What was it this week, Proverbs 16, 16 to 19. Did someone stop at 18? This is week five by the way. We missed last week on intentionally. This is week five, but let's let's start at the top with Proverbs I'm sorry. Whoops. Excuse me, and it's just a show that I'm not awake yet. It is evening. Yes, Psalm 37, 4, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37, 4. Psalm 46, 10. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth Psalm 46, 10, right? Proverbs 3, 5 and 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understandings in all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your past straight. Proverbs 3, 5 and 6. Proverbs 3, 11 and 12. My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline and do not resent his review for God's discipline's those he loves. As the father, the son, he delights in. Proverbs 3, 11 and 12 Proverbs 4, 18 and 19. For the path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn shining ever brighter till the full light of day. But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness. They do not know what makes them stumble. Proverbs 4, 18 and 19. Okay, now this one for tonight has hand motions, you see? So it's easier. I don't know if you do this when you memorize things. It's nice if it's all parts of the body, you know, head, shoulders, knees, and toes, and that kind of thing. But so we can do this. We can do this. Proverbs 6, 16 to 19. There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are testable to him, haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush to evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and one whose dissension among his brothers, Proverbs 6, 16 to 19. See, I'm old enough that I stumble over this because I learned a lot of these as a kid in the King James version. So it's hard to get over that and any of the rest of you who confess to that will also be confessing to your age, probably. I keep tripping myself so I'm going to stick this back here. Let me just comment on that one before we pray. I can get this back. That Proverbs 6, 16 to 19. It was striking to me when I thought about this a few years ago in reading that particular passage because I was thinking, you know, if I were the Lord and I were going to make a statement like, six things the Lord hates, yes, seven are testable to him, I'm not sure I would have chosen exactly this list. Now granted, let me turn to it here, granted it makes sense that he began with haughty eyes because we all know or at least if we've been around a while we know that one of the most detestable of sins is pride and it's also one of the more ridiculous sins when we're confronting God that way would in any way think that we can have something to be proud about. But the one that really surprised me and I'm going to make this pretty brief, the one that really surprised me was the last one, a man who stirs up dissension among brothers, Ouch. I think as Christians, often we are very quick to recognize the sins of others and to point them out and yet this is one that we can fall prey to because the tongue is so difficult to control. We may not often have a lying tongue but we are pretty good at stirring up dissension among the brothers and that is the seventh and in a sense the ultimate thing if it begins with pride those two pole positions pride God certainly hates but also dissension and as I research that a little bit trying to give attention to the prevention of dissension I found in the New Testament that in some of Paul's lists of heinous sins drunk in this debauchery orgy's dissension right there in the middle of those lists is again the mention of dissension I'm sorry everything's rhyming at this particular point but I would encourage you simply to reflect on these things this is not an exhaustive list there are other things of course there are other sins that the Lord finds detestable and yet these are listed for a purpose this is a sampling a significant sampling and that one surprised me maybe we can pray that God will enable us to be those who in our homes in our churches in whatever context we find ourselves are those who by God's grace do control our tongues and allow ourselves to be filled up by the Lord in such a way that we don't feel crippled and weak and vulnerable and thus likely to lash out at other people it's often when we're not feeling too good about ourselves that we find something wrong with other people and feel like we must express it so give attention to dissension recognize what your place is in in a particular context take church life for instance let me just give you one illustration I think it's important to realize in a church that in a sense it's like a bus or a van moving in a certain direction there are there is someone at the steering wheel of course ultimately it's Christ he's the head of the church and so he's we hope we we we pray driving that bus in the direction in which it's going but he has appointed human beings his servants to sort of handle the wheel as he as he works through them and who would those be well in a church setting I would say that would be the leadership of that church not necessarily just the senior pastor but the leadership of the church is in a sense driving the van and it's very tip it's very tempting sometimes for us to be backseat drivers now good leaders are delighted if you're consulting the map okay this is the map and if you make suggestions say hey you know I've been reading the map and I think maybe we could go a little bit more this way what do you think you know and that's fine and that's good and that's our responsibility as Christians to read the map and make suggestions to the drivers but it is not our responsibility to reach over from the back seat shove them aside grasp the wheel and start trying to drive it ourselves and sometimes you do get those power plays at those those struggles in a church that lead to dissension and belive what Jesus said they'll know where Christians buy our love so give attention to the prevention of dissension I can't avoid saying that I'm sorry and do recognize you know God has appointed these people who lead us let us pray for them let us advise them let's be diligent readers of the map make our suggestions now if you're in a bus that's going in your in as you read scripture that is going in the wrong direction then you can try to earn the right to drive the bus perhaps to earn the right to lead now you don't want to conduct them mutiny or you can get in a different bus you know there are bus stops along the way and I suppose you can get out and get in a bus that is going in the direction that you perceive to be the right direction but what is detestable to God is dissension just living on in in years of discord so let's say this one more time these these various parts of the body there are six things what we've got to do the reference first Proverbs six 16 to 19 there are six things the Lord hates seven that are detestable to him haughty eyes a lying tongue hands that shed innocent blood a heart that devises wicked schemes feet that are quick to rush into evil a false witness who pours out lies and a man that spreads stirs up dissension among the brothers Proverbs 16 to 19 very good let's pray together Father as we come before you this evening we do pray that you would so shed the peace of your spirit in our hearts that we are equipped to live peaceably with others how easily we fail in this particular area sometimes masking our sowing of discord and even our gossiping in the guys of prayer requests about others that we feel we must share explaining that it's not gossip it's simply the truth Lord we so easily err in this regard and we pray that you would help us that as onlookers inspect our lives in the lives of our churches and the lives of our families that they would be able to know that we are Christians by our love I pray that this would be the case in all the different contexts which are represented in this room at this time also represented not only in this room but in the video classes that will someday be watching this course are many concerns and many needs which obviously we cannot express explicitly to you but we thank you that you know them you know those that are present now and you're even now aware of those that will be present in the future and so we bring them to you knowing that you're an all-sufficient God and we ask that you would help us in our need that as you do your work in our lives we would learn the lessons you want us to learn and that you would be glorified even as we draw near to you and glorify you before we pray this in Jesus name amen okay well this is week five this is the last week we're going to get to spend on the Psalms and so we have some ground to cover again one of my frustrations in teaching Old Testament is that it's a very big book and there's a lot of ground to cover and some of it has to be covered very quickly so we're going to do several things tonight I have supplanted point e on your outline from last time I think I just gave you three points thinking I might be able to handle it very very briefly last time on the first sheet of the handout that you received tonight you have the first heading the shape of the Psalter I still want to handle this pretty quickly so I gave you a fuller outline so that I can see I can simply say c point 1a c point 1b and we can move along fairly quickly so we want to talk about the shape of the Psalter and then we want to talk for the for the bulk of this this evening together about the theology of the Psalter some of what you read in Longman's book for for today for this evening obviously handles that material and again he handles it more fully then we'll be able to handle or more comprehensively so we'll simply focus on certain aspects that are worthy of discussion in particular we'll be talking about messianic Psalms which is an interesting topic in itself and then also what are sometimes called imprecatory Psalms prefacing all of that with some general comments about the theology of the Psalter but right now let's go ahead and talk about the shape of the Psalter first a couple of words of introduction relating to the structure and divisions point one the there has there have been many attempts to discover an overarching logical structure to the book of Psalms we talked earlier about the way in which the Psalms are classified and so I don't need to go into that at length but these attempts to discover the organizing genius of the Psalter as we have it before us have for the most part defeated people's best attempts and the results have not been entirely satisfactory up to this particular time now we're going to see later that there has been real progress made in recent years and that's kind of exciting and we want to talk a little bit about that as we come to the end of this this lecture on the shape of the Psalter but first of all let's let's look at what has been attempted and what has been observed it's not surprising that there's been a little bit of trouble finding the organizing genius because if you pick up a hymn book at church and say what is the organizing genius well without the indices you might struggle for a good long time figuring out exactly what that was although if you look at the index you discover yes there are some groupings that were intentional it's not just a half hazard array of Psalms or Psalms now among those things that have been observed point B is of course the fact that the Psalter is divided into five sections or five books each of these each of the first four books ends in a doxology that is a a line or two of praise to God concluding with the word Amen and with the fifth book Psalm 150 which is itself a doxological conclusion to the fifth book and perhaps to the entire Psalm we have then a complete array of five books each ending with a doxology now these doxologies are not explicit the books themselves are not explicitly marked in the in the Bible we don't have book one mark the title for book one title for book two and so forth but the presence of the doxologies does seem to indicate that this is an intentional division of the Psalter they still seem to be markers I mentioned earlier the the presence of the Amen and Amen statements only coming at the end of book one book two book three and book four now it is also interesting to observe that these divisions into five books partly go against other groupings within the Psalter and so if they were simply arbitrarily assigned you know you've got 150 Psalms let's divide them into five well my analytical sense would be to say book one is 30 Psalms book two is 30 Psalms book three is 30 Psalms if my math is right and five of those would come out to 150 that's not what we find and in fact sometimes the division seems or seemed to many people in the past to sort of cut across some other grouping in the Psalter now let me let me let me get you to pull out your that handout if you still have it with you they hand that rather strange looking handout on the genre of the Psalms you know that one that you're supposed to memorize for the midterm you'll need that to look at just because of the next point we're going to make another way that the Psalter has been divided is according to the association of of a group of Psalms with a particular individual and if you look at this sheet if this is the one you're looking for it's very strange looking one if you can't find it not to worry just listen and I think you'll understand if you look at the next to last column on the right you will see that there are a number of Psalms in which David appears in the superscription book one is almost entirely made up of Davidic Psalms book two the book divisions you do see on the third to to the right column there book two begins in Psalm 42 42 launches book two and notice that there we pick up a little grouping of Psalms of the sons of Korah Psalm of Asaph and back to some Davidic Psalms book three picks up with some Psalms of Asaph or Asaph and as it probably should be pronounced in Hebrew book four again some some orphan Psalms we have the Psalm of Moses and Psalm 90 and then some orphan Psalms but notice there's a smattering of Davidic Psalms even in book four as there were in book book three book four book five more Davidic Psalms orphan Psalms and in songs of Ascent now just looking at that and what is found in the superscription leads us to believe that well yes someone was organizing this to some extent because there are groupings within the Psalter and the question really is what are the groupings there 73 Psalms associated with David but what are the groupings point four on your outline rather point D there are some groupings according to subject matter you don't necessarily need to remember all of these but Psalm 113 to 118 are sometimes called the Egyptian Haleo the Egyptian praise Psalms and these were used liturgically at the great Jewish festivals and then you see that that large grouping beginning in in 120 and going on through 134 the songs of Ascent whatever that exactly means these were problems sometimes called pilgrim Psalms they were probably Psalms that were sung as pilgrims those coming to the temple would be ascending to the holy hill to the temple mount and so I could go on and mention other further minor groupings but I want to rush on to point E what are the inferences to be drawn from the above features well I like what Derek Kiddner says he compares the Psalter to a cathedral I've mentioned this before let me just reiterate it and quote what Kiddner says in particular he he notes that there's a mixture of order and informality in the Psalter order and informality and he says this the picture that emerges is a picture is is a mixture of order and informality of arrangement which invites but also defeats the attempt to account for every detail of its final form let me read that again the picture that emerges is a mixture of order and informality in the Psalter sorry picture of order and informality of arrangement which invites but also defeats the attempt to account for every detail of its final form he then goes on to say its structure is perhaps best compared with that of a cathedral built and perfected over a matter of centuries in a harmonious variety of styles rather than a palace displaying the formal symmetry of a single and all embracing plan that makes sense I think that you grasp that cathedrals will build up over a period of centuries the styles did change from time to time you'd see and you could recognize little architectural groupings if you will in what then became a nice unity but not necessarily entirely uniform in its construction and that's what we have in the Psalter at least we can say that much now can we say more now what can we infer from the kind of information that we have been looking at just very briefly let's move on to point two the growth of the Psalter the analogy of the cathedral rightly suggests with respect to the Psalms the existence of earlier collections that were used prior to the final compilation of the Psalter I don't know what your idea of how scripture was was was written and and and inscripturated and put in the form which we now have it but when we come to Old Testament books in particular where you know if you have a Pauline epistle well that's a letter by Paul that's fairly straightforward and a little you know fairly easy to grasp when we come to the Old Testament we often have books that were built up over time does that make them any less inspired than that letter by Paul well not at all because it's the same god who inspired Paul in the writing of that letter who inspired perhaps a multiplicity of of holy authors as they wrote the Psalms which then became a part of the Psalter and also he would have overseen the compilation the collection perhaps in stages of the Psalter and then the final putting together of the Psalter we know that this kind of thing happened will come to the book of Proverbs where we'll see in Proverbs 25 an explicit reference to the men to the Solomonic material that was first included that is copied or transcribed and included in the book of Proverbs in the time of King Hezekiah and King Hezekiah King some two centuries after King Solomon so the Solomonic material was known and retained but it wasn't part of the book of Proverbs until the time of Hezekiah so an addition was put on to the book of Proverbs and yet we'll see the book of Proverbs itself has an intricate and very interesting structure so we know that that we believe that there were earlier collections there is direct biblical evidence for the presence of earlier collections we don't know exactly whether any of those that are mentioned in the Bible are explicitly included in the Psalter but let me just mention the book of the wars of the the Lord have you ever bumped across that in your reading as it is written in the book of the wars of the Lord or is that well one place you can find that references in Numbers 21 verse 14 or the book of Jashar as it's often pronounced in English book of Yashar Yashar and Hebrew means the upright so the book of the upright a reference is made in 2 Samuel 1 verse 18 now Peter Craigie in his Psalms commentary comments with regards to these kinds of references in the Bible that they may have been the early the early soldiers in Israel or the soldiers of early Israel the the book of the wars of the Lord the book of Yashar and he goes on to say the book of the wars of the Lord may have contained such passages as the song of the sea sung by Moses and Miriam after they had crossed the sea the song of Deborah the song of the Ark the book of Yashar may have contained other early poetry such as Hannah's song in addition to David's lament and he admits as this is clearly speculation what is known with certain is that there was a tradition in early Israel of collecting together songs into a book it was this tradition in early Israel which at a later period was to culminate in the formation of the book of Psalms so we have that direct evidence okay and you're probably saying well so what you know what's the big deal about this who cares well let me let me mention the indirect biblical evidence because I think unless we understand that the way the Psalter seems to have come about under God's providential guidance then we may be troubled by some of what we explicitly discover in the Psalter what is some indirect biblical evidence well for one thing there there exists in the Psalter or there exists in the Psalter some virtually duplicate Psalms now if you have duplicate Psalms in a a merely unified document then you would think wow the editor forgot you know on page 3 he had one thing and then again he had the same thing the very same thing on page 30 that was a bit of a slip up and I've given you as a handout it's probably about the last thing you picked up today and I want you to look at it here briefly let's see if this will come on we'll just have to see if this works sometimes in a reading of the Psalms these things don't strike us because there is some distance between them you have it also before you so you can what I've done here is simply splice together Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 Psalm 53 is underlined and I want you to notice the degree of similarity between these two Psalms and there are a few differences but the similarities are far too great to for us to claim that these Psalms are not essentially duplicates the one of the other begins Psalm 14 begins for the director of music of David Psalm 53 for the director of music according to Mahalat a my skill of David little extra information there and then 14 one begins with what I like to call the metaphysical fallacy and if you've studied English literature you're all worried about the intentional fallacy and if you're a logician you're worried about the logical fallacy well the only fallacy that really counts and is is a big deal in life is the metaphysical fallacy because 14 one says the fool says in his heart there is no God they are corrupt their deeds are vile there is no one who does good Psalm 53 one begins the fool says in his heart there is no God they are corrupt and their ways are vile there is no one who does good very very similar 14 to the Lord looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand any who seek God Psalm 53 to God looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand any who seek God virtually identical what's the difference you've got the Lord in one place God in the other you notice this in your reading of of Longman that he pointed out that that is characteristic of book two to to sometimes use the word that the name God the more generic name for God in place of the Lord the more personal name for the God of Israel 14 three all have turned aside they together they have together become corrupt there is no one who does good not even one Psalm 53 three everyone has turned away they have together become corrupt there is no one who does good not even one 14 four will will evil doers never learn those who devour my people as men eat bread and who do not call on God notice Lord and God are exchanged there 14 five there they are overwhelmed with dread for God is present in the company of the righteous Psalm 53 five there they are there they were overwhelmed with dread where there was nothing to dread God scattered the bones of those who attacked you you put them scattered the bones of those who attacked you you put them to shame for God despise them that's quite different that's the those are the two verses that are very very different from one another a similar sentiment similar kind of thing being said but this proves that they're not simply duplicate Psalms they're virtually duplicate Psalms but one has been you'd you'd have to say that the one Psalm is a modification of the other and that apparently is perfectly acceptable in inspired scripture and then it goes on 14 six you evil doers frustrate the plans of the poor but the Lord is their refuge for seven oh that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion when the Lord restores the fortunes of his people let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad 53 six oh that salvation of Israel would come out of Zion when God restores the fortunes of his people let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad again the use of the more generic term God in place of Lord okay now we could we could find other examples of this and in fact I'm going to mention a few of them to you but I just wanted you to see the first hand how similar these Psalms are and what do we make of that what what is likely to explain that phenomenon did you have a hand up back there yeah we're gonna talk about that in just a minute what how do we explain the difference in these two so good question Matt was asking if it may for those who later not be able to hear that he was asking if perhaps a Jewish audience as opposed to a Gentile audience might account for the preference of the name God as opposed to the name Yahweh and we'll talk about why that might be a possibility and what the logic of that question even is in just a minute but other duplicate Psalms if you wanted to look at them I'll get to you in just a second you might want to write down Psalm 40 verses 13 to 17 which is the twin of Psalm 70 so Psalm 40 13 to 17 finds its twin in Psalm 70 and Psalm 108 finds its twin in two places Psalm 57 verses 7 to 11 and Psalm 60 verses 5 to 12 Psalm 57 verses 7 to 11 and Psalm 60 verses 5 to 12 those two sections together constitute then Psalm 108 now furthermore as evidence of collections and we're not forgetting the question to which we will eventually come in terms of collections if you look at the end of Psalm 72 those of you who have bibles open you'll will be flipping around from time to time so you want to be ready for that again I may have mentioned this in passing earlier but we can focus on it at this point Psalm 72 which is the end of book two remember book two runs from Psalm 42 to 72 and book three from 73 to 89 and so forth the last verse of Psalm 72 says this concludes the prayers of David son of Jesse now either we have to say none of the further none of the Davidic Psalms which follow our prayers and I think that would be a stretch to try to demonstrate that or we have to say well wait a minute this reference is correct in terms of an earlier collection this book two was perhaps once a collection and it rightly ended by saying this concludes the prayers of David son of Jesse but in the present shape of the Psalter we're not to interpret that reference as an absolute claim that there will be no further Psalms of David in the rest of the Psalter as kind of an analog to that often in in scripture you'll have a reference for instance to the the poles in the book of chronicles for instance you have a reference to the poles with which the arc of the covenant was carried still being visible sticking out from the holy of holies to this day now that's in the book of chronicles chronicles written to those returning out of the Babylonian exile the temple had been destroyed and so in the day of that audience of course the poles were no longer visible the arc of the covenant had been had been probably taken probably destroyed god is not a protector of property per se and he's a free agent the the arc symbolized his presence at times but he was not bound to the arc now I know recent movies have shown that it can be rediscovered but the national geographic hasn't discovered it so I'm not going to trust Harrison Ford on that particular one but my point there is that the chronicle was using source material historical source material which included that statement in other words at the time of his source material it was it was from a time when you could still see those poles and rather than change his source material he said yeah I'll keep that I'll include that that indicates that I'm using that early source material even though it's not true of my particular day it was true then in terms of this material I'm drawing so same kind of thing may be happening here at the end of book two this concludes the prayers of the son of David of David son of Jesse in terms of an earlier collection does that make sense okay well we will we will move on let me again remind you of the little chart in Longman's book that that shows how there's a preference for Yahweh in book in in book one essentially and for Elohim in book two this has led some to refer to book two as the Eloistic Psalter the Elohim Psalter and there are reasons that are given Matt was mentioning one the possibility that a particularly Jewish audience is addressed in in by the time of the second collection this is the way Craigy speculates and he says this is this is clearly speculation he says the accumulation of evidence strongly suggests that an editor compiled the Eloistic Psalter from earlier collections and that their editorial revisions included the deliberate and frequent revision of Yahweh to Elohim the process may indicate that the purpose of the compilation was the production of a collection of hymns specifically designed for the temple worship at a time when the divine name Yahweh was used with considerable hesitation now have probably many of you are familiar with the practice among conservative orthodox Jews to avoid saying the divine name and thus they say either Hashem the name or they say Adonai which means Lord or any number of other possibilities or sometimes used but they don't tend to pronounce the divine name less they desecrate it and what they say with their lips they regard as a sacrifice to God and just as a sacrifice should be perfect and spotless and without blemish they are very cautious about pronouncing the divine name well that's that's a current Jewish practice I'm not sure how far back that stretches and I'm not really happy with that as an explanation of the transfer from Yahweh to Elohim from book one to book two there may be something else at work maize that's got remained maize in his Psalms commentary in the interpretation series offers another suggestion which I like a bit better he says this revision may have been a monotheizing spell that one if you can a monotheizing procedure to emphasize that Israel's God is the God of all the earth in other words the name Yahweh was closely related to the people of Israel he was their personal God he was their covenant God but what they said about Yahweh the rest of the world needed to know the Psalms of the hymns of praise the songs of Thanksgiving these instructions in prayer the rest of the world needed to know and there was a universalistic in the sense of worldwide intent missionary intent from day one in terms of God's dealing with his people Israel so it may well be that some of these Psalms were simply more conscious more as it were seeker friendly or Gentile friendly and just say well they refer to the higher being as God well let's let them see that we're talking about God maybe not the God that they would define as God but this is the true God and so it's an intriguing notion clearly speculative we really don't know just a phenomenon we observe so so what can we summarize before we launch into a little discussion of recent studies psalmade was clearly an early phenomenon in ancient Israel it's been around for a long time obviously these Psalms I think would have been collected into into earlier collections and so the Psalter was built up like a cathedral and we should bear that in mind when we see duplicate Psalms and the like now what about recent studies on your outline you see point three recent studies on the editorial shape of the Psalter well let me also ask you to pull out the chart that that little very very small chart that you received earlier I'm sorry these I sometimes give these things out in advance hoping that I will get to them I hoped I would get to this in our last session we'll need to look at that briefly in just a minute it's entitled at the top it looks like this and it's entitled recent theories on the editing of the Psalter or the editing of the Psalms a friend of mine teaches at Moody Bible Institute some of you have probably used his work John Walton and he wrote an article which I think I gave you on your outline there Psalms a cantata about the Davidic covenant that was published in the journal of the evangelical theological society in 1991 all the date is there on your outline so I won't repeat that but in in in this article he is reflecting on and trying to carry further some work that was really begun by Gerald Wilson who's written a number of things on the editing of the Psalter beginning with his Yale PhD dissertation and Wilson has observed some things now that it gets a little intricate so I'm not going to share all of it with you because it might be counterproductive in terms of really where we need to go but I'm going to tell you just a few the some bottom line things and then you can dig out the specifics later if you'd like but he has he concluded from studying the cumron manuscripts you know the Dead Sea Scrolls the cumron manuscripts relating to the Psalter he came to the conclusion that as Wilson came to the conclusion that books one to three were pretty well formed and set by the first century BC before Christ and had achieved a high degree of stability whereas books four and five show a higher degree of variability extending into the first century in terms of his understanding of the Dead Sea scroll evidence the cumron evidence then he went to work now whether he's right about that or not is not really the point but then he went to work analyzing the the junctures the titles to the Psalms the ordering of the Psalms the kind of Psalms you find where and and trying to discover if there was some intentionality to the editing of the Psalter not just do we have distinct collections that now have become distinct books but does it seem like some overarching strategy has been applied in the in the sort of scenes between the books and even the scenes between the Psalms in the Psalter and he says that he comes to this conclusion he says I have been able to show one that the book divisions of the Psalter are real addatorially induced divisions and not accidentally induced and so he would argue and I think there's a point on your outline that asked is the present shape of the Psalter accidental or intentional he would say it is an intentional it is not simply accidental and these other I'm going to give you a few other items just listen to them they may not make any sense to you but don't need to remember these or write them down but he also says secondly the separating and binding functions of the author and general groupings have also been discerned thirdly the lack of a superscription is an indication of a tradition of combination with the previous Psalm remember we see a bunch of orphan Psalms he says when you have an orphan Psalm that may mean that there was a tradition of reading it with the preceding Psalm fourthly the use of hallelujah that is praise Psalms to indicate the conclusion of segments and the use of Hodo that is Thanksgiving Psalms is indicates the introduction of segments so he's he's discerning what he regards as markers of concluding segment and opening of a segment and then finally he says the existence of a thematic correspondence of thematic correspondences between the beginning and the ending of Psalms in some books is also evident so he's beginning to see also a thematic relationship between the individual Psalms and kind of an intentionality of the arrangement all of these findings he says demonstrate the presence of editorial activity at work in the arrangement of the Psalms now having then demonstrated the activity Wilson considered what might be the editorial agenda you have on your outline is there a thematic progression throughout the the Psalter is there an agenda is there a thematic progression and he believes that the same Psalms the Psalms at the at the juncture between the different books those would be the same Psalms between book one and book two book two and book three and so forth he says that the same Psalms show an interesting progression in thought regarding kingship and the Davidic covenant well look at this chart I tried what I tried to do on this chart is summarize Wilson's viewpoint and then add to that Walton's sort of variation on the theme there's a lot of resemblance between their two two schemes but if you see the left hand column deals with books one two three four and five and also an introduction chapters one and two Psalms one and two and then a conclusion the Psalms one forty six to one fifty and what what Wilson sees is that the that covenant is the central feature of the Psalter the first book deals with the covenant proclaimed the second book with the covenant passed on or transmitted the third book with the covenant failed ending with Psalm 89 which is really a psalm of sort of desperation you know Lord what's happened to our arrangement here book four we have then the answer to the problem book three raised a problem has the covenant failed what about the promises to the Davidic King and book four answers that by stressing that Yahweh is King God is a refuge independent of the human monarchy so trust in the Lord it seems to be a dominant theme that comes to him book four and then book five in Wilson's scheme David as a model for individual and national response and he places Psalm 119 in the center of that and the focus on the word of God now Walton wanted to say he wanted to ask well wait a minute is this thematic progression which Wilson discerns is that also a possibility can we can we trace that not only at the scenes you know at the at the boundaries of each book but does it characterize the books themselves and so what I have in the last two columns I have first of all Walton's headings and then I have a little stenographic summary of the evidence that he abuses now I'm not going to read through that much to your relief and you don't need to even read through that although I do want to memorize just kidding no I don't want to memorize but it's there for your information if you want to just kind of have a guide if you wanted to read Walton's article it is an interesting one in his view yet covenant sure but the David's career is really what launches the Psalter and he sees book one is dealing with David's conflict with Saul remember book one is full of lament Psalms that makes some sense you know in terms of his his conflict with Saul and then book two deals more with David's reign once he's established and you see how this is kind of following a historical thread of David's own career his conflict with Saul then his reign and then we come to the Assyrian crisis and this is what maybe where Walton differs a little bit from Wilson in that Walton points to the fall of the northern kingdom okay the Assyrian crisis as as catalyzing this crisis of faith okay what's what's happened to God's promises to the covenant and then book four introspection about the destruction of the temple and the exile okay that brings into the southern exile and then finally book five praise reflection on the return and the new era I know this may seem a little dry and dull and it is but I think it's kind of exciting because it raises a question the last question that will handle should the Psalms be interpreted individually or in relation to one another I think that's important now we're just at the we're just at the beginning stages of beginning to sort out some of this but if we can discover what the editorial genius is that has put the Psalms together in the way it has they are arranged then we are seeing in a sense the divine intentionality as God was in charge of the of the final compilation of this book we believe that's that's kind of the question but it seems that there's enough intentionality there that we must believe then that God was guiding that intentionality and so the question arises well should we should we interpret the book as a whole or which should we interpret it atomistically you know just Psalm 73 irrespective of what proceeds and what follows and what do you think the answer is to that both yeah that's a safe and a good answer really both I think I think we are within our rights as we discover more about the the shape of the Psalter to say how does the position of this this Psalm in the overarching shape of the Psalter how does that influence my understanding of that Psalm but surely also these Psalms were composed originally in specific circumstances the arrangement we have here is sort of a theological structuring but it does not suggest that there's not also significance in each and every Psalm simply in and of itself because they were composed individual and they've simply been brought together by some divine design in this particular shape now we're just again we're just at the at the beginning stages of sorting this kind of thing out but if there are any of you in this class or in other classes in TV land who have a desire to go on and do further study and biblical studies there are tons of things to study I once ran into I was at a garden party in Cambridge one time and everyone was hobnobbing and saying what's your field and what are you studying and I said I'm studying the Old Testament and the guy said really hasn't that been done and I thought and I said yes over and over but there's always the wonder of God's word is there's always something new to learn now and it's more exciting than I think my presentation would make it seem now any questions we're going to take a break in just a minute but any we'll take a couple of minutes for questions if you have them yes yes yeah the question is we meant we noted some duplicate Psalms some duplication of Psalms the same phenomenon does occur in the book of Proverbs does the same explanation carry over possibly but not necessarily because even in our own writing and even well if you refer to McCann's actually just realized it didn't bring McCann's book with me tonight we're going to discuss McCann later as we get into the theology of the Psalter yeah even in McCann's writing for instance he repeated certain things at various junctures for his own his own reasons to drive home that point so when you're dealing with proverbial literature it may be that a proverb is repeated simply because it needs to be said again the whole thing about Proverbs in real life use is that they are repeated sayings if if something no matter how wise and no matter how pithy and no matter how catchy if if something is said but once it does not qualify as a proverb it needs to be repeated so it could be that repetition is simply by virtue of the nature of Proverbs and and what the the the compiler of those Proverbs is trying to get across yes when were the Psalms numbered we know well they were certainly numbered prior to the time of Christ they were they would have been numbered prior to the translation which we call the Septuagint the Greek translation of the Old Testament which was we can't locate that exactly but or second century BC the the Psalms already were numbered in the sense that they were counted there was a consciousness of how many there were but now whether there were numbers applied in the Hebrew text even to this state there's not a Hebrew number indicating this is this this is Psalm 1 2 or whatever actually it'd be a Hebrew letter of the alphabet that's how they typically numbered things olive is one and bait is two so forth so you don't have explicit numbers there but there was a sense of there was a reference to you know the second song or the third song those kinds of references would be made other questions maybe one more okay let's take a let's take a break and come back when the big hand reaches that two okay ten after