Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Okay, so before we dive into the Psalms themselves, I want to talk a little bit about.
[00:00:10] About poetry and specifically Hebrew poetry. So Hebrew poetry extends beyond the book of Psalms.
[00:00:22] For the sake of just time and this class, the Psalms is going to be our focus. But you can find poetry in lots of other places in the Bible. So the minor prophets contain quite a bit of poetry.
[00:00:38] Books like Hosea, Joel, Amos, Micah.
[00:00:44] You also see extensive examples of poetry in some of the major prophets, like Isaiah, Jeremiah.
[00:00:52] You find poetry and songs in Genesis, Genesis 49.
[00:00:59] The whole book of Genesis ends with a song. Exodus 15.
[00:01:05] After the Israelites are delivered via the miracle of the Red Sea, they sing a song. That's poetry.
[00:01:14] And even we even find poetry in some of the wisdom books and wisdom literature that we talked about last week. So. So Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 3. There's a time for everything, right? That's poetry.
[00:01:29] Proverbs has poetry, Job has poetry.
[00:01:33] But by far the book that contains the largest amount of poetry is the Book of Psalms.
[00:01:40] The word Psalms in Hebrew is this word tehillim.
[00:01:53] Tehillim, which means praises some things about the Psalms, just by way of collection, it is the largest canonical book in the Bible.
[00:02:09] The Psalms is how many chapter?
[00:02:15] 150. 150 chapters.
[00:02:20] So just by collective makeup, it is the largest chunk of the Bible.
[00:02:26] It's not the longest technical book of the Bible. Like, it doesn't have the most words.
[00:02:32] Jeremiah has the most.
[00:02:35] It has the largest word count in all of the Bible.
[00:02:39] Jeremiah is huge. But Psalms is the largest kind of canonical book in Scripture. And I also think that the Psalms is arguably the most unique work of Scripture because its genetic makeup isn't just poetry.
[00:03:00] There's actually more in the Psalms that it's not just poetic language. So you have poetry.
[00:03:12] What else do you think of when you think of the song, the Psalms? I have a few music.
[00:03:18] Music, right. Like it's songs.
[00:03:25] It's called. It's nicknamed the Hymn Book of Israel.
[00:03:30] The Hymn Book of Israel.
[00:03:36] These are songs that are meant to be sung and read aloud again and again and again. You're just supposed to reference them over and over again. In the temple, you also have prayers.
[00:03:52] In the Book of Psalms, the reader is crying out to the Lord in praise and lament and suffering and all kinds of things.
[00:04:07] The Psalms are also human, and I'll talk more a little bit about that in a second. But it's a very human book because they're relaying words back to God instead of God relaying Words, revealing words to somebody else, right? So it's human.
[00:04:36] And the last one is that it's worshipful.
[00:04:43] Worshipful. The Psalms are meant to evoke a sense of worship towards God through song, through poetry, through prayer, through. Through the human experience.
[00:04:58] It's all meant to bring these things before the throne room of God.
[00:05:05] Now, when I talk about how this is a human book, an Old Testament scholar puts it this way.
[00:05:15] When talking about just how psalms work, he says, the words of man have become the words of God to man.
[00:05:26] Does that make sense?
[00:05:28] In other words, the words of man, like these collection of poetic songs that were written primarily by David Asaph, these words of these men have now become the words of God to men. Because the Psalms are part of the word of God and therefore are inspired by the Holy Spirit, right? So these words of men have become the words of God to man. And this is kind of the irony of the book of Psalms, right?
[00:06:05] People praying has become the way that God speaks to people, right? These written prayers are now how we understand that this is, in a way, God communicating to us.
[00:06:22] And so that's part of the whole function of the book of Psalms is they're meant to set our hearts and minds in the right direction.
[00:06:33] They adjust our vocabulary and help us interpret our experiences through our relationship with God. Which means that the Psalms are meant to give us.
[00:06:49] You think about. Think about, like the study and the discipline of psychology, right?
[00:06:58] Psychology is the study of the mind, the study of emotions and the human experience.
[00:07:09] And in Psalms, you have psychological concepts in there. Like, the psalmist is experiencing different emotions of joy and sorrow and lament and happiness and sadness, but it's not necessarily coming out and just telling you that.
[00:07:34] Like, the psalmist doesn't say, dear God, I am sad.
[00:07:38] I am feeling anxious.
[00:07:41] Please help. Amen. No, that's not how it works.
[00:07:46] There's a language.
[00:07:52] Oh, my gosh, I'm misspelling language.
[00:07:58] Is that how you spell it? Language. Okay? A language to the human experience. So instead of saying, God, I need you, the psalmist says, as a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. You see that? You see how it's putting language to a psychological emotion that's already there.
[00:08:29] It's giving you a language for how to understand your emotions.
[00:08:35] So instead of saying, lord, I'm going through a really hard time right now. It's, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, right? But you think about that like, what is the valley of the Shadow of death.
[00:08:51] Everyday life.
[00:08:52] Yeah, it's not. It's actually not meant to be anything at all.
[00:08:57] And we'll talk about that when we start going through how to interpret the Psalms. It's not like the valley of the shadow of death is a specific place that we go and walk through.
[00:09:10] It's metaphorical language to what Tim's talking about, the everyday, present suffering that you and I experience.
[00:09:21] Okay, so what I'm getting at there is that it's not quite accurate to say that the Psalms directly deal with human emotion, though the Psalms are full of emotion. But what's happening is the Psalms are giving language to the emotion being experienced. Does that make sense?
[00:09:42] It's not directing us towards just introspection. It's putting language to it and then directing that back to God. Okay, so let's talk about reading the Psalms as poetry.
[00:10:00] Think about English poetry for a second. What are some defining characteristics of English poetry? What would you say some of those things are?
[00:10:10] Rhyming. Rhyming. Good structure.
[00:10:16] English poetry.
[00:10:20] Rhyming.
[00:10:22] Meter.
[00:10:23] Meter. Good rhythm. Good prose.
[00:10:32] Lyrical.
[00:10:36] Say lyrical.
[00:10:38] Yeah, lyrical. Right.
[00:10:46] Anybody have, like, a favorite poem off the top of their head? Anybody? Any lovers of poetry here?
[00:10:53] I can't recite it.
[00:10:57] What is it?
[00:11:02] Okay.
[00:11:03] Can you recite it, Austin?
[00:11:06] Dan, do you have a favorite poem?
[00:11:09] Yes, but if you actually just recite it, I will never be able to recite the entire lay of her.
[00:11:15] You don't have to recite the whole thing. What's the name of it?
[00:11:20] What's the name of the poem?
[00:11:23] Wow.
[00:11:25] Oh, Lord of the Rings. Okay, see, I need Tolkien, then wrote some real poetry.
[00:11:33] Listen to this. Is Shakespeare, probably most famous poet in the West.
[00:11:40] Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
[00:11:43] Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May and summer's Lethe hath all too short a date.
[00:11:54] What did you hear there?
[00:11:58] That we're getting older.
[00:12:02] Yeah, time's moving on.
[00:12:04] Yeah, but you heard rhyme, you heard rhythm, you heard meter, right? Those are kind of the defining characteristics of English poetry. It's how we came to get the kind of music that we have in the West. You know, like, it's all about rhymes, meter, rhythm.
[00:12:33] There's a rhythm to poetry.
[00:12:36] When we're talking about Hebrew poetry, the defining characteristic of Hebrew poetry is actually not this.
[00:12:44] It's a word.
[00:12:50] Parallelism.
[00:12:52] Everyone say parallelism.
[00:12:56] Okay, so parallelism. What is parallelism?
[00:12:59] Parallelism involves the pattern of parallel ideas that often repeat, reinforce, or build upon the thought expressed in the preceding line. Okay, so in Hebrew poetry, you have line and then parallel idea that's either going to reinforce that what was just said or say something the opposite of what was just said, or it's going to just kind of repeat it. And so there is a bishop, Robert Louth, in his 17th, or, sorry, 18th century work, kind of rediscovered these primary different types of parallelism. And he identified three kinds. Okay, so three kinds of parallelism. There's more than that, than these that scholars like to kind of parse out. But these are the main ones. You have synonymous.
[00:14:09] Synonymous, antithetical and synthetic.
[00:14:21] Synonymous, antithetical, or actually just antithetic and synthetic. Okay, so let's kind of break these down.
[00:14:36] Synonymous is the most simple kind of parallelism is it's when the second line restates the first line, but in different words. Okay, so Psalm 19:1. The heavens declare the glory of God. Line 1, line 2. The skies proclaim the work of his hands.
[00:15:00] Okay, Same idea being conveyed there in two different lines. The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands. So it's not like there's something different going on with the heavens and the sky, because in Hebrew it's the same word.
[00:15:20] It's the whole fullness of the earth declares God's glory. That's the idea. But it's synonymous because you're getting the same idea repeated twice. Does that make sense? So that's synonymous.
[00:15:37] All right, here's another one. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.
[00:15:46] The earth is the Lord and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. So the second line restates the same concept. Everything, both land and people, belong to God. Right? Synonymous, antithetic parallelism is. The second line contrasts the first. Okay, the second line says something opposite of the first. So what would this be? Psalm 1:6. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. That's antithetic. Right.
[00:16:24] The Lord knows the way of the righteous. So there's one way of the righteous, but there's also a way of the wicked. And that leads to what?
[00:16:33] Perishing to destruction. Okay, so that one's a little bit more obvious to see.
[00:16:43] The last one is one that a lot of scholars argue makes up the majority of the book of Psalms, and that's this synthetic.
[00:16:55] So synthetic means that the second line adds ideas or develops the thoughts of the first presented line. Okay, so the second line is going to Reinforce and add more to what was just said before.
[00:17:10] All right, so Psalm 19:7. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.
[00:17:19] Right.
[00:17:20] What does reviving the soul do there? It reinforces how the law of the Lord is perfect.
[00:17:28] Why? Because it revives your soul. Psalm 119, 11. I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
[00:17:39] See how that builds upon, like, why, why? Why should we store God's word in our heart?
[00:17:46] Well, one reason is that so we might not sin against him.
[00:17:49] It's building, okay?
[00:17:52] And a lot of Psalms do this. Like, I'm just reading you two lines, but Psalm 1, a lot of scholars argue, is doing this synthetic work.
[00:18:07] So blessed is the one who does not walk in.
[00:18:11] Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. But whatever they do, they prosper. You see how it kind of like it's building. Each line builds upon itself a little bit.
[00:18:43] That is synthetic structure.
[00:18:48] So those are the three kinds of parallelism. Any questions on those before we go to the next thing?
[00:18:59] The Psalms.
[00:19:02] The reason we call it the Psalms plural is because it's actually a collection of five books.
[00:19:11] So it's not just one book, it's a collection of five books. So you have book one, book two, book three, four, and five.
[00:19:32] Scholars think that part of the reason why it's broken up into five books is to echo or mimic the Torah first five books of the law.
[00:19:42] So just as there is a five structure to the law, the Psalms introduce us to the writings.
[00:19:52] So you have the Law, the prophets, and the writings. The writings are broken up into five books. So one through 41 is a book.
[00:20:04] 42 through 72 is a book.
[00:20:09] 73 through 89 is a book, 90 through 106 is a book. And the last book, 107 through 150.
[00:20:27] The reason why we know that it's broken up in this way is that there is a benediction at the end of each of these books. So, like Psalm 41 concludes with a benediction.
[00:20:44] Psalm 72, 89, 106, 150. All of these have concluding benedictions or doxologies.
[00:20:51] And there's also some clear transitions. So like at the end of Psalm 72, it says the prayers of David are ended. And now we know Psalm 73. I believe that's where Asaph picks up. Yeah, so Psalm 73,89. And you'll see, you'll see in some of your Bibles that it's already like written at the top of the margins.
[00:21:19] Like It'll say book three, 73 through 89. So most scholars are all in agreement that this is how the five books are broken out.
[00:21:33] Psalms 1 and 2 function as the introduction to the entire collection of psalms that are going to summarize a lot of themes. And. And then the great doxology is what it concludes with, which is 145 through 150 is considered the great doxology.
[00:21:55] That's like an extended benediction for the entire work of the Psalms. Okay, so that's kind of the structure, that's kind of the breakdown.
[00:22:06] Let's talk a little bit about. We're going to talk about interpreting the Psalms and then we're going to talk about genres of the Psalms, and then we're going to break up and do our activity.
[00:22:16] So just a few rules on interpreting the Psalms. The first rule is don't over interpret the Psalms.
[00:22:25] They're not meant to be exegeted like Paul's letters or like the book of Hebrews, like where we're looking real closely at the syntax and the structure and how it relates to this thing.
[00:22:40] Don't over interpret it because as you know, many of the Psalms are not meant to be taken literally. Okay. The Lord literally is not a shepherd, but he functions as our shepherd. Right, but it's. But, but we shouldn't conceive of him as a shepherd. We should conceive of how he relates to us as a shepherd. Does that make sense?
[00:23:05] And in the same way, we're not sheep. He's not actually making us lie down in green pastures.
[00:23:12] That's not actually what the Psalm is calling us to do. So we don't need to over interpret that. Right. That's taking a far too literal approach to the Psalms. This makes sense to you.
[00:23:24] The other thing too is that we don't need to over allegorize the Psalms.
[00:23:30] So like, Brad made an analogy, an allegory, an allegorical point, with Narnia today, that's meant that that actually is allegory. Lewis wrote Narnia as a fuller allegory of the Christian life. But the Psalms are not meant to be read as allegories. So like Psalm 1 that we just read earlier, talking about, you know, the man who, whose delight is in the law of the Lord is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season. Again, that's no, it's not meant to like point you to a particular tree or a particular fruit or like your. The streams of water. They don't. It doesn't actually mean. It's not actually like pointing to something.
[00:24:24] Just like when I said that the valley of the shadow of death. It's not.
[00:24:28] It's not. We're not meant to draw that. Like we are with Aslan and Jesus, you know, like, we're not meant to like make those comparisons.
[00:24:38] So we don't want to over allegorize the Psalms.
[00:24:43] How do we interpret it in sed.
[00:24:45] Two words, metaphor and simile.
[00:24:49] You guys probably remember this from English class, right?
[00:24:52] So what's a simile?
[00:24:55] Know what a simile is?
[00:25:00] Yeah, it's a figure of speech that compares two different things using like or as Psalm 1 is a simile. Right. You are like a tree planted by streams of water. And then metaphor, very similar to it is what, an example of something without being literal.
[00:25:24] Yeah, figure of speech that describes one things in terms of another to suggest a deeper meaning.
[00:25:33] Okay. Describe one thing in terms of another. That's majority of the language being used in the Psalms.
[00:25:43] The last thing is to treat the Psalms as wholes.
[00:25:48] So each psalm has its own integrity as a literary unit. Which means like, if you're going to like read Psalm 23, read the whole thing.
[00:25:59] It's meant to be taken as a whole literary poem.
[00:26:05] So we don't need to take certain verses out of context that will lead us to the wrong conclusions. Because that happens. Doesn't just happen with psalms. It happens with lots of pieces in the Bible. So read the Psalms as a literary whole. Okay.
[00:26:28] Three different kinds of psalms. Look at your sheets. Does everyone have a sheet in front of them?
[00:26:36] Three different kinds of psalms. There's more than this, but again, I'm just giving you a very simple overview.
[00:26:43] The first one is lament Psalms. This is by far.
[00:26:48] This is the majority of the psalms. Actually there's over 60 lamenting Psalms in the Bible.
[00:26:56] I've discussed lament in a previous equipped class, but these are psalms that express grief, anguish, distress, suffering.
[00:27:08] They function as a cry of help and deliverance from trouble. And they also model honesty and candor before the Lord.
[00:27:18] So a very raw experience of emotion.
[00:27:23] When you are lamenting before God, you're not sugarcoating anything. You're taking your distress and your complaint directly before the Lord, that is the majority of the psalms. And then that structure there. We'll return to that later. That's going to be part of your activity.
[00:27:41] Next one is Thanksgiving psalms.
[00:27:44] These express joy and gratitude for things already received from God, So they focus on his faithfulness and his protection and his benefits.
[00:27:55] These are the psalms that often, like, already, will, like, recount the things that God has done in the past. And they'll say, this is what you did. These are Thanksgiving psalms.
[00:28:07] They're recounting what's already been said. And then the last one are hymns of praise. Praise psalms. Okay, so these are songs that focus on God's greatness and goodness and benefits.
[00:28:25] They center directly on God.
[00:28:28] So your personal experiences and your circumstances are brushed to the side when we're talking about hymns of praise. Okay, so those are the three lament, Thanksgiving, hymns of praise.
[00:28:48] Sound good?
[00:28:49] Make sense?
[00:28:51] Psalms are good.
[00:28:53] I like the Psalms. It's kind of.
[00:28:55] They kind of speak for themselves, which is what they're supposed to do. Supposed to.
[00:29:03] We naturally understand some of the language that's being delivered to us in the psalms, and that's why it's so relatable.
[00:29:14] So here's what I want to do.
[00:29:16] I want to take the next 10, 15 minutes and do our group activity.
[00:29:24] So what I'm going to do is I'm going to divide us into thirds.
[00:29:31] All right, y'. All. Hey, we're going to come back together following this activity.
[00:29:40] What were some things that stuck out to you as you kind of worked through the structure of lament or Thanksgiving giving or hymns of praise?
[00:29:50] Anything stick out, any patterns you recognize?
[00:29:57] I liked what you said in our group is that these are, like, helpful structures, but the psalms aren't formulaic, so it's not awful for a piece to be missing, you know? Yeah.
[00:30:09] It's not like you're going to find this in every single lament psychology psalm or every single Thanksgiving Psalm. You know, a look to the past or the present. But there are elements that are present in most of Lament or praise or Thanksgiving. Yeah, there is usually a shift, a turn to the Lord element.
[00:30:44] I don't know if that's another song, but that's good. There's like a. There's a pivot from the lament to, like, determining to hope in the Lord. Yeah, definite praise as well.
[00:30:59] Yeah. Like, it goes from, you know, I'm going to the valley, shadow of death to praising the Lord for what he's done. Good. And trusting in what he is doing. Yeah, that's really and that's really key to a lot of the lament psalms because otherwise you're just, you're just left in despair. Even if you're, even if you're taking those things before the Lord, if you don't fight for hope in the midst of it, it's just dark and there's no. And there's no hope.
[00:31:34] Yeah, that's really good insight.
[00:31:38] Anything, hymns of praise, you guys find anything? There's no personal introspection whatsoever. Yeah, it's all outward directed towards God and then collectively our relation towards Him. It's really the defining characteristic of a praise psalm is that there's. You're not bringing human elements or emotions into it where with like thanksgiving and lament, that's what you're doing.
[00:32:11] Very God centered and talking about a lot about God's character, a lot about creation, you know, like all creation come together to praise Him a lot about different kinds of creatures and kings and people alike.
[00:32:33] Come see and extol the name of God.
[00:32:38] You're going to hear a lot of language on the name of the Lord, you know, praise the name of the Lord kind of stuff.
[00:32:54] Good.
[00:32:56] Yeah, yeah, you're going to get a lot of that too. Just callbacks to the pattern of creation and your praise as well.
[00:33:07] So.
[00:33:08] Hey, great job everybody. I just want to close with like the Psalms are in terms of how we read them. Obviously, like when we open the Psalms, we're probably not going to have this sheet in front of us and do an activity like this.
[00:33:27] A book that has been really, really personally helpful to me on the Psalms is Don Whitney's how to Pray the Bible.
[00:33:36] Don Whitney's a seminary professor at Southern Seminary and. And he walks through just.
[00:33:45] Basically the problem he identifies is that we often find ourselves in our own prayer lives praying the same things over and over and over again. And so his thing is like, why not let the Bible inform some of your prayers? And so he actually walks you through how to pray, a psalmist.
[00:34:06] And he even like has like an app or something that allows you to look at different psalms of the day so that you can pray through with them. And so I just want to read this. This is from an excerpt from his book on how to pray, like Psalm 23. And so he says, you read the first verse, the Lord is my shepherd, and you pray something like this. Lord, thank you that you are the good shepherd. Thank you that you're the shepherd of my life. Would you shepherd my family today? Would you guard them from the ways of the world? Would you guide them into the ways of God?
[00:34:44] Would you lead them not into temptation, but deliver them from evil?
[00:34:49] Great Shepherd, I pray for my spouse, I pray for my children. Would you cause them to be your sheep today?
[00:34:56] And then he just says, as you continue praying, anything else that comes to mind, you go to the next line that says I shall not want. And perhaps you pray something like, lord, I thank you that I've never really been in want.
[00:35:10] I thank you that I haven't missed too many meals, that all that I am that comes from you.
[00:35:16] I know it pleases you that I bring my desires to you. And then after you're finished with that, you go to the next verse.
[00:35:23] He makes me lie down in green pastures. Maybe this prompts you to pray for those who lead you in the teaching of the word of God. So just what the idea of it is, is to come to the different lines, the different meters, and just pray what comes to mind. But you're using the language of the psalm and praying it back to God, kind of like how the Psalms are meant to be. Remember we talked about earlier that that's the great irony is that the words of man have become the words of God for man. Right.
[00:36:05] So that's just a little something for you there to do. Just to use the Psalms devotionally. I use the Psalms devotionally every day I try and pray a psalm and I just use it to guide my prayer life because I get very distracted very easily.
[00:36:26] And so it helps me kind of put language. And honestly, it puts a lot of language to, you know, what I'm experiencing. So if I'm in a place of sadness or lament good news, there's a lot of them. And the psalmist puts better language and structure to that there. Or if place of joy or thanksgiving, that's there too. So see these as like all encompassing and hopeful to the human experience.
[00:36:57] Okay?
