Episode 238: Josh James – Psalms Isn’t What You Think It Is

Pete  

You’re listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I’m Pete Enns.

Jared  

And I’m Jared Byas. 

Jared  

Welcome, welcome, everyone to this episode of the podcast. Before we get started, you’ve heard us yakking about this on our last few episodes, but this is the last call for our March class, called Why God Died: How Atonement Theories Try to Explain Salvation.

Pete  

Yeah, and it’s taught by our good friend and nerd in-residence, Jennifer Garcia Bashaw. It is live for one night, just in a couple of days, on March 28th from 8-9:30pm, and as always with all of our classes it’s Pay What You Can. 

Jared  

Until the class ends.

Pete  

Yes, until the class ends.

Jared

Then it’s $25.

Pete

Then it’s $10,000. Right?

Jared

Pete  

Today, we’re talking about Psalms Isn’t What You Think It Is with our friend, Joshua James. Now Josh is an affiliate assistant professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, but he’s also a pastor, and the author of “Psalms for Normal People,” which is the newest book in our line up.

Jared  

That’s right, and it is about to come out. So, we’re just gonna plug it here for just a minute. And if you like what you heard on the episode with Josh today, you can hear how good he is at articulating some of these nerdy concepts in a way that has some pastoral significance. But also, is just a really fun look at how Psalms operates, which is so different than maybe you would have been taught growing up, in terms of what it is and what we’re supposed to do with it. So, the book comes out April 17th, you can purchase it wherever you can buy your books. So, go ahead and bookmark it. Put it in your brain, in your calendar, in your palm pilot, in your Blackberry.

Pete  

Jared  

April 17th, “Psalms for Normal People.” But until then, to tide you over.

Pete  

Welcome to this episode.

Josh  

Jared  

Well, welcome to this episode of the podcast, Josh. It’s great to have you.

Josh  

It is great to be here. Thank you.

Jared  

And thank you so much for writing “Psalms for Normal People.” 

Pete  

Yeah. 

Jared  

We are so excited to have that. And, you know, we thought maybe before people get a chance to read that we should start with this question: What is a psalm?

Josh  

Let me just peel back the curtain a little bit for your listeners and let them know I’m going to shatter all of their dreams here. We, as guests, get a list of questions ahead of time to prepare. So, this was the first question that I got and actually, I feel like it’s one of the more difficult questions on this entire list of things—and I hope that also doesn’t set me up to answer all of the rest of them with much eloquence because I don’t know if that’s…

Pete  

We have no expectations of eloquence, Josh.

Josh  

Okay, thank you. Let’s set the bar low and see how high I can get. But defining a psalm is difficult, primarily because the content within the book of Psalms is so diverse. So, I think the best way to talk about what a psalm is, is to do so descriptively. What we have in Psalms is a collection of Israel’s poems, prayers, and litanies. The term where—you know, we’re talking about psalms, that comes from a Greek word, “psalmos” and that’s a tie to something about music or a song, so, some people want to refer to Psalms as having something to do with music. So, we have this very diverse collection of 150 compositions within the book of Psalms, that could be anything from a poem, a prayer, a litany or like a responsive reading, perhaps, something to do with music. Even as you turn the page into Psalms, you can see that it’s formatted differently. It’s poetic, it looks and reads very differently than prose, but beyond that, it’s a wide array of different sorts of pieces of literature within this book.

Josh  

Okay. So, that’s a psalm. It’s all over the place. 

Josh  

Pretty much. Yeah. And I think that’s something that gets lost on readers too. Because when you go into it, all of it’s really foreign and we just kind of read it all as these things that we don’t necessarily understand, but all look kind of similarly, but you know, with regard to the form of each composition and the content, they’re just very, very diverse. 

Jared  

Well, maybe can we jump into that and talk a little bit about the different types of Psalms? Because I think that’s helpful as you’re talking about the diversity of it. I think it might be nice to maybe go through the different genres or different types, maybe, just to do a little deeper dive on what you mean by diversity.

Josh  

Yeah, that’s a good question. So there was this guy named Herman Gunkel—I’m going to take you back, and we’re going to get nerdy here a little bit, to the early 20th century. There was a German biblical scholar named Herman Gunkel who basically set out to classify all of the poems within the book of Psalms. He did that by looking at all kinds of ancient poetry. So, he’s dealing with a massive corpus of these poems and prayers, he’s reading them, and he’s trying to identify points of similarity amongst this big collection, and then he puts them into categories. So Gunkel ended up coming up with five major categories for these individual Psalms, they are: hymns or praise psalms, royal psalms, which are psalms about the king. Then he’s got two categories, or two genres, which are very closely linked. One is a communal lament, and one is an individual lament and the only thing that separates the two is who is speaking, whether it’s a plural “we” or an individual “I”. So, we’ve got the communal event, which is the people of Israel lamenting a situation, talking about all of the bad things that are happening, or an individual psalmist writing about the things that are taking place in their life, which are more personal. 

And then the fifth category that Gunkel came up with were the “thanksgiving psalms.” Now, he also had a bunch of minor categories, like the “pilgrimage songs,” which are basically people who are going on pilgrimage to the temple, or victory songs, legends, Torah psalms, so he has a bunch of minor categories. But it’s those five major categories that began to dominate the conversation within psalms scholarship in the early 20th century, the hymns, royal psalms, communal and individual laments, and then the thanksgiving psalms. Now, those five ended up being whittled down to three, which is what most scholars talk about now. And those are the praise psalms, the lament psalms, and the t

thanksgivings. 

Gunkel, and others, defined these categories based on the content of the psalms. So, like a praise psalm, clearly, it’s going to say, “Praise the Lord,” it’s going to tip its cards really quickly. The content leads you to see that this is a psalms singer who is praising Yahweh for who Yahweh is, what Yahweh has done, those sorts of things. But then also, there’s a formal component. So Gunkel was the guy who created a method of interpreting the Bible known as “form criticism.” So, he was wanting to look at how these poems move, how they were shaped. And you can think of this in similar terms to, maybe, how we think about movie genres. So, scary movies have a certain way that they unfold and if you’ve seen one scary movie, then you’ve seen a lot of them, just because they’ve kind of got a stereotypical structure. And maybe a better example would be a Hallmark Christmas movie: big city mogul has to go back to the country town where they were raised and there’s a lot of problems there, and if by the end of that movie, the big city person hasn’t scorned all of their riches and their condo in New York City for the reclaimed love of their life, to move back home to this country place—and if at the end of that movie, there’s not like a twinkly lit Christmas pageant where the two main characters share this climactic kiss, then you’re not watching a Hallmark Christmas movie. 

So, it’s got this stereotypical movement from the beginning to the end, and Gunkel was trying to identify these sorts of movements within the psalms formally. So, just sticking with a praise psalm, it’s got at least a couple of different parts that you can anticipate. The first part is a call to praise and it moves then into the reasons or the motivations for the praise. So, you know, Psalm 117, would say, “Praise the Lord, all you nations,” and then it moves into the reasons, “For great is the Lord’s steadfast love,” and then it may or may not culminate with a final call to praise which is just, “Praise the Lord,” and Psalm 117 does. So, it kind of ticks all of these boxes that Gunkel was thinking had to be true of the genre, formally: how it moved, how it was structured, how it gets from point A to point B. So, the genres aren’t just content driven, there’s also a formal aspect as well.

Pete  

And also—I mean, I’m recalling years back, studying these things, and your recollection is better than mine—but there are psalms that don’t, like some of the songs just don’t neatly fit these categories.

Josh  

Right.

Pete  

Because some of them have like, elements of more than one of those three or five types. Like, they can start off very lament-y and end very positively or something like that. And some are just lamenting all the way through. So, it makes it…I mean, some have accused Gunkel of being German. 

Josh  

Yes. Right. Exactly.

Pete  

Right. And putting everything in categories. But, I think, would you agree they’re still helpful, right? They’re good ways of wrapping our arms around this diverse literature, even if they’re not perfect. 

Josh  

Yeah, I think so. But you are right, that he has been accused of—he’s created these genre categories, and is the one saying what is stereotypical. Right? So…

Pete  

Right.

Josh  

He isn’t necessarily the final authority. So, then people have looked at these genre categories since his work in the early 20th century and they’ve kind of you know, adapted them, morphed them, sort of massaged them a bit. And also you have to figure out too, sometimes within the stereotypical, formal movement, the Psalmist doesn’t go there, and maybe on purpose. So—

Pete  

Right.

Josh  

The classic example would be Psalm 88. It’s a lament psalm. In the lament psalms, you have either individuals or communities, you know, lamenting their situation. Telling God about all of the problems that are true in their life, which kind of push against the core theology that you might see in a praise psalm. In a praise psalm, everything’s great, God is good, you can talk about God’s character, but then it all hits the fan and your life is lived and it doesn’t seem to be working out that way and people push against that. Well, oftentimes, in 99 out of 100, the lament psalms will present their problem and then it’ll turn at the end to a confession of trust, like, “Regardless of what is happening in my life, Yahweh, yet I will trust you.” But Psalm 88 doesn’t go there. It leaves on this really dark note. The last couple lines are, “They surrounded me like a flood all day long. From all sides, they closed in on me,” the Psalmist here is talking about his enemies. And then in verse 18, it says, “You, God, have caused friend and neighbor to shun me, my companions are in darkness.” Or another way to translate that would be “darkness is my closest friend,” and then the screen goes black, the curtain falls, credits roll, there is no turn to trust.

Pete  

Amen!

Josh  

Right. And that’s one of the ones that I think we can relate to more so than this stereotype, “Yet, I will trust you,” you know, because that’s not always the case. We don’t always feel that, we don’t always want to go there. So, the psalmist of Psalm 88, by shirking that—and I don’t want to put that on them necessarily, because that’s too Gunkel-y, you know?

Pete  

Yeah [Laughs]

Josh  

I don’t think they had this list of things that they have to prove—

Pete  

But they move beyond the formula or something.

Josh  

Yes.

Pete  

I mean, it’s probably fair to say that I think. Like, this is just a different kind of psalm. And what always intrigues me is that some group of scribes intentionally compiled these things.

Josh  

Right.

Pete  

And they said, “Yeah, this is a keeper.” They didn’t have to, but Psalm 88 a keeper, so I think it’s pretty wonderful. Can I ask you something else on Gunkel? Because the way Gunkel was presented to me in graduate school was, his work was a big shift from reading the Psalms as merely reflections of people’s experiences, and moving it into another kind of setting entirely, a cultic setting, you know, a worship setting, a liturgical setting. So, it’s not so much about the individual’s experiences, it’s about how these things were used. Does that make sense? Did I say that right?

Josh  

Yeah, I think so. It is, there’s shifts in Gunkel’s scholarly life where at times he really adopts, like, these are the cries of the individual psalmist’s heart, and he’s almost like got an anti-religious flair to it. It’s like devotional literature. But then there’s a shift where he gets on board with these are poems that are meant to be used within Israel’s communal worship setting, whatever that looked like. And I don’t think that we can reconstruct that with much certainty or accuracy. But, these are almost like the things that you say in worship. For example, like the thanksgiving psalms. Thanksgiving psalms are the second half, so to speak, of a lament psalm. In a lament psalm, we’ve been talking about these, you present all of the issues that’s going on, you kind of call God to task, you ask God to do something, but then it ends and we don’t know if God answers that prayer or not. 

Well, in the thanksgiving psalms, we absolutely do. Because they retell their story and they say, “I was, you know, in the pit and everything was going terribly for me. I called out to Yahweh and Yahweh has answered my prayer and here I am.” But also with that, a lot of these thanksgiving psalms, they’re sort of formatted as if someone who’s lived through that prayed those prayers, received an answer that’s positive, has gotten out of the metaphorical pit. Now, they’re in a worship setting and they’re presenting a thank offering for what God has done. It’s very ritualistic, it’s liturgical, it’s something that happens in a worship setting. And for all of the things that we cannot say about psalms—namely, who wrote them, why they were written, when they were written, where they were written, all of that stuff is- There’s a lot of question marks—scholars have sort of landed on, we can at least say that they were written to be used in some way, shape or form in Israel’s communal worship setting.

Jared  

So maybe we can go back, because you just, like, knocked a lot of things out there off the list of, we don’t know who, we don’t know when, we don’t know where. But let’s back up and maybe talk a little bit about that. Because, I think, for a lot of people, you know, in my tradition going up, it was assumed, like, David wrote all of these. But it doesn’t square with the idea of compilations and we don’t really know the origins. So, could you say a little bit more on who wrote them? Or do we know who wrote some of them and not others? Or where do we stand with that?

Josh  

Okay, so in an early version of the book, I tried to play up some of the comedic value of what I was attempting to do. And that meant that I just had a bunch of really cheeky chapter titles. And one of the chapter titles that I came up with was, “I don’t know who wrote the Psalms, and neither does anybody else.” My editor has helped me to sort of dial back some of that tone, so I’m trying to dial some of that back, but for me, at least, the short answer is we actually don’t know who wrote the Psalms and I know that’s difficult for people to hear, or maybe just surprising for people to hear. As I was writing this book and throwing some chapters to people to read, you know, one of the comments on this chapter in particular was, “Well, you know, my study Bible says…” and then it will go on this little rant about how David was involved in the authorship of the Psalms. There’s a couple reasons why David is closely associated with the book. In the narratives about David’s life in Samuel, we get this bit that David is a really good musician, there’s a story about how Saul is being tormented by evil spirits that “Yahweh has placed upon him.”

Pete  

Yeah, that’s another podcast.

Jared  

Yeah, forget that.

Josh  

We’ll just skip past that. His attendance said, “You should get somebody to come in here and play the liar and I know a guy.” Apparently, in the ancient world, like, music had some sort of evil spirit fighting capabilities. So, David was recommended to come in and play the lyre for Saul and help to alleviate some of his anxiety or issues that he was dealing with because of these evil spirits. So all throughout the narratives of David’s life, there’s this trope that he’s a really good musician, he’s later involved in the coordinating of Temple music—so, he’s the one who puts people into those music playing roles within the temple. So David and music are kind of walking hand-in-hand on the beach together in the narratives about David’s life. 

And then in Psalms, we get a bunch of what scholars call psalm titles, which is not the most exciting of labels, I know. But this is the stuff like at the beginning of a psalm that would say something to the effect of “This is a psalm of David.” If you want to even get beyond that it would say, here’s an example from Psalm 63. It says, “To the leader with stringed instruments, according to the Sheminith.” Most of these terms, we have no idea what is going on. And Pete to your earlier question, too, this is one of the reasons why that temple or worship focus was brought in because we’ve got all of these Psalm titles that give instructions to worship leaders and sort of coach them through on, maybe, the tune or something that we can’t quite put together but it’s got this tie to worship.

But then it also says in Psalm 63, “a psalm of David.” Now, when we hear that, we usually very quickly associate its meaning with, “that’s a psalm that David wrote.” And there’s a ton of these psalms. In Hebrew it would be a “L’Dovid Psalm.” “L’Dovid” is a compound word that includes “L'” which is a Hebrew preposition, it can mean a bunch of different things. And then “Dovid,” which is David. There are 73 of these L’Dovid Psalms in the Hebrew version of Psalms. I don’t know if we want to go here, but I’ll throw it out here for the super nerds—In the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, they bump that number up, sort of arbitrarily from 73 to 85 L’Dovid Psalms. Be that as it may, the L’Dovid Psalms, we usually immediately take as, that’s authorship. But, it’s a bit more ambiguous. That preposition can mean any number of things. So, it could just as easily be a psalm to David, for David, on behalf of David, inspired by David, concerning David, about David, a psalm that’s dedicated to David, a psalm that’s like belonging to the Davidic collection. So, scholars are…They want to kind of pump the brakes here and say this L’Dovid term can mean any number of things, and it’s not usually in the Hebrew Bible, that construction is not usually used to indicate authorship, it’s more often used to indicate something else entirely. The other complicating factor here with these titles would be they’re most likely added much, much, much later. So, it’s not as though whoever’s writing these psalms is slapping the title at the top, most scholars would say a later editor is coming along to give notes on the function of the psalm, like how it’s to be used, and what we’re supposed to do with it. That’s the sort of idea here. So…

Pete  

It’s like it’s a layer of interpretation. 

Josh  

Yes.

Pete  

People later came along and interpreted the Psalms as being… Whatever the “L’Dovid” means it was connected to David somehow, but you’re saying that originally, that’s probably not the case.

Josh  

Yeah, probably, it’s not there. Like, that title is probably not there. Pete, your point about like, it’s a layer of interpretation, that’s really made clear in, what scholars call—drumroll, please—the long psalm titles. So, these are the titles that say things about, “when David was doing this or that.” It sets the frame for a reading of the poem—Let’s, Psalm 51 is a good example. Psalm 51 is a psalm of confession. It’s about the psalmist, like, talking about their sin, it’s very hyperbolic, it’s very intense, it’s very emotional. And a later editor came along and said, “Hey, you know, it’d be good. If we take this psalm of confession and we let people read it through the lens of the David and Bathsheba and Uriah and Nathan the prophet who comes to kind of tell David all of the ways in which he has fallen short. If they read it in light of that story, that will really be an interesting hook for the rest of the psalm.” But it’s not historical, it’s not, you know, the author saying, “I was reflecting on all of the debacles in my life and this is when I wrote the psalm,” it’s somebody who’s much later combining those two stories for the benefit of later readers to say, this is a sort of situation in which you might want to offer this sort of prayer.

Pete  

So, I mean, just to be clear here, so everybody’s on board. The ascription, like “to David” or “for David”, that’s not the thing that’s—”oh, now we know David’s really musical, or whatever, because he wrote all the psalms.” That is actually later Jewish tradition reading back into the psalms something of David, because they felt that connection was very, very important.

Josh  

Yes, I think that’s the correct way of seeing it. Most people that just flip open their bibles don’t know that backstory, so they usually just treat it as, this is a byline for an op-ed. You know, it’s like the author of the psalm just wrote this at the top. But yeah, scholars are sort of unanimous on the view that this is a much later addition to the texts by the scribal community, or the people that are putting this book together for communal use within a worship setting. 

Jared  

Do we have any indication of any timing of when these things are happening? So, clearly, you know, these are individual Psalms, so, they’re being produced at various times. But then at some point, it seems like they get compiled and used in these cultic settings, at some point they’ve been given these titles or ascriptions. So, is there a sense of, kind of, timing or the evolution of the development of these?

Josh  

Yeah, this is, I think this is another place where historical criticism sort of lets us down. But it’s not the fault of historical criticism, so, that whole enterprise of trying to get behind the psalms and figure out you know, the when and the who, it’s incredibly difficult with psalms because they’re so ambiguous. And intentionally so, right? If these are prayers that are to be used by a number of people in a worship setting, you can’t really get super specific. But this would be like, you know, if I gave you—I’m gonna get real specific here and show some of my own musical cards—but if I give you Pearl Jam’s first album, 10, and say, “Tell me when this was written,” you would be depending upon the lyrics of that record to find any sort of hook in history that lets you place, you know, the setting of that song or the history of that song. But that’s not usually how music works. There’s a couple of offhanded examples of where people are writing about, like a historical event. 

But for the most part, it’s just…it’s ambiguous. So, within Psalms, we don’t have a lot of those historical hooks to hang our hat on. You do get some mentions, though, of the exile. So, Psalm 137, for example, begins “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, and there we wept when we remembered Zion.” So, there’s like a hook there saying, “Okay, so this psalm, at least, was written in the aftermath of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, and the exile of some of the Judahite people and it’s looking back to this monumental event.” So, within the book of Psalms, we’ve got these historical markers that at least put the final form of the book at that stage, even if some of those individual psalms were written earlier. Now, beyond that, if you’re actually talking about when were the titles added, that one’s a lot more difficult, I think, to answer and certainly beyond my paygrade, I believe.

Jared  

I want to maybe go back to the different genres, and I was curious about the structure of the psalms themselves, because from what I remember of these songs, it’s not like there’s a section of hymns and then there’s a section of lament and then thanksgiving, they’re not organized by type. Again, this is Gunkle’s analysis of these different ones, you’re sort of picking them out here and there—so, is there a structure to all 150? Is there a rhyme or reason to how these were put together?

Josh  

Yeah, that’s a great question. And, honestly, this was something that blew my mind when I was in seminary, because I think most people approach Psalms as a collection of prayers that you can read and engage in certain moments of life. So, you kind of flip around to find something that’s germane to the situation that you find yourself in and we treat each individual composition as its own entity. And when we finish it, we don’t expect the next Psalm to have anything to do with what we just read. I tried to float this analogy in the book—and this one goes out to all the 90’s kids out there in the world—the way that we tend to read Psalms is much like the way that we used to listen to “Now That’s What I Call Music” or for the super Christians amongst us, like the “WOW Worship” CDs. You remember these CDs? I just—

Jared  

You know what, I just saw the “Now That’s What I Call Music,” I think it’s Volume 85 was being advertised on Facebook.

Josh  

I thought that would be a funny little tidbit to show how far it has gone and I can’t believe that they’re still making those. But like before streaming services and playlists, like having a collection of all of your favorite songs on one CD that probably lived in that CaseLogic book in your car that rode shotgun with you wherever you went—to have all of those songs on one CD was awesome. But you didn’t expect it to have much logic from one song to the next. It was just a collection of things that you may or may not have appreciated. And some of the things you didn’t appreciate at all, and you skip them immediately. That’s sort of how we approach Psalms. But when you pull back and you see the entire collection, I think it’s much more analogous to like a really good playlist or—to stick with the children of the 90s—like a CD that you burn. You know, you go to Napster, you get all the songs, you put them in a certain order. It’s like you’re trying to create a mood or something and then you draw with the Sharpie on the front of the CD. For folks that aren’t like 90s kids, I’m not sure how much this tracks with you.

Pete  

How do we explain this to these people?

Jared  

Playlists for sure.

Josh  

Right. 

Jared  

My daughter calls CDs and albums “playlists.”

Josh  

Okay.

Jared  

So when somebody comes out with something, she’ll be like, “Oh, yeah, Beyonce has a new playlist out.”

Pete  

Yes, oh yeah. [Laughing]

Josh  

So, there’s a lot of intentionality when you’re creating something like that, you know, because you want—it’s got to start out with something big and loud. It’s got to get kind of kicked off and then it might move into a more emotional spot in the record and then it ends with, you know, a grand sort of encore, crescendo, that sort of thing. And you can look at the psalms in that sort of way where there’s been intentional, editorial shaping that’s been taking place that has organized the entire collection. Now scholars disagree on the degree to which this is true. Some people will say every single psalm has been placed in its current spot in the collection, and it has hooks that link it to the preceding psalm and the psalm that succeeds it. Now, that might be a little bit too much but most scholars would say that there has been an intentional editorial shaping of the collection, and I’ll just give you a couple of things that people will talk about. 

So, they would say that Psalms has an intentionally editorially shaped introduction and conclusion. So, Psalm 1 sort of sets the tone, it’s the lenses through which you’re to view the entire collection and then at the end, you’ve got this conclusion that has been placed there, it’s a crescendo of praise. Brueggemann talks about the movement from Psalm 1—which was a Torah psalm, it’s a psalm about obeying the Torah, meditating on the Torah—so it moves from obedience to praise at the end. You’ve got Psalms 146-150, that all sort of just hit you over the head, “praise Yahweh, praise Yahweh, praise Yahweh.” So it’s moving you from the beginning of the book and this Torah obedience, to the end of the book, and this monumental call to praise. But, beyond that—and this is the more interesting tidbit—beyond that, Psalms has been arranged and edited into five books. Right off the bat, bells should be going off that link the five books of the psalter with the five books of Moses, like there’s this intentional editorial shaping that’s meant to say, “Psalms is a different form of instruction, but it’s instruction nonetheless and it’s on par with the five books of Moses.” Those five books, there’s indications of editorial shaping, because at the end of each of these five books, there’s a very similar doxology that’s been added. So, at the end of book one—book one is Psalms 1-41—so at the end of Psalm 41, it says, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting, amen, and amen.” And then you get something similar at the end of book two—which is Psalm 42-72—at the end of that it says, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things. Blessed be his glorious name forever, may his glory fill the whole earth, amen and amen.” So, you’ve got these doxologies at the end of each book that seemed to scream out somebody, somewhere, has organized this entire collection, placing them into five books, and at the end, appending a doxology, to help you see that this entire collection has been put together on purpose.

Pete  

Mhmm.

Josh  

There’s one other really cool aspect of this in the five books. Some people would say—and this is not unanimous—but some people would say there’s a narrative that’s being told from Book One through Book Five. So, in book one, it’s dominated by L’Dovid psalms, it’s all about David and it’s different genres. It’s got lament, it’s got praise, it’s got a bunch of different things that are happening. And it’s sort of meant to draw you in to this world of David and the kingship. Book two continues David’s rule, but you get this really weird note at the end of book two at Psalm 72—I already read the doxology—but you also get this note that says, “the prayers of David are ended.” Which is not true, first of all, because there’s other L’Dovid Psalms after book two, but some people have said that this is more of a thematic…It’s a signal to say, the Davidic monarchy has collapsed and crumbled. Psalm 72, also, I should note, is not a L’Dovid Psalm, but it’s a Psalm of Solomon, his son. So, there’s like this transition at the end of book two that’s going beyond David to Solomon, and it’s moving towards the ultimate collapse of the Davidic monarchy, which shows up in the form of Israel being destroyed by Assyria, and also more climatically, Judah being destroyed by Babylon. 

So in book three you have all these communal laments. It’s not individuals, it’s the community and they’re all talking about the things that have taken place. In Psalm 78 you get a real clear nod to the fall of Israel and then in Psalm 89—which is the end of book three—you get this psalm that starts with notes of God’s covenant faithfulness to David. But towards the end, it shifts and God has “spurned and rejected David,” it says that “God is full of wrath against God’s anointed. God has renounced the covenant with God’s servant. God has defiled his crown in the dust.” This is really intense language, where the psalmist is just kind of going after Yahweh to say, it’s almost as if the psalmist is saying God has been a big, fat liar, because the covenant that was supposed to be promised is now in shambles, the Davidic monarchy is totally gone to pot, and now we have nothing. 

So, from book one to book three you’ve got David, you’ve got this transition in book two, then you’ve got the ultimate collapse of the Davidic monarchy in book three, and then it shifts again, in book four, which, interestingly enough, starts with a Psalm of Moses. So, it takes you back to time before the monarchy, almost like saying, “Hey, guys, let’s get our bearings now by going back to before all of this nonsense happened and let’s think about Moses and Torah and obedience.” And then in book four, it shifts to celebrate Yahweh as the rightful king, which is just fascinating. And then in book five—last thing about the structure and narrative—in book five, it begins with a psalm that’s calling all of the exiles to come home. “Let the redeemed of the Lord say, so those who redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands from the East and the West and the North,” and you want it to say the South, but it actually says, “and from the sea,” which is weird. But it’s, like, it’s telling all of these exiles to come back home. So, the narrative goes from Davidic monarchy to a transition of power, to the complete and utter collapse of the Davidic monarchy, back to Yahweh, who is the rightful ruler, to a postexilic time where everyone should come back home and then it ends in this crescendo of praise to Yahweh as Israel’s rightful king. So, some people see it’s structured to give this narrative flow from the beginning to the end.

Pete  

And that whole structure is self-evidently—if that’s true, and I personally think that it is—it’s a post-exilic organization that tells that whole story that “We started off great, it was David, then everything collapsed. But let’s remember that there’s a bigger picture here and there’s hope for the future.” So, that seems like a very hopeful structure. It’s not just let’s do five books to mimic Torah, let’s do something that actually speaks to our people who have gone through a lot, and—now, remind me the third book, the collapse of the monarchy as you put it—a lot of the lament psalms are in book three. I know they’re spread out a little bit, but like the density of lament psalms, I think, is higher in that book than the others. But I may be misremembering that.

Josh  

Well, certainly, there’s an overwhelming number of community laments, which is weird because community laments by and large are not very well represented of—the lament itself is the most represented genre in the book of Psalms—which I think is telling, and interesting, and also noteworthy that in a lot of faith communities lament is completely and utterly absent. But within Psalms, you know, lament sort of dominates, but not community laments, not communal laments, not “we have experienced this,” sort of laments. But in book three, that is exactly what you get, you get a lot of “we are lamenting,” which sort of moves you into this corporate lament of both the fall of Israel to the Assyrian Empire and and the fall of Judah to the Babylonians.

Pete  

It’s a real national lament. 

Josh  

Right.

Pete  

Yeah, yeah. So, it’s following the history. You know, I guess that’s really another way of putting it. It’s following the history of Israel.

Josh  

Yep. And I don’t think this is something—and I don’t mean this to disparage anyone. I wouldn’t have figured this out on my own, just reading through the book of Psalms, like, this is something where I’ve really benefited from other people saying, “Hey, here’s a way to approach Psalms.” But if you’re just like doing a read through the Bible in a year program, I don’t know, it seems like it’s just not that evident. But once you hear it, then everything starts to click, and you say, “Oh my gosh, there’s a lot more going on here than just this random hymnal with a bunch of different genres haphazardly attached.”

Jared  

With that, and maybe we can wrap up our time here. Thinking through some of the structure, and you said maybe some of the narrative or even the thematic throughlines of all five books of the Psalms—is there a way to talk about a theology of the Psalms? Is there, are there common ways of talking about God and talking about how God interacts with the world that we can sort of craft some sort of theology of the Psalms? Or is it—How diverse is it? And maybe what are some of those themes?

Josh  

I’m sure that there are people who talk about the theology of Psalms. I assume that there’s like some threads that run throughout. In the book, I’m really at pains, though, to celebrate the diversity within Psalms. So, I talk a lot about the culturally embedded snapshots of an individual psalmist’s theology that may sort of be in tension with someone else’s, another psalmist’s, theology. Especially if you just think about the Psalms genres. You know, the psalmist of Psalm 88, where darkness is their closest friend, I don’t know how good of a time that psalmist would have if he was kicking back some beers with the psalmist who has written a really deep…

Pete  

Happy-peppy? 

Josh  

Yeah, a happy…A theology of, like, “God is so good.” You know, like that sort of psalm? I don’t know if those two—

Pete  

“The sun will not scorch you, the moon will not-” you know, “you’re safe,” what is it, Psalm 121, everything’s gonna work out great?

Josh  

Yes, those two people together in a room, I don’t know if they’re going to have a great time. Now, underneath of that, maybe if you push the psalmist of Psalm 88, say, “Is God good?” They might say, “Yeah, but not today.” But those sorts of different theological themes that are coming out in their work, I just want to let them sit there and I want to let them sit there in tension without trying to make everything harmonious and every psalmist saying the same exact thing, because I don’t think that’s necessarily what we see here in Psalms. And sometimes that’s based on the different contextual situatedness, like, if you get somebody who’s writing in the shadow of the Babylonian exile, their take is going to be a little bit different than maybe somebody who’s writing earlier, perhaps, but just those situational realities are really driving the bus in how these people are talking about their theology. 

And, I think—you know, I’m a minister. So that comes out a little bit and how I process and how I think—but that sells really well, because within any congregation or any group of people, you’ve got very different ideas about how they have experienced the divine and allowing their lived theology to sit maybe in tension with one another is the most beautiful gift that we might be able to give them as opposed to saying, “Oh, no, no, no, you got to turn to trust, and you got to, kind of, move beyond. You gotta sing this praise Psalm even though your entire world is falling apart, you need to rush the grief, you need to rush the lament, and get over here with the rest of us, because we’re going to sing, you know, about how good God is.” I just, I don’t want that to be the case and I don’t really see that happening in Psalms anyway.

Pete  

Right. And you know, just to bring it to a close here, the diversity of the people who couldn’t sit with each other and the psalm authors, the diversity that we see in the Psalter, in the book of Psalms, really, it’s sort of a microcosm of how the Hebrew Bible as a whole works, where you have these diverse voices, and no one’s trying to mute the less happy ones. It’s just part of the reality of the life of following Yahweh or the life of faith and I think in that respect, there’s a lot that the book has to offer, you know. And hopefully, your book will also be a lot to offer!

Josh  

There we go, what a segue.

Pete  

And help them understand it. Oh, it’s gonna be great. So, anyway, but listen, Josh, thank you so much for taking the time. We know that you’re a busy pastor type and we just podcast. We don’t have anything to do except sit around once a week and talk to people, so, thank you for being here. We really appreciate it and can’t wait for the book to come out.

Josh  

You are very welcome, and I can’t wait for it to come out either. I hope it is meaningful for many people.

Pete  

It will be. Thanks, bud.

Jared  

Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/give.  

Pete  

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Jared  

And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show.  

Outro  

You’ve just made it through another episode of the Bible for Normal People! Don’t forget you can also catch the latest episode of our other show, Faith for Normal People, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People podcast team: Brittany Prescott, Savannah Locke, Stephanie Speight, Natalie Weyand, Stephen Henning, Tessa Stultz, Haley Warren, Nick Striegel, and Jessica Shao.