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The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift for James B. Jordan
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Christian Encounters Series)
Athanasius
(Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality)
The Four: A Survey of the Gospels
Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom
From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John
Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture
1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary
The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter
A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons
Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature
Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen
The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism
A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel
From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution
Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper
A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament
Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays
Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church
Psalm 42:5: Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance.
Psalm 42 is a lament. The Psalmist is a deer in the wilderness panting for God. He is separated from God and wonders if he will ever be in God’s presence again. His soul is thirsty and he longs for the God who alone can refresh him. He doesn’t celebrate any feasts, offers no morning and evening sacrifice, but instead feeds day and night on tears, his only sacrifice. God seems to have forgotten him and left him a heap of broken bones. He is attacked by an ungodly nation and assaulted by deceitful and unjust men, mockers who ask “Where is your God?”
Twice in the Psalm, this refrain appears: “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me?” And the lament continues into the following Psalm, which ends on the same note: “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me?”
It is a lament in a time of darkness and near despair. It is also a pep talk.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, December 4, 2011 at 7:23 am
The Hebrew shir (song) is used vastly more often in the Psalmter than anywhere else, as one would expect. It appears over 40 times there, and doesn’t even reach double figures in any other book. In the Pentateuch as a whole, the word appears only eight times.
The word is, of course, also the title of Solomon’s shir, and one ofthe Psalter uses is very close to the use in the Song of Songs. Psalm 45 is entitle a “song of loves” (shir yedidydot), and as it goes on it becomes clear that it is a love song for the king, an epithalamion celebrating the king’s wedding. And as the Psalm goes on, it becomes clear that there is another king in the poem, Yahweh who sits on His throne (v. 6). The king whose love is the focus of the Psalm is the anointed of God, the King’s son.
As a song of loves, Psalm 45 is a precis of the Song of Songs, and supports the instinct to allegorize the Song.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 9:21 am
In Psalm 40, David says that Yahweh has “dug” or “pierced” or “opened” his ear. He is referring to the ritual for permanent slaves, according to which the slave’s ear is pierced at the doorway of the house to symbolize that his ear is open to one master. David is a permanent slave in the house of Yahweh.
This forms the background for Jesus’ repeated exhortations “he who has an ear, let him hear,” and for the phrase repeated in the messages to the seven churches, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
So far, so (fairly) obvious. But Psalm 40 sheds more light on these New Testament passages. In the Psalm, the open ear is linked to obedience (“I delight to do Your will, O my God,” v. 8). And, importantly, it is contrasted with other forms of response to God’s Word: sacrifice, meal offering, ascension offering, purification offering. In context, the opened ear represents the fitting sacrifice, the obedience that delights the Lord more than sacrifice. When Hebrews 10 quotes Psalm 40, it is making the same point: Jesus offers the true sacrifice of obedience, rather than the old sacrifices that do not take away sin.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, June 24, 2011 at 7:20 am
There’s land, and there’s sea. Israel and the nations.
What then are islands? Bits of land within the sea.
Kings of the islands bring tribute to the Davidic king (Psalm 72:10), and the islands rejoice when God reigns over the earth (97:1).
Isaiah 11:11 says that the Lord will recall His people from the places they’ve been scattered. He lists seven locations (Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath) and then adds “from the islands of the sea.” An eighth location? Perhaps, but I’d suggest that it is an interpretation of the the list of seven nations: “even from the islands of the sea.” During the dispersion, Israel constitutes islands in the sea of nations, but one day the Lord will gather them from the lands.
No book of the Bible refers to islands more often than Isaiah, and most of these occur after chapter 40. No wonder, Yahweh is calling His people from the islands back to the land.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 1:47 pm
In her essay, Pickstock notes the synaesthetic biblical exhortation to “taste and see.”
It’s a regular biblical theme, not only in the Psalm 34. Adam and Eve taste and see. So does Jonathan. So do the disciples on the road to Emmaeus.
So do we, each week as the Lord’s table, as we taste the Lord and begin to have our senses healed.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 7:54 am
Psalm 88 is a Messianic Psalm, but in indirect ways. Because the Psalm contains the words of the anointed King, it contains the words of Christ. The utter isolation and anguish of the Psalm is the utter isolation and anguish of Jesus. No matter how low we go, we’ll still find Jesus, lower still, holding us up.
The Psalm also questions whether Yahweh can be praised in the grave, by the shades that populate Sheol. That question is left unanswered here, but the gospel answers it. Because Jesus has descended to the grave, because He has become Lord of death, the dead do praise Him.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, September 9, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Israel, heaven and earth, the islands are to “rejoice and be glad” in Yahweh (Psalms 14:7; 16:9; 31:7; 32:11; 97:1, 8). The combination of terms is used in liturgical contexts; rejoicing and being glad is an act of worship.
Then Proverbs 23:24-25: Father and mother rejoice and are glad in a wise son. Father and mother offer a kind of “liturgical” praise to their wise children.
And so in the fellowship of the Trinity. The Father rejoices and is glad in the Son, and “mother” Israel joins in the Father’s praise. The Son is the chief liturgist of the church, bring the church to worship the Father. But there’s a reverse movement too, as the church joins in the Father’s eternal praise of His beloved Son.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 5:26 am
In a 1985 article in Theology Today, James L. Mays notes how in Psalm 22 David is first surrounded by a demonic, bestial community to a community of friends, God-fearers, afflicted, and lowly, a group that is qualified as the “seed of Jacob”:
“the group who celebrate his deliverance with him have a theological spiritual identity. They are not simply family, friends, and neighbors, a company constituted by natural and accidental relations. They are brothers (v. 22) in a religious sense. All the different designations refer to this fraternal company: ‘fearers of the Lord’ (w. 23, 25), ‘seekers of the Lord’ (v. 26), ‘the lowly’ (Hebrew ‘ânâwîm, RSV ‘afflicted’ or ‘poor,’ v. 26), ‘descendents of Jacob/Israel’ (v. 24). This last designation does not mean that Israel as a nation is the lowly, but rather that the lowly, seekers, fearers are the true Israel, the real congregation who live by the praise of the Lord.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 2:24 pm
On the cross, Jesus is surrounded by “strong bulls of Bashan” with mouths that open like the jaws of lions (Psalm 22:12-13, 21). Why lions and bulls?
Jesus on the cross is one like the Son of Man, triumphing over the beasts.
Jesus on the cross is the temple, flanked by cherubim.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, March 5, 2010 at 7:07 am
1 Peter 3:10-12: He who would love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their prayers; but the face of the LORD is against those who do evil.”
Pastor Sumpter’s sermon text closes with a quotation from Psalm 34. In the Psalm, David praises the Lord for delivering him from his troubles. “This poor man cried and Yahweh heard Him,” he says, and he rejoices because the “angel of Yahweh encamps around those who fear Him and rescues them.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, January 17, 2010 at 7:42 am
Idols have noses, but can’t smell (Psalm 115).
That means, for starters, they can’t breathe in the aroma of sacrifice. So what’s the point of turning animals to smoke?
It also means that they are not to be feared. If their noses don’t breathe in, they can’t breathe out either. Yahweh can breathe life into Adam; idols can’t. Yahweh’s nose burns against disobedient Israel; idols noses can’t burn, nor can they breathe out smoke and fire.
Therefore: Do not fear them.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Athanasius points out to Marcellinus that the Psalms cover every “eventuality.” They are a mirror of the soul because they are a mirror of human experience – of suffering, of desperation, of exultation, of thanksgiving, of prosperity, of adversity, of garden and wilderness, of isolation and communion, and on and on. They are a mirror of the soul because they are a mirror of our emotional life, including every permutation of passion.
More than mirror, though: Through singing the Psalms, the diverse passions of the soul, Athanasius argues, are trained and harmonized. Praising God “in well-tuned cymbals and harp and ten-stringed instrument was again a figure and sign of the parts of the body coming into natural concord like harp strings, and of the thoughts of the soul becoming like cymbals, and then all of these being moved and living through the grand sound and through the command of the Spirit so that, as it is written, the man lives in the Spirit and mortifies the deeds of the body.”
In short, by “beautifully singing praises, he brings rhythm to his soul and leads it, so to speak, from disproportion to proportion.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 11:12 am
No one would dare, Athanasius writes to Marcellinus, to take the words of the patriarchs, or Moses, or the prophets as his own. No one would dare imitate the prophets by saying “As the Lord lives, before whom I stand today.”
The Psalms are different. When someone reads, hears, chants, sings the Psalms, “he recognizes [these words] as being his own words.” He is “deeply moved, as though he himself were speaking, and is affected by the words of the songs, as if they were his own songs.” Thus, the words of the Psalms “become like a mirror to the person singing them” to enable us to name and perceive the “emotions of the soul.”
Scripture is sufficient – not only in telling us what to believe or in telling us what to do. Scripture also is sufficient in modeling the proper response to its affirmations, and in training us in those responses.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 11:07 am
The Aaronic blessing promises the “face” and “countenance” of Yahweh, and places the name of God on the people of God (Numbers 6:27).
Psalm 44 explains these words of blessing. Yahweh’s hand drove out nations and planted Israel in the land (v. 2) because He shone the “light of [His] countenance” on them and was “gracious” to them (v. 4). Israel did not win by her own strength but bythe “name” of Yahweh drop down enemies.
To be sent out in benediction is to be sent out to battle and victory, armed with the name of Yahweh.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Psalm 105:28-36 lists the plagues. Some of them. But not in the order they happened.
Instead of the ten plagues of exodus, there are only seven (darkness, water to blood, frogs, flies/gnats, hail, locusts, firstborn). Seven strikes a chord, as does the fact that the summary begins in darkness (reversing the first day of creation) and ends with the death of firstborn sons (reversing the sixth day of creation). Psalm 105 tells the story of the plagues as a reversal of creation, a sevenfold judgment that leaves Egypt in darkness and in dust.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Psalm 115:4-8 is as ironic a blason as Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130. Like many of the descriptions in the Song of Songs, the Psalmist begins from the head and moves to the feet, but instead of celebrating the beauty of the idols of gold and silver he focuses on their incapacity at every point. They are un-creations, seven-fold nothings, possessing impotent mouths, eyes, ears, noses, hands, feet, and throats.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, April 13, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Why are women the first witnesses to the resurrection. Psalm 68:11-12 might provide a clue: “The Lord gives the command; the women who proclaim the good tidings are a great host. Kings of armies flee, they flee, and she who remains at home will divide the spoil!”
Women announce the good tidings of a great victory, the flight of all the kings of the earth before the King of kings.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, March 23, 2009 at 11:42 am
Psalm 89 explicitly tells us that Yahweh entered into a covenant with David (v. 28), which makes David the firstborn over the kings of the earth (v. 27) and promises a perpetual seed and sonship (vv. 26, 29).
The Psalm as a whole, however, is about an apparently broken covenant. No sooner has the Psalmist repeated Yahweh’s promise to preserve David’s seed as the sun and moon (vv. 36-37) than the Psalmist suddenly protests that Yahweh has in fact cast off HIs anointed, broken covenant, and cast his crown to the ground (vv. 38-39). And the protest doesn’t let up through the rest of the Psalm. The only hope is that Yahweh will remember (vv. 47, 50), but the Psalm ends with enemies still mocking Yahweh’s anointed (v. 51).
The Psalm places David on the cross, and doesn’t let him off. In that respect, the Psalm is a summary of the history of the Davidic house: Yahweh promises a perpetual seed, but the promise doesn’t appear to hold. So Israel waits for Yahweh to remember and raise up the seed of David, the one who calls Yahweh Father, the firstborn of the kings of the earth.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 4:20 pm
INTRODUCTION
Hope is a spring of human action. We do what we do because we hope to accomplish something by our actions, and when we are truly hopeless we do nothing at all. Scripture teaches us that we raise our children in hope, as well as in faith and love. But what should we hope for in our families?
THE TEXT
“Blessed is every one who fears the LORD, who walks in His ways. When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you. . . .” (Psalm 128).
STRUCTURE
The Psalm is structured in two panels. Each begins with a reference to fear of Yahweh (vv. 1, 4), then continues to describe the blessing that comes on the one who fears Yahweh (vv. 2, 5a). Verse 3 begins with a reference to the man’s fruitful wife, and verse 5b extends this to the bride of Yahweh, Jerusalem. And each section ends with a reference to children (v. 3b, 6a). The Psalm ends with a pronouncement of peace upon Israel.
FEARING GOD
Psalm 128 describes blessings that the Yahweh brings to a home. But the presumption of these blessings is stated in verses 1 and 4. These blessings are not for everyone, but for the man who fears Yahweh. Proverbs tells us the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7). Fearing Yahweh means turning from evil (Proverbs 3:7; 16:6) and walking in uprightness (Proverbs 14:2) without envy for the wicked (Proverbs 23:17). The Lord promises to reveal His covenant to those who fear Him (Psalm 25), and also promises life (Proverbs 14:27).
FRUITFULNESS
The main blessing promised to the man who fears Yahweh here in Psalm 128 is fruitfulness in his home. He will prosper from the labor of his hands, with no one plundering or taxing away his goods. His wife is fruitful, and fruitful like a vine, which produces grapes that produce wine. A wife at the heart of the house is like having a feast of wine at the heart of the house. His children are olive shoots, flourishing young trees that will grow into productive fruit-bearing trees. Olive oil is used for burning; children like olive trees are lights in the world. Olive oil is for anointing; children are priests and kings in training. The overall portrait is of the home as an orchard, a restored garden. The man who tends his garden in the fear of Yahweh will enjoy its produce. And in verse 5, the Lord extends the promise to Jerusalem. If Jerusalem and Zion fear Yahweh and walk in His ways, they too will prosper, flourishing like a garden.
HOPE
But this is not always the way it seems. Teeming with small screaming needy children, a home doesn’t always appear to be a garden. When your wife is frazzled at the end of a long day, she doesn’t appear to be a fruitful vine in the heart of your house. A man who gets testy at his kids doesn’t look like the man who fears the Lord. This is where hope comes in: The Lord gives us a portrait of a flourishing home, and we are to muck around in the mud in hope that the Lord will produce a harvest. Persevere, and he will.
HELP FOR HOPE
The older, established families at Trinity have an important opportunity for ministry to the many younger families here. You have been through it. You’ve had the bad days; you’ve dealt with the discipline challenges; perhaps you’ve felt despair that your kids are going to come out OK. But you also have seen the Lord fulfill His promises. You are living illustrations that hope does not disappoint. Look for opportunities to encourage the younger families in hope.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 6:48 am
The following is largely inspired by Jon D. Levenson’s Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel.
In his novel, The Death of Ivan Illych, Leo Tolstoy tells the story of the life and death of his title character. Ivan Illych is a government lawyer who has devoted his life to advancing his career. He lives, he thinks, just as he should, doing everything that he is supposed to do, living life correctly. That doesn’t mean he’s happy. He’s not. He married in order to advance socially and vocationally, but soon after his wedding virtually abandoned his wife for work. As his wife became irritable and demanding, he made his work more and more the center of gravity in his life. But he still believes he is doing everything just the way it should be done – devoting himself to work, pursuing a prestigious transfer to St Petersburg, periodically redecorating his home.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, April 8, 2007 at 2:11 pm
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