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Study Lesson 9: The Psalms - continued

9.1 Connect

Several collections have been grouped together: Psalms of David (3-41), Psalms of
the Sons of Korah (42-49), Psalms of David (51-65), Psalms of Asaph (73-83),
Kingship of Yahweh (93-99), Songs of Ascents (120-134), Psalms of David (138-145),
and hallelu-yah Psalms (146-150). Any of these might make a good sermon or
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Sunday school series to introduce Psalms to a congregation or small group.

The Songs of Ascent have often been selected for use as a mini-psalter. While a variety of reasons for
their collection have been suggested, the best seems to focus on people journeying to Jerusalem for
festivals. Three times each year people were required to ascend to Jerusalem for Passover, Pentecost,
and Rosh Hashanah (New Year’s). (See Ex. 23:14-17; 34:22-24.) “Presumably, these songs were sung
along the way and marked the progress of the journey and the concerns of heart as the pilgrim
remembered those at home and entered into the joy of the city of Zion.”
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We do not know how or when they were put together. One suggestion has been that the pilgrims
themselves gradually formed the collection. In prophesy of the future, Isaiah apparently referred to the
practice in his day. “And you will sing as on the night you celebrate a holy festival; your hearts will rejoice
as when people playing pipes go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the Rock of Israel (Isa. 30:29).” “The
Hebrew pilgrims made merry with songs and instruments of music as they went up to the Feasts. We
may be sure that they would choose for this purpose short songs, easily carried in the memory, and
appropriate songs, national lyrics, or lyrics which expressed the moods of the time and the journey.”
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Believers over the centuries have seen them as teaching life as
a pilgrimage. “The ascent was not only literal, it was also a
metaphor: the trip to Jerusalem acted out a life lived upward
toward God, an existence that advanced from one level to
another in developing maturity.” It is striking in this way to
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think of Jesus traveling as a youngster with his family to a
festival at Jerusalem. He may have heard these songs from an
early age and had memorized them all. “Every year Jesus’
parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover
Figure 42: the ascent to Jerusalem (Luke 2:41).” As an adult, knowing the end of his own

133 David M. Howard Jr., “Introduction to the Psalms,” in NIV Zondervan Study Bible, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2015), 971.
134 Walter c. Kaiser, Jr. The Journey Isn’t Over (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993), 15.
135 Samuel Cox, The Pilgrim Psalms (London: Daldy, Isbister, & Co., 1874; reprint, Kessinger Publishing: Whitefish,
nd), 7.
136 Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press, 1980), 14.
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