NOTICE: The book of Psalms is the biggest book in the Library known as the Bible. It is reader-friendly for the statements in it are plain and simple to a casual reader. It is a book for everyone and we are blessed to have it in the Canon.
- Name: The name of the Book in Hebrew is Tehillim which means ‘Composed Praises’. When these books were translated to Greek, the Old Testament Greek version (Septuagint/LXX) titled the Book Psalmos which means “To Pluck” (Hebrew: Mizmor). Psalmos can be translated as pulling the string or twanging a music instrument. This is not to mean that every Psalm is a song, but the majority of the Psalms are in that line, or actually, even those that are not in the respect introduce or eventually conclude with at least praise implications. The Book of Psalms, therefore, is a book of Judah for the name Judah means ‘Praise’. In that book, none and nothing is worshipped but the true lion of Judah who is none other than the incarnate God, Jesus Christ. There is nothing as important in the relationship between God and believer as Praise. Praise and Worship is everything emotional creatures like us need.
- Canonicity: The book of Psalms is canonical for two reasons, its coherence with the history of the Jews and its correspondence to the major theological theme of the entire Bible. The Old Testament part of the Bible where the book belongs has three sections whose acronym is Tanakh (Torah, Nevi’im, Kethubhim). Psalms belong to the section of the Kethubhim which is the wisdom writings. And in this section, we have Job, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, Esther, Proverbs and Psalms. The Jewish canon adds the festival books (Megilloth) to the section. The book, therefore, is a wisdom writing (Kethubhim or in Greek, Hagiographa). The wisdom of Mesopotamia specifically that of the Habirus (Hebrews) differs from that of the western world which has a distinctive scheme of accentuation and rhythm to set it apart from what is known as Prose. The Hebrew wisdom is presented in its re-use and positioning of phrases in the same discourse. This is what is known as Parallelism. While the book of Psalms is a worship and praise book, what the reader needs to be careful with is the structure of thought in every particular praise, worship and song. In Psalms, there is a deliberate and intentional word and phrase repetition and contrast in majority passages. I will expound this under the theological bites, lets now look at the outline.
OUTLINE
The Book of Psalms can be outlined in two ways; first as books and secondly, by segmenting the independent psalms based on their content. There are 150 Psalms in the Book of Psalms and the makeup five books. Book 1 = Psalms 1-41, Book 2 = Psalms 42-72, Book 3 = Psalms 73-89, Book 4 = Psalms 90-106, Book 5 = Psalms 107-150.
Because the wisdom of the world in which these books are born is that of parallelism, we do not expect each of the book to be constrained to a particular theme though all of the five books are essentially poetry about the experiential relationship between believers and their God. Since the Psalms are a product of human experiences they present four principles:
- Wisdom,
- Praise/Thanksgiving,
- Lament/Complaint and,
- Christological principle (Luke 24:44).
RUDIMENTARY LESSONS
We could draw millions of lessons from reading the Book of Psalms but here are a few lessons that we need not miss on various lists:
- God’s involvement in matters concerning our lives and living is inevitable no matter whether we are believers or not.
- Understanding who God is and what he has done provokes and invokes Trust, Praise and Worship responses in us.
- Music is in every business of this world and it affects not the God or the gods but puts all the creation into either the proper or the improper rhythm.
- The book of Psalms reminds each of us that we are emotional beings and God appreciates the emotional language too.
- We are called to praise and worship for all the good the Lord has done amidst us and at the same time praise and worship until God appears bigger than the mountains before us.
- The book of Psalms is the book of kings, and those at the bottom in the social-strata, God is not just for us all, but before God we are equal.
Theological Bites
There are six types of parallelism in the wisdom writings of the Jews:
- Synonymous (having the same meaning),
- Antithetic (Marked by being exactly opposite),
- Emblematic (a metaphor or simile),
- Introverted/Inverted (turn in upon itself or upside down),
- Synthetic (compounded or put together),
- Stair-Step (The thought is repeated in a series of progressions or developments)
As we read the book, detecting these differences matters and make the Psalms interesting. Bob Deffinbaugh wrote;
“It is also crucial for a student of the Scriptures to know the difference between poetry and prose. When we read in the early chapters of Genesis that God created Adam and Eve, we read it as history, and we believe this man and woman to be historical persons, just as the New Testament indicates our Lord and the apostles did (Mathew 19:4-6; 1 Corinthians 15:45).
However, when we read in the Psalms that David made his bed swim and he dissolved his couch with his tears (Psalms 6:6) we do not take his words literally; but we should accept the truth behind the figurative expression, that he was so overcome with sorrow he cried constantly. When we read in Psalms that the rivers clap their hands and the mountains sing for joy (Psalms 98:8), we interpret these words in light of the fact that we are dealing with poetry and not prose.”
Theologically, the book of Psalms emphasizes what I call the 4Es of Christian life:
- Experiment: To know who God is and appreciate him, we need not and can actually never know everything in the initial stages. We need to experiment him at least.
- Emotion: I always teach people that their feelings must be guided by their understanding but the book of Psalms reminds us that sometimes we must think about the existing feeling that hijacked us before we even thought.
- Experience: In such a scientific and empirical generation like ours, nothing has substituted one’s experience. There are things in your life you cannot explain but know and live them. The book of Psalms encourages experiential knowledge.
- Expression: It doesn’t matter what you know, what you feel, and all that you have gone through unless you have expressed it; it will not grow even in yourself.
Finally, the book is not a doctrinal manual but a reference to each of us in our various daily experiences. How you apply those experiences to your own situation is upon you. In Reflections on the Psalms, C. S. Lewis emphasized the importance of studying the Psalms as poetry, with its unique forms and characteristics. He wrote:
“What must be said is that the Psalms are poems, and poems intended to be sung: not doctrinal treatises, nor even sermons. Most emphatically, the Psalms must be read as poems; as lyrics, with all the licenses and all the formalities, the hyperboles, the emotional rather than logical connections, which are proper to lyric poetry. They must be read as poems if they are to be understood; no less than French must be read as French or English as English. Otherwise, we shall miss what is in them and think we see what is not”
Please read and sing the Psalms and feel free to write your own non-canonical Psalm that worships God in your own language and experience.
God bless you I invoke TRUTH, REASON and FAITH (2Tim 2:7)
Pr. I. T M WHITE
The Gospel Hawker
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24)
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 