While Psalm 28 states the fact of Christ’s resurrection, Psalm 30 prophetically records Christ’s retelling after-the-fact and his rejoicing over this happy outcome.
2 O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me. 3 O LORD, you have brought up my soul from Sheol; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit. (Psalm 30 ESV)
11 Thou hast turned my mourning into joy for me: thou hast rent off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness; 12 that my glory may sing praise to thee, and I may not be pierced with sorrow. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to thee for ever. (Psalm 30 LXE) Note: “pierced with sorrow” reflects a single word in Greek for “pierced” or “pricked.” In both Testaments, it is nearly always used in this metaphorical sense with the concept of sorrow, which is not part of the word itself.
Structure of Psalm 30
It’s good for the reader to remember that the Psalter is a book of ancient Near Eastern poetry. The poetic and literary conventions were a bit different back then. However, if the Christian reader keeps the basic fact of the prophet David’s being a voice of Christ foremost in thought, then the more often she reads Psalms, the easier it becomes to understand the abbreviated, minimalized structure inherent in its poetry. Certain word choices within the poem also underlie its resurrection theme.
Since Psalm 30 is relatively short, I will use some space here to print it out fully and fill in words in places where a narrator’s explanatory voice would prove helpful. As always, it is good to consult more than one translation.
29(30) For the end, a Psalm and Song [literally, a psalm of a song] at the dedication of the house of David.1 I will exalt thee, O Lord; for thou hast lifted me up, and not caused mine enemies to rejoice over me.2 O Lord my God, I cried to thee, and thou didst heal me.3 O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from Hades, thou hast delivered me from among them that go down to the pit.4 Sing to the Lord, ye his saints, and give thanks for the remembrance of his holiness.5 For anger is in his wrath, but life in his favour: weeping shall tarry for the evening, but joy shall be in the morning.6 And I said in my prosperity, I shall never be moved.7 O Lord, in thy good pleasure thou didst add strength to my beauty: but thou didst turn away thy face, and I was troubled.8 To thee, O Lord, will I cry; and to my God will I make supplication.9 What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to destruction? Shall the dust give praise to thee? or shall it declare thy truth?10 The Lord heard, and had compassion upon me; the Lord is become my helper.11 Thou hast turned my mourning into joy for me: thou hast rent off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness;12 that my glory may sing praise to thee, and I may not be pierced with sorrow. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to thee for ever.–Available at https://ebible.org/eng-Brenton/PSA029.htm. Accessed August 16, 2019.
Psalm 29(30) begins and ends with bookends, as it were, which state the speaker’s purpose:
1a I will exalt thee, O Lord… and 12c O Lord my God, I will give thanks to thee for ever.
The body of the poem states the speaker’s reasons for exalting and thanking his God, the Lord.
1b thou hast lifted me up, and
1c not caused my enemies to rejoice over me.
These first two reasons, given above, tell the story of the psalm in overview; they refer to the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Christ.
Reason one (vs 1b), “Thou hast lifted me up,” contains a double meaning–1) Christ was “lifted up” on the cross (cf. Jesus’s words in John 12:32-33, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. {ESV}), and 2) he was resurrected from the grave.
Reason two (vs 1c), Christ was exulted over his enemies–first by the fact of his resurrection, and secondly by his ascension into heaven to sit at the right hand of God.
Okay, so how do we as readers know that those few words mean all that? We know by faith. Both our faith and Scripture itself tell us that the Bible is consistent in all its parts and that the Bible points to Christ. I say “Bible,” because we as Christians today have two testaments as part of our Bible, the Old Testament and the New. Jesus, his disciples, the New Testament authors, and the early church had but one testament, which was for them their Scripture–the Old Testament. Both Jesus himself and the New Testament writers unashamedly claimed the Old Testament as their own and claimed that it pointed to Christ. There are many verses I could show to demonstrate this, but to do so would lead me far afield from the point of this article, which is to focus on Psalm 30. The interested reader who is new to these things may do a bit of digging on their own. The best way to find specific verses verifying my claims is to read the New Testament. It’s short.
Then, after the reasons for praising God given in verse 1, verses 2 and 3 fill in some of the details of the thematic story of death and resurrection in this psalm:
2 O Lord my God, I cried to thee, and thou didst heal me.
3a O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from Hades,
3b thou hast delivered me from among them that go down to the pit.
The psalm continues in verses 4 through 10, where the speaker turns from addressing the Lord in his prayer to addressing those whom he calls the Lord’s “saints.” To help us see how the portion addressed to the saints fits into the psalm as a whole, we can view the structure of Psalm like this:
- The speaker addresses the Lord his God: verses 1 through 3.
- The speaker addresses the Lord’s saints: verses 4 through 10.
- Within the address to the saints, the speaker records how his condition changed from prosperity (vs 6) to tragedy (vs 7), how he proposed in his heart to call upon the Lord (vs 8), the words of his prayer (vs 9), and the final outcome (vs 10).
- The speaker addresses the Lord: verses 11-12.
First, verse four introduces these new characters as “saints,” those whom the New Testament calls the church. What happened to Christ happened by faith to his followers. Because Christ died as a sacrificial lamb, sinners who receive and partake in the meat and blood of the sacrifice (John 6:53-57), symbolized by communion (Matthew 26:26-28), are called by God, “holy,” or perhaps his “faithful followers.” The speaker of Psalm 30 intends that God’s saints appropriate as their own his joy, praise, and thanksgiving to the Lord for his victory over sin and death.
4 Sing to the Lord, ye his saints, and give thanks for the remembrance of his holiness.
Next, verse 5 explains and develops the aforementioned sin and death theme, contrasting it with the joy now attainable from God through Christ. Before the sacrifice of the cross, God displayed his anger and wrath, but now God gives life, according to his will (the word “favour,” as explained in Thayer’s lexicon.) The suffering of the cross (“weeping shall tarry for the evening”) is followed by the joy of resurrection (“but joy shall be in the morning.”)
5 For anger is in his wrath, but life in his favour: weeping shall tarry for the evening, but joy shall be in the morning.
Next, the psalmist recounts to the “saints” the narrative of his tribulation. First, he was confident in his possession of the Lord’s blessing, expressed as his “well-being, prosperity, and good condition,” (Thayer’s Lexicon entry for εὐθηνίᾳ, Psalm 29:7 BGT).
6 And I said in my prosperity, I shall never be moved. (Cf. Matthew 3:17, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” and Mark 9:7, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.“)
Following this, the saints learn that God his Father performed many mighty miracles through him in a display of strength and beauty. He recalls this period through direct address to the Lord. Nevertheless, this direct address is a recollection of what happened in the past, a recollection which he is repeating for the benefit of the saints whom he is currently addressing:
7a O Lord, in thy good pleasure thou didst add strength to my beauty:”
But all that changed when Christ was crucified. In verses 7b through 9, the speaker recounts to the saints his prayers to the Lord during that period of his life. First, he states what happened.
7b but thou didst turn away thy face, and I was troubled.
Next, he relates his response to the troubling turn of events. He re-enacts how he addressed the Lord:
8a To thee, O Lord, will I cry;
And he repeats for his audience, the saints, what he proposed to himself within his own heart:
and to my God will I make supplication.
Through the speaker’s pleading with God, verse 9, he foretells his knowledge that he was about to die:
9 What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to destruction? Shall the dust give praise to thee? or shall it declare thy truth?
Finally, verse 10 retells to the saints the outcome of this period of the speaker’s life:
10 The Lord heard, and had compassion upon me; the Lord is become my helper.
At this point in the psalm, the speaker turns back to the Lord in real time, continuing to speak to the Lord from where he left off in verse 3:
11 Thou hast turned my mourning into joy for me: thou hast rent off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness;
12 that my glory may sing praise to thee, and I may not be pierced with sorrow. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to thee for ever.
The psalm is structured as though it is to be presented upon the stage of a great prophetic drama. The psalmist himself, as the person who penned the psalm, is invisible. He prophetically penned the words of the on-stage speaker, who wears the dramatic mask of the Christ, the future anointed King. The purpose of the psalm is to prophetically portray a certain period of time within the Christ’s incarnation. Although the psalm is a monologue, the dramatic speaker-persona is aware of an audience: 1) The Lord God is listening. The speaker addresses him at the beginning (vv 1-3) and end (vv 11-12) of the psalm as though they are alone together. 2) The speaker also addresses an audience (vv 4-10), whom he calls the Lord’s saints in verse 4.
The following is a repetition of the material presented earlier, in a slightly different format.
[First, the speaker addresses God in joyful praise for some very dramatic events that transpired in his life.] 1 I will exalt thee, O Lord; for thou hast lifted me up, and not caused mine enemies to rejoice over me. 2 O Lord my God, I cried to thee, and thou didst heal me. 3 O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from Hades, thou hast delivered me from among them that go down to the pit.
[Then, the speaker turns to address the saints.] 4 Sing to the Lord, ye his saints, and give thanks for the remembrance of his holiness.
[He states a general principle about God.] 5 For anger is in his wrath, but life in his favour: weeping shall tarry for the evening, but joy shall be in the morning.
[Then he continues, as though giving an illustration of the general principle, Listen to my story; this is what happened to me.] 6 And I said in my prosperity, I shall never be moved. [That’s how I used to speak to myself in the days when everything went well.]
[In those blessed days, I used to pray like this to the Lord.] 7 O Lord, in thy good pleasure thou didst add strength to my beauty:
[But then, everything changed] but thou didst turn away thy face, and I was troubled.
[In response to these events, I made a decision to pray to the Lord. I said to him,–] 8 To thee, O Lord, will I cry; and to my God will I make supplication.
[Following through with my intention of praying to God, this is how I pleaded with him.] 9 What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to destruction? Shall the dust give praise to thee? or shall it declare thy truth?
[And here is the outcome of my prayers.] 10 The Lord heard, and had compassion upon me; the Lord is become my helper.
[At this point, the speaker has finished his reenactment of a previous time in his life. He had been recalling those days to the audience of “saints” as an illustration of the general principle concerning the Lord’s goodness, which he had stated in verse 5. His purpose in addressing his audience at all is to draw them in as co-participants in his joyful praise and thanksgiving to the Lord (vs 4). Therefore, having made his case to them, he turns back to the Lord and continues his own praise and thanksgiving in verses 11-12.] 11 Thou hast turned my mourning into joy for me: thou hast rent off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness; 12 that my glory may sing praise to thee, and I may not be pierced with sorrow. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to thee for ever.
How can the reader know that this is a psalm of resurrection?
1. First, the Christian presupposition toward all of Scripture is that it is God’s Word concerning the salvation he offers humanity through his Son. The following are just a few examples of New Testament statements of this fact.
- John 1:1-18 is a Christian condensation of the book of Genesis.
- Jesus often called himself the “Son of Man,” or “Son of Anthropos,” rather than any number of other names he might have chosen. (See, for example, Matthew 12:40, Mark 10:45, Luke 6:5, and John 1:51.) By choosing this name, he indicates that he came to bring salvation to the entire human race.
- Jesus claimed the Old Testament spoke prophetically of himself (Luke 24:26-27).
- With reference to something Jesus spoke or did, the Gospel writers repeatedly made statements such as, “as it is written,” and that what a certain prophet or Scripture foretold, “might be fulfilled.”
- Jesus in his public ministry made many references to the Law.
- The New Testament quotes from Psalms close to 100 times, most of these with regard to Jesus’s ministry.
- The authors of the letters base the bulk of their evangelism upon the words, actions, and events of the life of Christ, and they weave these pieces of factual recent history into theological arguments bound together by the Scripture of the Old Testament. They constantly sought to prove how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament Messianic promises.
2. Second, and most importantly, the Holy Spirit, through the eye, heart, and mind of faith, reveals to the reader references to Christ.
3. Third, the Christian presupposition is that God chose his words carefully. Certain words in Psalm 30 prick the reader’s ears toward discerning a crucifixion/resurrection theme. This is where comparison of translations becomes important. Some translations muffle the voice and subject of Christ in Psalms, whereas other translations present him more clearly. The English translation above is that of Sir Lancelot Brenton, and the text he used is the Greek Septuagint. As a general statement, the Greek Septuagint, written centuries before the incarnation of God’s Son in the bodily form of Jesus of Nazareth, is clear in its presentation of Messiah. As a translation itself, it does not shy away from words referencing the events of his life.
Specifically, the following words and phrases in Psalm 30 alert the reader to its death/resurrection theme.
- “for the end”: This phrase is found in the superscript, which is not part of the biblical text. The words before the first verse of any psalm have been added by ancient text editors. “For the end” in Greek is “εἰς τὸ τέλος”, roughly pronounced eess-toe-tell-os, (Psalm 29:1 BGT). I have come to observe that this phrase in itself refers to Christ, since he is the “end” or goal, of our faith. He is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. Further, Christ himself stated on the cross, “It is finished.” In Greek, this is “τετέλεσται”, pronounced teh-tell-ess-tay (John 19:30 BGT). This Greek word is a verb that means, “to bring to a close, to finish, to end.” (Thayer’s Lexicon)
- “at the dedication of the house of David”: Jesus referred to his body as the “temple,” or dwelling place, i.e., house, of God. (See John 2:19-22 and Mark 14:58)
- “thou hast lifted me up” (vs 1): As explained above, the Greek verb could be used either of the crucifixion (John 12:32, which is a different Greek verb but is translated “lifted up” in English) or the resurrection, in the sense of to be lifted, or drawn up from under, as though someone were beneath and pushing up; or in the sense of pulling someone up from under something. We say that someone or something “lifted my spirits.”
- “not caused my enemies to rejoice over me” (vs 1): My favorite media depiction of Christ’s resurrection is from an old BBC animated production of C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In this particular film version, as they considered the dead Lion Aslan, the scary, animated beasts who opposed him were very nearly throwing a party to celebrate his death. Aslan was Lewis’s symbol for Christ. We can imagine the celebration in Satan’s realm had Christ remained in his grave.
- “I cried to thee, and thou didst heal me” (vs 2): Christ did indeed cry out to God, so much so, that he sweat as it were great drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. He also cried from the cross itself, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” In the second clause, the Greek word “heal” is the same word used in Septuagint Isaiah 53:5. It refers to both physical healing and spiritual healing from sin. These together form a complete salvation. Christ was healed physically from death. He was spiritually healed from sin, as the sacrificial lamb of God upon whom was laid the sins of the world. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (ESV)
- “thou hast brought up my soul from Hades, thou hast delivered me from among them that go down to the pit” (vs 3): This verse most definitely speaks of death and dying. Most English translations acknowledge this. The NET writes, “O LORD, you pulled me up from Sheol; you rescued me from among those descending into the grave.”
- “ye his saints” (vs 4): “Saints” is a favorite word for God’s people in the Psalter, in Daniel, and in the New Testament. When reading a psalm in which the events of the speaker’s life strongly evoke the events of Christ’s life, and when this speaker turns in his speech to directly address the people of God as his “saints,” a careful reader should sit up with ears alert. The translation version here can make a difference. Brenton, The Orthodox Study Bible, the ESV, KJV, and NKJV translate the Scripture with the word “saints,” while the NIV, NET, and CJB, say either “faithful ones,” or “faithful followers.” NETS translates the Greek word as his “devout.”
- “thou didst turn away thy face, and I was troubled” (vs 7): As mentioned above, Jesus in his passion perceived that God had turned away and even abandoned him.
- Verses 8-10, again as mentioned above, are entirely suitable to the passion and resurrection of Christ.
- “my glory” (vs 12): The ESV uses the word “glory” 161 times in the New Testament. Many of these occurrences refer to Christ. Jesus uses the phrase, “my glory,” in John 17:24, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” Although King David may have had a certain kind of glory, I am sure that his glory is nothing compared to that of the Son of God.
- “that my glory may sing praise to thee, and I may not be pierced with sorrow” (vs 12). The ESV states, “that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.” The Septuagint expresses greater lexical depth. Its Greek word “pierced” is another example of what could be a double meaning. First, while the Greek word used in this verb does not in itself contain the concept of sorrow, most often the Greek verb is used in a context where sorrow is connoted. The idea is that if one’s emotions are pierced with sorrow, this will lead to the person’s silence. The Septuagint word choice can carry this meaning. Additionally, Christ was, of course, literally pierced, first, by the crown of thorns upon his head, next by the nails that fixed him to the cross, and lastly, by the soldier’s spear thrust into his side. If this piercing had resulted in permanent death, that would indeed have been a most sorrowful outcome for all concerned. And, a permanent, final death would have ended in silence. As a tie-in with the first clause about “my glory,” Scripture associates Christ’s glory with his eternal existence, both as crucified-then-resurrected man and as divine God. The Lord of Glory (1 Corinthians 2:8 and James 2:1) chooses to use that glory to praise the Lord, his God. The sorrowful silence of death was defeated by the joyfully glorious resurrection unto praise.
4. A final means by which a careful reader is alerted to the crucifixion/resurrection theme of Psalm 30 is the “plot” of the psalm. The plot traces the movement in the life of the psalm’s speaker from the happiness and well-being that proceeded from God’s favor, into death, and then back from death to life, and finally to joy, praise, and thanksgiving. That the speaker turns to an audience he calls the Lord’s “saints” and commands them also to praise the Lord for his action of turning the sorrow of condemnation into the joy of life restored–the darkness of night into the light of morning– strongly favors Christ as being the protagonist. He intends that the church share the salvation God gave him by means of his resurrection victory.
With the above in mind, and given that 1) the death and resurrection of Christ, considered as a unit, is the centerpiece of Christianity, and 2) that the New Testament quotes the Psalter far more often than any other book of the Old Testament (Isaiah is the second most often quoted book), it is plain good reading sense for the Christian reader to keep an ear out for words, phrases, and themes in Psalms that point to the death and resurrection of Christ. Once discovered, it is faith through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit that keeps a reader firm in her discovery of references to Christ in the Psalms, even though she may not at first, or ever, discover scholarly confirmation in the books available to her (See footnote).
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Psalm 30 is written clearly enough that the theme of resurrection is apparent. While this article is primarily based upon my own reading of Psalm 30, I discovered much confirmation. For example, Patrick Henry Reardon develops the type of David’s house as representative of Christ’s body, including his Resurrection. Andrew A. Bonar develops a similar theme, though in a different direction. Craig C. Broyles, whom I read after I understood the basic structure of the psalm, as presented above, gives a similar organizational structure to that which I presented. Lord Bishop Samuel Horsley is responsible for equating the sickness of verse 2 with the fall of humans into sin, and the healing with the redemption Messiah brought, as in Isaiah 53:4-5. Finally, The Orthodox Study Bible (page 700) writes in its notes, “Ps 29 speaks of the Resurrection of Christ, who is the End (v. 1), and together with Him, the resurrection of the Church.” The notes continue with many details linked to specific words and verses. Biographical notes for these sources are available at “Christ in the Psalms: Bibliography,” accessed on August 17, 2019.