Penitential Psalms: The Amazing Psalm 6–Windup to the Pitch

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The Psalter tells a story. Its setting is earth, with occasional glimpses of heaven. When readers first look at Psalms, they may see religious poems with few repetitive themes bound together in no particular arrangement. Many may appear vague–tiny slices of time unattached to any backdrop of explanatory detail. Tone can change abruptly, often with no apparent transition. What to make of all this? Is there a key to unlock a secret code? The key is Christ, and the code is revealed through the eyes of faith. What at first may appear as a jumble of emotionally disparate poetic lines becomes a portrait of a man whose simple story is presented with a few bold strokes.

The dramatic setting of Psalms is a war of righteousness versus wickedness. The forward backdrop depicts earth, where most of the action occurs. God, who never appears in person, occasionally speaks from time to time. His invisible presence rules the entire drama. His curtain is the rear backdrop, heaven, which is nearly always hidden by the front curtain, earth. Just offstage from the front curtain stands the chorus, constantly ready to appear suddenly and perform at a brief moment’s notice, before disappearing again. The voice of an unnamed narrator sometimes interprets the action, interacts with the characters, or speaks to the audience. Named characters are few, but there are large, generic crowds, sometimes the righteous and sometimes the wicked enemies. A single tragically heroic character dominates the play, appearing in approximately half of the onstage speeches. Although he dies, he comes to life again, triumphant.

Scene One of the Psalter opens ordinarily enough, but a closer look reveals its surreal nature. Special lighting blends the front and rear backdrops, earth and heaven, such that the audience can see both heaven and earth simultaneously. As the audience listens to the orchestra play an overture of righteousness versus wickedness, a person dressed simply as, “The Man,” appears. He seems to be walking on earth, and yet, he also walks in heaven.  This man is blessed by God and prospers, because he is righteous. He continuously remains onstage in God’s presence. The audience also sees large numbers of wicked characters crossing the stage from various directions. Their paths all disappear offstage into destruction.   But what of Almighty God the Governor/Judge himself? Is he good? Is he kind? Is he loving? Each audience member must watch the play as it unfolds and decide the answers to those questions herself.

Scene 2, Psalm 2 presents the conflict between heaven and earth in greater detail. God in the heavens has an Anointed One, his Christ. They speak with one voice. As two mountains blend together in the distance, the Anointed One and God the Lord become difficult to distinguish with certainty (vv 4, 11, and 12). But it is the Anointed One who speaks, quoting what God had said to him at a prior time. He is the Lord God’s Son, who has been given all authority over earth. All earthly rulers are given a solemn warning to submit to the Lord. Psalm 2 speaks with the authority of Heaven.

But in Psalm 3, where is the Anointed King (1:6)? He seems to have disappeared. Psalm 3 is set squarely on earth, and the voice we hear is definitely a human voice, a voice of one besieged by enemies on all sides. The person who speaks remains unnamed (1). He is one who appears to have no strength in himself, but wholly relies upon the Lord his God for deliverance. He speaks for the Lord’s people, those who receive the blessings bequeathed in Psalm 1.

Psalm 4 contains strong echoes of Psalm 1. But it has the ring of school boys on a play-yard. Is this the powerful King speaking? Verse 3 indicates that indeed the speaker of Psalm 4 is the holy one of Psalm 2. In vs 6 we see the contempt of those who reject God’s way (cf 2 Peter 3:4). Verse 7, as in Psalm 1:1-2,  provides the contrast of God given joy versus the purely carnal pleasures of earth. The assurance of Psalm 4:8 reflects the blessings to the righteous of Psalm 1:2-3 and 6a. Yet the King of Psalm 2 appears to be a man in Psalm 4.

Psalm 5 is the first extended prayer of the Psalter, and a good prayer model it is. Perhaps the reader has seen written instructions or attended group meetings where “Praying the Scripture” is taught. Psalm 5 is an example of that very concept. From start to finish, line by line, Psalm 5 prays Psalm 1. (I’ll let the reader work that out for herself.)

Verses 1 through 10 are prayed in first person singular; verse 11 switches to a group focus in third person plural; and finally, verse 12  closes with a first person plural, which is not uncommon in Psalms. This final verse could be spoken by the chorus stepping briefly onstage. Who are the characters suggested by these dramatic voices? If we were watching a performance, we would see costumes or face masks of some kind to indicate speaker identities. However, not having those, we the audience look for other clues. Although I usually choose to ignore the superscriptions, the superscription in the Septuagint for Psalm 5 is suggestively fascinating. It reads in English, “For the end, a Psalm of David, concerning her that inherits” (LXE, Brenton). Many of the psalms attributed to David have the Greek phrase, “εἰς τὸ τέλος,” for the end. However, the phrase, “concerning her that inherits,” (ὑπὲρ τῆς κληρονομούσης) occurs only here. Why is this interesting?

In Christian theology, who is “her that inherits?” Why, the church of course, which includes those saints who lived in Old Testament times. The Greek word for church does happen to have a feminine ending. For those who may be interested, Footnote 2 below gives a quotation from Thayer’s Greek Lexicon (See Thayer in Bibliography). The verb “inherit,” Thayer writes, was used extensively in the Old Testament to refer to the peaceful kingdom during Messiah’s reign and extended from that, “to partake of eternal salvation in the Messiah’s kingdom: Matt. 5:5 (4) (from Ps. 36:11 (Ps. 37:11))” (2).

Because the first person singular dominates, Psalm 5 can be read as the prayer of a single individual, and it can be read as the prayer of the church. Based upon the sequential development of the plot-line from Psalm 1 through Psalm 8 (3), the first person singular individual can be named as Christ, God’s appointed King of Psalm 2. He is the church’s head, its representative on earth and in heaven. Christ in his incarnation prays much of the Psalter, especially those psalms ascribed to David (4). He is the beleaguered man surrounded by enemies who pleads with the Lord for his own salvation and the salvation of the church, his body.

It’s important that we see Christ as the speaker representing the church in Psalm 5, so that when we come to Psalm 6, we will be able to understand the intercessory aspect of its penitential nature.

 

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1 This retelling of Psalms ignores the superscripts, which are not part of Scripture, but rather editorial additions.

2 “…in Biblical Greek everywhere with the accusative of the thing; so very frequent in the O. T. in the phrase κληρονομουν γῆν and τήν γῆν, of the occupation of the land of Canaan by the Israelites, as Lev. 20:24; Deut. 4:22,26; 6:1, etc.  But as the Israelites after taking possession of the land were harassed almost perpetually by their hostile neighbors, and even driven out of the country for a considerable period, it came to pass that the phrase was transferred to denote the tranquil and stable possession of the holy land crowned with all divine blessings, an experience which pious Israelites were to expect under the Messiah:  Ps. 24:13 (Ps. 25:13); Ps. 36:9,11,22,29,34 (Ps. 37:9,11,22,29,34) Alexandrian LXX; Isa. 60:21; Tobit 4:12; ἐκ δευτέρας κληρονομήσουσι τήν γῆν, Isa. 61:7; hence, it became a formula denoting to partake of eternal salvation in the Messiah’s kingdom:  Matt. 5:5 (4) (from Ps. 36:11 (Ps. 37:11)), where see Bleek.  ζωήν αἰώνιον, Matt. 19:29; Mark 10:17; Luke 10:25; 18:18; τήν βασιλείαν, Matt. 25:34; βασιλείαν Θεοῦ, 1 Cor. 6:9f; 15:50; Gal. 5:21; σωτηρίαν, Heb. 1:14; τάς ἐπαγγελίας, Heb. 6:12; ἀφθαρσίαν, 1 Cor. 15:50; ταῦτα (Rec. πάντα), Rev. 21:7; ὄνομα, Heb. 1:4; τήν εὐλογίαν, Heb. 12:17; 1 Pet. 3:9.  (Compare:  κατα-κληρονομέω.)*

3 Yes, the Psalter has a plot line, see opening statement and so forth, above.

4 I’ve added a new source in the Bibliography, Cameron, Michael. Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Cameron writes, “The apostles are portrayed preaching and teaching the Psalms as prophecies of the messianic age in general and of Messiah in particular (Acts 2:25-28; 4:25-26; 13:33-37; Rom. 15:8-11; Heb. 1:5-12). But Christians also read the Psalter as the Book of Christ in another way: not only as an ‘objective’ account of fulfilled prophecy but also as a spiritual revelation of his human soul, in fact as a virtual transcript of his inner life while accomplishing the work of redemption. Paul particularly taught Christians to read the Psalms as echoes of the voice of Christ. [Cameron cites Richard Hays: Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, and The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture, 101-118).] Second-century writers like Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus continued this Christological reading; so did Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen in the third century. In the fourth century, the Christ of the Psalms was important to Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Poitiers, Jerome, and Ambrose of Milan in the west.” (Cameron, 168)

 

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