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Preparing for Interpretation · Reformed Thinking

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  Hello and welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
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  I'm your host, and as always, it is just a real pleasure to sit
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  down and get into the text. This is what we do here.
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  We think about God, His Word, and how all of it shapes the way
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  we live. It's great to be here.
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  I'm looking forward to it. Now, we always like to, you
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  know, set the stage at the beginning.
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  Our whole approach here is, well, it's right there in the
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  name. We're reformed, we hold to the
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  Westminster Confession. We believe in the sovereignty of
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  God over everything and that the Bible is His complete and
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  authoritative word to us. And that framework, that lens,
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  is so important for how we approach any text.
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  It is. But today we're going to, we're
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  going to zoom in quite a bit. We're not tackling a huge
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  systematic doctrine like justification or or
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  sanctification. We're getting into the
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  mechanics. We're talking about the how,
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  specifically how we read the book of Psalms.
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  Which is something I think that most of us do pretty regularly,
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  whether it's in our daily devotions or every Sunday in
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  corporate worship. But, and I think this is the
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  key, we often do it on a kind of autopilot.
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  I have to make a confession right out of the gate here.
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  I have a really bad habit when it comes to the Psalms.
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  When I'm reading through my Bible and I get to say Psalm 51,
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  I see that little paragraph at the top.
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  You know, the the one that talents exactly the one in the
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  smaller font and I I just skip it.
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  I just go right over it. It feels like the terms and
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  conditions before you install a new app, you just scroll past it
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  to get to verse one where the quote real Psalm begins.
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  You are definitely not alone in that.
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  I think for a lot of people those headings are just, they're
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  seen as clutter. They're extra biblical maybe, or
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  just sort of ancient liner notes that we don't need any more.
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  But our guide for this deep dive, Mark Futado, in his book
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  Interpreting the Psalms, he basically puts up a stop sign
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  right there. He tells us, hold on, not so
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  fast. He makes the case that if we
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  want to really understand what's going on in the Psalms, we have
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  to look at the engine under the hood.
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  We can't just admire the paint job.
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  Right. We have to engage with the
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  titles, with the history, and even with the sometimes
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  intimidating world of textual criticism.
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  It does sound a bit academic, but the goal here is practical.
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  It's to equip you, the listener, to be a better, more thoughtful
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  reader of this part of God's Word.
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  It's not just about a devotional feeling, but about understanding
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  the mechanics of the text. And becoming better interpreters
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  as a result. OK, so let's start with one of
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  those titles I usually ignore. If you have a Bible handy, maybe
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  open it up to Psalm 18. The title here, it's not just a
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  simple label, it's, well, it's a practically a short story.
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  Listen to this. It's a long one.
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  It is for the director of Music of David, the servant of the
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  Lord. He sang to the Lord the words of
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  this song, when the Lord delivered him from the hand of
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  all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul.
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  It's very specific. It gives you a time, a place, an
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  author, a context. It seems to answer all our
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  questions before we even start. It does.
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  It feels like a perfect, neat little package.
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  But this is where Futado immediately starts pulling at
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  the threads. He shows that this title, which
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  seems so helpful, actually raises a whole swarm of
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  questions that, I'll be honest, I had never even thought to ask.
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  For instance, let's just take that very first phrase Lam Nazi.
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  Which our Bibles translate As for the Director of Music.
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  Right, We see that on, what, 55 songs?
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  It's all over the place. But Frittata's question is
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  simple. Do we really, truly know what
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  that means? And the answer is not really.
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  It's one of those great little mysteries of the Hebrew Bible.
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  The root of the word seems to have something to do with
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  emanates, or victory, or endurance.
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  Some older translations even tried rendering it to the
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  overcomer. Oh, that's interesting.
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  It is, but in a liturgical context, the consensus is that
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  it probably refers to, you know, the chief musician, the choir
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  director, the worship leader. But here is the real kicker.
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  And this is what shows you how old these terms are.
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  By the time the Old Testament was being translated into Greek,
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  we're talking about the Septuagint around 250 BC.
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  Centuries before Jesus. Centuries.
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  By that point, the Jewish scholars doing the translation
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  had already lost the precise meaning of the word.
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  They didn't know what this technical musical term meant
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  anymore. Wait, are you serious?
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  The guys translating the Bible more than 200 years before the
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  New Testament era? We're already kind of guessing
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  at some of this. For some of the technical terms,
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  yes, they made an educated guess.
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  They saw Lam Nazi and they thought it might be related to
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  another Hebrew word lenazi, which means forever or to the
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  end. So what did they translate it
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  as? They translated it as ease to
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  tolos, which in Greek means to the end.
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  They completely missed the musical context and turned it
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  into a sort of theological or eschatological statement.
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  That's incredible. So the term was so ancient that
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  even the ancients had forgotten what it meant.
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  That tells you something right there.
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  It tells you these titles aren't a late addition from, say, the
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  Middle Ages. They are incredibly old.
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  And that's just the first phrase.
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  What about the next part of David?
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  The David in the Hebrew. Right, La David.
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  Now the little preposition there, lady, is one of the most
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  flexible in the Hebrew language. It can mean by David as in
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  authorship. Which is how we usually take it.
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  It's the traditional understanding and I think for
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  good reason, but dramatically it could also mean for David, or
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  concerning David, or even belonging to David's collection.
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  So you could in theory read it as a Psalm written for King
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  David to use in worship, or a Psalm that is about the life of
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  David. Grammatically, all of those are
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  possible. Now, tradition and other
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  biblical evidence like the New Testament's testimony, strongly
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  point us toward Davidic authorship in many cases.
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  But the point is that the grammar itself has this this
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  ambiguity built into it. And then you get to the big
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  historical note about being delivered from Saul.
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  Is that note reliable? Does the content of the Psalm
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  perfectly match that specific historical moment?
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  And these are the questions Futada wants us to ask.
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  It really feels like we're opening a can of worms here.
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  Or maybe a toolbox. The goal right now isn't to
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  definitively solve every single Riddle in the title of Psalm 18.
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  The goal is to use these very questions as a launchpad.
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  They force us to think more carefully about how the entire
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  book of Psalms works. And to do that, we have to talk
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  about history. OK, let's do it.
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  Let's talk about history. Because I feel like in every
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  hermeneutics class I've ever taken, every how to read your
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  Bible book I've ever read, the number one golden unbreakable
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  rule is always context is king. You have to interpret a biblical
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  text in his original historical context.
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  If you're reading Paul's letter to the Galatians, you'd better
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  know something about the Judaizers.
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  If you're reading Exodus, you need to understand something
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  about Egypt and Pharaoh and Susan vassal treaties.
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  That is the standard, and for probably 95% of the Bible it is
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  absolutely indispensable advice. You cannot understand the drama
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  without knowing the stage it's set on.
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  But Fukado makes the point that the Psalms are well, they're the
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  exception that proves the rule in some ways.
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  They are. The Psalms are different by
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  their very nature as poetry and prayer.
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  Many of them are what you might call floating texts.
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  Most of them resist our best efforts to nail them down to a
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  specific date on a specific calendar.
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  So if a Psalm says my enemies surround me or I am in deep
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  distress. That could be David running from
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  Saul and say 1010 BC. It could be King Hezekiah
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  staring down the entire Assyrian army in seven O 1 BC.
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  It could be a random Israelite farmer dealing with a famine and
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  greedy neighbors and 450 BC. The language is often so general
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  that the text itself simply doesn't tell us.
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  So the historical context rule is hard to apply when we, you
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  know, don't actually know the historical context.
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  We often don't, and this leads to a really crucial distinction
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  that Furtado brings out. Even when we think we know the
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  context, we have to differentiate between the
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  original setting and what he calls the canonical setting.
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  OK. Break that down for us, original
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  versus canonical. Let's take Psalm 90 as the
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  classic example. The title is very clear, A
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  prayer of Moses, the man of God. So Moses.
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  If we take that title at face value, as I think we should,
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  then the original setting is the wilderness wanderings.
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  We're talking about what, roughly 1400 BC.
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  Moses is the leader of this grumbling, dying generation, and
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  he's looking at their short, difficult lives and praying.
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  So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of
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  wisdom. OK, I'm with you.
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  That's the original setting. What's the canonical setting?
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  The canonical setting is about the book itself.
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  The book of Psalms, the collection of 150 palms that you
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  and I hold in our hands, was not finalized in its current form
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  until after the Babylonian exile.
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  It was compiled and arranged by editors, maybe Ezra and his
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  school of scribes, sometime around the 5th century BC,
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  nearly 1000 years after Moses lived.
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  Wow, that is a massive gap in time.
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  It's enormous. So the canonical setting is the
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  world of the post exilic community.
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  They're back in the land, the temple is being rebuilt, but
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  they're a shadow of their former glory.
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  And we have to ask the question, why do the inspired editors take
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  this ancient poem from Moses and place it right here at the
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  beginning of book four of the Psalter?
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  What were they trying to say to their generation by dusting off
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  this thousand year old song? So we're reading with two sets
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  of glasses on. We're trying to see what it
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  meant for Moses, but also what it meant for Ezra's audience.
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  That is the challenge and the richness of it.
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  And this whole discussion brings us right back to the titles.
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  I think a lot of us, myself included, for a long time, just
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  sort of assume that when David, for example, was inspired to
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  write a Psalm, he wrote the poem.
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  And then as the last step, he wrote at the top a Psalm of
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  David when he fled from his son Absalom.
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  You know, like he was writing a subject line for an e-mail.
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  Yes, that's exactly how I pictured it.
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  But Futado, along with many other good conservative
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  scholars, suggests we need a more nuanced view.
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  He argues that the titles are absolutely canonical.
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  That means they are part of the inspired, authoritative Word of
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  God that we have received. OK, that's good.
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  But they are not necessarily original to the very moment of
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  composition. Now that sounds a little
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  suspicious to my reformed ears. If David didn't write the title,
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  but the title says it's of David, doesn't that create a
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  problem? Isn't that misleading?
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  Not if the title is itself an inspired editorial edition.
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  Think about the prophetic books. You open the book of Hosea and
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  it says the word of the Lord that came to Hosea.
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  Did Hosea write that introduction, or did an inspired
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  scribe add it later to categorize and frame the
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  collection of his prophecies? Either way, it's Scripture.
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  The Holy Spirit guided the composition and the compilation.
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  OK, I see that distinction. But what's the evidence that
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  these titles might have been added later by inspired editors
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  rather than by the original poets?
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  There are several lines of evidence.
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  The 1st is as we mentioned. They're almost always written in
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  the third person, a Psalm of David, not my Psalm.
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  It reads like an archivist's label, not the author's personal
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  signature. That makes sense.
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  It's an editorial voice. It has that feel.
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  Another piece of evidence comes from comparing our Hebrew Bible,
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  the Masoretic Text, with the Septuagint in the Masoretic
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  Text. 116 of the 150 PS have titles in the Septuagint.
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  All of them have titles except for Psalm 1 and 2.
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  So the Greek version added more titles.
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  It seems so, which suggests that the tradition of titling was
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  somewhat fluid in the centuries leading up to the time of
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  Christ. But the real smoking gun, I
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  think, is the evidence from what scholars call the doublets.
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  The doublets? What's that?
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  It's fascinating. We have two psalms in our Bible
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  that are, for all intents and purposes, the exact same poem,
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  just with a few minor variations.
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  They are Psalm 14 and Psalm 53I. Want to check this?
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  I'm opening my Bible right now. OK?
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  Psalm 14 verse one. The fool says in his heart there
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  is no God. They're corrupt, their deeds are
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  vile. There is no one who does good.
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  OK, now flip over to Psalm 53. All right, Psalm 53 verse one,
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  the fool says in his heart there is no God.
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  They are corrupt and their ways are vile.
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  There is no one who does good. Whoa, that's yeah, that is
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  basically word for word the same.
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  It's the same song. It continues on like that, but
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  now look at the titles for each one.
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  What does the title of Psalm 14 say?
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  It says for the director of music of David, pretty standard.
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  And Psalm 53. It's longer, it says, for the
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  director of music, according to Mahala A Maskell of David.
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  Do you see the issue? The poem is the same, but the
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  liner notes are different. Psalm 53 adds these extra
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  technical terms, Mahalath, which we're not sure about, and
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  Maskell. If David wrote the title at the
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  single moment he composed the Psalm, why would there be two
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  different versions of the title? It strongly suggests that this
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  one poem was floating around, maybe in two different
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  collections or two different hymn books, and each one had its
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  own, slightly different heading. That's precisely the conclusion
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  most scholars come to, and there's another subtle
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  difference between them that supports this.
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  In Psalm 14, the primary name used for God is Yahweh, the
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  covenant name, which we see as Lord in all caps.
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  But in Psalm 53 three, the name used for God is almost
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  exclusively El Haim. So 1 is the Lord version and one
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  is the God version of the same song.
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  Yes, and this has LED scholars to identify what they call the
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  Yaoistic Psalter and the elephistic Psalter, different
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  collections that were shaped by different editorial hands over
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  time before they were all stitched together into the one
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  book of Psalms we have today. The different titles on the same
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  Psalm reflect that complex editorial history.
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  OK, I'm tracking with the logic. It's compelling, but I have to
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  play the skeptic for a moment. If these titles were added later
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  by editors, even inspired editors, does that diminish
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  their authority? Does it mean they're just human
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  commentary and we can kind of take them or leave them?
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  Does it mean they're modern? That is the crucial question,
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  and the answer is an emphatic no.
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  And this is so important. When we say not original to the
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  moment of writing, we do not mean modern or unreliable or
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  fake. We have to go back to the
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  Septuagint. The Greek translation from 250
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  BC. Exactly.
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  When those highly educated Jewish scholars in Alexandria
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  sat down to translate the Hebrew Psalms into Greek, they came
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  across these titles. And what did they do?
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  They got stumped. They got stumped.
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  They didn't know what Lamb, not cement.
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  They didn't know what Mahalo meant.
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  They didn't know what Maskell or Shigeon meant.
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  So the point is, the titles were already so ancient by 250 BC
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  that their specific technical meanings have been lost to the
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  mists of time. That's it.
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  If the meaning was already lost by 250 BC, then the titles
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  themselves must have been written centuries and centuries
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  before that. We're likely talking about the
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  First Temple period, the time of the monarchy.
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  So these are not late scribbles in the margin.
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  They are an ancient, established part of the biblical tradition.
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  That gives me a lot more confidence.
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  We're not dealing with something a medieval monk decided to add,
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  We're dealing with something that was ancient even to the
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  ancients. And most importantly for us as
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  Christians, we are dealing with something the New Testament
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  authors and Jesus himself treated as authoritative
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  Scripture. When Jesus is arguing with the
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  Pharisees in Mark 12, he quotes Psalm 110 and he prefaces it by
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  saying David himself speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared his
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  whole argument rests on the authority of the title A Psalm
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  of David. And Peter does the same thing on
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  the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. Paul does it in his sermon in
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  Acts 13. They take the Davidic titles as
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  a given. They do, and there's even cross
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  scriptural witness within the Old Testament.
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  Remember the long title of Psalm 18?
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  Yes, about being delivered from Saul.
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  Well, the text of Psalm 18 also appears almost verbatim in Sex
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  Samuel chapter 22, and the title of Psalm 18 is simply the first
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  verse of the text in Sex of Samuel 22.
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  So if Tensomeil 22 is inspired scripture, then the title of
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  Psalm 18 is inspired Scripture. So the take away is the titles
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  are canonical. They belong.
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  They are God breathe guides for our reading, but.
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  And there's a but sometimes honestly the guide seems a
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  little confusing. Or at least I'm the one who gets
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  confused. They're thinking about the times
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  when the history and the title doesn't seem to perfectly match
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  the content of the song. I am Futano points out there are
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  13 psalms that have these very specific historical links in
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  their titles. Some of them, like Psalm 51
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  regarding David and Bathsheba, fit like a glove.
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  You read the story in Test and Samuel, you read the Psalm of
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  repentance and they mesh perfectly.
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  But then you get to Psalm 3. A Psalm of David when he fled
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  from his son Absalom. Right.
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  And we know that story from 2 Sets and Samuel.
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  It is arguably the lowest point in David's life.
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  His beloved son has staged A coup.
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  The nation has turned against him.
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  David is escaping Jerusalem, weeping, barefoot, climbing the
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  Mount of Olives. He is a heartbroken father.
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  And in Second Samuel 18 verse 5, right before the climactic
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  battle, as he's sending his loyal troops out to fight for
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  his life, what is the specific final order he gives his
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  commanders? He tells them be gentle with the
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  young man, Absalom, for my sake. He's more concerned about his
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  rebel son's life than his own throne.
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  He wants to save him. That's the historical context.
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  A grieving, merciful Father. Now open Psalm 3.
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  Let's look at what the purse says.
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  Read verse 7. OK, Psalm 3, verse 7 Arise, O
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  Lord, deliver me, O my God, for you strike all my enemies on the
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  jaw, you break the teeth of the wicked.
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  Break the teeth of the Does that sound like the same man who just
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  said be gentle with the young man?
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  But not at all. It sounds like he wants to go to
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  war. It's violent imagery.
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  Strike them on the jaw. It sounds like he wants to, you
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  know, completely disable them. So we have a real tension here.
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  The historical narrative paints a picture of a gentle father.
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  The Psalm of the same event paints a picture of a warrior
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  king. How do we put those together?
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  Is the title wrong? That's the question.
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  I don't think the title is wrong.
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  I think the title is giving us the occasion for the Psalm, but
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  it's not meant to be a restrictive box that limits the
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  application of the Psalm. The title tells us that this
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  prayer was born out of the crisis with Absalom, but the
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  poem itself isn't a word for word transcript what David said
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  to his generals. It's a prayer, and in that
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  prayer David is handing the whole situation, including the
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  need for justice, over to God. He's using conventional poetic
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  language of ancient warfare. Breaking the teeth is a common
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  metaphor, like for a lion or a predator.
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  It means rendering an enemy powerless so they can no longer
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  harm you. He's not necessarily asking God
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  to literally punch Absalom. He's asking God to stop the
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  rebellion. So the title gives us the
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  general mood, betrayal, danger, fear, the need for deliverance,
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  but the text itself is written a more general, poetic and
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  universally applicable way. Exactly.
• 18:29
  The text is stylized, and this leads us to what Futado calls
• 18:34
  one of the most brilliant aspects of the Psalms, the
• 18:36
  blessing of vagueness. I absolutely love that phrase
• 18:40
  because normally in interpretation, we hate
• 18:41
  vagueness. We want specifics.
• 18:43
  We want names, dates, locations, but you're saying that in the
• 18:47
  Psalms the lack of detail is a feature, not a bug.
• 18:50
  It's one of its greatest strengths.
• 18:52
  Think about it. In Psalm 3, David doesn't pray.
• 18:55
  Lord, please stop my son Absalom and his advisor Ahithophel at
• 18:59
  the Jordan River. He prays, O Lord, how many are
• 19:02
  my foes? He uses general archetypal
• 19:05
  terms. Foes, Enemies, the wicked, those
• 19:07
  who rise up against me. And in other psalms it's the
• 19:10
  same. Psalm 4 just says he's in
• 19:12
  distress. Psalm 6 talks about his bones
• 19:13
  being in agony and his soul being in deep anguish.
• 19:16
  And we have no idea if that agony in Psalm 6 is from a
• 19:18
  physical illness like the flu, or if it's the physical
• 19:21
  manifestation of deep grease and emotional turmoil.
• 19:25
  And because we don't know, the Psalm becomes infinitely useful.
• 19:27
  How so? Well, if Psalm 6 said, Lord,
• 19:30
  heal me from this very specific strain of ancient Near Eastern
• 19:34
  leprosy, then you might hesitate to pray it when you're battling
• 19:37
  cancer or when you're just grieving the loss of a loved
• 19:40
  one. You'd say, well, that's not my
• 19:41
  specific problem, but because it just says I'm fainting, my bones
• 19:46
  are in agony, my soul is in deep turmoil, it becomes a vessel
• 19:50
  that is large enough to hold your specific pain, whatever it
• 19:54
  might be. That immediately makes me think
• 19:56
  of the endless debate over Paul's thorn in the flesh in
• 19:59
  Second Corinthians. That is the perfect New
• 20:01
  Testament parallel. It's the exact same principle at
• 20:04
  work. For 2000 years, people have
• 20:06
  argued about what that was. Was it bad eyesight?
• 20:09
  Was it malaria? Was it a speech impediment?
• 20:12
  A spiritual temptation. A specific person like
• 20:15
  Alexander, the conference, Smith, who's always harassing
• 20:17
  him. And the great commentator Philip
• 20:19
  Hughes makes the point brilliantly that if we ever
• 20:22
  found out for sure, it would ruin the verse for the church.
• 20:25
  Let's just imagine we discovered a lost letter from Paul where he
• 20:27
  says, by the way, that Thorne, I mentioned this, chronic
• 20:30
  migraines. From that day forward, every
• 20:32
  Christian who reads 2nd Corinthians 12 who doesn't
• 20:34
  suffer from migraines would be tempted to say, oh, well, that
• 20:38
  was Paul's specific struggle. I don't have that, so I don't
• 20:40
  really need God's all sufficient grace in that same way.
• 20:44
  It would become limited. But because it's just a thorn, a
• 20:48
  powerful, painful metaphor, it applies to everything.
• 20:52
  It applies to the person with chronic physical pain, yes, but
• 20:55
  it also applies to the person with a rebellious child, or a
• 20:58
  besetting sin, or a difficult boss, or a deep secret grief.
• 21:02
  The vagueness makes it universal.
• 21:05
  The lack of specifics creates the space for the church in
• 21:08
  every age and every situation to step into the text and make it
• 21:11
  their own prayer. So when David prays against his
• 21:14
  enemies, you don't need to be a king fighting a civil war.
• 21:18
  Your enemy might be your own pride.
• 21:19
  It might be a destructive cultural ideology.
• 21:22
  It might be the devil himself. The Psalm gives you the inspired
• 21:26
  words to fight that battle. That is incredibly freeing.
• 21:29
  It's a huge permission slip. It means I don't have to try and
• 21:32
  force my 21st century life to look exactly like David of its
• 21:35
  10th century BC life in order to pray his prayers with integrity.
• 21:38
  You've hit the nail on the head. That's the gift of the Psalter.
• 21:41
  OK, I want to shift gears slightly.
• 21:43
  We've talked about the history, or lack thereof, in the personal
• 21:46
  application that flows from that.
• 21:48
  But we're Reformed thinkers. We're always trying to see how
• 21:50
  all the pieces of the Bible fit together into the one big story
• 21:54
  of redemption that culminates in Christ.
• 21:57
  Futado brings in Doctor Bruce Walca, a true giant in Old
• 22:01
  Testament studies, to give us a framework for doing just that.
• 22:04
  Walkies 3 contexts. This is such a helpful tool.
• 22:08
  The basic idea is that as the Canon of scripture grows, the
• 22:11
  context for reading any given text grows with it.
• 22:14
  The meaning doesn't change, but it deepens and expands.
• 22:18
  So let's walk through those 3 contexts.
• 22:19
  What are the three questions we should be asking?
• 22:21
  The first question is what did the Psalm mean to the original
• 22:24
  poet in his original situation? Let's call that context one.
• 22:27
  The second is what did the Psalm mean to the inspired editors who
• 22:31
  compiled the Psalter, particularly in the post exilic
• 22:34
  community? That's context 2.
• 22:36
  And the third. And the third is, what does this
• 22:38
  song mean to us, the church, now that we live in light of the
• 22:43
  finished work of Jesus Christ? That's context 3, the final
• 22:46
  canonical and Christian context. The best way to understand a
• 22:50
  framework like this is to see it in action.
• 22:53
  Futada uses Psalm 89 as his test case, and it's a brilliant
• 22:56
  choice. It's one of my favorite Psalms,
• 22:58
  but it's also one of the most gut wrenching Psalms in the
• 23:00
  whole book. It's a tragedy in three acts.
• 23:02
  It's a roller coaster of emotion.
• 23:03
  It really is. It starts on this incredible
• 23:05
  high note verse one. I will sing of the steadfast
• 23:08
  love of the Lord forever. It rehearses God's covenant with
• 23:11
  David in beautiful language. I will establish your offspring
• 23:14
  forever and build your throne for all generations with all
• 23:18
  confidence and praise. And then you get to about verse
• 23:21
  38 and the music just stops. The floor drops out.
• 23:24
  But you have rejected. You have spurned.
• 23:26
  You've been very angry with your anointed.
• 23:29
  The Psalm turns on a dime into a raw, painful lament.
• 23:32
  So let's apply Waldkay's three contexts to this Psalm.
• 23:36
  Let's start with context one, the original poet.
• 23:38
  The title says this is a maskel of Ethan, the Ezra Hite.
• 23:41
  Who was Ethan. The Bible tells us in First
• 23:43
  Kings that Ethan the Ezra Hite was a famously wise man who was
• 23:47
  a contemporary of King Solomon. So that places us squarely in
• 23:50
  the 10th century BC, during the glory days of the United
• 23:54
  Monarchy. But wait, that creates a problem
• 23:56
  right away. The second-half of the Psalm
• 23:58
  describes a king who has been defeated.
• 24:00
  His walls are broken down. His crown is thrown in the dust.
• 24:03
  His enemies are plundering him. That doesn't sound like Solomon
• 24:06
  at all. Solomon's reign was the golden
• 24:08
  age of peace and prosperity. It does not fit Solomon, but you
• 24:12
  know who it fits almost perfectly?
• 24:14
  Solomon's son and successor Rhihabom.
• 24:16
  The king who was so arrogant he caused the gangdom to split in
• 24:19
  two. That's the one the Bible tells
• 24:21
  us in First Kings 14 that in the fifth year of Rhihabom's reign,
• 24:25
  A pharaoh from Egypt named Shishak came up and attacked
• 24:28
  Judah. He marched on Jerusalem and he
• 24:30
  plundered the treasures of the temple in the King's palace.
• 24:33
  He even took away all the gold Shields that Solomon had made.
• 24:36
  It was a national humiliation. So the theory is that Ethan the
• 24:40
  Ezraite, who is now a very old man, is watching this happen.
• 24:44
  He's seeing the Egyptian army March away with the nation's
• 24:47
  treasures, and he writes this Psalm.
• 24:49
  Lord, you made this glorious promise to David.
• 24:52
  But look at his grandson. We're being looted.
• 24:55
  Our crown is in the dust. In that original context,
• 24:58
  Context 1, the prayer is very specific and immediate.
• 25:01
  It's a prayer for King Rehoboam. Lord, save our current king.
• 25:05
  Restore our borders. Help us get our national
• 25:07
  treasures back from Egypt. OK, that makes perfect sense of
• 25:10
  the historical details. Now let's Fast forward context
• 25:12
  to the editors. We jump forward about 400 years.
• 25:16
  The year is 586 BC, or shortly after the Babylonians under King
• 25:21
  Nebuchadnezzar have come. And this time it wasn't just a
• 25:23
  raid where they stole some gold Shields.
• 25:25
  They burned the city of Jerusalem to the ground.
• 25:27
  They destroyed the temple. They blinded the Last King of
• 25:30
  Judah and dragged him off in chains.
• 25:32
  They ended the Davidic monarchy seemingly for good.
• 25:36
  The line of David has been completely cut off.
• 25:38
  The throne is empty. Right.
• 25:40
  And now imagine you are one of the inspired editors.
• 25:43
  You're sitting in exile by the rivers of Babylon, weeping when
• 25:46
  you remember Zion, and you are compiling the prayer book for
• 25:50
  God's broken people. You pick up this old scroll of
• 25:54
  Psalm 89, and you decide to place it right at the very end
• 25:58
  of book three of the Psalter. It's the climactic conclusion to
• 26:01
  the first half of the entire book.
• 26:03
  And when those exiles read that Psalm, the meaning must have
• 26:06
  just exploded for them. It's a total transformation.
• 26:09
  When Ethan originally wrote, Oh Lord, where is your steadfast
• 26:12
  love of old which you swore to David?
• 26:14
  He meant, why did we just lose this battle to Shishak?
• 26:17
  But when the Exiles in Babylon read the same words, they mean,
• 26:21
  has the entire covenant failed? Have you abandoned us forever?
• 26:24
  Do we even have a God anymore? The defiled crown is no longer
• 26:28
  just for your Boehm's humiliation, it's the end of the
• 26:31
  whole monarchy. The broken walls are the
• 26:33
  complete destruction of Jerusalem.
• 26:35
  It becomes a cry not just for a defeated king, but for an absent
• 26:39
  king. Yes, it becomes the definitive
• 26:42
  lament for the death of the nation.
• 26:43
  It's the darkest moment. And that brings us to context. 3
• 26:48
  Us, the church. We read this Psalm now, 2000
• 26:52
  years after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
• 26:54
  We don't have a king on a physical throne in Jerusalem.
• 26:57
  We don't have a temple with animal sacrifices.
• 27:00
  So how do we read Psalm 89 today?
• 27:02
  I think I can see at least two ways we have to read it
• 27:04
  simultaneously. Go for it.
• 27:05
  The first way is as a Psalm of incredible fulfillment.
• 27:09
  The desperate question that ends the Psalm Where is your
• 27:11
  steadfast love? Sworn to David, now has a
• 27:14
  definitive answer. The answer is Jesus of Nazareth.
• 27:17
  Amen to that. Matthew's Gospel opens by
• 27:20
  calling Jesus Christ the son of David.
• 27:22
  Paul's letter to the Roman says he was descended from David
• 27:25
  according to the flesh. God kept his promise.
• 27:28
  He didn't forget his covenant, he just fulfilled it in a way
• 27:31
  that Ethan and even the Exiles could never have seen coming.
• 27:34
  The king is on the throne. But the throne is at the right
• 27:37
  hand of the Father in heaven. Exactly.
• 27:39
  But that leads to the second way we read it.
• 27:41
  Because we look around the world today and we still see ruins.
• 27:45
  We see the Church of being persecuted.
• 27:46
  We see sin and moral failure in our own lives and communities.
• 27:50
  We see sickness and death. It doesn't always look like King
• 27:54
  Jesus is reigning in complete and total victory over
• 27:57
  everything just yet. This is the classic theological
• 28:00
  tension of the already and the not yet.
• 28:02
  We already have the king and the Kingdom has been inaugurated,
• 28:05
  but we do not yet see the full final consummation of that
• 28:09
  Kingdom. And so we can still pray Psalm
• 28:12
  89 with integrity. We can still cry out, Lord, how
• 28:15
  long we can still give voice to that anguish and that confusion?
• 28:19
  But we do it with hope. We do it knowing that all of
• 28:22
  God's promises, including the one to David, find their yes in
• 28:25
  Christ. It's a hopeful lament.
• 28:27
  It's a protest against the brokenness of the world, made
• 28:29
  from within the safety of God's unbreakable covenant in his Son.
• 28:33
  That is just so helpful. It allows the Psalm to travel
• 28:36
  through time. It starts as a specific prayer
• 28:38
  about rhythm, it expands to become the cry of the exile, and
• 28:41
  it lands in the church as both a celebration of fulfillment and a
• 28:45
  prayer for consummation. It just gathers weight and
• 28:48
  meaning as it goes. And that is the beauty of a
• 28:50
  truly reformed, Christ centered hermeneutic.
• 28:54
  It honors the original history. We don't erase Rio Boom, but it
• 28:58
  sees that history as part of a trajectory that culminates in
• 29:01
  Christ and the Church. Now I'm going to ask you to hold
• 29:05
  my hand for this next section because we need to pivot from
• 29:08
  that high level theological view down to the microscopic nuts and
• 29:12
  bolts view. We need to talk about textual
• 29:14
  criticism. I can almost hear some of our
• 29:16
  listeners reaching for the stick button.
• 29:17
  Don't do it. Please stick with us, because
• 29:19
  this deals with the most foundational question of all.
• 29:22
  How do we even know that the words we're reading in our
• 29:24
  English Bibles are the right words?
• 29:26
  Are they what the biblical author actually wrote?
• 29:29
  It's a fundamental question of authority and reliability, and
• 29:32
  we have to be honest with the data.
• 29:34
  When you look at the ancient manuscripts that have survived,
• 29:37
  there are variations between them.
• 29:39
  Give us an example of what that looks like.
• 29:41
  Well, as we mentioned the Septuagint, the Greek
• 29:43
  translation actually contains A Psalm 151, which is not in our
• 29:46
  Bibles. Right, our Bible stop at 1:50.
• 29:49
  The Syriac Bible has even more than that, and if you go look at
• 29:52
  the Dead Sea Scrolls, the famous scrolls found in the caves at
• 29:55
  Qumran in the 1940's, the great Psalm scroll they found there
• 30:00
  has a different order for many of the Psalms.
• 30:03
  It's missing some psalms that are in our Bible and includes
• 30:06
  some non canonical poems that are not.
• 30:08
  That sounds, frankly, a little unsettling.
• 30:10
  It makes it sound like the text of the songs was very fluid and
• 30:13
  unstable it. Was to a certain extent in some
• 30:16
  of these outlying communities like Qumran, but for mainline
• 30:20
  Judaism and subsequently for the Christian Church, the standard
• 30:24
  has always been what we call the Masoretic Text.
• 30:28
  This is the traditional Hebrew text that was meticulously
• 30:30
  preserved by a group of medieval Jewish scribes called the
• 30:33
  Masoretis. These men were absolutely
• 30:36
  fanatical about accuracy. These are the guys who, like,
• 30:40
  counted every single letter in every book of the Old Testament
• 30:44
  to make sure their copies were perfect.
• 30:45
  They did. They had traditions about which
• 30:47
  verse, which word, and even which letter was the exact
• 30:50
  center of every book, and they would count in from both ends to
• 30:53
  make sure they matched. Futado explains that from about
• 30:56
  180 onward, this textual tradition became the gold
• 30:59
  standard for both the synagogue and the church.
• 31:01
  It's the text Jerome used for his Latin Vulgate.
• 31:04
  It's the text the Reformers used, and it is the primary
• 31:07
  basis for all our modern Old Testament translations.
• 31:10
  Those stand on the Masoretic Text, but even the most careful
• 31:13
  scribe can make a mistake, right?
• 31:15
  A flip of the pen. They're still human.
• 31:17
  They are, and when you're copying a document by hand for
• 31:19
  over 1000 years, some small errors are inevitably going to
• 31:23
  creep in. A letter gets swapped for a
• 31:25
  similar looking 1A word gets accidentally skipped.
• 31:29
  Textual criticism is simply the science of carefully comparing
• 31:32
  all the available ancient manuscripts in order to identify
• 31:35
  those rare scribal hiccups and, where the evidence is strong, to
• 31:39
  restore the original reading. Futano gives a really specific
• 31:43
  and powerful example of this in Psalm 104 that I want to walk
• 31:47
  through slowly. It's a bit detailed, but it's
• 31:49
  fascinating because it shows how changing a single vowel can
• 31:52
  clarify the entire theology of a creation account.
• 31:55
  Let's do it. Psalm One O 4 is a magnificent
• 31:57
  creation hymn. It basically walks through the
• 31:59
  six days of creation from Genesis 1, but in beautiful
• 32:03
  poetic form. OK, I'm looking at my Bible
• 32:05
  Psalm one O 4 verse 6. A standard translation like the
• 32:09
  KGV or ESV reads something like this.
• 32:12
  You covered it with the deep. As with the garment, the water
• 32:14
  stood above the mountains. You covered it.
• 32:16
  God covered it. It sounds majestic, doesn't it?
• 32:19
  God taking the primordial ocean and draping it over the earth
• 32:21
  like a blanket. It does.
• 32:22
  So what's the problem? The problem is twofold.
• 32:24
  The first is hidden in the Hebrew grammar.
• 32:26
  Now in English, we just have it. The earth, isn't it?
• 32:29
  The ocean, isn't it. The sky, isn't it?
• 32:31
  But Hebrew, like many other languages, is a gendered
• 32:35
  language. Every noun is either masculine
• 32:37
  or feminine. Like Spanish or French?
• 32:39
  Yeah. Exactly.
• 32:40
  Now in this verse, the IT that is being covered is the earth.
• 32:44
  The Hebrew word is eretz, and the noun eretz is feminine.
• 32:49
  So if you're going to say you covered her, the pronoun
• 32:52
  attached to the verb needs to be a feminine suffix.
• 32:55
  And that's not what the Hebrew text has.
• 32:57
  No, the Masoretic Text as it stands has the word kisito.
• 33:01
  That suffix at the end, the O sound, is a third person
• 33:05
  masculine singular suffix. It means you covered him.
• 33:08
  But the earth is a her. Correct.
• 33:10
  So grammatically it's a bit of a clash.
• 33:12
  It's like pointing at your mother and saying he is a
• 33:14
  wonderful woman. It just sounds wrong to a native
• 33:16
  speakers ear. But there's a much bigger
• 33:19
  problem here than just grammar. It's a theological problem with
• 33:22
  the logic of the creation sequence.
• 33:24
  OK, walk me through that logic. Look at the flow of the song.
• 33:28
  Verse 5 says he set the earth on its foundations so that it
• 33:31
  should never never be moved. So step one, God builds and
• 33:35
  establishes the dry land. Got it.
• 33:37
  Step 1. Build land.
• 33:40
  Now verse 6, as the Masoretic text reads, says you covered it
• 33:44
  with the deep. That means God takes the waters
• 33:46
  of chaos, the deep, and He deliberately pours them all over
• 33:51
  the stable, dry land that He just built.
• 33:53
  So he builds the land, and then he immediately floods it
• 33:56
  himself. That's what the text says, and
• 33:58
  then in verses 7 through 9, God rebukes the waters and commands
• 34:02
  them to flee so that the dry land and mountains can appear
• 34:04
  again. That feels redundant.
• 34:06
  It feels chaotic. It sounds like God is creating a
• 34:09
  problem just so he can solve it. 3 verses later, He's undoing his
• 34:13
  own work and then fixing it again.
• 34:14
  And more importantly, it directly contradicts the
• 34:17
  sequence in Genesis one. In Genesis 1, the Spirit of God
• 34:20
  is hovering over the face of the waters 1st, and then God
• 34:22
  commands the dry land to appear out from the waters.
• 34:25
  The land doesn't appear 1st and then get covered by water.
• 34:28
  So we have a grammatical mismatch, the hammer problem,
• 34:32
  and a theological narrative problem with the order of
• 34:34
  creation. What's the proposed solution?
• 34:37
  The solution is a very minor, very reasonable emendation or
• 34:41
  change to the text. We have to remember that in
• 34:44
  ancient Hebrew, only the consonants were written down.
• 34:48
  The vowel marks were added by the macerates much much later,
• 34:51
  around the 8th or 9th century AD.
• 34:53
  If we just change the vowel pointing slightly on that one
• 34:56
  word, we get a completely different reading.
• 34:58
  OK, so instead of kisito you covered it.
• 35:00
  We read it as KISA. Quisata.
• 35:03
  What did that mean? It changes the subject of the
• 35:05
  verb. It now means it covered it.
• 35:07
  Specifically, the deep covered it.
• 35:09
  The deep covered the earth. Yes, the sentence now reads the
• 35:12
  deep, like a garment covered it. Oh so God is no longer the one
• 35:17
  doing the covering? The deep was already covering
• 35:20
  the lamb. Just like in Genesis one verse
• 35:22
  2. The earth was without form and
• 35:23
  void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.
• 35:26
  Precisely. The deep was covering the land
• 35:29
  in its natural chaotic state. And then in verse 7, God speaks.
• 35:34
  He rebukes the deep, and he drives it back into its proper
• 35:37
  boundaries so that the dry land can appear for the first time.
• 35:40
  That fixes everything. It fixes the grammatical
• 35:42
  problem, it fixes the logical sequence of creation, and it
• 35:46
  makes Psalm One O 4 align perfectly with the narrative of
• 35:49
  Genesis 1. And that is the work of careful,
• 35:52
  responsible textual criticism. It's not about rewriting the
• 35:55
  Bible to suit our modern tastes. It's about using all the
• 35:59
  available evidence to clear away a tiny scribal error and restore
• 36:03
  the beauty and clarity of the original text.
• 36:06
  It's polishing the lens so we can see the original picture
• 36:08
  more clearly. I.
• 36:09
  Have to admit, when I hear phrases like changing the text
• 36:12
  or changing the vowels, a little alarm bell goes off of my head.
• 36:15
  It feels like we're tinkering with the very word of God.
• 36:17
  And that is a healthy and pious fear.
• 36:21
  We should tremble at His word, but we have to remember two
• 36:24
  things. First, the vowel points
• 36:26
  themselves, while an incredibly valuable tradition, were added
• 36:30
  by scribes 1000 years after the prophets wrote.
• 36:34
  They are a helpful guide, but they are not infallible.
• 36:36
  And 2nd, and this is the most important point, no major
• 36:40
  doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a textual variant in
• 36:43
  the Book of Psalms. Right.
• 36:44
  We're not deciding the deity of Christ or the doctrine of the
• 36:47
  Trinity based on a vowel point in Psalm one O 4.
• 36:50
  Not at all. The great pillars of our faith
• 36:52
  are secure and attested everywhere in Scripture.
• 36:55
  This kind of work which just helps us clarify the details of
• 36:57
  the picture. It's a service to the church,
• 36:59
  not a threat to the faith. We're coming toward the end of
• 37:02
  our time here, and I feel like my brain is full in the best
• 37:05
  possible way. But Furtado has one last crucial
• 37:08
  piece of advice for us. We've talked about all these
• 37:11
  tools, history titles, grammar, textual criticism.
• 37:14
  But he says the most important tool in our toolbox might just
• 37:17
  be other people. Interpretation, he says, should
• 37:20
  not be a solo sport. And I think there's a strong
• 37:23
  tendency, especially in our individualistic Western culture,
• 37:26
  to think it's just me and my Bible and the Holy Spirit.
• 37:30
  And on one level, that sounds very spiritual.
• 37:33
  It sounds pious, but in practice it's actually quite dangerous.
• 37:37
  If you go into a room, lock the door, and decide you're going to
• 37:40
  figure out what the Bible means all by yourself, you are far
• 37:43
  more likely to come out with a heresy than you are with the
• 37:45
  truth. Or at least a very weird,
• 37:47
  idiosyncratic idea. We need the community.
• 37:50
  We need resources. We need good commentaries.
• 37:53
  We need books that help us understand the conventions of
• 37:55
  Hebrew poetry, like parallelism and imagery.
• 37:58
  But more than that, we need to stand on the shoulders of the
• 38:01
  great cloud of witnesses. We need to read what John Calvin
• 38:04
  said about a Psalm. We need to see what Augustine
• 38:07
  thought. We need to engage with modern
• 38:09
  faithful scholars like Walt Chamean Futado themselves.
• 38:12
  It's a vital safety check if I come up with a brand new
• 38:15
  interpretation of Psalm 89 that nobody in the last 2000 years of
• 38:19
  church history has ever seen before.
• 38:21
  The chances are overwhelmingly high that you are wrong.
• 38:25
  That's a very good rule of thumb to live by.
• 38:27
  The Holy Spirit has been teaching the whole church for
• 38:29
  two millennia, not just me and my private study this morning.
• 38:33
  So consulting the wisdom of the church, past and present, is a
• 38:36
  profound act of humility. It's admitting I don't have all
• 38:40
  the answers and I need help. We have covered a massive amount
• 38:43
  of ground in this deep dive. We looked at the titles and we
• 38:47
  saw they're not junk mail, they're ancient inspired guides.
• 38:50
  We looked at the role of history and how sometimes a mismatch
• 38:53
  between the title and the text is actually the thing that opens
• 38:56
  the door for us to pray these prayers today.
• 38:59
  We traveled through 2000 years of redemptive history with Psalm
• 39:02
  89, and we even did some delicate linguistic surgery on
• 39:06
  Psalm One O 4. It just goes to show you the
• 39:08
  density and the brilliance of this book.
• 39:10
  The Psalms are not just simple sentimental greeting card
• 39:13
  slogans. They are profoundly complex,
• 39:16
  divinely inspired literature. I want to leave our listeners
• 39:19
  with one final thought to Mull over.
• 39:21
  We talked about watching Keys context 3.
• 39:24
  Our context is Christians and we talked about the anguish,
• 39:26
  perplexities that we see in a Psalm like Psalm 89.
• 39:30
  For me, that's one of the most pastorally helpful things we've
• 39:33
  talked about. Why do you say that?
• 39:34
  Because I guarantee that there is someone listening to this
• 39:37
  right now who is deeply confused.
• 39:40
  They are looking at their own life.
• 39:41
  Maybe their marriage is falling apart.
• 39:43
  Maybe they just got a terrible diagnosis.
• 39:45
  Maybe their child has walked away from the faith and they
• 39:48
  feel exactly like the psalmist. They feel like God has rejected
• 39:52
  them, that he has defiled their crown in the dust.
• 39:55
  They feel like the promises of God have failed in their life.
• 39:58
  They're living in the ruins. They are living in the ruins,
• 40:00
  and the book of Psalms gives you divine permission to bring that
• 40:04
  ruin, that confusion, that anger, that grief directly to
• 40:08
  God. You don't have to clean yourself
• 40:09
  up or pretend everything is fine.
• 40:11
  You can pray Psalm 89. You can cry out, Lord, where is
• 40:15
  the steadfast love you promised? But you do it.
• 40:17
  Knowing that you are now in the story that ends not in exile,
• 40:21
  but in resurrection, the historical context of your
• 40:24
  personal pain is now wrapped up and held within the ultimate
• 40:28
  context of Christ. That's a beautiful and powerful
• 40:31
  place for us to land. Pray the honest prayer, but
• 40:34
  always pray it toward the empty tomb.
• 40:36
  That's it. Thank you so much for walking us
• 40:38
  through all of this. It's been incredibly
• 40:40
  illuminating. It was my pleasure, a real joy.
• 40:42
  And thank you, our listeners, for joining us for this episode
• 40:45
  of Reformed Thinking. If you want to dig deeper into
• 40:48
  any of this, I can't recommend highly enough Mark Futado's
• 40:52
  book, Interpreting the Psalms, An Exegetical Handbook.
• 40:56
  It is a clear, accessible, and deeply faithful guide that you
• 41:00
  will find yourself returning to for the rest of your life.
• 41:03
  Until next time, keep thinking, keep reading, and keep praying.