Note: From Reading Wisdom and Psalms as Christian Scripture (Baker 2024). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
The Psalter’s vision of the life of faith rings true to reality. This vision is capacious; it includes praise and pain, joy and despondence, confidence and doubt, dancing and weeping, confession and confusion. These expressions mark the experiences of the life of faith, and they characterize the tone of the different types of poems in Psalms. These different types of psalms reveal God’s relational goodness and loving faithfulness across the different seasons of the life of faith.
Hymns
The hymns in the Psalter praise Yahweh for his character and for his work in creation and history on behalf of his people. These psalms are catechetical, concerned with the fundamental elements of faith. They celebrate Yahweh’s creation of all things by his word (33:6, 9; 148:5-6), through his wisdom (104:24-26) and as a manifestation of his loving faithfulness (136:4-9). They rehearse Yahweh’s mighty acts in history: his covenant with Abraham, his redemption of his people from Egypt, his presence at Sinai, his provision for and protection of his people in the wilderness, his gift of the land of Canaan and his restoration of the people after the exile (Psalms 68; 105; 107; 136:10-26).
The psalmists do not praise God in the abstract. They specify God’s attributes and his work in creation and history, providing concrete reasons for praise. The closest Psalms gets to abstract praise is Psalm 150. By this point in the journey through the Psalter, however, the reader is fully aware of Yahweh’s nature and works. Praise drives the life of faith across Psalms. The book is entitled “praises.” Each of its five books ends with praise (41:13; 72:19; 89:52; 106:48; 150:6), and the entire book culminates in a crescendo of praise (Psalms 146-50). Praise names and extols God’s character and the incalculable manifestations of his loving faithfulness. It is a primal form of speech that orients the life of faith. In fact, it represents humanity’s “most characteristic mode of existence: praising and not praising stand over against one another like life and death.” [Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, vol. 1, The Theology of Israel’s Historical Traditions, pp. 369-70]
Laments
The life of faith, of course, is not always rosy. It involves suffering, despair, sin and oppression. The Psalter embraces these realities of the life of faith; lament is the most prominent type of psalm in the book, and notes of distress sound across the other types of psalms as well. Whether the source of distress is personal sin, external enemies or God himself, the laments identify and describe troubles intrinsic to the life of faith. These troubles haunt the psalmists. The scheming of the wicked and the onslaught of enemies cause emotional anguish and physical disintegration (6:6-7; 13:2; 18:4; 22:14-15; 55:4-5). As powerful embodiments of evil, the wicked are depicted as ferocious beasts, skilled trappers and tyrannical oppressors that pursue, catch, afflict and kill the psalmists and vulnerable members of the community (10:2, 8-9; 35:17; 37:14; 109:16; 140:5; 141:9). The psalmists’ sin produces brittle bones, festering lesions and burning loins (32:3-4; 38:5, 7); it kindles anxiety, sorrow, guilt and groaning (6:2-3; 31:9-10; 38:4, 8; 51:8). It brings about public humiliation and social abandonment (31:11; 38:11). Regardless of the source of trouble, the psalmists lament their situation and implore God to intervene. Within the context of covenant relationship, the psalmists appeal to God’s loving faithfulness. They make their problem God’s problem. They challenge God’s relational goodness and call on him to demonstrate the reality of his reign in their situation.
When read within this covenantal context, lament is “a learned skill,” not a form of whining. [Ellen F. Davis, Opening Israel’s Scriptures, p. 326] It is a faithful expression of pain to the only one who is faithful and capable of transforming the psalmists’ situations. While most laments move from pain to praise, Psalm 88 is the exception that proves the rule; it ends in darkness, suggesting that the life of faith is messy. The darkness may linger. This possibility uncovers a paradox at the heart of Psalms’ laments: these laments both question God’s loving faithfulness and cling to it as the very basis of their hope (25:6-7; 44:26; 109:26).
Thanksgiving and Trust
This hope, rooted in God’s loving faithfulness, is the predominant testimony across the psalms of thanksgiving. These psalms look back on a season or situation of distress (30:1-2, 6-9; 118:5, 10-13). They recall the lament (30:9-10; 118:5), but they bear witness to God’s specific intervention in the psalmists’ predicaments (30:3, 11-12; 118:5, 13, 21, 23). As powerful witnesses to God’s response to lament, the psalms of thanksgiving reveal God’s relational goodness through the concrete demonstration of his loving faithfulness. They testify to a God who hears and answers the prayers of his people, and so they strengthen hope in the life of faith.
A comparable dynamic is manifest in the psalms of trust. Fear characterizes the life of faith, but when facing danger (23:4-5; 46:2, 6), the psalmists counter their fears with vivid images and metaphors redolent of God’s loving faithfulness: God is a shepherd (23:1), a host (23:5) and a fortress (46:1). The psalmists use these metaphors not only to express trust but also to ground their trust in God’s relational goodness. They foster confidence in God’s faithfulness and attest to his trustworthiness in the life of faith.
Instruction
The different types of psalms reflect different seasons of the life of faith. Whatever the season, Psalms affirms that the life of faith is never lived in isolation. It is not only experienced in covenant relationship with God; it is also directed by God’s gracious instruction. The didactic poems in the Psalter align the life of faith in relationship with God, others and the created world. The vision of life portrayed through Psalm 37’s proverbs, for example, rhetorically reinforces the psalm’s instructional refrain: do not fret because of the prosperity of the wicked (37:1, 7; cf. 37:8). The juxtaposition of creation and God’s instructions in Psalm 19 intimates that a life ordered in accord with God’s instruction is a life ordered in accord with the grain of creation. This ordering of life under God’s trustworthy instruction is developed through the form and content of Psalm 119. The poem is cast in the form of an alphabetic acrostic; it moves from aleph to tav or from A to Z. Each stanza contains eight lines, and each line includes one of eight synonymous terms used throughout the poem for God’s instruction. The symmetry of the poem reflects the symmetry of a life directed by God’s revealed will. Its structure corresponds with its content. Taken together, the structure and content of Psalm 119 indicate that God’s revealed will is sufficient and trustworthy for the life of faith; it nurtures covenant relationship with God and offers stability.
Prayed Ethics
The didactic poems in Psalms are a microcosm of the function of the anthology as a whole. If Psalm 1 directs a reading of the book, then the psalms are torah; they offer instruction in the life of faith. This instruction is far reaching. It includes instruction about God and the self. It provides a grammar for discourse with God, offering instruction in prayer. And Psalms presents ethical instruction; following Gordon Wenham, we might say that the book sketches a “prayed ethics.” [Gordon J. Wenham, Psalms as Torah: Reading Biblical Song Ethically, p. 57] Like Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes, the Psalter profiles virtue and vice through prototypical character types. But it does more than this. The use of the psalms in liturgical song or recitation involves the singer or reciter in a distinctive way. Reflecting on the ethics of liturgy, Wenham notes, “It makes a stronger claim on the believer than either law, wisdom or story, which are simply subject to passive reception: one can listen to a proverb or a story and then take it or leave it, but if you pray ethically, you commit yourself to a path of action.” [Wenham, Psalms as Torah, p. 57]
Singing or reciting the psalms commits one to a path of action or to a particular form of belief. The question is, How? The ethical implications of singing or reciting the psalms necessitates a crash course on speech-act theory. Speech-act theory operates under the assumption that language is functional. That is, words perform actions; one does something through what one says. While words perform different types of actions, speech-act theory maps the performative nature of language through three categories: locutions, illocutions and perlocutions. A locution is the act of saying something, an illocution is the act in saying something, and the perlocution is the act by saying something. For example, if I say to my daughter, “I will pick you up at 5:00 p.m.,” I make a locutionary statement. I say something. But I do more than this; this locutionary statement also performs an illocutionary act. In saying this, I make a promise: I commit myself to picking my daughter up at 5:00 p.m. This commitment produces a perlocutionary effect. By promising that I will pick my daughter up at 5:00 p.m., she expects that I will pick her up at 5:00 p.m. She takes me at my word.
How does speech-act theory contribute to prayed ethics? If one sings or recites Psalm 51, one commits oneself to the locutions and illocutions of the psalm.
As a lament, Psalm 51 includes particular locutions and illocutions, which seek to move God to hear the speaker’s confession, forgive the speaker’s sins and restore the speaker in covenant relationship with God. By singing or reciting this psalm, one performs certain acts. Other types of psalms incorporate different types of speech acts. Hymns, for example, foreground expressives, specifically the act of praise (146:1-2; 147:1). Many laments and psalms of thanksgiving contain commissives in the form of oaths or vows, promises to perform some act in response to God’s intervention (22:25; 66:13). The imprecatory psalms involve performative declarations – that is, passing sentence on someone (109:6-19). While different types of psalms consist of different types of speech acts, every psalm contains locutions that perform illocutionary acts and elicit perlocutionary effects. Singing or reciting the psalms, therefore, involves a person in discrete ways. Most generally, singing or reciting a psalm commits a person to specific beliefs and acts: “Praying the psalms is a performative…act: saying these solemn words to God alters one’s relationship in a way that mere listening does not.” [Wenham, Psalms as Torah, p. 75]
Note: Christopher Ansberry, Reading Wisdom and Psalms as Christian Scripture, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group,” 2024, used by permission.
Christopher Ansberry, Associate Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies, Grove City College
