Page 45 - The Poetic Books - Student Text

Study Session 5 – The Psalms - Introduction

5.1 Connect

The amount of material in the book of Psalms is immense, 150 “chapters” and over 2,500
verses. Genesis comes in second with around 1500 verses. The volume of information alone
makes Psalms difficult to master. Over the centuries, believers have found instruction and
comfort in individual verses, whole psalms, and even some of the collections such as the
fifteen “songs of ascents” from 121 through 134. Only occasionally have attempts been made
to discover a theological or governing principle for the whole. Usually readers approach the
book as a collection of poems that could be rearranged in many ways without losing meaning. Psalm 66
could be the first psalm, Psalm 79 could be the last psalm and so on. Studies in Psalms have been
sidetracked for at least 150 years focusing on the forms the poems come in and the possible occasion
that caused the writing of the psalm.

5.2 Objectives

1. You will be introduced to methods used by scholars to study the psalms during the last 100

to 150 years, especially newer views.

2. You will compare a typical song written to a pagan god and one written to the God of Israel.

3. You will see how the structure of the book of Psalms points to Christ as the central topic.

5.3 Learn : Psalms Studies

The book of Psalms was complete in its present form before the fourth century B.C. and
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translated into Greek for wider use along with the rest of the OT around 250 B.C. Dead Sea
Scroll finds discovered in 1948 and worked on since 1956 confirm the Hebrew text with only
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spelling differences. This is remarkable in that the first psalm was written by Moses (Psalm
90) during the fifteenth century B.C., and Psalm 137 appears to have been written after the
exile in the sixth century B.C., a period of almost nine hundred years.
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During the last 150 years or so, scholars have often discounted the titles of psalms, suggesting that
editors who came along after the original writers added the titles. Yet David was described as the “sweet

66 Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (Waco: Word Books, 1983), 31.
67 Bullock, An Introduction, 170.
68 David M. Howard Jr. “Divine and Human Kingship,” in The Psalms, Andrew J. Schmutzer & David M. Howard Jr.,
eds (Chicago: Moody Press, 2013), n. 1.
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