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How to Read the Psalms: Structure, Purpose, and Use | James Hastings et al. · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. I'm glad you were here with us.
• 0:03
  We have a lot of ground to cover today.
• 0:05
  It is good to be here. We certainly do, you know.
• 0:07
  Usually when we talk about a book of the Bible, we we sort of
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  treat it like a finished product.
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  It's this static object that just dropped out of heaven,
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  bound in leather with gold gilt edges, ready for us to read.
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  But today we're doing something a little different.
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  We're looking at the Dictionary of the Bible by James Hastings,
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  specifically the entry on the songs.
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  And I have to tell you, after working through this material, I
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  don't think I can ever look at this altar the same way again.
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  It's it's messy. It is messy and that's the best
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  part. Right.
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  But it's a specific kind of messiness.
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  It's not disorganized. It's it's organic.
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  We're going to look at the Psalms not just as a collection
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  of nice verses for your morning coffee mug, but as a hymnal of
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  hymnals. This is a library that was
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  built, renovated, added to, and reorganized over the course of
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  centuries. That is the key phrase hymnal of
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  hymnals. If you take one thing away from
• 1:02
  this discussion, it should be that the Book of Psalms is not a
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  book written by a man named David in a single afternoon.
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  No, it is the accumulated liturgical asset of Israel.
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  It is the responsive voice of the covenant people speaking
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  back to God. And that's a crucial distinction
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  for us, especially in our tradition.
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  We usually talk about the Bible as God's revelation to man, but
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  the Psalms are different. They are.
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  They are the only part of Scripture that is explicitly
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  man's words to God, yet inspired by God to be the perfect vehicle
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  for that speech. It's God teaching us how to
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  speak to Him. But to understand how that
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  works, we have to get into the engine room.
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  We have to look at the editing, the duplicates, the weird titles
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  and the history. OK, so let's start with the
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  basics. The furniture in the room, so to
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  speak. Where do the Psalms actually
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  live? In the library of Scripture?
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  Because Hastings points out something interesting about the
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  Canon order that I had not really considered before.
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  Right, so most of our listeners probably have an English Bible,
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  KJVESVNIV, where the Psalms are sitting right in the middle.
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  You open the book, gravity takes over and it falls open to
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  Psalms. Yeah, that's my experience.
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  And in our arrangement they sit right before the prophets.
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  But in the Hebrew Bible, the structure is quite different.
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  This is the Tanakh structure we're talking about.
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  The Hebrew Canon has three baskets, if you will.
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  The Torah, which is the Law, the Nebium, which are the prophets,
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  and then the third basket, the Kathubim or the Writings.
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  The Psalms are the head of that third basket.
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  Why does that distinction matter?
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  I mean, why should I care which basket it's in?
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  It matters because the writings was the section of the Canon
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  that stayed open the longest. The law was fixed early, the
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  profits were fixed next. But the writings which includes
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  books like Proverbs, Job, Ezra, Nehemiah, that was the
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  collection where the community was still curating its wisdom
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  and worship. Placing the Psalms there signals
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  to us that this book has a history that stretches all the
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  way into the post exilic period. It was the open drawer where the
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  treasures were kept. I like that image.
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  Yeah, it's the open drawer. Now let's talk about the name.
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  We say Psalms feels very holy, very churchy.
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  But Hastings points out that Psalms is actually a Greek idea,
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  and it clashes a bit with the Hebrew idea.
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  It is a bit of a culture clash, yeah.
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  The Hebrew title is Tehillim. Tehillim.
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  And that word simply translates to praises.
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  It's a content label. It tells you what the poems are
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  about. They're about the praise of
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  Yahweh. Which seems straightforward
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  enough, except for the content itself.
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  Right, except that a huge chunk of the book is not praise at
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  all. It's lament.
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  It's complaining. It's God.
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  Where are you? So Tehillim is a bit of a
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  generalization. It captures the dominant note,
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  but maybe not every measure. And then we have the Greek
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  title, which is where we get our word right.
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  The Greek translators, the Septuagint scholars, they looked
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  at this book and called it Samoe.
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  Now psalmist is a technical word.
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  It comes from a verb that means to twitch or to twang.
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  To twang. Yeah, specifically the twanging
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  of a stringed instrument. So tahila means praises and
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  somoy means string songs. Essentially, yes.
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  The Greek title focuses on the method of delivery.
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  These are lyrics set to music, but again, Hastings notes the
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  tension. Not every song was sung to
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  strings. Some were probably a Capella,
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  some might have been flutes. I see.
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  So neither title is perfect, but together they give you the full
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  picture. These are the praises of Israel
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  set to the music of the Temple. Let's.
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  Get into the numbers 150. It's a nice round Number.
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  I feel like if there are 149 we would all be very uncomfortable.
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  But Hastings throws a wrench in this.
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  He suggests that the number 150 is a bit of an artificial
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  ceiling, and that underneath that number the text shifting
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  around. It is more than shifting.
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  It is evidence of a living liturgy.
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  The Hebrew text says 150. The Gree text actually has 151,
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  though it admits the last one is supernumerary.
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  Or, you know, outside the official count.
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  The extra 1. An extra 1.
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  Yeah. But the real fascination is what
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  is happening inside the count. Hastings shows us pretty
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  conclusive evidence that some Psalms have been split in two
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  and others have been glued together.
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  Give us the split example. I found the Psalm 9 and 10
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  connection really compelling. That is the classic case.
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  If you read Psalm 9 and Psalm 10 in your English Bible, they look
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  like 2 separate poems. But if you look at the Hebrew
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  text, there's an acrostic structure, an alphabetical
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  pattern where each verse starts with a subsequent letter of the
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  Hebrew alphabet. An ABC poem, basically.
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  Exactly. And the pattern starts in Psalm
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  9, goes halfway through the alphabet, and then continues
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  Florida State right into Psalm 10.
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  So if you separate them, you basically cut the alphabet in
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  half. Precisely.
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  You break the scheme and the Greek version actually treats
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  them as a single poem. Oh, it does.
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  It does, and the same thing happens with Psalm 42 and 43.
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  Psalm 43 has No title, which is very in that part of the book,
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  and it repeats the exact same chorus as Psalm 42.
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  Why are you cast down? Or my soul.
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  Right, that refrain. It is clearly the third stanza
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  of the song that got separated on a scroll somewhere.
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  It belongs with Psalm 42. And then we have the opposite.
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  We have the mashups. Psalm One, O 8.
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  Psalm One O 8 is the remix. It is literally verses 711 of
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  Psalm 57 pasted together with verses 512 of Psalm 60.
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  Why? I mean, why would they do that?
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  Why take two perfectly good Psalms, chop them up and make a
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  Franken PS? Well, think about how we do
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  worship today. A worship leader might take the
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  chorus of Amazing Grace and tag it onto a modern song.
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  It's liturgical utility. I see.
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  At some point in Israel's history, a worship leader needed
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  a song that expressed a specific kind of victory and praise.
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  And he realized, hey, the end of Psalm 57 and the end of Psalm 60
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  fit perfectly together, and the community used it so much that
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  it became canonized as Psalm 108.
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  That blows my mind a little bit. It makes the Bible feel so
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  practical. It wasn't just written, it was
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  used. And that utility is what leads
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  us to the biggest insight in Hastings work, the structure of
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  the book itself. We need to talk about the Hymnal
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  of Hymnals concept. Yes, this is the core of our
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  discussion, the editorial history.
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  Because Hastings claims that the book of Psalms is actually 5 or
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  different hymn books bound together and he has a smoking
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  gun to prove it. He does.
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  It's a verse that most people skip right over Psalm 72 verse
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  20. The prayers of David the son of
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  Jesse are ended right? Now think about where that is.
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  That is at the end of Book 2. We are not even halfway through
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  the Psalter and yet we have a definitive editorial note saying
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  that's it, no more David. But I can flip a few pages to
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  Psalm 86 and it says A prayer of David, Psalm one O 1 of David,
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  Psalm one O 3 of David. I mean, they keep coming.
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  So was the editor wrong? Did he not check the back of the
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  book? He wasn't wrong.
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  He was copying an older document.
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  Hastings argues, and most scholars agree, that Psalm 72
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  was the final page of an earlier independent songbook.
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  Let's call it the second Davidic Hymnal.
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  When the final editor came along centuries later to compile the
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  Mega Hymnal which became our Book of Psalms, he took that
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  smaller book, plomped it into the middle, and he respected the
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  text enough to leave that the end note in place, even though
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  he knew he was about to add a bunch more Davidic Psalms later
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  on. It's like finding a the end
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  credit in the middle of a movie and then the movie keeps going
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  for another hour. Yes, it proves the movie was
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  stitched together from two different films.
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  That is a great analogy, and this helps us solve another
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  mystery. The duplicate songs we mentioned
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  Psalm 14 in Psalm 53 earlier, they are virtually identical.
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  Why do we need it twice? And this is where the detective
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  work comes in regarding the names of God.
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  This is the Elohistic theory, so take those two duplicates in
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  Psalm 14. The text uses the name Yahweh,
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  the covenant name Lord in all caps in our Bibles.
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  Right in Psalm 53. The exact same poem uses the
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  name Elohim, the generic word for God.
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  It's a find and replace. It is a theological find and
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  replace, and when you zoom out you see a massive pattern in the
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  first section of the songs. That's Psalms one through 41.
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  The name Yahweh appears 272 times, Elohim only 15 times.
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  It's overwhelmingly yawest. OK, a very clear preference.
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  Very clear, but then you cross the border into the next
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  section, psalms 42 through 83. Suddenly the polarity reverses,
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  Yahweh drops to 43 mentions and Elohim skyrockets to 200.
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  Wow, that cannot be an accident. It is definitely not.
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  Hastings identifies this block, Psalms 42 to 83, as the
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  Elohistic Psalter. It suggests that there was a
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  specific editor or specific time period where there was a massive
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  preference for the title Elohim. Why though?
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  Any theories? We don't know for sure.
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  Maybe it was to avoid using the sacred name too casually that
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  was a concern in later Judaism. Maybe it was to make the Psalms
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  more accessible to non Israelites who knew God as
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  Elohim but not Yahweh. We don't know the motive, but we
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  see the fingerprint. The editor's fingerprint.
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  I like that. So if we reconstruct the
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  timeline like Hastings does, how was this library built?
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  Walk us through the floors of the building.
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  OK, let's simplify the construction history.
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  Stage 1 is the earliest collection, Psalms 3 through 41.
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  This is the first Davidic Psalter.
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  It uses the name Yahweh almost exclusively.
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  This was probably the hymnal of the First Temple period, the
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  time of the. Kings, that makes sense.
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  Then stage 2 is another Davidic collection, Psalms 51 through
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  72. This is the one that ends with
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  the Prayers of David are ended. OK, so that's the second book
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  that got included. Right, and then we get the Guild
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  hymnals. The Guild hymnals.
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  Correct. Stage three and stage 4 are the
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  Guild hymnals, the Sons of Korra and the Sons of Asaph.
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  These were professional choirs in the temple.
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  They were like the Levites worship teams and they had their
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  own song books. So these were specialized
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  collections for the professional musicians.
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  Exactly. The Korhites have their book,
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  the Asaphites had theirs, and then someone merges them.
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  Yes, that's stage 5, the Elohistic redactor.
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  This editor takes the second Davidic book, the Korh book and
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  the Asaph book, combines them and applies this elohim filter
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  over the whole thing that creates the middle section of
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  our Bible and. Finally, stage 6, we get the
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  later editions. These are collections that were
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  probably floating around on their own scrolls.
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  The Songs of a Sense, which are Pilgrim songs for travelers, and
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  the final Hallelujah psalms at the end. 146 and 50 that act as
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  a grand doxology for the whole book.
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  And what's the time frame for all this?
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  This whole process stretches from the time of David, maybe
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  1000 BC, all the way down to the post exilic period, maybe even
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  as late as 100 BC. 100 BC. That is remarkably close to the
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  New Testament. It is.
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  It means the book was still setting like concrete just a
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  century before Christ walked into the temple.
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  It means this book sustained the people through the Babylonian
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  destruction, the exile, the return, and in the Greek
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  occupation. It is a survivor's manual.
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  I want to pivot now to the the liner notes, the titles.
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  I feel like most people, myself included, treat the titles like
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  the terms and conditions on a website.
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  We just scroll past them to get to the good stuff.
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  But Hastings says these are technical instructions.
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  They are the stage directions for the choir director and they
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  give us a glimpse into the soundscape of ancient Israel.
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  They're fascinating. Let's talk about the
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  instruments. First we see the word Neganoff.
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  What's that? Neganoff means with stringed
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  instruments, so harps, liars, that sort of thing.
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  This is the soft melodic accompaniment.
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  OK, so a fairly gentle sound. Probably.
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  Then you have Neil off in Psalm 5.
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  Hastings thinks this might be wind instruments, flutes, so
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  that changes the mood entirely. A flute is mournful, piercing.
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  It's a totally different feel than a harp.
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  And then Giddeth. That one's strange.
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  Giddeth is fun. It literally relates to Gath,
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  the Philistine city. Lyat's hometown.
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  Very same. So it could mean an instrument
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  from Gath like a Fender Stratocaster implies a specific
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  sound and origin, but it also connects to the word for
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  Winepress which is GATH. A Winepress.
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  Yeah, so Hastings suggests it might refer to a vintage melody,
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  a rhythm used by people stomping grapes, a work song, a marching
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  beat. That is such a vivid image.
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  Psalm 8 is set to get if. Imagine singing, O Lord our
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  Lord, how majestic is your name to the rhythm of a harvest
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  festival. It grounds it in the dirt and
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  the joy of life. Precisely.
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  It's not ethereal, it's earthy. It's got a pulse.
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  And Speaking of melodies, we have these bizarre phrases, the
• 13:14
  hind of the morning, the dove of the distant arabints.
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  These sound like bad poetry, but they are not poetry, are they?
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  No, they are instructions on what tune to use.
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  A tune. Yeah, imagine a hymnal today
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  that printed the lyrics to Amazing Grace, but at the top it
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  said to the tune of House of the Rising Sun, the hind of the
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  morning. Ideal of Hashahar was likely a
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  famous folk song, maybe a ballad about a deer haunted at dawn,
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  The editor is saying. Take the theology of Psalm 22,
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  the song of the cross, but sing it to that melody everyone
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  already knows. It's the secular culture serving
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  the sacred purpose. It shows that the boundary
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  between the sacred and the secular was permeable.
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  They took the music of the streets and baptized it for the
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  temple. What about destroy not?
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  Destroy not all Tasheth is another one.
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  Hastings identifies this as a vintage song mentioned in
• 14:04
  Isaiah, a song sung by grape harvesters saying do not destroy
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  the vine, there is wine in it. It's a song of hope and
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  preservation. I also want to touch on The
• 14:12
  Voice instructions. This is really getting into the
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  weeds. Alamoth and Sheminoth.
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  This is fascinating for musicians.
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  Alamoth means maidens, so the instruction is probably for
• 14:22
  Sopranos, high voices or perhaps boys voices before they changed.
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  OK, high register. Right, and then sheminoth means
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  the 8th. In musical theory, the octave is
• 14:31
  the eighth note, so the 8th likely refers to the lower
• 14:35
  octave basses only. So you can almost hear the
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  texture. A Psalm for maidens on Alamoth
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  is going to sound shimmering and light.
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  A Psalm of the Sheminith is going to be dark, rumbly, and
• 14:46
  heavy. It adds so much color to our
• 14:48
  reading. These are not just words on a
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  page. They are sound waves.
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  They are musical scores. And just quickly the songs of a
• 14:54
  sense, what are they? Those are Psalms 120 through
• 14:57
  134, a collection of 15 psalms. The most common theory is that
• 15:02
  these were the road trip songs when the pilgrims were walking
• 15:05
  up the elevation to Jerusalem for the feast.
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  These are the songs they sing. Up the ascends.
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  Exactly. There is also a rabbinic
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  tradition that there were 15 steps leading up to the court of
• 15:15
  Israel in the Temple, and the Levites would sing one of these
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  15 psalms on each step. Either way, they are songs of
• 15:21
  movement towards God's presence. Let's move to the controversy
• 15:25
  authorship, the Davidic question.
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  Tradition says David wrote the whole book.
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  Modern scholarship sometimes says he wrote nothing.
• 15:32
  Hastings tries to find a middle ground, and it hinges on a tiny
• 15:36
  Hebrew preposition. Right.
• 15:38
  The title say LED David. Now in Shebrew, that preposition
• 15:42
  is incredibly flexible. It can mean by David authorship,
• 15:46
  that's how it's often translated.
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  But it can also mean for David, dedicated to David or belonging
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  to David. Belonging to seems to be the key
• 15:55
  for Hastings. Yes, think about the sons of
• 15:58
  Kora. When we see a song titled
• 16:00
  Lacora, we don't think a guy named Kora wrote it.
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  We know Kora was long dead. It refers to the collection
• 16:06
  belonging to that Guild, the Kora Heights Songbook.
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  I see Hastings argues that La David often functions the same
• 16:12
  way. It marks a Psalm as belonging to
• 16:14
  the Davidic collection, a repertoire of songs in the style
• 16:18
  or tradition of the king. It's like saying a Wesleyan
• 16:20
  hymn. It might be by Charles Bestley,
• 16:22
  or might just be in that theological tradition.
• 16:24
  That is a great comparison. It's a genre marker, not always
• 16:28
  an authorial signature. This frees us from the need to
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  prove that David held the pen for every single one, especially
• 16:34
  the ones that clearly date to after his death.
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  And dating is tricky. I mean, how do we know when a
• 16:38
  Psalm was written? What are the clues?
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  It's detective work. You look for internal clues.
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  The biggest clue is the mention of the exile.
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  If a Psalm says by the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept, it
• 16:50
  clearly was not written by David in 1000 BC, right?
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  It was written after 586 BC. And Psalm 137?
• 16:58
  Pretty undeniable. Another clue is the absence of a
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  king. If a Psalm complaints that we
• 17:03
  have no Prince, no prophet, no leader, it likely fits the
• 17:06
  period after the fall of Jerusalem but before the rise of
• 17:10
  the Hasmonean kings in the 2nd century BC.
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  This leads to the Mccabean theory.
• 17:14
  This is where Hastings gets into the really late dating for some
• 17:17
  of these psalms. This is a hot topic in
• 17:19
  scholarship. There are some Psalms, Psalm
• 17:21
  447479, that describe a very specific kind of suffering.
• 17:25
  It's not just war, it is religious persecution.
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  The enemy has defiled the sanctuary.
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  They are killing people for their faith, not just for their
• 17:32
  land. Which sounds exactly like the
• 17:34
  crisis under Antiochus Epiphanes in the 2nd century BC, The
• 17:38
  Hanukkah story. It fits the profile perfectly.
• 17:40
  The roaring in the sanctuary, the burning of the meeting
• 17:43
  places, is the call for God to vindicate His name against
• 17:46
  blasphemy. Hastings acknowledges that many
• 17:50
  scholars place these psalms in the Maccabean era.
• 17:52
  If that is true, it means the Salter was still taking in new
• 17:55
  content very late in the game. Does this diminish David though?
• 17:59
  If we have Maccabean Psalms and generic collections, is David
• 18:02
  just a figurehead? Hastings says no.
• 18:05
  He talks about a residuum, a residue.
• 18:07
  A residue, yeah. Even after you strip away the
• 18:09
  later editions and the editorial titles, there remains a solid
• 18:13
  core of poems like Psalm 18 that radiate the personality in the
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  context of the historical David. He was the sweet singer of
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  Israel. He set the trajectory.
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  The river got wider, but the spring was David.
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  He's the patron St. of the whole enterprise.
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  That's a helpful balance. It respects the history without
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  losing the tradition. Now I want to go deeper into the
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  theology. Part five of our outline, the I
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  of the Psalms. This for me was a huge take
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  away. This is the game changer for
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  devotional reading. When we read I in the Psalms, I
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  waited patiently for the Lord. They hate me without cause.
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  We instinctively read it as me, the private individual, my
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  diary, my bad day. Because we are Western
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  individualists, that's our default setting.
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  It is, but Hastings brings up the concept of the national eye.
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  In the ancient Near East, the king or the representative often
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  spoke as the nation. The eye is not a private guy.
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  The eye is Israel. Is there proof for this in the
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  text itself or is it just a theory?
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  Oh, there's proof Psalm 129 is a smoking gun here.
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  It starts many a time. Have they afflicted me from my
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  youth? Sounds like an individual,
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  right? A man looking back on a hard
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  lift? Yeah, totally.
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  But then the verse continues. Let Israel now say the ME is
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  explicitly defined as the corporate body of Israel.
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  So it should be read many a time.
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  Have they afflicted up? Exactly.
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  When the psalmist sings, he is singing the biography of the
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  people of God. This solves a huge theological
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  problem for us, the problem of self righteousness versus
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  penitence. Oh, this is the tension between
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  the I Am Awesome Psalms and the I'm a Worm psalms.
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  Basically you have one group of psalms like Psalm 26 where the
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  speaker says Judge me, O Lord, for I have walked in my
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  integrity. I am innocent, my hands are
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  clean. And as Reformed Christians, we
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  cringe. We think nobody's innocent.
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  Total depravity. We do, but then you have Psalm
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  51. I was born in iniquity, and in
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  sin. Did my mother conceive me?
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  Right. Complete opposites.
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  So is the psalmist schizophrenic?
• 20:06
  Hastings explains this beautifully through the covenant
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  lens. When the psalmist claims
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  righteousness, he is not claiming sinless perfection
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  before God. He's claiming innocence relative
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  to his enemies. In a specific context.
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  Yes, he is saying, God, in this lawsuit between me and the
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  wicked, I am in the right. I have not worshipped idols.
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  I have not betrayed the covenant.
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  It is a plea for vindication in a human court, so to speak.
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  But the penitential Psalms are different.
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  The penitential Psalms are when the eye pivots and looks at God.
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  When he looks at the enemy, he is righteous.
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  When he looks at Yahweh, he is undone.
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  Hastings calls this the highest mark of Christian consciousness.
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  It's not a contradiction, It is the dual reality of the
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  believer. In Christ.
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  We are justified, yet in ourselves we're constantly aware
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  of our need for grace. We have both realities in us.
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  That is so dense and valuable it means I can read the imprecatory
• 21:00
  Psalms, the cursing psalms, not as my personal petty vengeance
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  against my neighbor who plays his music too loud, but as the
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  church crying out for justice against the enemies of God.
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  Precisely. You step into the shoes of the
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  corporate eye. You are voicing the suffering
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  and the hope of the entire body of Christ throughout history.
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  That leads us to the ultimate corporate eye, the Messiah.
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  Let's talk about the theology of hope in the Psalter.
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  The Psalms are an intensely hopeful book, and it starts with
• 21:26
  their view of God. Hastings tracks this development
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  from a context of, you know, many gods in the ancient world
• 21:32
  to a fierce monotheism. But it is not a cold
• 21:36
  philosophical monotheism. It's an intimate one.
• 21:38
  My God, the living God. Hastings points out that in the
• 21:42
  Psalter the other gods of the nations are dead, lifeless,
• 21:45
  idols of wood and stone. But Yahweh is alive, and because
• 21:49
  he is alive, he is coming. That is the heartbeat of the
• 21:52
  messianic hope God is going to act.
• 21:54
  We tend to look for predictions like does this verse predict
• 21:58
  Jesus getting pierced? And it does in Psalm 22.
• 22:02
  But Hastings looks at the types of psalms, the royal psalms for
• 22:04
  instance. The Royal Psalms are fascinating
• 22:06
  because they were originally about a guy like Solomon.
• 22:09
  They were sung at his coronation, but the language was
• 22:12
  too big for Solomon. May he have dominion from sea to
• 22:15
  sea. May all nations bow down to him.
• 22:18
  Solomon had a nice Kingdom, but he did not have that.
• 22:21
  The poetry outgrew the reality. It did.
• 22:24
  The language itself, inspired by God, propelled the hope forward.
• 22:28
  The people sang these songs about the king and they looked
• 22:31
  at their actual kings, who were often corrupt and disappointing,
• 22:33
  and realized this song must be about the ultimate king who is
• 22:36
  coming. The ideal.
• 22:38
  King, the ideal king. And then you have the suffering
• 22:40
  servant. Psalms this is.
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  The other side of the coin. Right.
• 22:43
  The eye who is betrayed by his friend.
• 22:45
  The eye who is forsaken by God. The eye whose bones are out of a
• 22:49
  joint. Originally this might have been
• 22:51
  the nation feeling abandoned in exile.
• 22:54
  But as the concept of the Messiah developed these two
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  streams, the conquering King and the suffering Servant, began to
• 23:00
  merge into one paradoxical figure.
• 23:03
  And this is where we as Reformed thinkers see the fulfillment.
• 23:07
  We don't have to choose between the historical meaning and the
• 23:09
  Christological meaning. No, they're layers of the same
• 23:12
  reality. Jesus is the true Israel.
• 23:14
  So when the Psalm speaks as the national eye, Jesus steps into
• 23:18
  that role. He is the one who was truly
• 23:20
  afflicted from his youth. He is the one who was truly
• 23:22
  forsaken by God on the cross. And he is the King who actually
• 23:25
  has dominion from sea to sea. He is the ultimate singer of the
• 23:28
  Psalms. That is a beautiful way to put
• 23:31
  it. The New Testament writers see it
• 23:32
  this way. When we sing the Psalms, we are
• 23:35
  actually joining in the song that Jesus is singing to the
• 23:37
  Father. That brings it all home.
• 23:39
  We've covered a lot of ground today.
• 23:40
  I mean a lot. We have gone from the dusty
• 23:43
  editing rooms where scrolls were being cut and pasted to the
• 23:47
  choir loss with their soprano and bass instructions all the
• 23:51
  way to the throne room of the Messiah.
• 23:53
  It is a path from a library of isolated songs to a unified book
• 23:57
  that fueled the faith of a people who had lost everything,
• 24:00
  their land, their temple, their king, but found that they still
• 24:03
  possess their God. And that is the take away.
• 24:07
  The Psalter is not just a book of nice thoughts, it is a
• 24:10
  survival mechanism for the people of God.
• 24:13
  Absolutely. It teaches a community how to
• 24:15
  speak to God in the midst of chaos and hope.
• 24:18
  So here is my challenge to you, the listener.
• 24:21
  Next time you open the Psalms, maybe tomorrow morning, do not
• 24:24
  just read it as you do not just look for a nugget that makes you
• 24:27
  feel better about your commute. Try to read it as the corporate
• 24:30
  eye. Read it as the voice of the
• 24:32
  church across history. Read it as the voice of the
• 24:35
  Christian suffering and persecution right now.
• 24:37
  And if you can, try to hear the voice of Christ singing those
• 24:40
  words through you. That changes everything.
• 24:42
  It turns a quiet time into a rehearsal for eternity.
• 24:45
  Thank you for taking this deep dive with us.
• 24:48
  We hope you will never look at the hymnal of hymnals the same
• 24:51
  way again. Join us next time on Reformed
• 24:54
  Thinking.