The History of Ancient Israel by Michael Grant

Author:Michael Grant [Grant, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Jewish
ISBN: 9781780222776
Google: minUBgAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00RTY9HKO
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Published: 2012-02-15T16:00:00+00:00

iv. The Psalms

The hundred and fifty Psalms, the contents of the Psalter, are of incalculable importance to our knowledge of the people of Yahweh, but their composers and editors and revisers cover a great range of centuries. Some psalms, or parts of them, can be dated to Solomon’s epoch, and possibly to David’s (Ch.7,ii). At the other end of the time-scale, many passages belong to periods after the exile had ended. But the principal creative age of the psalms was the age of the divided monarchy, when their composition proceeded in Judah with unexampled vigour.

Yet the extraordinary diversity of these songs almost defies any attempt to order them into categories. A number of original collections have been detected and distinguished among them, from internal evidence: Psalms ‘of David’, of David’s musician Asaph, of Heman and Ethan the Ezrahites (descendants of Asaph’s ancestor Zerah the Levite), of the Sons of Korah, of Yahweh-King, of Degrees or Songs of Ascent (pilgrim songs for festivals) – a category which partly overlaps the ‘Hallelujah Psalms’, ending with the ritual command ‘Praise the Lord.’ Attempts have also been made to classify the psalms according to subject and purpose: praises of Yahweh, professions of faith (thanksgiving, communion), national or personal lamentations, supplications in time of crisis, curses upon enemies, prophetic oracles, royal psalms.

This last group expresses the theology of the Davidic monarchy of Judah, and seeks to enhance and renew its effectiveness and potency. The royal psalms, like a number of others, are framed in the first person. This ‘I’ often purports to be the king himself, speaking for the group and the nation in the collective Hebrew spirit. The king swears to root out evil from private and public life, stressing that dissidents will be severely dealt with, and so will the country’s enemies, as many a call for retribution reminds us. The rulers and their peoples feel themselves perilously surrounded by threatening foes, within and without. ‘Scatter them, O Yahweh, like thistledown, like chaff before the wind…. O Yahweh, break the teeth in their mouths…. The righteous man shall rejoice that he has seen vengeance done, and shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.’31

Love of the Torah, too, remains paramount. And numerous psalms are also close to the moralizing wisdom tradition. Many others display equally strong affinities with the standards of the prophets, interpreting the past or foretelling the future, and sharing the prophetic unwillingness to dwell on sacrificial worship – except sometimes in metaphorical and spiritual terms. There are particularly powerful echoes of Jeremiah’s Confessions; and the appeal, ‘Save me, O Yahweh, for the waters have risen to my neck, I sink in muddy depths and have no foothold’,32 could be a reference to his imprisonment in a marshy pit.

The scorching, tormenting reality of the sense of sin, and the saving themes of divine forgiveness and repentance, are once again reminiscent of Jeremiah: seven psalms on such topics were later set aside as the Penitential Psalms by the Christian Church. For nothing is stronger in the Psalter than its conviction of the omnipotence of Yahweh.

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