recognized as existing as a single composition.[13]  Likewise, Psalms 146-150 all begin and end with the word “Hallelujah”—a fitting doxology that closes the entire Psalter with a rising crescendo of universal praise.

Looking Deeper

These structural markers are indeed fascinating, but they still provide no self-evident clue to any larger narrative thrust within the Psalms.  Here the work of Wilson and those who have followed him is particularly valuable.  Wilson points out that in each of the five books of the Psalter there are strategically placed “seam” Psalms that begin and end each major division (Pss. 1-2, 41, 72, 73, 89, 90, 106, 107).  Wilson’s enduring achievement was his observation that these Psalms not only consistently highlight the figure of David, but do so by narrating the historical progress of the Davidic covenant in Israel’s history.  This Davidic framework running throughout the Psalms is the primary point of consensus among scholars who adopt a narrative approach of interpretation.

Book 1 (Pss. 1-41) begins with a royal coronation Psalm (Ps. 2), announcing that God has anointed a king—just as David was (1 Sam. 16)—to rule over the nations in accordance with the Torah (Ps. 1).  Yet the rest of the book is filled with laments and the threat of dangerous enemies who persecute this newly minted King.  This, of course, dovetails neatly with the early years of David’s life after his initial anointing by Samuel, when Saul and others hunted him down in spite of his royal pedigree (1 Sam. 18-31).  Yet the Lord is faithful to rescue His anointed one, and Book 1 ends on a high note—David has been delivered from his enemies (41:11-13)!

Book 2 (Pss. 42-72) narrates the actual reign of David over Israel during the rest of his life.  Passionate praise and glad songs that celebrate God as refuge and deliverer characterize this section, though hints of David’s failure to live up to the original ideal of the Torah-saturated king also appear (Ps. 51).  Yet the portrait of David as a man after God’s own heart is clear as expressed through David’s consistently worshipful longing in this section.  Significantly, the vast majority of the Psalms ascribed to David in the Psalter appear in these first two books (58 out of 73), giving the impression that the Psalter places an inordinate focus on David in the early goings.  This intuition is confirmed by the final seam Psalm of Book 2 (Ps. 72), which is the only Psalm ascribed to Solomon—who, of course, ascended to the throne of Israel at the end of David’s life (2 Kings 1-2).  Psalm 72 also contains notable allusions to the language and hopes of the Davidic covenant found in 2 Samuel 7—a covenant that in context is far more concerned with the royal line that will come from David than David himself.  And Book 2 curiously ends with the statement that “the prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended” (72:20).  Taken as a statement about the Psalter, this is manifestly awkward and untrue—15 more Davidic compositions are still to come.  But if Books 1-2 are arranged to retell the story of David’s own personal history, it makes perfect sense that at the end of his life, demarcated by the passing of the crown to Solomon, a formal pronouncement of the demise of Israel’s great king would be provided.

Book 3 (Pss. 73-89) represents the darkest valley in the Psalter.  It begins with Asaph’s individual complaint, replete with ominous overtones of what is to follow, and ends with a blatantly schizophrenic Psalm (89) that contrasts God’s everlasting promises to David’s royal line (89:1-37) with the tragic undoing of this divine guarantee through the epic decline and fall of the Davidic dynasty as recounted in 1-2 Kings (89:38-51).  In a word, the third act of the Psalter is a reflection on Israel’s catastrophic descent after David’s death into royal wickedness and the doom of exile.[14]  God has rebuked His people for their sin by destroying their temple, banishing them from their land and rejecting their king.[15]  God’s promises in 2 Samuel 7 seem to be harshly contradicted by Israel’s experience.  The kingdom has collapsed.  The sole note of hope is the remarkably out-of-tune doxological confession in 89:52.  Book 3 compels the reader to remember this central fact with heartbreaking candor: Israel’s kings have failed.  Israel lay in ruins.  The promises of God are nowhere to be seen in history.  How long, O Lord (89:46)?

Book 4 (Pss. 90-106) is characterized by several remarkable features.  First, David and his royal line suffer a veritable disappearing act (though dimly faint echoes still remain—Pss. 101-103).  For the first time, the movement of the Psalter is not centered on David.  Second, and perhaps against our expectations after Book 3, the silencing of David’s voice from history does not lead to the removal of the royal theme of kingship from Israel’s story.  Psalms 93-99, employing much of the same language that was earlier connected to David, repeatedly exclaim that “the Lord reigns,” serving to remind Israel that in spite of her current predicament God still sat enthroned as King over the nations.  As Wenham writes, “The answer to the non-fulfillment of the Davidic promises is that ‘the Lord reigns’ (Ps. 93:1; 96:10; 97:1; 99:1).”[16] In spite of God’s rebuke and rejection of Israel, manifested within history in the utter collapse of David’s throne, the Lord remembers His promises and continues to sustain the hopes of His people.[17]  Thus it is fitting that the only Psalm attributed to Moses (Ps. 90) begins this section, calling Israel to remember its ancient covenantal roots as the people of God, and ends (Ps. 106) with a rousing cry for the Lord to remember His ancient covenantal commitments to Israel by gathering the nation from exile for the sake of His great name (106:44-48).  There is still no king.  But the dawn is coming.

Book 5 (Pss. 107-150) completes the Psalter on a fitting note by painting a bright vision of Israel’s future restoration, a redemptive reversal that will send out ripple effects to the ends of the earth as the nations join in Israel’s ancient worship.  The Lord will one day gather back His exiled people from the four corners of the earth (Ps. 107).  And immediately after this opening salvo of hope, David reappears (Pss. 108-110)!  Yet this cannot be the David of history, for he is long since dead (72:20) and (furthermore) could never match the ideal set forth in Psalms 1-2.  And just as David is miraculously resurrected at the beginning of this last stage of the Psalter, so he returns once more at the very end (Pss. 138-145).[18]  Indeed, this time the presence of the king sets off the incredible, escalating symphony of “Hallelujahs!” in Psalms 146-150.  This is no longer the David of history.  The Psalter is not primarily interested in David for either his past or present significance.  David dominates the Psalms because of what he means for the future.  This David who is still to come will lead Israel, the nations and creation itself in praise to the Lord.  As Hamilton summarizes, “The Psalms recount the history of Israel from David to the exile, and then they look beyond the exile to the new David who will arise and lead the people back to the land.”[19] This is the ultimate message of the story that the Psalms proclaim: the King will come again.  And then all that has gone wrong will be healed and renewed.[20]

Here is a brief summary of the story of the Psalms:

Book 1: David’s Enthronement and Persecution by Enemies (1-41)

Book 2: David’s Reign and Solomon’s Succession (42-72)

Book 3: The Tragic Failure of David’s Royal Line and Exile (73-89)

Book 4: The Ancient Lord Still Reigns as King (90-106)

Book 5: The Return of the King (107-150)

Story-Shaped Faith

What implications might be drawn from this narrative approach to the Psalms?  First, the Psalms remind us that biblical spirituality must be story-shaped and rigorously particular.  In the Christian faith, religious emotions and experience are not valued as ends in themselves, nor are believers to be content with any old path to spiritual formation.  Christianity is not characterized by bare religious emotions like hope, faith, joy, grief and fear.  Truly Christian experience springs out of hope and faith in the crucified, risen Jesus, out of joy and fear and grief that are shaped by the contours of the story we confess about the Messiah as we remember the past and raise our eyes beyond our present moment to the future.  The songs we sing in our corporate worship simply would not “work” if the story of Jesus was replaced by another story.  So it is with the Psalms.  Israel’s emotional life was to be shaped by the meaning of David’s royal vocation, by its potential for restoring God’s purposes in creation, and by the hope David’s covenant gave as they looked to the distant future beyond judgment and exile.  To miss this aspect of the Psalms is to fail to understand them in an essential way.

Second, the Psalms—rightly understood—are thoroughly messianic and eschatological.[21]  This is just a fancy, theological way of saying that the Psalter is primarily interested not in Israel’s past or present, but in Israel’s future.  And in particular, the distinctive heartbeat of the Psalms centers on the ideal messianic king who will come from David’s lineage and embody all that passages like 2 Samuel 7 and Psalms 2, 72 and 110 portray.[22]  The Psalms are not so much about David, as they are about what David was always supposed to be (but never was).  When the early Christians understood the Psalter as foreshadowing the Messiah Jesus, they were not importing ideas foreign to the substructure and ethos of Israel’s hymnbook.  They were seeing what was always there.  David’s suffering, joy, abandonment, trust, vindication, and reign over the Gentiles constitutes a pattern that points beyond itself even in the original context, testifying to the David who is to come.  The hope was in place from the beginning.  And when Jesus appealed to Psalm 110 (Matt. 22:41-45, Mark 12:35-37, Luke 20:41-45) to implicitly argue that David’s “son” must be greater (“my Lord”) than David, he was not merely interpreting this individual Psalm correctly with reference to its own self-contained meaning.  He was summarizing the literary point of the entire Psalter when its narrative flow is properly grasped.  As Kidner points out, “Quite evidently Jesus would have said what He said of Moses: ‘he wrote of me.’”[23]  David’s son is the hope of the world.  When he sits enthroned, all will be set to rights again.  This is the story of the Psalms.

“When Adam’s flesh and Adam’s bone

Sits at Cair Paravel in throne,

The evil time will be over and done.”[24]