Participants: William Shea
Series Code: FC
Program Code: FC000379
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00:29 My name is William Shea, I'm a retired seminary professor.
00:33 Welcome to Faith Chapel. 00:36 I'm going to study an introduction to the Psalms with 00:40 today, lets pray as we begin. 00:42 Loving heavenly Father we thank you for the wisdom that you have 00:47 given your servants of old to compile and bring together in 00:51 these beautiful texts and as we struggle to understand how 00:55 these texts have been put together and used through the 00:59 centuries we ask the blessing of Your Holy Spirit to lead us 01:02 and guide us. In Jesus name. Amen. 01:07 I want to introduce the subject of the Psalms to you by 01:13 referring to a modern church hymnal. 01:16 The hymnal in the church I worship in has the fifth 01:21 addition of the hymnals that my church has had. 01:26 That over a period of 160 years. Five hymnals in 160 years. 01:33 What we have in the Psalms is the hymnal of ancient Israel. 01:38 The hymnal of the temple and it went through a number of 01:43 additions and we want to look at those individually. 01:49 Now its true as you study the Psalms you will get the best 01:53 spiritual value out of the individual Psalms themselves 01:57 but sometimes its helpful to see how all this was but together 02:01 how God guided His word through the ages, and what we have here 02:07 is a hymn book that was put together over more than 02:10 5 centuries. 02:12 If you think of the time of David about 1,000 B.C. and the 02:16 time of Ezra probably the last one adding to the Psalms, he 02:22 lived about 450 B.C., you have a period of about 5 and a half 02:27 centuries and that's they way in which this hymnal for the temple 02:31 grew, actually what we have in the Psalms is not one book 02:36 of Psalms but five books of Psalms and the text itself 02:40 actually divided its different sections up by use of a doxology 02:46 A doxology, a closing benediction for each one of the 02:50 books of the Psalms so we're going to look at those first 02:53 and then when we get these five sections of the Psalms 02:56 outlined then we can think a little bit more about what went 03:00 into each one of these books. 03:02 The first book of the Psalms ends with Psalms 41. 03:05 So I'm going to turn to Psalm 41 and read the doxology. 03:09 Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to 03:16 everlasting amen and amen. Sounds a little bit like a 03:20 doxology that we might use in church today and some of you 03:24 may have an English Bible which says immediately after that 03:27 Book 2, and so this doxology in Psalm 41:13 is a signal that 03:36 this is the end of one section of the sulter or we can refer to 03:40 it as Book 1. Book 2 goes over to Psalm 72. 04:10 You may notice something a little unusual here, it says the 04:15 prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended but lets go 04:19 for example to Psalms 86 which is in this section and in Psalm 04:23 86 the label at the top calls it a prayer of David and if we 04:28 had time we could go through many more texts which have in 04:33 the titles to the Psalms attributed them to David 04:37 So this shows that the book 2 of the Psalms was closed 04:42 to the particular time and at that time they remarked that 04:47 they had concluded the Psalms of David the son of Jesse at that 04:52 point in time but lets go on to Psalm 89 and we have another one 05:00 of these doxologies, it's very brief Psalm 89:52, 05:06 Blessed be the Lord forever amen and amen. 05:10 You may notice the similarity between 05:12 the doxology at the end of Book 1 we found at the end of Psalm 05:17 41, the next section of the book Book 4 as it reads many English 05:22 Bibles have beginning with Psalm 90, above Psalm 90 it'll read 05:26 Book 4 and then we go over to Psalm 106 and at Psalm 106 05:32 we read another doxology verse 48 of Psalm 106 Blessed be the 05:41 Lord the God of Israel from everlasting even to everlasting 05:45 and let all the people say amen praise the Lord. And then 05:49 the beginning of Psalm 107 we not only have the designation 05:54 Psalm 107 but we have up above it says Book 5, so we have 5 06:00 books of Psalms. Now why would we have 5 books of Psalms? 06:04 Well because at different times different sections were added 06:10 successively and we may identify some of those periods of time 06:15 in which these additions were made. Now the first 32 Psalms 06:20 first 41 Psalms I should say Book 2 starts Psalm 42 06:25 in the title to the Psalms and we'll talk a little about the 06:29 title to the Psalms virtually all of those first 41 Psalms 06:35 are attributed to David and they're attributed in this way 06:39 they use the Hebrew preposition el which means according to 06:43 in other words its an indication of authorship. Now in the titles 06:48 to the Psalms there are also references not only to the 06:52 author but to the musical instruments that were played 06:55 in accompanying them to the pieces of music to with they 06:59 were chanted or sung, to the experience of a person in 07:05 particular David there are a number of Psalms that have a 07:08 particular reference to an experience of David that we can 07:11 find in the historical books of Samuel and then it has a 07:18 reference commonly to the type of Psalm and so there are 07:23 different classifications of Psalms for instance I'll just 07:26 give you a couple of words a maskil is the word used for a 07:29 wisdom Psalm or a michtam is a Psalm of atonement and so 07:36 we have these bits of information in the titles to the 07:40 Psalms now the question would be how accurate historically are 07:44 they. Obviously when David wrote a Psalm he didn't put up at the 07:49 beginning and say I David wrote this Psalm but apparently 07:55 the attribution to David is found early enough that they 08:00 knew who wrote the Psalm it was specified in the titles. 08:05 Now since Book 1 has the attribution of all these Psalms 08:10 to David you may say that they were composed by David collected 08:15 in the time of David and so Book 1 would end perhaps with 08:19 death of David. He lived until about 970 according to the dates 08:24 for the Hebrew kings and so from there Solomon took over and we 08:29 would expect since Solomon was the great temple builder that 08:32 he would have needed or wanted a hymnal, an expanded hymnal 08:38 so Book 2 we might attribute to Solomon in fact its interesting 08:42 to see that the nature of the Psalms changes. Book 1 the 08:48 Psalms of David are basically an individual type of Psalm. 08:52 Were David is reflecting upon an experience of his either good 08:57 or bad sometimes his enemies are chasing him sometimes he's 09:01 praising God for something good that's happened to him 09:03 There basically four types of Psalms. Now there are exceptions 09:08 there are special Psalms we might mention, 4 types of Psalms 09:12 They're easy to classify. They're either individual 09:16 like David's or congregational like we now read in Book 2 09:20 and I'll discus those a little bit more and then they come in 09:24 two different types either its good or its bad either its a 09:28 lament or mourning for something bad that has happened or it a 09:33 praise and you might know that the word for halleluiah that we 09:39 so commonly use comes from the root hallel from Hebrew which 09:45 means praise and so the name for Psalms in Hebrew is 09:49 atahila is the singular or tehillim is the plural. 09:53 And so this word for praise is the title to these books 09:57 of praises and its rather interesting to see that today we 10:00 have traditional hymns and praise songs the Hebrews didn't 10:04 make that distinction. They were all praise songs all 150 of them 10:09 were all praise songs. So when we move into Book 2 we run into 10:15 something different, we run into congregational songs and they 10:19 are congregational songs that are written by a particular 10:22 groups of people and I'm looking at the title 10:25 for Psalm 42. 10:27 Directions to the choir director a maskil or a wisdom Psalm 10:32 of the sons of Korah. Now who were the sons of Korah? 10:35 They're listed in 1 Chronicles 6 as the temple singers. 10:40 And so as we continue as I just scan through Psalm 44 songs of 10:46 Korah Psalm 45 sons of Korah, and it goes all the way to Psalm 10:52 49 so here's a block of hymns written by the sons of Korah 10:56 written by the temple singers from Psalm 42-49 this group 11:02 that the temple singers as the temple is now being used in the 11:08 temple which Solomon has constructed the temple singers 11:11 now come into play and bring to for their hymns now there's a 11:17 another interesting one here Psalm 50 and this is not a Psalm 11:22 by the sons of Korah but a song by the sons of Asaph and who 11:28 were the sons of Asaph? They too were temple singers in fact if 11:33 anything they were more prenominate temple singers 11:35 then the sons of Korah. The sons of Asaph and Asaph are mentioned 11:42 four times in the historical books 1 Chronicles 6, 15, 16, 11:49 and Ezra 2. You may remember that Ezra 2 gives a list of the 11:54 people who came back from the Babylonian exile and their on 11:57 the list as the ones who came back and continued their 12:04 occupation of temple singers in the second temple that was built 12:08 by Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest according 12:11 to the book of Zechariah. 12:12 So now we have these congregational type hymns and so 12:18 Book 2 continues with these and then come another collection of 12:23 Psalms of David and its interesting to see the last book 12:27 we said Psalm 72 divides of this section of Psalms 12:34 We have the long doxology which we already read but you'll 12:42 notice at the beginning in the title of Psalms 72 its a Psalm 12:47 of Solomon. Solomon of course was also known for his literary 12:51 activity and so here's a Psalm of Solomon which ends the second 12:57 book which probably was collected in the time of Solomon 13:02 for use in the temple. Now when we come to Book 3 we have more 13:07 of these congregational type hymns written by the sons of 13:11 Asaph, and there are more than ten of them, they run from 13:16 Psalms 73 to 83. And so the sons of Asaph are mentioned in the 13:23 title of the rest of these Psalms and so these were 13:26 congregational hymns used in the temple. Its also interesting to 13:31 notice that occasionally we will run into Psalms that have 13:37 the names of the hymn tunes. You know in our hymnal 13:41 We can use a poem, you can take that poem and use it to sever 13:48 different kinds of music if the meter is correct. 13:50 If the meter of the poem and the meter of the music match 13:53 you can make them interchange so we have some songs that are 13:57 sung to different pieces of music or a piece of music that 14:01 maybe used for several songs and they did the same thing in 14:07 ancient Israel so let me just take one example if we look at 14:12 Psalm 57, 58, and 59 the reason these 3 Psalms are of interest 14:18 is because they were all sung to the same song the same music 14:22 and let me read an introduction here. The title of Psalm 57 14:31 For the choir director set to Altaschith a Michtam of David 14:37 when he fled from Saul to the cave. Notice the historical 14:40 reference there in the title. There are only historical 14:44 references to the experiences of David nobody else's historical 14:48 experiences are found in the titles. Now we know these Psalm 14:52 titles were old because when they came to translate the old 14:57 testament into Greek in the 3 B.C. a knowledge of what some 15:02 of these musical terms meant had already been lost so this 15:06 shows that these are quite old and therefore probably go back 15:10 to times shortly after the original composition alright so 15:14 here's Altaschith for the music of Psalm 57 then Psalm 58 to the 15:22 choir directors set to Altaschith a Michtam of David 15:26 a Psalm of atonement and Psalm 59 for the choir director set to 15:31 Altaschith a Michtam of David when Saul sent his men and they 15:35 watched the house in order to kill him. So here we 15:39 have three Psalms and right in a row that were set to the same 15:43 music. So we have the names of the hymn tunes let me take one 15:49 interesting Psalm which is one of these exceptional Psalms 15:53 It doesn't fall into the usual four categories which I 15:58 mentioned. The label in English is the song celebrating the 16:03 king's marriage specifically the marriage of Solomon. 16:06 And it says for the choir director according to Shoshonean 16:11 that's the Hebrew word for lilies that was the name of the 16:16 tune a maskil of the sons of Korah a song of love, well 16:20 here's a wedding song and here's their wedding march and so 16:24 what I want you to notice in particular about this is the 16:28 same music was used for Psalm 69 and Psalm 80 so lets just turn 16:33 to those two quickly. Psalm 69, and it says for the choir 16:44 director according to Shoshonean a psalm of David. So here's the 16:48 musical piece which the gave the label of lilies. You know we 16:52 have titles for our music too. Even when we use it with 16:59 different poems for instance a famous hymn tune in the English 17:03 hymnal is Old Hundred and so you can use that to several 17:07 different poems. Now there are some interesting indications 17:13 of how these collections were done and I want to go back to 17:17 Book 1 and I want to go to Psalm 9 and Psalm 10 because 17:21 originally these two Psalms were all one Psalm. How do we know 17:29 that? We can only see this in Hebrew because there is 17:34 something in Hebrew called an acrostic which is the 17:37 use of the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. 17:42 And to make it simple in Psalm 9 the verses start with the letter 17:47 Alph or 'A' and they go to Kaph or 'K' in Psalm 10 they 17:52 begin with 'L' or Lamed and they go to Tow or'T' so half of 17:57 the Hebrew alphabet is in Psalm 9 and half more is found in 18:02 Psalm 10 so obviously to have this anacrustic or alphabetic 18:06 Psalm it would have originally belonged together. Another 18:11 interesting aspect in the use of the divine names. 18:16 The divine name that is common as God's personal name is, 18:22 we would say Jehovah or perhaps a better pronunciation would be 18:25 Yahweh and its interesting to note that in the first 40 Psalms 18:29 that were written by David, he very prone to use that personal 18:33 name of God. In Book 2 in which we now have the congregational 18:38 hymns for the temple by the temple singers its much more 18:45 common to use Elohim which is generic word of God. And outside 18:50 of ancient Israel anybody in any country would understand 18:54 Elohim as a word for god. But Yahweh was the name of the God 18:58 of Israel only. Its His personal name. Just as Kimosh was 19:01 the god of the Moabites and Marduk was the god of Babylon 19:04 and so on and so forth each country and city had there own 19:09 god and there were names and Yahweh or Jehovah was the name 19:13 of the God of Israel and now another aspect of the Psalms is 19:21 the reuse so I wanted to give you an example of that, 19:26 This is Psalm 14 let me read a little bit of that. The fool 19:32 has said in his heart, there is no God, they are corrupt, they 19:35 have committed a abominable deeds. 19:37 There is no one who does good 19:39 watch carefully now, The Lord has looked down from heaven 19:44 upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand who 19:48 seek after God, they have all turned aside together they have 19:52 all become corrupt. There's is none that does good not even one 19:56 Alright now lets turn to Psalm 53 and you may notice something 20:06 similar and then you may notice something different. 20:12 The fool hath said in his heart there is no God they are corrupt 20:17 they have committed abominable injustice there is no one who 20:20 does good. God has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men 20:25 to see if there's anyone who understands anyone who seeks 20:28 after God. Everyone of them has turned aside together they have 20:32 become corrupt. There is no one who does good not even one. 20:35 If you listen carefully you may have noticed that those verses 20:40 from Psalm 14 are repeated in Psalm 53 but there was one 20:46 tiny little difference and I don't know if a careful listener 20:49 caught it. In Psalm 14 it uses the name of the Lord or the 20:56 Hebrew word behind this is Yahweh. Yahweh looks down from 21:00 heaven to see if there's anyone righteous and Psalm 53 21:04 it uses the term God or Elohim so its the same Psalm reused in 21:11 Book 2 but now with a different name for God. 21:16 And so people have said well the reason David uses this personal 21:21 name of God is because of his close personal association with 21:26 God and because of the individual nature of the Psalms 21:30 speaking out of his experience whether it was mournful 21:33 or whether it was praise speaking to God as a friend 21:36 which is what these Psalms are just to do, where as in worship 21:41 in the temple its a more transcended or a more 21:45 over arching experience and so they used the name for God 21:49 that was used for example in Genesis one, so here we have 21:53 the same Psalm repeated now we have some other cases of this 21:58 which I wont bother you with but I want to notice some 22:05 special collections. Lets go to Psalm 120 this now would be in 22:11 in Book 4. Psalm 120 which is right after the longest Psalm of 22:17 all Psalm 119 which is an acrostic incidentally the 22:21 letters of the Hebrew alphabet are used all the way through 22:24 in order in Psalm 119. 22:27 This Psalm and praise of the law a wisdom Psalm 22:30 but starting with Psalm 120 if you look at the title it says 22:36 Song of a sense. Psalm 121 a song of a sense, Psalm 122 a 22:42 a song of a sense of David, Psalm 123 a song of a sense and 22:47 that goes on until Psalm 134. So here's a collection. You know 22:53 we have collections in our hymnal. We have songs about 22:54 Christ songs about His suffering songs about His birth Christmas 22:59 songs, we have songs about God songs about the church 23:02 and we collect those in different sections so they did 23:05 that here. Now what were songs of the sense? 23:06 Songs of a sense were songs which people sang or chanted 23:14 as they ascended to Jerusalem to go to the festivals 23:18 you may remember the 6 festivals of the Jewish calendar 23:21 three of which at Pentecost, Passovers, and tabernacles 23:25 all the males of Israel were required to attend and since 23:31 it was a fairly long walk or a fairly long donkey ride 23:34 they needed something to pass the time of day so they would 23:38 sing and they would chant with these Psalms and you can 23:43 see this quite clearly in Psalm 122 I was glad when they 23:48 said to me let us go to the house of the Lord our feet are 23:53 standing in are gates oh Jerusalem and so forth. 23:59 The tribes go up even the tribes of the Lord so here we have 24:04 a psalm of a sense that speaks rather clearly to the idea of 24:10 these marching people going to these festivals. Now there's 24:16 another section here if we go back to Psalm 11 that uses a 24:22 word with which you are very familiar even if you don't know 24:25 Hebrew and the word is halleluiah and halleluiah 24:29 is the word to praise in the imperative form and the 'iah' 24:36 is a short form of the name of God so basically when you say 24:38 halleluiah your saying praise Jehovah or praise Yahweh. 24:42 And you may notice that Psalm 11 begins with praise the Lord 24:47 Psalm 112 begins with praise the Lord, Psalm 113 begins with 24:53 praise the Lord and ends with praise the Lord. 24:56 And Psalm 115 ends with praise the Lord and so forth. 25:01 So here's a little book, a little collection of Psalms that 25:06 were collected around the word halleluiah. Halleluiah at the 25:10 beginning or halleluiah at the end or halleluiah at the both. 25:14 And so this is called the hallel this is a collection known as 25:18 the praise of the praises. Now we have late Psalms and you 25:27 might expect them to occur in Book 5 and sure enough we'll 25:31 turn to one that very characteristic Psalm 137. 25:35 This is a tragic Psalm but its very well known and here we have 25:42 the experience of the exiles. By the rivers of Babylon there 25:46 we sat down and wept. When we remembered Zion upon the 25:52 willows we hung our harps for there our captors demanded of 25:57 us songs and our tormentors murth saying sing us one of 26:02 the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lords song in a foreign 26:07 land if I forget you oh Jerusalem may my right hand 26:10 forget her skill, may my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth 26:14 if I do not remember you, if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my 26:19 chief joy. So here are the people in exile bemoaning 26:25 their fate and bemoaning the fate of Jerusalem with now lay 26:30 in ruins and destruction and they are reflecting back 26:33 and so here is a Psalm which could only have been written 26:36 during the Babylonian exile and so it was collected let us say 26:41 later after they got back to their homeland after they were 26:44 sent back by Siris and it makes to Book 5 we have a Psalm 26:50 And so we come to the final section of the Psalms and we 26:57 might say that Book 3 was probably collected in the time 26:59 of Hezekiah. There was much literary activity going on 27:03 in the time of king Hezekiah. Proverbs 25 refers to the 27:08 collection of Proverbs made in the time of king Hezekiah 27:11 Book 4 probably collected just before the Babylonian conquest 27:16 and Book 5 at the end of the exile and so we come to the 27:22 last five psalms and you may remember them cause they're all 27:25 very musical psalms that once again use the word halleluiah 27:28 halleluiah at the beginning halleluiah at the end over and 27:32 over again and you may remember Psalm 150 which is the praise 27:33 of God on all the instruments that have been mentioned 27:40 in the titles of the Psalms that have gone before. Let me close 27:44 by reading that Praise the Lord praise God in the sanctuary 27:48 praise Him in His mighty expanses praise Him for His 27:51 mighty deeds praise Him according to His 27:53 excellent greatness. |
Revised 2014-12-17