Bible Commentary - Psalms Introduction

Welcome to Psalms!  This is the second out of the five wisdom books.  It’s easy to remember the wisdom books because they are all grouped together: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs.  We have just finished Job, the first wisdom book, and are now moving on to the second.

Despite their categorical grouping, the wisdom books are incredibly diverse in content and style.  Job, for its part, was a 42-chapter book with an almost singular focus on just one topic, the question of human suffering and why bad things happen to good people. Furthermore, Job follows a single narrative line, structured around the dialogue between Job and his friends.  The contrast with Psalms could not be starker.

Psalms is not so much a single book or composition as much as it is a compilation of hundreds of individual songs.  In some ways we could correctly say that Psalms is not even a single book.  Psalms has 150 chapters, and as a general rule each chapter is a distinct psalm (this is not always true, as we will see, but it usually holds), most of which were authored separately, though it is very likely that some psalms were written by the same person.

Even internally, the book of Psalms is actually divided into five books, and this division is ancient.  Wikipedia suggests that the five book separation was “introduced by the final editors”, possibly to mimic the five-book organization of the Pentateuch.  The book divisions are generally annotated in pretty much any bible, but they are after the following psalms: 41, 72, 89, 106 and Psalms ends at 150.

Psalms does not have a single author or date of composition because, as mentioned, it is an anthology and not a single work.  Many psalms specify their author in the title, and these authors include (but are not limited to) King David, the “sons of Korah” and Asaph.  Many other psalms are untitled, and for the psalms without titles, their authorship is a topic of guesswork and wild speculation.  Some scholars have tried to pin down demographic characteristics of the anonymous psalmists by studying their choice of language and topic, and that is probably the most we will ever be able to know.

The “sons of Korah” and Asaph both refer to professional Levitical musicians who would have a prominent role in composing and performing religious music such as the psalms.  David might seem a surprising composer (as one may have expected him to be more busy with political and military concerns), but descriptions of both him and Solomon emphasize their creative endeavors.  2 Samuel 23:1 calls David “the sweet psalmist of Israel”.  2 Chronicles 29:27 refers to musical instruments as “the instruments of David”.  Chronicles in general seeks to establish a historical connection between David and the temple worship ceremonies, so his role as a musician is less surprising in that light.

Solomon, on the other hand, only rarely appears in the book of Psalms, but in 1 Kings 4:32 we are told that Solomon wrote 1,005 songs and authored 3,000 proverbs.  This indirectly supports David’s role as a musician and author of psalms, because it shows a cultural tradition for kings of Israel to look beyond pragmatic political concerns and to pursue excellence in a variety of fields.

Consistent with the documentary hypothesis, there are modern theories that the Psalms were composed very late, after the exile and possibly even as late as the Maccabean period (i.e. ~160 BC).  These theories generally argue based on linguistic traits such as the usage of Aramaic terms or expressions and the attempt to tie specific theological concepts to a later time period as textual evidence that the Psalms must be relatively late.  I’m not going to discuss this at length because there are many other things to talk about and I don’t feel like this theory substantially changes our interpretation of the Psalms.  We can have a consistent, meaningful interpretation regardless of when they were authored.

Just as Psalms has many authors, it was also authored over a long time period, probably well over a hundred years.  A handful of psalms were clearly written after the destruction of the temple (for instance, Psalm 74:7), but many psalms show clear evidence of pre-exilic origin.  I personally lean towards a pre-exilic origin for many psalms, because amongst other things the Psalms do not even once mention the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Persians or any other major post-exilic foe.

On the other hand, the Psalms contain many cultural and political relics of the pre-exilic period.  The Edomites are mentioned eight times, the Moabites are mentioned three times, and the Canaanites are mentioned three times.  While these are certainly not overwhelming numbers in a 150-chapter book, it shows a focus on national enemies from the pre-exilic period, while an absence of their post-exilic enemies.  Several psalms also reference “the king” of Israel or Judah, which clearly places those individual psalms into a pre-exilic context; there was no king over Israel after the exile.  The psalms “of David” and psalms “of Asaph” certainly point to a focus on pre-exilic traditions, if they do not directly refer to psalms of pre-exilic origin.

Beyond its immediate authors, there is also the question of who compiled it and when it was compiled together into a single anthology.  This question faces many of the same challenges as assigning authorship and a date to the individual psalms.  In some ways identifying the editor is even more difficult, because the role of the editor was selecting and organizing the Psalms.  We can only discern their identity indirectly, by the choice of what material is included in the Psalms.  From this basis we can only draw the broadest of generalizations; the editor was probably from Judah and probably a priest.  My NIV bible commentary suggests that the first two books of psalms have a likely pre-exilic origin, while the other three books are mixed or uncertain.  It seems very likely that the final editor is post-exilic, but anything beyond that I cannot say.

While the content of the Psalms is wildly diverse, as I mentioned before, we can draw some generalities.  Psalms generally fall into several categories.  There are psalms of praise, petition, mourning; really the Psalms cover pretty much every human emotion and the range of possible interactions that we can have with God at an emotional level.

The emotional descriptions are one of the best parts about the Psalms.  I had mentioned long ago that the OT can feel very dry emotionally.  It has a lot of neutral language, many descriptions of what people were doing but without talking much about their reactions to it or how we should feel about it.  Places like the second half of Exodus, with the tabernacle schematics, or Leviticus with its sacrifice rituals.  Theologically significant as they may be, they are not generally considered interesting or engaging writing.  On the other hand, Psalms is a very emotional collection, since this is literally Jewish worship music from the temple period.

There is a lot of speculation about why the Psalms got organized in the particular way that they did.  Given that it was an anthology, the selection and organization of the Psalms was the primary contribution of the editor.  Detailed study makes it clear that the Psalms are indeed organized in particular ways, but apart from really obvious things (like the choice of introductory and concluding psalms), it is not usually evident to a casual reader.  Even to someone like me who is reasonably familiar with the bible, analyzing the structure of Psalms is not an easy thing to do, so I am mostly going to ignore it for the purposes of this commentary.  One thing I do want to mention is that the division of the five “sub-books” of Psalms is ancient and textual analysis shows significant variation in language (for instance, usage of “elohim” vs. “yahweh”), topic and other factors.  This strongly indicates, but does not prove, that the five books come from distinct origins; different authors or groups of authors, different time periods, or different locations.  One possibility is that the five sub-books were composed or compiled independently and then merged together at some later phase; once again this is impossible to prove but the evidence vaguely hints at it, so I will vaguely hint at it too.

I will wrap up my introduction here.  As long as my introduction already is, there is so much more I could write about Psalms that I want to just stop here and spread out some of that analysis into the chapter-by-chapter breakdown.

With all that said, let’s move on to chapter 1 of the book of Psalms!