The Promise of the Arrival of Elijah in Malachi and the Gospels

By Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.

[Walter C. Kaiser Jr. is President Emeritus, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Hamilton, Massachusetts.]

Abstract

Was John the Baptist the fulfillment of Malachi’s prediction about Elijah the prophet who was to come before that great day of the Lord comes? The hermeneutical solution to this question is offered in a generic fulfillment, or what the older theologians called the novissima. Therefore, Elijah has come “in the spirit and power” witnessed in John the Baptist, and will yet come in the future. Generic prophecy has three foci: (1) the revelatory word, (2) all intervening historical events which perpetuate that word, and (3) the generic wholeness (one sense or meaning) in which the final or ultimate fulfillment participates in all the earnests that occupied the interim between the original revelatory word and this climactic realization.

* * *

The NT’s interest in the prophet Elijah may be easily assessed from the fact that he is the most frequently mentioned OT figure in the NT after Moses (80 times), Abraham (73), and David (59); Elijah’s name appears 29 or 30 times.[1]

Even more significant, however, are the six major and explicit references to Elijah in the Synoptic Gospels. There, some of Jesus’ contemporaries identified our Lord—in the second of three opinions—as Elijah (Mark 6:14–16; Luke 9:7–9). Jesus’ disciples were also aware of this popular confusion, for they too repeated it (Matt 16:13–20; Mark 8:27–30; Luke 9:18–21). This connection between Jesus and Elijah continued to hold its grip on many even up to the time of the crucifixion, for those who heard Jesus’ fourth word from the cross thought he was calling on Elijah to rescue him (Matt 27:45–49; Mark 15:33–36). And who should appear on the mount of transfiguration but Moses and Elijah, talking to Jesus (Matt 17:1–19; Mark 9:2–10; Luke 9:28–36)?

But there were two other references in the Synoptics which referred to a future coming of Elijah. One came when Jesus’ disciples asked why the scribes claimed it was necessary that Elijah had to come first (Matt 17:10–13; Mark 9:11–13). Jesus responded that “Elijah had come” and said it in such a way that the disciples knew that he meant he was John the Baptist. If any doubt remained, Jesus said just that in Matt 11:14—”he is Elijah, the one who was to come.”

However, when one turns from the Synoptics to the Fourth Gospel, none of these six references are present. Instead, we find John categorically denying that he was either Christ, “that [Mosaic] prophet,” or Elijah (John 1:21, 25)! John’s clear disavowal is so stark by way of contrast with the way he is presented in the Synoptics that the Synoptics and John appear to contradict one another flatly. What explanation can be offered for this phenomenon? And what impact does it have on the question of the NT author’s use of OT citations?

I. The Issues

At stake in this discussion are three critical points of tension: (1) the identity of that coming messenger or future prophet named Elijah, (2) the time of his coming, and (3) the task(s) assigned to him. Each of these three questions raises a number of hermeneutical and theological issues that have left their mark on various traditions of interpretation.

However, even before these three tension points have been joined, perhaps there is a prior question which asks if Elijah’s coming is at all connected with the coming of the Messiah. A recent study by Faierstein concludes that:

…contrary to the accepted scholarly consensus, almost no evidence has been preserved which indicates that the concept of Elijah as forerunner of the Messiah was widely known or accepted in the first century C.E.… The only datum…is the baraitha in b. Erubin 43a-b, a text of the early third century C.E.… The further possibility, that the concept of Elijah as forerunner is a novum in the NT must also be seriously considered.[2]

Faierstein, while conveniently avoiding the strong evidence of Mal 3:1; 4:4–5 and the repeated NT allusions, tends to assign either a post-Christian date or to reserve judgment on a whole series of evidences to the contrary from the Jewish community. Certainly the Qumran fragment J. Starcky cited (lkn ʾs̆lḥ qd[m], “therefore I will send Elijah befo[re]….”) is incomplete;[3] but it should have reminded Faierstein to take another look at Mal 3:1; 4:4–5 [Heb 3:24–25]. Faierstein also sets aside the same eighteen rabbinic texts which L. Ginzberg analyzes differently.

Now, in no fewer than eighteen passages in the Talmud, Elijah appears as one who, in his capacity of precursor of the Messiah, will settle all doubts on matters of ritual and judicial.[4]

But the locus classicus of these eighteen, m. ʿEd. 8.7, is exceptionally clear. Elijah would establish legitimate Jewish descent, family harmony, and resolve differences of opinion and religious controversies. He would do all this, says m. ʿEd. 8.7 “…as it is written, Behold I will send you Elijah, the prophet…and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers.”[5] Once again, we are brought back to the Malachi texts if we are to make any decision on what was normative either for pre-Christian Judaism or the NT itself. To this day, Judaism continues to reserve for Elijah a distinguished place and loosely to relate it to their fading expectation of the coming of the Messiah. This can best be seen in the cup of Elijah and the seat reserved for him at every Passover meal. The hope and prayer of every Jew at the conclusion of the Passover—”next year in Jerusalem”—is one piece of a larger picture of the coming Messianic era. And at the heart of it remains the open door for the new Elijah.

II. Malachi 3:1; 4:4-5

A. The Identity of ‘My Messenger’

God’s answer to the impious complaints of the wicked men and women of Malachi’s day who mockingly sneered: “Where is the God of justice?” was to send his messenger to prepare the way for the God for whom they alllegedly searched. He did not promise merely a messenger, but one that was already familiar to them from the informing theology of Isa 40:3, for the words used to describe this messenger were the same as those used there: he was “to prepare the way.”

No doubt the words “my messenger” (מַלְאָכִי) were intended to be both a play on the name of the prophet Malachi and prophetic of a future prophet who would continue his same work. But he was certainly to be an earthly messenger and not a heavenly being. This can be demonstrated from three lines of evidence: (1) in Isaiah the voice which called for the preparation of the nation came from someone in the nation itself; (2) this same messenger in Mal 3:1 is associated with Elijah the prophet in Mal 4:5; and (3) he is strongly contrasted with “The Lord,” “even the messenger of the covenant” in Mal 3:1.[6]

Thus this messenger cannot be the death angel, as the Jewish commentator Jarchi conjectured,[7] or an angel from heaven as another Jewish commentator Kimchi alleged from Exod 23:20, a passage which finds its context in a time when Israel was being prepared for a journey into the desert. God’s mouthpiece was an earthly proclaimer.

B. The Identity of the Lord and the Messenger of the Covenant

“The Lord” (הָאָדוֹן) can only refer to God when used with the article.[8] That he is divine personage is also evident from these additional facts: he answers to the question of Mal 2:17, “Where is the God of justice?” (2) he comes to “his temple” (Mal 3:1) and thus he is the owner of that house in which he promised to dwell; and (3) he is also named the “Messenger of the covenant” (מַלְאַךְ הַבְּרִית). Furthermore, it is clear from passages such as Zech 4:14 and 6:5, “אָדוֹן of the whole earth,” that אָדוֹן is used interchangeably with Yahweh.[9]

The title “Angel or Messenger of the Covenant,” is found nowhere else in the OT. Nevertheless, the title is very reminiscent of the more frequently used, “Angel of the Lord.” That was the same “Angel” who had redeemed Israel out of the land of Egypt (Exod 3:6), had gone before the army as they crossed the Red Sea (Exod 14:19), led Israel through the wilderness (Exod 23:20) and filled the temple with his glory. He was one and the same as Yahweh himself. This Angel was God’s own self-revelation, the pre-incarnate Christ of the numerous OT Christophanies.[10] He is the same one discussed in Exod 23:20–23; (“Behold, I send an Angel…My name is in him”) 33:15 (“My Presence [or face] shall go with you”) and Isa 63:9 (“The Angel of his Presence or face”).

The covenant of which he is the messenger is the same one anciently made with Israel (Exod 25:8; Lev 26:11–12; Deut 4:23; Isa 33:14) and later renewed in Jer 31:31–34 as repeated in Heb 8:7–13 and 9:15. Therefore, while the covenant was a single plan of God for all ages, this context addressed mainly the Levitical priesthood (Mal 1:6–2:9) and the nation Israel (Mal 2:11; 3:5, 8) for violating that covenant relationship.

Still, it must be stressed that there are not two persons represented in “The Lord” and the “Messenger of the Covenant” but only one, as is proven by the singular form of “come” (בָּא).[11] Thus the passage mentions only two persons: “The Lord” and the preparing messenger.

C. The Connection between the Announcer’s Task and the Work of the Lord

The preparing messenger was “to clear the way before [the Lord].” The striking similarity between this expression (פִּנָּה דֶּרֶךְ לְפָנָהW) and that found in Isa 40:3, (פַּנּוּ דֶּרֶךְ יהוה) 57:14 and 62:10 is too strong to be accidental. The resemblance between Isaiah and Malachi was drawn out even to the omission of the article from דֶּרֶךְ, “way”; the only difference is that in Malachi the messenger is to prepare the way while in Isaiah the servants of the Lord are urged to prepare the road.

Under the oriental figure of an epiphany or arrival of the reigning monarch, the text urged for a similar removal of all spiritual, moral, and ethical impediments in preparation for the arrival of the King of Glory. Whenever a king would visit a village, the roadway would be straightened, leveled, and all stones and obstacles removed from the road that the king would take as he came to visit the town. The only other instance of this expression is in Ps 80:9 [Heb 10]: פִּנִּיתָ לְפָנֶיהָ, “You cleared [the ground] before it [= the vine (or the nation Israel) brought out from the land of Egypt].” Once again, however, it was necessary to do some clearing away as a preparation before the nation Israel, here represented as a vine, was to be able to be planted and to take deep root in the land.

This future messenger would likewise clear out the rubbish, obstacles, and impediments “before me”—the same one who was identified in the next sentence as “The Lord,” “even the Messenger of the Covenant.” The equation of these three terms can be argued for even more convincingly when it is noticed that the waw, “and,” which introduces the phrase “and the messenger of the covenant whom you desire” is an epexegetical waw used in apposition to the phrase “The Lord whom you are seeking.” Therefore we translate the whole verse:

Behold, I will send my messenger. He will clear the way ahead of me. Suddenly, the Lord whom you are seeking will come to his temple; even the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come, says the Lord of hosts.

Over against this preparatory work, the Lord and Messenger of the Covenant was to arrive “suddenly” (פִּתְאָם) at his temple. The people had longed for the coming of God in judgment as a redress to all wrongs (Mal 2:17). Indeed, he would come, but it would be “unexpectedly.”[12] The ungodly hoped for a temporal deliverer, but Mal 3:2 warned that most would not be able to stand when that day of judgment came. Not only would the heathen gentiles be judged, but so too would the ungodly in Israel. It would appear that the final judgment associated with the second advent has been blended in this passage with the Lord’s arrival in his first advent. It was necessary to be prepared for both!

D. The Identity of Elijah the Prophet

Does Malachi expect the Tishbite to reappear personally on the earth again? It would not appear so, for Mal 4:5–6 specifically said, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the[13] prophet, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.” Only the LXX reads “Elijah the Tishbite.” The reason Elijah was selected is, (1) he was head of the prophetic order in the nation Israel and (2) many of his successors indirectly received the same spirit and power that divinely was granted to him. There was, as it were, a successive endowment of his gifts, power, and spirit to those who followed in his train.

This phenomenon is known already in the OT, for 2 Chr 21:12 mentions “a writing from Elijah the prophet” during the reign of King Jehoram when Elijah had already been in heaven for many years. Furthermore, many of the acts predicted by Elijah were actually carried out by Elisha (2 Kgs 8:13) and one of the younger prophets (2 Kgs 9:13). Indeed, Elisha had asked for a double portion, the portion of the firstborn (בְּרוּחוֹ, 2 Kgs 2:9), as his spiritual inheritance from Elijah. Thus, just as the spirit of Moses came on the seventy elders (Num 11:25) so the “spirit of Elijah”[14] “rested on Elisha” (2 Kgs 2:15).

We are to expect a literal return of Elijah no more than we expect a literal return of David as the future king over Israel. Surely passages like Jer 30:19; Hos 3:5; Ezek 34:23; and 37:24 promise a new David. But it is universally held that this new David is none other than the Messiah himself who comes in the office, line, and promise of David. Consequently, we argue that the new Elijah will be endowed with this same spirit and power without being the actual Elijah who was sent back long after his translation to heaven.

E. The Connection between Elijah and the Forerunner

There can be little doubt that Elijah the prophet is one and the same as the messenger whom the Lord will send to prepare the way before him. Mal 4:5 marks the third great “Behold” in this book (3:1; 4:1, and here) and therefore carries our mind and eye back to the other two passages. A second similarity is to found in the participial phrase, “I am sending.” There is also, in the third place, a similarity of mission; for both the verbs “to clear the way” (פַּנּוֹה) and “to restore” (שׁוּב) are based on verbs which also mean “to turn” and hence imply a repentance or turning away from evil and a turning towards God. In the fourth place, the play on sending “my messenger” with Malachi’s name in 3:1 is matched in 4:5 by sending “Elijah.” Finally, both 3:1 and 4:5a are followed by references that speak of the awesomeness of the day of the Lord (3:2; 4:5b).

F. The Time of Day of the Lord

This messenger, who is called the prophet Elijah, is to appear “before that great and terrible day of the Lord comes.” That day was described in similar terms in Joel 2:11, 31 and Zeph 1:14. A number of the OT prophets view that day as one day and a collective event which entailed this three-way puzzle: (1) though five prophets refer to that day as “near” or “at hand,” their prophecies are spread over four centuries (Obad 15; Joel 1:15; 2:21; Isa 3:6; Zeph 1:7, 14; Ezek 30:3); (2) these prophets also saw different immediate events belonging to their own day as being part of that “day of the Lord” including destruction of Edom, a locust plague, or the pending destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.; and (3) nevertheless, that day was also a future day in which the Lord “destroyed the whole earth” (Isa 13:5) and reigned as “King over all the earth” (Zech 14:1, 8–9), a day when “the elements will be dissolved…and the earth and the works that are in it will be laid bare” (2 Pet 3:10), as well as a day of salvation and deliverance (Joel 2:32).

It is just such a day that Mal 3:2; 4:1, 5 mention. The principle of generic or successive fulfillment is most important if we are adequately to explain and be faithful to all the biblical data. T. V. Moore stated it this way:

There are a number of statements by the sacred writers that are designed to apply to distinct facts, successively occurring in history. If the words are limited to any one of these facts, they will seem exaggerated, for no one fact can exhaust their significance. They must be spread out over all the facts before their plenary meaning is reached. There is nothing in this principle that is at variance with the ordinary laws of language. The same general use of phrases occurs repeatedly…. Every language contains these formulas, which refer not to any one event, but a series of events, all embodying the same principle, or resulting from the same cause.

[Thus]…the promise in regard to the “seed of the woman,” (Gen 3:15) refers to one event but runs along the whole stream of history, and includes every successive conquest of the religion of Christ…[This] class of predictions…is…what the old theologians called the novissima…[15]

Thus, the “Day of Yahweh” is a generic or collective event which gathers together all the antecedent historical episodes of God’s judgment and salvation along with the future grand finale and climactic event in the whole series. Every divine intervention into history before that final visitation in connection with the second advent of Christ constitutes only a preview, sample, downpayment or earnest on that climactic conclusion. The prophet did not think of the day of the Lord as an event that would occur once for all, but one that could “be repeated as the circumstances called for it.”[16]

Now, the future Elijah, the prophet, will appear “before that great and terrible day of the Lord comes.” Furthermore, as shown in Mal 3:1 and Isa 40:3, he will prepare the way for Yahweh. But which coming of the Messiah is intended by Malachi—the first or second advent? Since most conclude along with the NT writers that the messenger’s preparation was for the first advent of our Lord, and since the events included in that day in Mal 3:2ff and Mal 4:1ff involve the purification of the Levites, the judgment on the wicked and the return of the Yahweh to his temple, it is fair to conclude that that day embraces both advents. This is precisely the situation which Joel 2:28–32 presents. The fulfillment of Joel’s words at Pentecost is as much a part of that day as the seismographic and cosmological convolutions connected with the second advent.

The basic concept, then, is that Malachi’s prophecy does not merely anticipate that climactic fulfillment of the second advent, but it simultaneously embraces a series of events which all participate in the prophet’s single meaning even though the referents embraced in that single meaning are many.[17] In this way, the whole set of events make up one collective totality and constitute only one idea even though they involve many referents which are spread over a large portion of history. Perhaps the best way to describe this phenomenon is to call it a generic prediction which Willis J. Beecher defined as:

…one which regards an event as occurring in a series of parts, separated by intervals, and expresses itself in language which may apply indifferently to the nearest part, or to the remoter parts, or to the whole—in other words, a prediction which in applying to the whole of a complex event, also applies to some of its parts.[18]

III. John the Baptist and New Testament Fulfillment

The NT question may now be asked: “Was John the Baptist the fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecies or was he not?”

A. Three Basic Positions

Three basic answers have been given to this inquiry: (1) John the Baptist fully fulfilled all that was predicted of the messenger who would prepare the way and Elijah will not come again;[19] (2) Elijah the Tishbite will personally reappear and minister once again at the end of this age;[20] and (3) John the Baptist did come as a fulfillment of this prophecy, but he came in “the spirit and the power of Elijah” and is thereby only one prophet in a series of forerunners who are appearing throughout history until that final and climactically terrible day of Yahweh comes when it is announced by the last prophet in this series of forerunners.[21]

B. A Generic Fulfillment of the Elijah Prophecy

From our examination of Malachi’s prophecy it is clear that we should adopt the third alternative. The identity, timing, and tasks of this messenger in Malachi all argue for his appearance in two different individuals, if not a series of them, rather than a single individual such as John the Baptist.

The NT evidence yields a similar construction. Matt 11:14 quotes Jesus as affirming that “he [John the Baptist] is himself (αὐτός ἐστιν) Elijah, the one who is to come.” Again in Matt 11:10 (= Luke 7:27), “This (οὗτος) is the one of whom it is written, ‘Behold I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare the way before thee’.” So John was that one—Elijah the prophet!

Yet it is just as clear that John denies that he is Elijah: “I am not [Elijah] (ἐγὼ οὐκ εἰμί, John 1:21, 23); and that Luke assures us that John the Baptist came only in the “spirit and power of Elijah” (ἐν πνεύματι καὶ δυνάμει, Luke 1:17). Even when it is clear that John only denied being Elijah in the popular misconceptions entertained by the people of John’s day, John could be identified as Elijah only because the same Spirit and power that had energized Elijah had now fallen on him.

C. The New Elijah’s Tasks

Even the task of this coming prophet had this same two-pronged focus. Mark 9:12 answers the inquiry of Peter, James, and John (“Why do the scribes say the first Elijah must come?”) as they were returning from the Mount of Transfiguration and hearing about the Son of Man suffering and being raised again by saying: “Elijah has come [ἐλθὼν, past] first and is restoring [ἀποκαθιστάνει, present] all things.” Matt 17:11, referring to the identical event, combined the present with the future tense: “Elijah is coming (ἔρχεται, present) and he will restore [ἀποκαταστήσει][22] all things.” Since this present is coupled with a future tense, the present must be interpreted as a futuristic present—”Elijah is coming.”

Now the term “restoration” is used in the OT both as a technical term for the restoration of Israel to their own land[23] and as a moral restoration of the inner man.[24] We believe that Matthean and Markan uses of this verb are parallel, in part, to the noun form (ἀποκαταστήσεους) used in Acts 3:21. In Acts, Peter states that Jesus now remains in heaven “until the time of the restoration (or ‘establishing’)[25] of all things that God has spoken by the mouth of his holy prophets.” That too is a future work associated with the parousia.

Luke has described John’s work as one of going before the Lord to prepare his ways, of giving the knowledge of salvation to his people and giving light to those in darkness (Luke 1:76–79). He would also “turn the hearts of the fathers to the children (ἐπιστρέψαι καρδίας πατέρων ἐπὶ τέκνα, Luke 1:17, which follows the MT of Mal 4:6 in the verb ἐπιστρέφω instead of the LXX ἀποκαθίστημι).”

IV. Conclusion: Hermeneutical Implications

The emerging picture is clear. How can we disassociate Elijah who is to come from the day of the Lord? And how can we limit the day of the Lord entirely to the second advent and the parousia? Both errors will lead to a result less than what was intended by Malachi. Elijah still must come and “restore all things” (Matt 17:11) “before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes” (Mal 4:5).

Nevertheless, let no one say that Elijah has not already in some sense come, for our Lord will affirm the contrary: “Elijah has come.” Now, what explanation will adequately answer all of these phenomena? Were it not for the fact that this same type of phenomenon occurs with so many other similar prophetic passages, we would need to conclude that the text presented us with internal contradictions. But this is not so, for the list of generic prophecies wherein a single prediction embraced a whole series of fulfillments when all those fulfillments shared something that was part and parcel of all of them is a long one.[26]

Some will argue that this is nothing more than what most name “double fulfillment of prophecy.” This we deny. The problem with “double fulfillment” is threefold: (1) it restricts the fulfillments to two isolated events and only two; (2) it usually slides easily into a theory of double senses or dual intentionality in which the human author usually is aware of none of these referents or meanings or at most only one (if it is contemporaneous) with the other or both fulfillments left as surprises for the future generation in which they take place; and (3) it focuses only on the predictive word (usually given in abstraction from the times in which that word came) and on the final fulfillment without any attention being given as to how God kept that word alive in the years that intervened between the divine revelation and the climactic fulfillment.

Only generic prophecy can handle all three foci: (1) the revelatory word; (2) the series of intervening historical events which perpetuate that word; and (3) corporate, collective, and generic wholeness of that final fulfillment with whatever aspect of realization that event has had in the interim as God continued to promise by his Word and to act by his power throughout history. The intervening events, then, while being generically linked with that final event, were earnests, downpayments, samplers, partial teasers until the total payment came in God’s climactic fulfillment.

That exactly is what happened in the case of John the Baptist. He was only a sample of a portion of the work that was to be done in the final day. We can show this by referring to the identities, tasks, and timing given in Malachi and the Gospels without adding at this time the further evidence of the work of one of the two witnesses in Revelation 11.

John then was Elijah as an earnest, but we still await the other Elijahs and especially that final Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of our Lord. The meaningI is one; not two, three, or sensus plenior. Only that sense given by revelation of God can be normative, authoritative, and apologetically convincing to a former generation of Jews or to our own generation. We urge Christ’s Church to adopt the single meaning of the text and a generic meaning for prophecies of the type found in Mal 3:1 and 4:5–6 .

Notes

1. J. Jeremias, “ἡλ(ε)ιας,” TDNT 2 (1964) 934. The disparity of 29 or 30 is due to a textual problem in Luke 9:54.
2. Morris M. Faierstein, “Why Do the Scribes Say That Elijah Must Come First?” JBL 100 (1981) 86. John H. Hughes, “John the Baptist: The Forerunner of God Himself,” NovT 14 (1972) 212 is of the same opinion: “There is no reliable pre-Christian evidence for the belief that Elijah was to be the forerunner of the Messiah, and this helps support the suggestion that the conception originated with Jesus.”[!]
3. J. Starcky, “Les Quatre Etapes du Messianisme à Qumran,” RB 70 (1963) 489-505. The fragment is 4QarP. See p. 498 as cited in Faierstein, “Elijah Must Come First?” 80, nn. 33–34.
4. L. Ginzberg, An Unknown Jewish Sect (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1976) 212. These 18 texts all end 18 talmudic discussions and are known by the term teyqu which came to mean “The Tishbite will resolve difficulties and problems.” Ginzberg lists the location of these 18 passages in n. 14 on p. 212.
5. Herbert Danby, The Mishnah (London: Oxford University, 1958) 437 [italics his].
6. These three arguments are substantially those of E. W. Hengstenberg, Christology of the Old Testament (trans. James Martin) (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1875) 4.164.
7. R. Cashdan, Soncino Books of the Bible: The Twelve Prophets (ed. A. Cohen; London: Soncino, 1948) 349.
8. So argues T. V. Moore (The Prophets of the Restoration: Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi [New York: Robert Carter and Bros., 1856] 376). He refers to Exod 23:17; 34:23; Isa 1:24; 3:1; 10:16, 33; Mal 1:12, etc. In Dan 9:17 (הָאָדוֹן) seems to refer to the Son.
9. So argues Joyce G. Baldwin (Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi [Tyndale Old Testament; 1).
10. See W. C. Kaiser, Jr., Toward an Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978) pp. 85,120,257–58. See references to the “Angel of the Lord” in such texts as Gen 16:7; 22:11, 15; Judg 2:1; 6:11, 14.
11. So argues E. W. Hengstenberg, Christology, 4.168.
12. T. Laetsch (Bible Commentary: The Minor Prophets [St. Louis: Concordia, 1956] 531) says “Suddenly, pitʾom, is never used to denote immediacy; it always means unexpectedly, regardless of the lapse of time (Joshua 10:9; 11:7; Num 12:4; Ps 64:5, 8, A.V. 4, 7; Prov 3:25; 6:15; Isa 47:11; Jer 4:20, etc.).”
13. Jack Willsey (“The Coming of Elijah: An Interpretation of Malachi 4:5, ” [unpublished Master’s disseration, San Francisco Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, 1969] 31) notes that the use of the article with נָבִיא refers “to Elijah: specifically, the Elijah who was known to the readers as the Prophet (as opposed to any other possible Elijah).”
14. For a long discussion of the Christian history of interpretation of the NT identity of Elijah, see E. B. Pusey, The Minor Prophets, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1950) 2. 499–502 and E. W. Hengstenberg, Christology, 4.195-200.
15. T. V. Moore. Zechariah, Malachi, 396–99.
16. Willis J. Beecher, The Prophets and the Promise (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1905; reprinted, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1970) 311.
17. A most helpful distinction can be found in G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980) chap. 2. He “distinguishes between meaningV (= value: “This means more to me than anything else”), meaningE (= entailment: “This means war”), meaningR (= referent: identifies person(s) or thing(s) named or involved), meaningS (= sense: gives qualities of person or thing) and meaningI (= intention: the truth-commitment of the author).
18. W. J. Beecher, The Prophets and the Promise, 130.
19. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950) 5.627; E. W. Hengstengberg, Christology, 4.165; Oswald T. Allis, Prophecy and the Church (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1974) 49; David Allan George Knight, “John the Baptist and Elijah: A Study of Prophetic Fulfillment,” (Unpublished M.A. thesis; T.E.D.S., Deerfield, IL, 1978) 115-16.
20. John Paul Tan, The Interpretation of Prophecy (Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 1974) 185-87; Tertullian, “A Treatise on the Soul,” 3:217.
21. Justin Martyr, “Dialogue with Trypho,” 1:219–20; Aurelius Augustine, “St. John’s Gospel,” 7:27; T. T. Perowne, Malachi (The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1890) 39; J. T. Marshall, “The Theology of Malachi,” ExpT 7 (1895–96) 126; J. Dwight Pentecost, Things To Come (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1958) 311-12.
22. Both Matthew and Mark’s word for “restoration” is found in the LXX. The Hebrew MT of Mal 4:6 has שִׁיב. The text of Sir 48:10 followed the LXX.
23. Jer 15:19; 16:15; 23:8; 24:6; Hos 11:10.
24. Amos 5:15. I owe these references to David A. G. Knight, “John the Baptist and Elijah,” 93.
25. Some prefer to link this idea with the fulfillment or establishment of OT prophecy; see K. Lake and H. J. Cadberry, The Acts of the Apostles, The Beginnings of Christianity [ed. F. J. Foakes Jackson and K. Lake; 5 vols.; London: Macmillan, 1933) 4.38, as cited by Knight, “John the Baptist and Elijah,” 94. This is a strange word to express that concept when so many others were available and used by Luke. The OT usage appears to be too fixed to allow this novel meaning—especially in a passage that appeals to the prophets!
26. See W. C. Kaiser, Jr., “The Promise of God and the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit: Joel 2:28–32 and Acts 2:16-2l,” The Living and Active Word of God, ed. Morris Inch and Ron Youngblood (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1982).

The Messiah Of Psalm 80

By Walter C. Kaiser Jr.

[This is the fourth article in the four-part series “Using the Context of the Psalms to Interpret Their Message,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 2-5, 2016.

Walter C. Kaiser Jr. is President Emeritus, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Hamilton, Massachusetts.]

The “Shepherd” theme that begins Psalm 80 connects this psalm with the previous psalms in a group of seven (Pss. 77-83). Psalm 79:13 ends with “We are your people, the sheep of your pasture,” while Psalm 80:1 opens with a cry to the shepherd of Israel: “Hear us, Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock.”

Psalm 80 is both the midpoint of the whole book of Psalms and the central psalm of the seven psalms of devastation and destruction that are Psalms 77-83. In this central position, Psalm 80 interacts with the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel, also known as the house of Joseph. It reinforces this focus on the northern ten tribes by its clear references to “Joseph,” “Ephraim,” and “Manasseh.” Not only is Psalm 80 the midpoint of these seven psalms, but also Jewish scribes who counted the Hebrew letters (as a safeguard for maintaining accuracy in copying the text) of this book identified the Hebrew word “from-the-forest” (מִיָּעַר) in Psalm 80:13 as containing the middle letter of the book of Psalms. Thus, what at first glance appears to be an isolated psalm dealing with the northern capital city of Samaria is in fact closely aligned with the adjoining psalms.

Franz Delitzsch described Psalm 80 as consisting of

five eight-line strophes, of which the first, second and fifth [strophes] close with the refrain, “Elohim, restore us, let Thy countenance shine forth, then shall we be helped.” The refrain begins the first time with Elohim [5], the second time with Elohim Tsebaoth [7], and the third time with a threefold Jahve Elohim Tsebaoth [19], with which the second strophe (ver. 5 [4]) also opens.[1]

Robertson notes that except for the single reference to the person of “Joseph” in Book V (Ps. 105:16-22), almost all of the other references to “Joseph” in the book of Psalms are clustered around Psalm 80 (77:15; 78:67; 80:1; 81:5). There is one other exception to this cluster of names for the Joseph tribes: “Ephraim” is mentioned in Psalm 60:7 and echoed in Psalm 108:8.

Already in Psalm 78:67 Scripture informs us that “[God] rejected the tents of Joseph, he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim.” Instead,

[God] chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion which he loved. . . . He chose David his servant and took him from the sheep pens; from tending the sheep he brought him to be shepherd of his people Jacob, of Israel his inheritance. And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them (Ps. 78:68, 70-72).

In keeping with this rejection of the “tents of Joseph,” God had previously rejected King Saul, who came from the tribe of Benjamin, one of the Rachel tribes. But hope for the northern kingdom rested on a single person, who was called a “son” whom God himself had raised up (80:15). This unique “son” was called the “man of [God’s] right hand” and the “son of man” (80:17). But this is confusing, for it calls to mind the messianic “son” promised to David (2 Sam. 7:14) while it also seems to play on the name “Benjamin,” the favored younger son of Rachel, whose name meant “son of the right hand.” How could the only hope that the northern kingdom possessed be placed on this figure called the “man of [God’s] right hand” as well as the “son of man” (80:15, 17)? It would appear that this “son of man,” this “man of [God’s] right hand” was a deliverer who carried in his person the gift of leadership that was assigned to Joseph, or the Rachel side of Jacob’s family, and not Judah from the Leah side of the family.

To understand this reference, we need to go back to the ancient prophetic blessings that Jacob and Moses gave to each of the tribes of Israel. Jacob, the patriarch who fathered all twelve sons of Israel, had declared in his blessing on his deathbed that the scepter would not depart from Judah “until he should come to whom it properly belongs” (שִׁילֹה, Gen. 49:10). However, a later prophetic benediction given by Moses in Deuteronomy 33:16-17 announced that Joseph would be

the prince among his brothers . . . like a firstborn bull; his horns [would be] the horns of a wild ox. With them he [would] gore the nations, even those at the ends of the earth.

Interestingly, an identical priority of position was given to Joseph and his descendants in 1 Chronicles 5:1-2. That text declared that the rights of the firstborn belonged to Reuben, but “when he [Reuben] defiled his father’s marriage bed,” his rights as firstborn “were given to the sons of Joseph, son of Israel; . . . [even] though Judah was the strongest of his brothers and a ruler [would] come from him, [yet] the rights of the firstborn belonged to Joseph.”

What, then, are we to do with this tension created by the rights that seem to have been given simultaneously to the line of Joseph and to the line of David? The book of Psalms never completely resolved this tension. In fact, the Lord clearly rejected Ephraim as well as another of the Rachel tribes, i.e., Benjamin, from which hailed the deposed King Saul. In their place, God appointed King David of the Leah tribes (Ps. 78:9, 67). However, Psalm 80 informs us that a position of priority remained for the Joseph tribe as well. Thus, from Joseph and his sons, the Lord would raise up for himself a “man at [his] right hand” and a “son of man” (80:1-2, 15, 17) with an explanation that is based on the name Benjamin (בִּנְיָמִין), meaning a “son” of the “right hand.”

Rabbinic apocalyptic literature, using a dubious midrashic interpretation of the text, declared that a

Messiah b. Joseph will appear prior to the coming of Messiah b. David; he will gather the children of Israel around him, march to Jerusalem, and there, after overcoming the hostile powers, reestablish the Temple-worship and set up his own dominion.[2]

This act by Messiah ben Joseph would prompt certain hosts/armies to wage war and slay him. One group of Jewish interpreters argued that Messiah ben Joseph’s corpse would be hidden by the angels until Messiah ben David came and resurrected him.

In Psalm 80, then, the psalmist uses various plays on words, such as three different phrases for the “vine” and the play on the name “Benjamin,” to speak of a hero who will deliver the devastated people of the northern kingdom so that God’s face might shine on them with a blessing once again (Ps. 80:3, 7, 19). Notably, the Aramaic Targum explained the term “son” in Psalm 80:15 (Hebrew v. 16) as “anointed king.”[3] However, Psalm 80 should be looked at in its entirety.

Strophe I—Psalm 80:1-3

Asaph began with a plea and a cry to the Shepherd of Israel that he would hear their entreaty. The Lord was identified as the one “who [led] Joseph like a flock” and “who [sits] enthroned between the cherubim” (80:1). The cherubim are those who bear up the chariot on which the throne of God is placed (Ezek. 10:9-17).

The psalm identifies the petitioners addressing God as “Israel,” “Ephraim,” “Benjamin,” and “Manasseh” (80:2). It is surprising to see “Benjamin” in this list of names from the northern ten tribes, for Benjamin remained with Judah and King Rehoboam after the division of the kingdom (1 Kings 12:21). However, 1 Kings 11:13, 32, 36 says only one tribe remained with the house of David, i.e., the tribe of Judah. This is why the Benjamite cities of Bethel, Gilgal, and Jericho are sometimes placed with the northern kingdom. We conclude that the boundaries of the Israelite tribes were fluctuating and that the tribe of Benjamin was divided in its loyalties between the northern and southern kingdoms.

The ten tribes of the north are summarized in the name of “Joseph” (Ps. 80:1), and the triad of names “Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh” all come from the Rachel line of Jacob’s family.

The plea was for “Elohim” (v. 2b) to “awaken [his] might and to come and save [them],” making his “face shine on [them] so that [they might] be saved” (vv. 2b–3). Their primary adversaries were the Assyrian kings Tiglath-pileser and Shalmaneser, who oppressed the northern ten tribes heavily. It was because of this pressure that the Joseph tribes cried, “Restore us, O Elohim” (v. 3). This refrain also occurs at verses 7 and 19, with a hint of the same in verse 14. The request that God would make his “face shine” on them takes up the words of the Aaronic blessing in Numbers 6:25.

Strophe II—Psalm 80:4-7

The petition for God’s help arises anew in the second strophe. God apparently veils himself in the impenetrable smoke of his wrath (v. 4). The petitioners are fed, but with the “bread of tears,” tears that they can drink “by the bowlful” (v. 5). As a result, the northern ten tribes have become the “object of derision to [their] neighbors” (v. 6). The foreign forces threatened all the promises of God, for in Book III of the Psalter they appear to be too numerous to defeat.

The refrain in verse 7 pleads once again for God’s restoration, using the name “Elohim Tsebaoth.” The name Elohim applies to all creatures and creation, but the psalmist now adds Tsebaoth (צְבָאוֹת), a reference to the “armies” or “hosts” of both earth and the angelic realms of heaven (1 Sam. 16:26, 36).

Strophe III—Psalm 80:8-11

In this strophe, Asaph contrasts what God had done in the former days for Israel with what he was doing in the present. Here Joseph is compared with “a vine” that had been “transplanted . . . from Egypt” (v. 8); this may have been the background for our Lord’s teaching, “I am the true vine” (John 15:1). From this same period came the parable of the vineyard in Isaiah 5:1-7. Later, the vine is featured in Ezekiel 15. This metaphor of the vine may have been inspired by Jacob’s reference to the “fruitful bough” in his blessing of Joseph in Genesis 49:22.

In those former days, God drove out the nations from Canaan “and planted [the vine]” in the land of promise (Ps. 80:8b). This vine, the people of Israel, “took root” and “filled the land” (v. 9b). “The mountains [the southern boundaries of the land of Canaan] were covered with [the vine’s] shade, the mighty cedars [the northern boundaries] with its branches” (v. 10). The “branches reach[ing] as far as the Sea” (v. 11a) refers to the western boundary created by the Mediterranean Sea, and “the shoots [extending] as far as the River” to the Euphrates River in the east. Taken together, the imagery describes the extent of the territory given to Israel by God.

Strophe IV—Psalm 80:12-15

Now, however, Assyria is hammering the ten northern tribes with its armies and reducing their sovereignty and territory. The poet wants to know why this present state of affairs is taking place. The walls around the vine are being torn down so that anyone who passes by can pick the grapes off Israel’s vine (v. 12). “Boars from the forest ravage it” (v. 13), the “boars” being an obvious metaphor for Assyria. It is not unusual for animals to be used as symbols for foreign nations; this can be seen in references to the sea monster (Isa. 30:7) and “flies” (7:18) as metaphors for Egypt and the extensive use of animals in Daniel’s vision in Daniel 7.

The psalmist’s request resumes with triple urgency in verse 14: “Return,” “Look down,” “Watch!” Verse 14 is also a variant of the chorus in verses 3, 7, and 19. Its request to “return to us, Elohim Tsebaoth” emphasizes the compassionate regard God has for all who call on him.

Strophe V—Psalm 80:16-19

Three different phrases are used for the “vine,” the nation of Israel that God had brought out of Egypt. Israel is called (1) the “son you have raised up for yourself” (v. 15b), (2) the “man of your right hand” (v. 17a), and (3) the “son of man you have raised up for yourself” (v. 17b). These alternative names for the “vine” all play on the name “Benjamin,” “son of the right hand,” whose name was introduced in verse 2. These names represent both the whole community of Israel as well as a single individual. The referent will be deliverer of Israel, but Israel cannot be her own savior. Moreover, this psalm has the descendants of Rachel in mind (Joseph, Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh) and not the descendants of Leah (Judah, David); thus the psalm is not primarily about a Davidic Messiah, yet the individual mentioned here seems to be messianic.

Robertson argued that the tradition of two “saviors” (or even Messiahs) who come from two different tribal lines (Joseph and David) finds its

resolution in a single Savior who combines in himself the major elements of both traditions. Because the ultimate Redeemer of God’s people is so rich in significance, no one figure could encompass all the facets of his person and work.[4]

What was needed was a royal image of a Davidic king who was sovereign over all, along with an image of a suffering Joseph figure who goes down into a pit, down into Egypt, down into prison, and then ascends to the ruling position alongside Pharaoh.

Book III, the middle of the book of Psalms, began by recalling how Israel, including the descendants of Jacob and Joseph, was delivered from Egypt (Ps. 77:15). Near the end of Book III this theme is highlighted again in Psalm 81:

This is the decree for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob. When God went out against Egypt, he established it as a statute for Joseph (Ps. 81:4-5).

Psalm 80 ends in verse 19 with a third expression of the psalm’s plea for restoration, only this time Asaph uses the triple name for God: Yahweh Elohim Tsebaoth. The psalmist pleads with Israel’s covenant God, Yahweh, who is also God over all creation and over mighty armies, to repeat with Joseph’s descendants his restoration of Joseph from suffering. The agent of this restoration is to be the “son of man,” the Messiah. This is not a second Messiah, as rabbinic interpretation would suggest, but rather the same Messiah who, in addition to being a Davidic king, would also fulfill the role of the suffering Joseph. Asaph has chosen the Joseph figure in Psalm 80 to highlight Messiah’s identification with the suffering of Israel as well as his ability to “gore the nations” (Deut. 33:17), here necessary due to the oppression of Assyria. The Messiah cannot be reduced to the likeness of a single historical figure, but encompasses many roles. In Psalm 80, he is the one who will restore the decimated people of Joseph and cause God to shine his blessing on Joseph and his descendants once more.

Notes

1. Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Psalms (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953), 2:383.
2. Moses Buttenwieser, “Messiah,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls), 1906, 8:511-12. Also see Gerald J. Blidstein, “Messiah,” in Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972), 11:1410-12, as cited by O. Palmer Robertson, The Flow of the Psalms: Discovering Their Structure and Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P. & R., 2015), 143, n. 11.
3. David M. Stec, The Targum of Psalms (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004), 157, as cited by O. Palmer Robertson, The Flow of the Psalms, 133, n. 11. Delitzsch noted that the Targum rendered Psalm 80:16b as “king Messiah” (Biblical Commentary on the Psalms, 2:388).
4. Robertson, The Flow of the Psalms, 134.

The People Of Psalm 83

By Walter C. Kaiser Jr.

[This is the third article in the four-part series “Using the Context of the Psalms to Interpret Their Message,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 2-5, 2016.

Walter C. Kaiser Jr. is President Emeritus, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Hamilton, Massachusetts.]

Psalm 83 is the last of the twelve psalms by Asaph (Pss. 50, 73-83) that are part of the collection of seventeen psalms in Book III of the Psalter, a collection focused on foreign invaders of Israel and Judah. Psalm 83 does not indicate when it will be fulfilled; it contains no formula about “the latter days,” “in that day,” or “that day.” The motivation for this attack on Israel is clear, however, with words of bravado that still can be heard in hostility and disdain for the nation of Israel: “ ‘Come,’ they say, ‘Let us destroy them [the Israelites] as a nation, so that Israel’s name is remembered no more’ ” (v. 4).

Here the “enemy” is no longer a single nation that is bent on attacking Israel, as was commonly the case in Books I and II and for most of the history of conflict in the Middle East. It is now a coalition of ten nations, all of which closely surround the territory occupied by Israel, that band together with the unified purpose of eradicating the nation of Israel so that her name is remembered no more and so that these nations can occupy what Israel once held as her own territory.

Something else is unusual about Psalm 83. The seven psalms that fall toward the midpoint of Book III (Pss. 77-83) feature the unusual teaming up of nations in hostile alliance against the people of God, but this psalm addresses the redemptive work that God would accomplish, not just for the northern ten tribes or for the southern two tribes of Israel; rather, this deliverance was for the two patriarchal figures mentioned as long ago as the book of Genesis—Joseph and Jacob. By the time of the psalmist of Psalm 83, their descendants had already for several centuries (since 931 BC) been separated into two nations. But in Psalm 83, they were challenged to recall the magnificent deliverance these two kingdoms had experienced from bondage under Egypt, one of the greatest and most powerful nations in the world up to that time. This would become the basis of their hope for a second similarly magnificent deliverance in the future as the impending invasion of ten foreign nations threatened them, this time with literal extinction.

Could this, then, be the final Arab-Israeli war that is also mentioned in Isaiah 17, in which Damascus and Syria are finally destroyed? This does not appear to be part of the Russian-Iranian war of Gog-Magog in Ezekiel 38-39, nor does it seem to fit the invasion of Israel in the campaign of Armageddon in Revelation 19, for none of the nations mentioned in Psalm 83 appear in the Gog-Magog list or the list of nations in Armageddon.

A second suggestion, going back to the days of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodorus, assigns this psalm to the time of 1 Maccabees 5. But once again, while it is true that the neighboring nations were hostile, there is no evidence of a league or an alliance formed at that time, and neither Edom nor the sons of Lot were the major opponents in that contest either.

A third view argues that the historical context for this psalm was in the days of Nehemiah, for Sanballat, the Horonite of Moab, and Tobiah the Ammonite, were two of the chief opponents, together with Geshem the Arabian, along with the Ashdodites. But Asshur (Ps. 83:8) had long since ceased to be a problem in Nehemiah’s time.

The Enemy Conspiracy: Psalm 83:1-5

Psalm 83 is one of the imprecatory psalms (or a psalm of cursing). It prays to God for his intervention against an alliance of nations banded together for the sole purpose of eliminating Israel as a nation from the face of the earth. As such, it is a national lament. The psalmist prays that the enemies of the Lord may be shamed for their ambitions and that they instead may seek the “name” of Yahweh. This psalm could be classified as a war oracle with elements of prayer, lament, and imprecations on the enemies that threaten the very existence of God’s people.

Psalm 83 begins with these words:

O God [Elohim], do not remain silent; do not turn a deaf ear, do not stand aloof, O God [El]. See how your enemies growl, how your foes rear their heads. With cunning they conspire against your people; they plot against those you cherish. “Come,” they say, “let us destroy them as a nation, so that Israel’s name is remembered no more” (Ps. 83:1-4, NIV).

Surely this is a prayer addressed to our Lord, but it also has the marks of a prophecy. So the poet prays that Elohim would not remain a detached onlooker while major destruction threatens the people of Israel. Moreover, Israel’s foes are also God’s foes (83:2; cf. Ps. 2:1-3), for they are directly said to be “your enemies” (83:2). These nations have made a secret agreement (סוֹד, v. 3) to wipe out the nation of Israel so that it will no longer be a people or a nation that they need to contend with. These hostile nations hate God as much as they hate the people of God; therein lies their intransigence and determination.

This bitter enmity against Israel has its roots in matters that are of more concern than the policies and issues that arose from time to time between Israel and some of their relatives. Rather, here was an issue that went all the way back to the promise made to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 and 7. This conflict was not a disagreement that could be settled by some sort of compromise on the human level, for it involved an everlasting promise made by God himself with regard to Abraham and his offspring. The kingdom of darkness has from time to time come in opposition against Israel through such mortal rulers as Pharaoh, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, and Alexander the Great, but up to the point of this psalm, there had been no concerted effort to eradicate Israel from the face of the earth. The fact that God had chosen Israel to be his means of spreading the good news to all mankind and that he had set aside a highly contested land mass, right where three continents come together, as well as where east meets west, as the home of this chosen people—this was the thorn in the side of the rest of the nations and peoples of the globe. The fact that in the case of Psalm 83 most of the enemy peoples were close relatives of the descendants of Abraham made the hostility all the more intense.

Two Hebrew words for “God,” אֱלֹהִים and אֵל, occur right at the beginning of the prayer. These names for God form bookends with “Yahweh/Lord” and “Elyon/Most High” that come at the end of Psalm 83 in verse 18. There can be no doubt here: the psalmist’s prayer is to the one and only true God, for there is no one else to turn to in view of the seriousness of the threats.

These enemy nations are all “astir” (v. 2), like the waves of the sea—roaring and foaming with a huge sense of over-confidence as [they] “rear their heads” in success and keep on plotting the sudden demise of Israel. They gather together craftily in secret in order to conspire as one solid force in carrying out a holocaust against God’s people (v. 3, here called “your people” and “those you cherish”).

The spirit of agitation exhibited here is the same as was seen at the Tower of Babel, where people rallied together, saying, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly. . . . Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves” (Gen. 11:3-4). Just as those tower builders strove to achieve autonomy in their day with “name recognition,” so the ten nations who banded together in the cause of wiping Israel off the face of the earth wanted to achieve the same objective, gaining what they thought was a freedom and a sovereignty that made them look like gods.

The Ten-Nation Enemy Coalition: Psalm 83:5-8

Suddenly, nations that had rarely gotten along together or seldom found they were of one mind on major issues joined in an “alliance” (בְּרִית, usually translated “covenant,” but here a “treaty of confederacy in war”). They made this alliance against the Lord; that is also how they achieved such solidarity—“with one mind” (v. 5).

The psalmist listed ten nations that hated the Lord and therefore hated Israel. At the head of the list came Edom, here called by a poetic phrase “the tents of Edom” (v. 6). Some might assume that the Edomites dwelt in tents, but instead it was an expression that was used for the nation as a whole. The Edomites were the descendants of Esau, Jacob’s twin brother, who settled in the hill country of Seir, an area south of Israel’s Negev in the mountains on the west side of the Arabah south of the Dead Sea (Gen. 36).

Associated with the Edomites were the Ishmaelites, who were descendants of Ishmael, the son of Hagar and Abraham (Gen. 16:15-16; 25:12-18). The term “Ishmaelite” may serve as a general term for the Bedouin tribes who lived in tents and often invaded Israel from the south. These semi-nomads made their living off such caravan routes as that of the Midianites (Gen. 37:25, 28; Judg. 8:24).

Moab, another conspirator in this alliance, often manifested hostility to Judah. Along with Moab were the Ammonites, who were descendants of Lot (Ps. 83:6-7; Gen. 19:36-38). The book of Judges presents the Ammonites as real trouble-makers in the Transjordan during the judgeship of Jephthah (Judg. 11:6-33). Later King Saul led Israel in rescuing the people of Jabesh from the threats of Nahash the Ammonite (1 Sam. 11:1-11). Earlier, Balak the king of Moab had tried to hire Balaam to curse Israel (Num. 22-24), and judge Ehud had freed Israel from subjugation to Eglon, king of Moab (Judg. 3:12-30). Even this short resume indicates the enmity that existed against Israel.

The Hagrites (Ps. 83:6) are known only from Assyrian epigraphic materials as nomadic tribes that lived east of the Jordan.

Likewise the identity of גְּבָל (v. 7) is somewhat uncertain, but Mitchell Dahood was probably correct in linking it with the city of Byblos, since the city of Tyre, a close Phoenician neighbor, occurs in the same context. Another nomadic tribe named Amalek, descended from Esau (Gen. 36:12, 16), fought against Israel during their wilderness wanderings (Exod. 17:8-13) and joined the Midianites in their attack on Israel (Judg. 6:3). King Saul tried to destroy them (1 Sam. 15:3), but many survived. The Philistines are also mentioned, for they were a constant thorn in the side of Israel. Finally, “Assyria” is listed, but their end had already come in 611 BC with the fall of Nineveh. Thus this name may have been used symbolically.

Surely God will not sit idly by and allow this confederacy of nations to destroy Israel.[1] Moreover, the Lord promised his prophet Amos that he would do nothing unless he revealed his secret to his servants the prophets (Amos 3:7). Surely an onslaught like that described here in Psalm 83 would not take place in the future without our Lord alerting not only his prophets, but also all who love him and love his word. God will not keep silent (Ps. 83:1), for he will give us some clues as to how Israel will survive this Arab confederacy. What is described here in Psalm 83 is also contained in Jeremiah 49 and in Obadiah 1:1-21, since Edom is the lead member of this hostile group of nations.

The Imprecation Against God’s Enemies: Psalm 83:9-17

One could expect that what God would do in the future could be judged by what he had done in the past. Thus Psalm 83:9-12 set up a reminder of great acts of God in history that, in comparison to what is going to happen in the future, were micro-episodes of how the majesty of God can and will overcome all challengers.

The first evidence of how God worked previously comes from Gideon’s victory over the Midianites (v. 9). Gideon’s three hundred men were armed merely with trumpets, jars, and torches (Judg. 7:19-20). Jabin, who was king in Canaan (Judg. 4:2) and ruled from the mighty city of Hazor, was served by the commander of his army, Sisera. They were armed with 900 chariots of iron and thus were able to cruelly oppress Israel for twenty years (4:2-3). But God used a woman, Deborah, and a reluctant judge named Barak to gain a total upset over this technologically advanced enemy. God caused the Kishon River to flood so that the iron chariots became a liability and Jabin and Sisera were overwhelmingly defeated.

The other victory mentioned here was won by Gideon as he overcame four chiefs of the Midianites: Oreb, Zeeb, Zebah, and Zalmunna (Ps. 83:11; Judg. 8:1-21). “Endor” (Ps. 83:10) was located at the base of Mount Tabor and thus is in the general area where the battle took place, though the name “Endor” does not occur in the narrative of the book of Judges.

The psalmist selected these two victories of Israel over the Canaanites from the period of the judges to serve as models for the prayer of Israel for God to deliver them in the coming contest with the Arab confederacy. Whereas in the past, the Midianites had chosen to attack Israel precisely at the time that her crops became ripe for harvest so that they could claim these crops for themselves, saying: “Let us take possession of the pasturelands of God” (Ps. 83:12), Israel’s new prayer was that God would make this confederacy end up just like Oreb, who was killed at the rock, and Zeebah, who was killed at a winepress (Judg. 7:25), and like the two other chiefs of Midian, Zebah and Zalmunna, whom Gideon killed (8:21). It is worth noting as well that the “pasturelands” that the Midianites invaded belonged to Elohim!

The psalmist continued to pray against this league in Psalm 83:13-16. He likened the ten enemies listed in this psalm to “tumbleweed,” a plant in the wild artichoke family that has wheel-shaped stems (hence its name, גַּלְגַּל, “wheel”) along with thistles. Some translate this same metaphor as “whirling dust.” Their lot is also likened to “chaff,” which also was slated for destruction. If there was any uncertainty about these two metaphors, little doubt remained when verse 14 asked God to act as a “fire” that would set the forest and its undergrowth all ablaze. The request was that God would “pursue” them and “terrify” them in his “storm” (v. 15). This prayer of imprecation asked God to shake the overbearing confidence that they exhibited as they boastfully declared that they would rid themselves of the name and presence of Israel forever (v. 4). The psalmist prayed that God would convert their pride and boasting into their shame (v. 17).

The Enemy’s Recognition Of Yahweh: Psalm 83:17-18

The imprecations begun in verse 9 now end and the names for God in verse 1, “Elohim” and “El,” are joined by “Yahweh” and “Most High” in verse 15. The psalmist’s prayer concludes with a desire that Yahweh will confound these conspiring nations whose actions actually oppose the Lord himself and then his chosen people. But the psalmist also prays that these same nations may come to know the one whose name is “Yahweh.” They need to come to a personal relationship with the Lord and not just be aware of God in his common grace to all creatures on earth. Yahweh will then be the source of their forgiveness as he extends his grace and mercy to any who will come to him by faith.

Conclusion

The rallying cry of hostility from hostile nations is being heard more clearly and with more determination each day in this modern era. There is a concerted effort to “destroy Israel as a nation” and to liquidate them so that “Israel’s name is remembered no more” (Ps. 83:4). Even though this is presented as an attack against Israel, it must be remembered that this is an assault against the character and pledge that God himself made to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If enemy nations can exterminate the name and people of Israel, then the covenant-making God can no longer be proclaimed as a covenant-keeping God. If a character flaw can be exposed by these enemies of Israel, then the God of all believers worldwide would be exposed as unable to do what he said he would do in other areas as well. Clearly in this psalm, the enemies of Israel are also presented as the enemies of God. Accordingly, their best offensive against our Lord is not a philosophy of atheism or similar academic probes; the most insidious of all offensives against God is the one directed against his promises seen in the Abrahamic, Davidic, and New Covenants.

The battle described by Psalm 83 may well be one of the next offensives against Israel that is poised to take place at any moment, but Scripture assures us that it will end in a tragic and complete vanquishing of these enemy nations. God will bring honor and glory to his name as he delivers Israel and all her people.

Appendix: Reflections On Imprecations In The Psalms

In the entirety of the psalter, no more than eighteen psalms contain any element of imprecation.[2] These eighteen psalms contain 368 verses; yet only 68 verses of the 368 have any element of cursing. Therefore, it would be more proper to speak of imprecation in the psalms rather than whole imprecatory psalms. Of course, the real problem is not the quantity of imprecation in the psalms, but why there should be any at all.

While it goes without saying that in these expressions we are dealing with poetry and not prose, there is also the matter of Oriental poetry, which is fond of hyperbole. Yet those reminders are just things to keep in mind as we note, first, that these expressions are the longings of the Old Testament saints for the vindication of God’s righteousness. Second, especially from the mouth of David, these are utterances of zeal for God and God’s kingdom. But there is a third principle to note here: these strong-sounding utterances are the expressions of the Old Testament saints’ abhorrence of sin. And finally, these imprecations are teachings that tell us God’s attitude toward sin and toward persistent and impenitent sinners. It is in these contexts that we should regard such psalms as those from David (Pss. 35, 58, 69, 109) and from Asaph (83).

Notes

1. Few have contributed more to my thinking on this chapter than Bill Salus, Psalm 83: The Missing Prophecy Revealed (La Quinta, CA: Prophecy Depot Ministries, 2013).
2. The classic essay on this subject was written by Chalmers Martin, “Imprecations in the Psalms,” Princeton Theological Review 1 (1903): 537-53, reprinted in Walter C. Kaiser Jr., ed., Classical Evangelical Essays in Old Testament Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1972), 113-32.

The Message Of Book III: Psalms 73-89

By Walter C. Kaiser Jr.

[This is the second article in the four-part series “Using the Context of the Psalms to Interpret Their Message,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 2-5, 2016.

Walter C. Kaiser Jr. is President Emeritus, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Hamilton, Massachusetts.]

Book III of the Psalter has only seventeen psalms, and they have a different perspective than Books I and II. The focus of attention is no longer on King David, for only Psalm 86 is attributed to David and only a few psalms in Book III are individualistic in their form and emphases. The psalms of Book III deal more with the corporate group of the people of God and the attack made on them as a nation by foreign or international forces.

Robertson asserts that the most striking feature of Book III is the defeat of Israel by the powerful forces of foreign nations gathered against her. Surprisingly, Book III ends with David’s throne and crown being “cast into the dust” (Ps. 89:38-39, 41). Thus Robertson labels this section of the psalter as one in which “devastation” is the prominent theme.[1]

Book III can be divided by authorship claims into two unequal parts. Psalms 73-83 are attributed to “Asaph,” while Psalms 84, 85, 87, and 88 are said to come from the “sons of Korah,” with Psalm 88 also being assigned to one of the sons of Korah named “Heman the Ezrahite.” Psalm 89 is assigned to Ethan, also called an “Ezrahite” (perhaps meaning “a native-born person”). Interestingly enough, the usage of the names for God tends to support this division by means of authorship, for in the “Asaph” psalms (Pss. 73-83), the name “Elohim” prevails over the name “Yahweh” as the preferred name for God (Elohim is used 47 times while Yahweh is used only 13 times). Contrariwise, in the “sons of Korah” psalms (84-89), the use of “Yahweh” prevails over “Elohim” as the way to address and talk about God (“Yahweh” 31 times, “Elohim” only 16 times). However, to make the matter more interesting, in the “sons of Korah” psalms in Book II (Pss. 42-49), “Elohim” was the dominant and preferred name for God. What can explain this obvious shift in the names used for God? It is difficult to say with confidence what the reason was. Perhaps because Book II focused on communicating with non-Israelites and the unconverted persons of this world, the name “Elohim” would be more appropriate to the communication of this fact.

The further identity of “Asaph” and the “sons of Korah” can be partially determined, for 1 Chronicles 25:1 and 6 note that Asaph, along with Heman and Jeduthan, was one of David’s three chief musicians. The sons of these three chief musicians and later their relatives were appointed as those who had the “ministry of prophesying” and providing the music of the temple on “harps, lyres, and cymbals.” These sons were members of the musical worship team who were supervised by their father, while Asaph, Jeduthan, and Heman were supervised by David himself (v. 6). The Chronicler went on to say that these sons and their relatives were all “trained and skilled in music for the Lord” and that they numbered “288” (v. 7). All of them, teachers and students, young and old alike, regularly cast lots for the assignment of their duties in the temple musical liturgy.

Robertson summarizes the substance of these seventeen psalms in this manner. He lists Psalms 73 and 74 as the two psalms that introduce the distress and pain that characterize Book III. Psalm 73 views the problem from an individual aspect, while Psalm 74 approaches the issue from a corporate or group perspective. Following these two introductory psalms, the next two, Psalms 75 and 76, demonstrate that the Lord is king over all earthly kings, even in the face of the devastation these hostile nations could raise against Israel.

That introduction provides the groundwork for a special collection of seven psalms, Psalms 77-83, that report the devastation that came to the northern capital of Samaria at the hands of Assyria in 722 BC (Ps. 80) and the destruction that the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin faced from Babylon in 586 BC. These seven psalms (77-83) are followed by the first of the psalms by the sons of Korah (84 and 85), which amaze us by introducing a positive tone that is striking by comparison with the previous psalms in Book III. Then Book III concludes with notes of individual and corporate distress caused by the devastation that Israel faced with seemingly little hope for deliverance (Pss. 88-89). Sections of Book III can be examined in more detail as we attempt to analyze the intentional structuring of the psalms as a contextual basis for interpreting them and showing their interconnectedness.

Introduction To Book III: Psalms 73-74

The psalmist exhibited the same pattern used in Book II to introduce the substance of what was to follow as he opened up the themes of distress and devastation that dominate Book III. To be more specific, notice how in Book II, Psalm 42/43 (taken as one psalm) treated the problem it faced at that time from an individual perspective, just as Psalm 73 is now employed in Book III, while Psalm 44 in Book II viewed the issue from a corporate perspective, as does Psalm 74 in Book III.

Psalm 73 wrestles with the striking contrast between the apparently peaceful and prosperous life of the “wicked” and the “boastful” when they are compared with those who are “pure in heart” (73:1, 3). The “wicked” in these situations were those who came from and made up the international community of enemies, as can be seen from Psalm 75:4. The “wicked” were those who were part of the occupying troops of the foreign nations that had conquered Israel and whose “mouths [laid] claim to heaven and whose tongues [took] possession of the earth” (73:9). But they would face their real challenge one day in the future, for their good times of success in life and war would seem like a dream, for in the evaluation of that time, the Lord would despise them as if they were mere fantasies (v. 20). So frightening was the apparent success of the wicked, when compared with the sufferings of the righteous, that the psalmist’s feet had almost slipped over the edge of a precipice (v. 2) as he tried to understand the success of the wicked (v. 16). The psalmist thought that perhaps he had kept his heart pure in vain (v. 13), for it was they, not he, who were living high as wealthy and victorious conquerors. But all of that changed when the psalmist went into the house of God and it finally dawned on him what the ultimate destiny of these self-confident, arrogant boasters would be (v. 17). That was how Asaph introduced the problem of national devastation from an individual perspective.

In Psalm 74 Asaph introduced the issue found in Book III from a corporate or group perspective. This second introductory psalm of Book III presented the international invaders as the ones who had wielded their axes as they smashed the sanctuary of the Lord in Zion and defiled the dwelling place of God’s name (vv. 5-7). But when did all of this happen? It is clear that the psalmist was talking much beyond the day of King David, which would have been the major time frame for most of the events in Books I and II. So we ask again, When would that time have occurred?

Psalm 74, it can be seen from the text, referred to the Babylonian invasion that came in the sixth century BC. Thus we have moved four centuries from the time of David (c. 1000 BC). It might be argued that Psalm 74 was addressing the Babylonian invasion that came ten years before the 586 BC destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, for 2 Kings 24:8-17 reported on the brief, three-month reign of King Josiah’s eighteen-year-old grandson Jehoiachin. The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar’s officers had set up a siege against Jerusalem in 596 BC, but when Nebuchadnezzar himself arrived, King Jehoiachin surrendered himself and the city of Jerusalem. As a result, Nebuchadnezzar stripped the temple of all its treasures, but since Jehoiachin surrendered to the Babylonian king willingly, some of the city’s major buildings seem to have been left intact after that 596 BC attack. Accordingly, the narrative of 2 Kings 24 parallels the picture that Psalm 74 presents, in that both focus on the stripping of all valuables from the Lord’s temple. However, ten years later in 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar returned to bring complete decimation on Jerusalem and the temple (Ps. 79:1, 3; 2 Kings 25:9). In the meantime, Psalm 74 depicts the fact that there were still some prominent residents in Zion whom the psalmist prayed for (v. 19).

The destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC is described in Psalm 79. Complete destruction came when King Zedekiah refused to surrender voluntarily to Nebuchadnezzar as King Jehoiachin had previously. The Babylonians exercised no mercy as they arrogantly destroyed Judah and Jerusalem.

Celebrating God’s Kingship Over All Earthly Kings: Psalms 75-76

It is difficult to say completely how Psalms 75-76 function in this context, but Robertson labels them as a response to Israel’s cry for deliverance from the foreign invading armies. There is a call for God to rise up and to defend his own cause as he “will cut off the horns of all the wicked” (75:10) (“horns,” of course, being a symbol of power and authority). It is God who will judge (v. 7).

If Psalm 79 reports how God will vindicate his name and reputation in the chaos brought on Jerusalem by the conquering Babylonians, Psalm 76 relates how God totally humiliated the king of Assyria, King Sennacherib, when the angel of the Lord slew the Assyrian army outside the gates of Jerusalem in 701 BC (Isa. 36-37).

This interpretation seems to be confirmed by the Septuagint translation that adds to the title of Psalm 76 the words “concerning the Assyrian.” Sennacherib had boastfully vaunted himself over Israel by pointing out to King Hezekiah of Judah and to the citizens of Jerusalem listening from the walls of that city that none of the gods of the cities he had taken thus far had been able to match his military expertise and power. So Hezekiah must not think that Yahweh would experience any different kind of result—all gods of all nations were doomed in the face of Sennacherib’s military might and power! That would include Yahweh as well, Sennacherib arrogantly blustered and blasphemed.

But Psalm 76:5-7 graphically depicts a scene that must have horrified Sennacherib after all his bravado speeches. It depicts his vanquished army this way: “The valiant lie plundered, they sleep their last sleep; not one of the warriors can lift his hands. At your rebuke, God of Jacob, both horse and chariot lie still. It is you alone who are to be feared. Who can stand before you when you are angry?” (vv. 5-7).

When Sennacherib learned that his whole army of 185,000 lay dead in the fields of Judah, he beat a hasty retreat back to Assyria only to be ambushed and murdered by his own two sons (2 Kings 19:35-37). No wonder, then, that Psalm 76 ends in verse 12 with these words: “[God] breaks the spirit of rulers; he is feared by the kings of the earth.”

To be sure, these were trying times for the nation of Israel and David’s line, but the psalmist was certain that the kingdom of our Lord and his Messiah would remain supreme and rule over all the nations on earth. Of course, Israel had faced one foreign invader after another, but it would be God alone who would triumph in the end as King of kings and Lord of lords.

These four psalms of introduction and response bring us to the heart of message of Book III, the seven psalms of devastation—Psalms 77-83.

Psalms Of Devastation And Deliverance By The Son: Psalms 77-83

Among Psalms 77-83 two psalms place the destruction and devastation brought on by two foreign invaders at the heart of all that confronts Israel and the Lord God himself. They are Psalm 79 with its description of the attack on Jerusalem and Judah by Babylon in 586 BC and Psalm 80 with its description of the attack by Assyria on the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

First among the seven, Psalm 77 opens with the cry of an individual in danger, ostensibly prompted by his confrontation with international enemies. But when this individual recalls all the miraculous interventions that God has demonstrated, especially at the exodus of Israel from Egypt (vv. 16-20), he is helped by that memory. Verse 14 affirms, “You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the peoples.”

The psalmist’s personal troubles are dwarfed when he gives his mind over to remembering and meditating on the tremendous events of the Red Sea and the fire of God on Sinai. The “waters,” presumably those of the Red Sea, were not just in an upheaval; these waters were downright frightened (v. 16) as the lightning is poetically depicted as God’s flaming arrows (v. 17). Therefore the psalmist faced the challenge that came to Israel’s national security by recalling, as Psalms 74-76 had, God’s intervention against those hostile foreign enemies. God’s “way is holy” (77:13). This all raises the question found in the victory song of Moses in Exodus 15:11, “Who is like you . . . among the gods?” or, as Psalm 77:13 phrases it, “What god is as great as our God?” Moreover, Psalm 77 introduces references to the “descendants of Jacob and Joseph” (v. 15). Thus the psalmist is concerned with the way both the northern and the southern tribes of Israel would experience devastation as well as deliverance.

The final verse in Psalm 77, however, surprisingly introduces an expression of pastoral kindness in the midst of all this international chaos and turmoil: “You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.” This same pastoral theme reappears in the next three psalms, perhaps as a way of quieting the anxieties that filled Israel and Judah in the face of the national trauma of war: “He brought his people out like a flock; he led them like sheep through the wilderness” (78:52). “And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them” (v. 72). “Then we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will praise you forever; from generation to generation we will proclaim your praise” (79:13). “Hear us, Shepherd of Israel, you who led Joseph like a flock” (80:1). By using this same phrasing over the course of several psalms, the psalmist shows his organizational structure.

The second of these seven psalms (77-83), Psalm 78, reviews the vacillating history of Israel from the time of slavery in Egypt until the reign of David. But in the midst of its recounting all that took place, the great miracles of God are also included as a sign of the grace of God and the maintenance of his promise-plan. Psalm 78 reviews the faithfulness of God to Israel despite the repeated failure of Israel and Judah. The focus of this chapter is the centrality of God’s covenant with David. Even though some four or five hundred years have passed since David’s lifetime, Israel’s interaction with the Lord remains based on the covenant he made with David. This is amazing in the light of the devastations that David’s dynasty and his kingdom had undergone since his day. Nevertheless, there is no indication that God would go back on his promise to David; it would remain intact and fully operative.

Robertson noticed that Psalm 78:1-8 provides an extensive introduction,[2] but then the psalmist unexpectedly calls attention to verses 9-11 with what appears to be an almost interruptive word: “The men of Ephraim, though armed with bows, turned back on the day of battle; they did not keep God’s covenant and refused to live by his law. They forgot what he had done, the wonders he had shown them.”

The prophet Hosea, from this same period of time, wrote, “Whenever I would heal Israel, the sins of Ephraim are exposed and the crimes of Samaria revealed” (7:1); “Ephraim is like a dove, easily deceived and senseless—now calling to Egypt, now turning to Assyria” (v. 11); “They [Ephraimites] do not turn to the Most High; they are like a faulty bow. Their leaders will fall by the sword because of their insolent words. For this they will be ridiculed in the land of Egypt” (v. 16).

The psalmist gave an extensive review of how God had delivered Israel from Egypt, led them during the wilderness wanderings, helped them in the conquest of Canaan, and upheld them during the relentless raids that came on them from the Philistines. As a conclusion to this long list of times when God had helped the nation, he suddenly once again introduced a word about the tribe of Ephraim, one of the sons of Joseph: “He rejected the tents of Joseph, he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim; but he chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which he loved” (Ps. 78:67-68).

David was chosen to be “the shepherd of [God’s] people Jacob, of Israel his inheritance” (v. 71). So Psalm 78 claims that despite all the setbacks that had come from the invasions of the nations surrounding the people of God, God was still standing by his promise and covenant to David and to his dwelling place in Zion.

Psalm 79 returns to the theme of the conquering invasions that the people of God faced in the land of promise. If Psalm 74 described some of the heartache and disaster caused by international invaders of the land of Israel, Psalm 79 described a carnage that went far beyond what Psalm 74 described. In Psalm 79 the nations have invaded the inheritance given to Israel by God and have proceeded to defile God’s holy temple and reduce Jerusalem to rubble (v. 1). These invaders left corpses out on the fields as food for the birds and animals of the wild (v. 2). In fact, they shed so much blood, continued the psalmist, that one would think it was just water being poured out all around Jerusalem (v. 3). Surely this is a depiction of the tragic fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC.

David had faced foes described in Book I and II, but nothing like this list of savage and brutal international invasions of the land of Israel that are found in Psalms 74-79. The list is ominous:

• Babylon’s invasion of Judah in 596 BC—Psalm 74
• Assyria’s invasion of Judah in 701 BC—Psalm 76
• Philistine invasions of Israel about 1060 BC—Psalm 78:60-64
• Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem in 586 BC—Psalm 79
• Assyria’s invasion of Samaria in 722 BC—Psalm 80

At the center of these seven psalms (77-83) reporting international calamity that came upon Israel and Judah is Psalm 80, which takes up the destruction visited upon the northern ten tribes of Joseph or Ephraim in the fall of Samaria, capital of the northern tribes. This psalm has long been assigned the central point of the entire book of Psalms by the Jewish scribes (sopherim, “counters”) who counted all the Hebrew letters in each book. Hebrew manuscripts have a raised letter ayin in Psalm 80:14 (Eng. v. 13) to mark the “middle letter of the Psalter” in the Hebrew word מיער “from the forest.” This psalm will be taken up by itself later on.

Psalm 81 celebrates once again the unprecedented deliverance of Israel from Egypt. After the psalmist rehearsed the devastations of the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Philistines in Psalms 74, 77, 78, 79, and 80, he reminded the people once again how they could have been saved from all these invading armies if they had listened to the teaching that came from the Lord and followed his ways (81:11, 13). But Israel responded out of the stubbornness of their hearts and followed their own devices instead. Had they done otherwise, their enemies would have been rapidly subdued by the Lord (v. 14), and these invaders would have cringed before the Lord (v. 15). Israel would have found “honey from the rock” in the desert instead of water (v. 16). If past rescue of the people of Israel by the Lord had been magnificent, the results would have been even more spectacular had the people turned back to the Lord in the face of these more recent threats on the land.

In Psalm 82, it is Elohim who judges the judges of the nations. These judges, in their capacity of rendering judgments over their people, are here designated as “gods” (v. 1). But the nations of the world must remember that God, who is the Most High One over the kingdoms and thrones of all mortals, will arise to judge the whole world (v. 8). Therefore, even though these human judges may themselves be designated as “gods,” their judgeships in no way surpass that of the one who possesses all the nations (v. 8).

To read this psalm is to be reminded that our Lord Jesus used it in a controversy with the Jewish authorities over his identity. These leaders were about to exercise their authority as judges by ordering that Jesus be killed because he claimed to be the Son of God. Interestingly enough, Jesus did not appeal to a Messianic text to support his claim of being divine; instead he cited this passage from Psalm 82 and argued from the lesser to the greater. His argument was this: Why do you deny me the claim to the title “God” or “Son of God” when you designate your own human “judges” as “gods” and “sons of the Most High” in this psalm (v. 6) and when you fulfill a Godlike function by rendering judgment (vv. 1, 6)? Jesus stated that the source of his argument was “Scripture.” Jesus did not use the plural form “Scriptures,” but the singular form; thus he underscored the unity of this source, which he also called “your law” (John 10:34-38). How could these human judges object when Jesus presented himself as the “Son of God” and performed miracles that were by all assessments much more awesome than any earthly decision rendered by a human judge?

What makes this use of Psalm 82 all the more powerful is the argument pressed by Robertson that individual psalms, for instance Psalm 82, should be understood in context of the whole book of Psalms. By the same token, Psalm 82 should be understood even more particularly in light of the seven psalms (77-83) that focus on Psalm 80, where the suffering Messiah ben Joseph is likewise called a “Son,” also referring to his position as a “Son of God.” Accordingly, Jesus was appealing not simply to the fact that judges were called “gods,” as in Psalm 82, but he also appealed to his unique Sonship as Messiah ben Joseph in Psalm 80! Was our Lord also arguing that he was, according to Psalm 80:15, 17, Messiah who would suffer as God’s “Son” and as Messiah ben Joseph? (More will be said on Psalm 80 in an article that is to follow.)

Conclusion

This special collection of seven psalms was meant to call attention to the destruction of both the northern and southern kingdoms in Israel while emphasizing at the same time two Messianic figures who would come forth to deliver both the north and the south. A son of David, but also a son of Joseph, would be Israel’s deliverer (Pss. 78:65-66, 70-72; 89:35-37; 80:1-2, 15, 17).

The seventeen psalms in Book III focus on the defeat of the people of God at the hands of international invaders. But most astounding of all in this record of stunning defeats is that this section ends with the throne and crown of David lying in the dust of defeat (89:38-39, 44). How could this be the real outcome of God’s everlasting commitment of his covenant with Abraham and David?

Any hope for the continuance of the Davidic covenant, which Psalm 89:17b–37 asserts is still strongly maintained in the ongoing and overall plan and will of God, must come in Books IV and V. It was not finally solved in Book III.

Notes

1. O. Palmer Robertson, The Flow of the Psalms: Discovering Their Structure and Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P. & R., 2015).
2. Robertson, The Flow of the Psalms, 129.

The Structure Of The Book Of Psalms

By Walter C. Kaiser Jr.

[This is the first article in the four-part series “Using the Context of the Psalms to Interpret Their Message,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 2-5, 2016.

Walter C. Kaiser Jr. is President Emeritus, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Hamilton, Massachusetts.]

It is rather unusual to find in recent biblical commentary and exegesis of an individual psalm any reference to the broader context of that psalm within the message and plan of the whole Psalter. It is all too frequently assumed that each psalm stands on its own and usually is isolated from any literary or theological connections with the whole book of Psalms and the psalms that surround it. However, in recent Psalms studies, a new emphasis is being placed on the broader context for interpreting a psalm in connection with other psalms that surround it in order to render a more accurate picture of what the psalmist meant. This new development is a welcome addition to treatment of the book of Psalms.

A major impetus in such a holistic contextual reading of a psalm in its setting within the Psalter is the recent work titled The Flow of the Psalms: Discovering Their Structure and Theology, by O. Palmer Robertson.[1] With overt and almost universal skepticism over the past centuries of biblical exposition about ever finding significant order and an intentional structure in the five books of the Psalter, many scholars have substituted modern form-critical approaches to the Psalms that do not look for the meaning of a psalm in its context in the whole book of Psalms. Instead, meaning is sought in the way the various psalm genres relate to cultural and social circumstances of the times they were written in. A good illustration of this type of substitution of the cultural circumstances in place of the context of the book of Psalms can be found in the work of the evangelical Old Testament scholar John Goldingay. He writes, “The Psalter as a whole does not have a structure that helps us get a handle on its contents. . . . [Instead, we must rely on the] more traditional critical approach.”[2]

But Robertson has raised the question: “Is there such a thing as a ‘flow [a plan or a purpose] of the book’ of Psalms?”[3] Robertson knows that his affirmative answer is a minority voice, for no end of discouragement is heaped on those who have attempted to analyze the Psalms to see if there is an intentional development of order and an ongoing coherent theme in these 150 chapters. An exception to the general pessimistic prospect for ever finding an overall intentional structure in the Psalms, however, can be seen in the contribution of John H. Walton.[4] He investigated the content of the Psalms, arguing that the content would function as a major key in detecting the structure of the Psalter as it was placed alongside the Davidic covenant. But Walton and Robertson have chosen an impossible task in the view of most scholars, for even the great evangelical scholar Franz Delitzsch (1813-1890) warned against it after reviewing the attempt of Gregory of Nyssa (335-395) to show that the five books of the Psalms lead upward like five steps to moral perfection. Delitzsch said, “We fear that in this direction, investigation has set before itself an unattainable end.”[5]

Nevertheless, Robertson plunged ahead in his quest to identify the intentional structure of the Psalms. He began by taking Psalms 1 and 2 as the two “poetic pillars” that, when taken together, anticipate the major themes that occupy the five books found in the Psalter. Psalm 1 traces the downward slope of the ungodly. But a different way of life marks the destiny of the righteous, for they love the law of God. To this emphasis can be added the Torah Psalms, of which Psalms 19 and 119 further demonstrate the centrality of the teaching found in the Torah to the book of Psalms.

A second major theme is found in these two poetic pillars of Psalms 1 and 2—the centrality of the person of the Messiah. Yahweh had established the presence of his messianic king in Zion, from which he would rule and reign over the nations of the world. In these two “poetic pillars,” Robertson argued, was to be found the overarching message of the Psalter. In all, Robertson thought that at least twelve different elements could be identified as part of this basic structure. But he acknowledged that the initial impression most readers and students of the Psalter have is that it is a helter-skelter, discombobulated assembly of various contributions that are detached from one another and act merely as stand-alone pieces.

Robertson was careful not to give the impression that the Psalter could be treated as if it were a theological treatise that was setting forth its theme in a predetermined logical order. After all, this is a collection of 150 psalms that span some 500 years and does not claim to be the work of any single person or group of persons. However, lest too much be made of that argument, recall that composition of the entire corpus of the 66 books of the whole Bible spanned some 1400 to 1500 years and involved 39 or 40 authors who lived on three continents: Europe, Africa, and Asia; and yet the Bible has one continuous story and promise-plan from start to finish. What, then, is the intentional structure that these 150 psalms evidence? Might that structure yield a cohesive progress in the purpose and plan of the Psalter? But before examining this concept any further, let us begin by analyzing the way Psalms 1 and 2 function from the rest of the Psalter.

Psalms 1 And 2

As has already been affirmed, Psalms 1 and 2 are not only introductory to the Psalter; they are foundational to the whole book in that, when taken together, they define the substance of all that will follow. Psalm 1 lays out the critical role of the law/teaching of God, while Psalm 2 presents the Davidic Son who was appointed by Yahweh to have a kingdom that will eventually extend to the ends of the earth. The two themes would be Torah and Messiah, or to put it in other words: law and gospel.

To describe the role of these two psalms in another manner, Psalm 1 identifies two groups of people in relation to God’s law/instruction: the wicked, who despise God’s law; and the righteous, who delight in his law. Moreover, the righteous are like a tree that is fed by a stream nearby and that therefore produces fruit throughout its life. Contrariwise, the wicked are like dried-up chaff that can be blown away, for when all is said and done, the wicked will perish and be left outside the group of the people of God. Meanwhile, the righteous will be vindicated by Yahweh and be known as his own.

Robertson argued that the other “poetic pillar” is Psalm 2, which has four major themes that come from the Davidic covenant. (1) Psalm 2 stresses the kingship of David over all the nations. Therefore rebelling against Yahweh’s kingship is an exercise in futility. Yahweh’s kingship is found throughout each of the five books of the Psalter. (2) Psalm 2 declares that the locale of Yahweh’s rule would be in Zion, that is, Jerusalem. Even though Yahweh is “enthroned in heaven” (2:4), the site for the rule of God is often mentioned as being in Jerusalem. Though that duality seems to present an unresolved problem, 2 Samuel 7:13 made it clear that David and his offspring would build a house for the Lord in Jerusalem. (3) Psalm 2 clearly points to the fact that Yahweh would permanently establish David and his dynasty. This theme is repeated and amplified in all five books of the Psalms except book IV. Finally, (4) Psalm 2 describes the merger of Yahweh’s throne with David’s throne as having already taken place.

It is for these reasons that Psalms 1 and 2 are regarded as poetic pillars and foundational entrances into the remainder of the content and argument of the Psalter. Thus there are two groups of people, the wicked and the righteous, who respond completely differently to Yahweh’s Torah, and there is his Messiah. But let us begin to apply Robertson’s thesis to books I, II, and III.

Book 1: Psalms 3-41

All the psalms in book I are attributed to David except Psalm 10 (which completes the acrostic poem of Psalm 9, which is said to be authored by David) and Psalm 33 (which is a quasi-acrostic with 22 verses, but not arranged in alphabetic order). Since David is the anointed man of promise in the messianic plan of God, this distinctive role explains why his person is so central.

Such a view is confirmed by the apostle Peter in Acts 4:25, where he, in response to the Jewish leaders who had threatened the disciples of our Lord, explained that God spoke “by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of [his] servant, our father David.” Peter followed up with a quote from the second Psalm, which he attributed to David, even though Psalm 2 is without a title in the Hebrew text.

David’s personal involvement in the construction of the psalms in book I can be seen in the fact that thirty-two of the thirty-seven psalms attributed to David in book I all have the singular personal pronoun “I” or the like in them. As such, it is important to appreciate that as the psalmist spoke of the messianic king, he in a similar way spoke to those who loved Messiah and showed they wanted to walk with him in fellowship. As Robertson put it, “As it fares with the messianic king, so it fares with each member of the messianic kingdom.”[6]

To illustrate his point, Robertson took up the discussion of Psalm 3. This psalm has David speaking in the first person as he deals with the tragic situation in which his own son Absalom led a coup against his father in order to seize the throne. Consequently, as David fared in this time of testing, so would the people of Israel fare. But the question that looms large here is Why was this incident placed as the first incident in the life of David in book I? Without a doubt, this attempted coup against David was a most agonizing situation for David, but how could that be of any help to those he hoped to minister to? This coup would affect David, but it did not appear to be directly related to those David was addressing in Scripture.

David appealed to God’s ancient word of promise to him and his line of heirs. Then he reminded the Lord of the promise he had made to him personally of a continuing dynasty/house, but he also strategically added that the dwelling place of the Lord would be in the midst of his people. The promise Yahweh would give to David would come not only to rescue him, but it would be a deliverance for his people just as well.

Robertson moved from a discussion of Psalm 3 to pointing out the structural role of Psalms 18 and 19; these two psalms coupled a messianic psalm with a Torah psalm, thereby mirroring Psalms 1 and 2. Here is Robertson’s point: The placement of Psalms 18 and 19 suggests an intentional arrangement of these two psalms so that the foundational or poetic pillars of Psalms 1 and 2 with their Torah and Messianic emphases could be highlighted in book I. Five kingship psalms (20-24) occurred immediately after Psalms 18 and 19.

Not once did Psalms 3-17 use messianic-kingship terminology. However, after David was established as messianic king with the defeat of his enemies, including King Saul, Psalm 18:50 suddenly announces: “He gives his king great victories; he shows unfailing love to his anointed, to David and to his descendants forever,” language that recurs a number of times when the language of messianic kingship, not used since Psalm 2, now reappears (20:6, 9; 21:1, 7).

But that is not all; beside the use of messianic terminology, five kingship psalms appear immediately, Psalms 20-24. These five form what Robertson calls a “poetic pyramid.” Psalms 20-21 present the kingship of Messiah, Psalms 23-24 present Yahweh as king, and Psalm 22 serves as the pinnacle, or central psalm. So while no psalm in 3-17 presents David as “the anointed one,” the “king,” or the one who has won great victories, Psalms 18-19 do just that. Some may stumble over the fact that Psalm 23 depicts the Lord as a shepherd, but that image bears out his kingly status as well.

What is true of the lack of references to Messiah’s kingship in Psalms 3-17 is also true of the law of God. Except for a single reference about God’s law with regard to the wicked in 10:5, multiple terms for the law of God do not occur until Psalms 18-19 and after (18:22; 19:7-11; 25:10; 34:11; 37:31; 40:8). Finally, the same could be said about there being no mention made of God’s teaching his way of living before Psalm 18, but it does surface after Psalms 18-19 (25:4-5; 27:11; 32:8; 34:11).

Another important contribution to understanding the structure in book I is the location of four alphabetic acrostic psalms (from the total of eight acrostic psalms that appear in the Psalter). These acrostics are somewhat distinctive in their poetic form in that they do not always place the alphabet in its usual sequence in the consecutive verses.

Significantly these acrostic poems are related to creation psalms and usually follow a creation psalm. Thus, there are only three creation psalms in Book I (from a total of eight for the Psalter), yet in each case a creation psalm precedes an acrostic psalm. Robertson[7] lays out these psalms this way:

Creation Psalm 8	Precedes acrostic Psalm 9/10
Creation Psalm 24	Precedes acrostic Psalm 25
Creation Psalm 33	Precedes acrostic Psalm 34

Such a teaming of a creation psalm with an acrostic psalm does not appear to be part of a random connecting of texts; it was done to fill out a key theological concept. Robertson along with many Reformed theologians emphasizes the “redemptive-historical” framework of the book of Psalms as the best way to preach and teach the book of Psalms, if not the whole of the Old Testament. This, of course, is important and is one of the keys to contemporary teaching and preaching from the Old Testament. But what often gets neglected is the doctrine of creation that supplies another dominant theme from the older Scripture, in which the One coming as Redeemer is also to be seen simultaneously as the sovereign Creator Lord who rules over all princes, principalities, powers, and authorities. He will not only redeem his people from their sin, but he will reign and rule as King of kings and Lord of lords forever and forever over all kingdoms and peoples. This is the aspect that the creation and acrostic psalms contribute to the redemptive-historical theme found in these psalms.

Therefore, to add to the picture Robertson has drawn, I would urge that the book of Psalms has three, not just two, points of entrance to the book. Robertson stressed the principles of the law (Ps. 1) and the Messiah (Ps. 2). I would add creation (Pss. 8, 24, 33).

The Psalter builds on the way of life found in the law, focused on the Messiah, who also created everything and to whom all rule and all authority will be concluded after the Messiah has provided redemption for all.

Conclusion To Book 1

Robertson suggests that book I focuses on the “confrontation” that the animosity raised between the two seeds—the way of the wicked and the way of the righteous. As the Lord’s anointed, David had experienced one struggle after another as he faced opponents to God’s kingdom. Yet the Lord delivered David from all his enemies and from Saul. In fact, Robertson challenges the current generation to memorize the acrostic psalms as a means of grasping the structural order of the Psalter. Doing so would produce an “inspired abbreviation” to the message of the whole Bible.[8]

Book II: Psalms 42-72

Book II has thirty-one psalms (42-72), which consist of seven psalms by the “sons of Korah” (42-49, plus one that appears without a title), followed by a single psalm by Asaph (50), then a collection of psalms by David (51-71) and a single psalm by David’s son Solomon (72). They appear in the following fashion.

Three Introductory Psalms: Psalms 42-44

That Psalm 43 is without title or ascription of authorship is best explained by the fact that Psalms 42 and 43 are bound together by the repeated refrain found in 42:5 and 11 and in 43:5. But why does book II open with the psalmist’s sense of despair and a feeling of rejection by Elohim? Could the psalmist be addressing the apostate northern kingdom of Israel as that “nation” (43:1) that showed no mercy? But this foe seems to be a national enemy, for God has scattered his people among the nations (44:11), even though he remains their king (44:4). Yet God’s unfailing love will rise up for Israel once again (44:26), despite their sinful failures.

Four Psalms On Elohim And Messiah’s Kingship: Psalms 45-48

The three introductory psalms are followed by four psalms that begin with a startling announcement of a royal wedding wherein the messianic king sits on his throne as truth and justice go forth (45:6-7). If we ask, How could Messiah be so suddenly presented as God in the context of three psalms of despair that have just preceded it? the answer is that this is done from the point of view of God’s covenant with David as a foundational pillar. That Messiah is called God (Elohim) is but an extension of God’s ancient promise to David in 2 Samuel 7:14-16, where it was promised that God would be Messiah’s “Father” and he would be his “son.” Both the redemptive-historical perspective and the creational sovereignty of our Lord are represented here. God’s rule would be united with David’s rule and the rule of his descendants. Elohim would dwell in his holy place, the city of the great king (50:1-3), for he would be the fortress of his people (46:4-5). Elohim would lift his voice and the earth would melt (46:6), for Elohim alone would be exalted among the Gentile nations over the whole earth (46:10). The creational sovereignty of our Lord and his Messiah is shown as he subdues all the nations under his feet (47:2-3, 8). The nobles of the nations assemble with the title of the people of the God of Abraham, “for the kings of the earth belong to God; he is greatly exalted” (47:9).

A Summons To Everyone From Two Intervening Psalms: Psalms 49-50

Now that Elohim and his Messiah are firmly established as king in Psalms 45-48, two psalms seem to intervene (49-50) before a second group of psalms by David is offered (51-71), observes Robertson. Both Psalms 49 and 50 open their message with a formal “summons” (50:4) to “all you peoples” (49:1) and “all who live in this world” (49:1). They are to “Hear this” (49:1), which will come in the form of a “proverb” and a “riddle” (49:3-4). Since Elohim is the king over the nations of the world, God has some “words of wisdom” (49:3) that will give them understanding. So what is this word of counsel? In a way similar to the form and style of writing in Ecclesiastes, the psalmist warns against pursuit of riches or even wisdom itself in place of a search for God.

The Second Collection Of Davidic Psalms: Psalms 51-71

Before surveying this second Davidic collection, it is important to inquire why the general name for God, “Elohim,” prevails over the covenantal name of “Yahweh.” In book II, “Yahweh” appears only 32 times whereas “Elohim” has 197 occurrences in Psalms 42-72. As a point of comparison, in book I “Yahweh” far exceeds the usage of “Elohim,” for “Yahweh” appears 278 times, while “Elohim” appears only 48 times in book I. To add to the facts of this difficult question, David’s confession of his sin with Bathsheba in Psalm 51 in book II uses “Elohim” exclusively while his confession of the same sin in book I (Psalm 32) uses “Yahweh” exclusively. Concerning the “fool,” Psalm 53 replaced the “Yahweh” of Psalm 14 from book I, using “Elohim” four times. Psalm 70 also uses “Elohim” three times, two of which are where the identical portions of Psalm 40 use “Yahweh.” Finally, Psalm 71 uses “Elohim” nine times and “Yahweh of Hosts” twice, while Psalm 31 uses “Yahweh” nine times and Elohim twice. Clearly, the editor or writer of book II favored “Elohim” in place of “Yahweh.” Even though he also infrequently used “Yahweh,” for some reason he deliberately preferred “Elohim” as the name for God. So what was his reason for doing so?

Many suggestions have been offered as a solution to this problem, but the one that makes the most sense is that this second collection of Davidic psalms in book II makes frequent reference to “foreigners,” “all mankind,” and the “peoples.” Twelve of the twenty-one Davidic psalms in book II refer to non-Israelite peoples. This is in stark contrast to book I, where only six of the thirty-nine psalms with Davidic superscriptions refer to non-Israelite peoples. This use of the more general name for God in book II is similar to the fact that the book of Ecclesiastes shows a preferential use of the name “Elohim” rather than “Yahweh.” This supports the observation that the message of Ecclesiastes was designed as God’s word to the nations of the world at large. “Yahweh,” of course, was the name reserved for those who had a personal relationship to the Lord. Thus, Genesis 1 uses “Elohim” (“God”) thirty-five times as it depicts his relationship to the whole created order, but God’s name is “Lord God” (“Yahweh Elohim”) when the man and the woman are brought into the picture (2:4-24). This same differentiation can be seen in Psalm 19, in which the psalmist uses “Elohim” when describing the heavens and the earth in the first part of the psalm; when in the second part of the psalm he turns to the law, it is the law of “Yahweh.”

The Message Of The Davidic Collection Of Psalms In Book II: Psalms 51-71

The tone of addressing David’s enemies in book II is different from the tone of address in other parts of the Psalter. The enemy is addressed directly by the pronoun “you.” Yet the psalmist feels compelled to praise Elohim from the midst of the nations (57:9-10). Even though they were David’s enemies, David must praise Elohim right in the midst of the nations, for they must hear about Elohim’s love for them and for all humanity. The goodness of Elohim can be seen in his common grace. In fact, the root of hope for the nations rests in the love and common grace of our Lord to the nations.

More than that, the kingdoms of the earth must also sing the praises of Elohim (64:9). This is in accord with what God promised in the Abrahamic covenant of Genesis 12:1-3—it would be by means of the seed of Abraham that all the nations of the earth would be blessed. So if David struggled with his enemies in book I as they attempted to “confront” him in order to do away with God’s promise-plan to establish his messianic kingdom, now in book II David does everything in his power to “communicate” with these same enemies about the love and grace of God.

The Triumph Of Messiah’s Rule: Psalm 72

The psalmist concludes book II with a psalm from King Solomon, Psalm 72. Elohim here endows the Messianic king with justice (v. 1), as evidenced in the fact that he will save the children of the needy (v. 4). Messiah’s reign will last as long as the sun and moon continue to shine (v. 5). Messiah’s rule will extend from sea to sea, even to the ends of the earth (v. 8). All the nations will bow down to him and serve him (v. 11), for his name will endure forever (v. 17).

Conclusion

The book of Psalms, then, is not a hodge-podge collection of what for the most part are isolated, self-contained psalms. Instead, the five books of the Psalter contain an intentional structure that embraces three foundational entry points into the continuing message of this book: the law, the Messiah, and his creational sovereignty over all persons and things. Great is the word of the Lord. Great is the Anointed One of the Lord and great is the rule and reign of Yahweh of Hosts!

Notes

1. O. Palmer Robertson, The Flow of the Psalms: Discovering Their Structure and Theology (Phillipsburg: NJ: P. & R., 2015). This marvelous study of the Psalms will set the mark for psalm studies for years to come.
2. John Goldingay, Psalms, Volume I: Psalms 1-41 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 36-37.
3. Robertson, The Flow of the Psalms, 50.
4. John H. Walton, “Psalms: A Cantata about the Davidic Covenant,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 34 (March 1991): 21-31.
5. Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Psalms (repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), 1:19. Of course Gregory of Nyssa was far off the mark in his choice of a guiding structure.
6. Robertson, The Flow of the Psalms, 63.
7. Ibid., 80.
8. Ibid., 82.