Obedience and Praise

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Blessed is the one

who does not walk in step with the wicked

or stand in the way that sinners take

or sit in the company of mockers,

but whose delight is in the law of the LORD,

and who meditates on his law day and night.

Psalm 1:1-2

Praise the LORD.

Praise God in his sanctuary;

praise him in his mighty heavens.

Praise him for his acts of power;

praise him for his surpassing greatness...

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.

Praise the LORD.

Psalm 150:1-2, 6

The book of Psalms opens with a promise that the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, those in covenant relationship with him, those who delight in his instruction and live by it. Readers take this call and its assurance with them into the rest of the book.

Then, as Psalm 1 provides an introduction, so Psalms 146-150 seem to form a conclusion to the book, with psalms of praise, culminating in the unfettered adoration of God in Psalm 150. In that sense, the Psalms are – as Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann puts it – ‘bounded by obedience and praise’.

And the sequence could well be important. Loving obedience initiates praise, praise is the culmination of obedience. Only those who begin in Psalm 1 can honestly end in Psalm 150. We don’t stay in Psalm 1 – that’s only the beginning – but nor do we rush too quickly to Psalm 150 – praising the Lord without taking account of his loving demand on our lives. Our adoration of God is bound up with our observation of his revealed will. Obedience is embedded in worship. The whole Psalter witnesses to a movement from piety to praise.

Of course, that move is not without its struggles! The world doesn’t always seem to go the way Psalm 1 suggests it should – with the righteous prospering and the wicked getting their comeuppance. We get to Psalm 150 in the end, but we don’t do so unscathed. Nor does Psalm 150 necessarily obliterate the despair and doubt, fear and failure that have been expressed along the way. It’s precisely in the ‘stuff of life’ that we discover our ultimate purpose in glorifying and enjoying God forever.

The psalms take account of the reality of sin and suffering and shame and setbacks, and they do so with brutal honesty; they also testify to moments when God works to bring us through those periods and renews our hope. And through it all, we come to understand that God doesn’t just exist safely at either end of the Psalter, but is found in the middle as well, in the midst of suffering and hope, in the midst of a life bound by obedience and praise.

Making Judgments

With some lines and ideas from my colleague, Margaret Killingray, I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Not so the wicked!

They are like chaff

that the wind blows away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,

nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

Psalm 1:4-6

How do we read passages like these, which talk about the ‘righteous’ and the ‘wicked’? Does everyone fall into one of these categories? Isn’t life – and aren’t people – more complicated than that? Yet, as unpalatable as it might sound, in Matthew 7:13-27, Jesus himself speaks about two ways (one which leads to life, one which leads to destruction), two trees (one which bears fruit, one which doesn’t), and two houses (one built on rock, one built on sand).

As it happens, the psalm itself fills out what is meant by being ‘righteous’ or ‘wicked’. It lays two ways before its readers – a contrast not just between the righteous and the wicked, but the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked. Here is a promise not only that the wicked will perish, but all that wickedness stands for will one day pass away, alongside a guarantee that the Lord ‘watches over the way of the righteous’.

None of this is because we are naturally good. The ‘righteous’ in the Old Testament are those who have been brought into covenant relationship with God, through his grace, who then seek to live within the terms of the covenant – even if they don’t always manage to do so consistently. We know from elsewhere in Scripture that ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23), and we are saved only ‘by grace... through faith’, which is not from ourselves, but is ‘the gift of God’ (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Jesus told a parable about wheat and weeds growing together in the same field until the final harvest. The over-enthusiastic servants who ask whether they should pull up the weeds are told by the owner, ‘Let both grow together until the harvest’ (Matthew 13:30). What looks like a weed today may actually turn out to be wheat. God alone makes the final judgment call.

In everyday life, there are moments to challenge wickedness and admire righteousness – in Christians as well as non-Christians, and sometimes in the same person. Still, the task of judging which category people belong to can, and probably should, be left to God, in the exercise of his complete love and perfect justice. Meanwhile, as we continue to serve the Lord, we can trust that he will watch over our ways.

John Goldingay on Robert Alter on the Psalms

John Goldingay, ‘Dichten = Condensare: Robert Alter’s Artful Guide to Unpacking the Psalms’, Books & Culture (July/August 2009).

The July/August 2009 edition of Books & Culture carries a review by John Goldingay of Robert Alter’s translation and commentary of the Psalms (The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary [New York: Norton, 2007]).

Goldingay provides helpful background information to Alter, his move into biblical studies in the 1970s, the publication of his significant books on Old Testament narrative and poetry in the 1980s through to his more recent translations and commentaries of the Pentateuch, the David story, and now the Psalms (paperback edition due out later this year).

Goldingay reminds us that one of the characteristics of Hebrew poetry is its denseness, using fewer words to say more than prose, with the result that readers have to work harder. Psalm 1, for instance, contains about fifty words, which is about half the total used in most English translations.

Even Alter struggles with the terseness, but his translation pays attention to word order to provide a sense of the dynamics of the poetic lines, and he is committed to preserving the concrete nature of the language of the Psalms as well as male pronouns for God.

Goldingay has some appreciative as well as a few critical comments on Alter’s rendering of Psalm 1, translated thus:

1 Happy the man who has not walked in the wicked’s counsel,
nor in the way of offenders has stood,
nor in the session of scoffers has sat.
2 But the LORD’s teaching is his desire
and His teaching he murmurs day and night
3 And he shall be like a tree planted by streams of water,
that bears its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither –
and in all that he does he prospers.
4 Not so the wicked,
but like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand up in judgment,
nor offenders in the band of the righteous.
6 For the LORD embraces the way of the righteous,
and the way of the wicked is lost.

Robert Cole on Psalms 1 and 2

Robert Cole, ‘An Integrated Reading of Psalms 1 and 2’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 98 (2002), 75-88.

When Psalm 1 is read with Psalm 2, the principal focus – according to Cole – is not Torah or wisdom, but a ‘royal [cf. Deuteronomy 17:18-19] and Joshua-like [cf. Joshua 1:8-10] figure who is given absolute victory in battle’ (75).

The ‘blessed’ figure of Psalm 1 is further identified as Yahweh’s ‘anointed one’ in Psalm 2. The ‘wicked’ opponents of Psalm 1 are identified more specifically as conspiring rulers in Psalm 2. The promise of 1:5-6 elicits the ‘Why?’ of Psalm 2:1. Yahweh and his messiah respond to the earthly scoffing with laughter and derision from heaven, with Psalm 2 then concluding with a reaffirmation of the same judgment promised at the end of Psalm 1.

This eschatological perspective opens the Psalter and ‘sets the tone for all subsequent psalms’ (88).

Jesper Høgenhaven on Psalms 1 and 2

Jesper Høgenhaven, ‘The Opening of the Psalter: A Study in Jewish Theology’, Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 15, 2 (2001), 169-80.

Links between Psalms 1 and 2 have often been noticed:

• Neither has a title or superscription.
• Psalm 1 begins with a blessing (1:1), and Psalm 2 ends with a blessing (2:12).
• The word translated ‘plot’ in Psalm 2:1 is the same word translated ‘meditate’ in Psalm 1:2.
• Psalm 1 ends with individuals being judged and perishing; Psalm 2 envisages nations perishing.
• Psalm 2:12 says ‘you will be destroyed in your way’; Psalm 1:6 uses that same language when it speaks of the way of the wicked perishing.
• Thematically, there is a contrast between the righteous and the wicked in Psalm 1, and a contrast between the rebellious nations and the Lord and his king in Psalm 2.

The two Psalms have regularly been read as one introduction to the Psalter.

The link has suggested to some that Psalm 1 be interpreted in the light of the ‘royal’ Psalm 2 (so that the figure of Psalm 1 who delights in the law is understood to be a kingly figure), whereas Høgenhaven suggests reading it in the opposite direction – Psalm 2 in the light of Psalm 1 (172).

Both psalms, according to Høgenhaven, show an interplay between different levels of time – the present and the future. The righteous person of Psalm 1 delights in the law of the Lord and anticipates the great separation at the final judgment, while Psalm 2 declares that blessed are all who take refuge in the Lord, who will one day make all nations serve his anointed one.

It is ‘the reference to the eschatological future as the necessary corollary to the statements made about the present [that] unite the two first Psalms’ (178). Høgenhaven sees Psalms 1 and 2 as ‘concerned with relating a present situation and the problems it poses for the righteous students of the divine tora to an eschatologically perceived future’ (178). In both psalms, ‘the troubling present is viewed in the light of the eschatological future, and in this light the proper attitude and the proper conduct for the present is laid out’ (179).