Written by Bruce K. Waltke and Fred G. Zaspel |
Tuesday, August 29, 2023
At Sinai God gave Moses the worship system for ancient Israel. It consisted of a stated place for worship, a priesthood, sacrifices and offering for various purposes and occasions, and so on. When David brought the ark of the covenant the tent on Mount Zion (1 Chron. 15–16) he preserved Mosaic worship, of course, but he added a musical dimension. Now the offerings were accompanied by singing and musical instruments and were in many ways made a festive occasion. This is the setting of the Psalms, and evidence of it is pervasive.

This article is part of the 10 Things You Should Know series.
1. The Book of Psalms Has No (Original) Title
The Hebrew Bible provides no title to the book of Psalms. Old Testament books in the Hebrew text are sometimes named according to the first words of the book. For example, the title of Genesis is In the Beginning, the title of Exodus is These Are the Names, and the prophetic books are named after the prophet himself. But the book of Psalms has no title in the Hebrew text.
Psalm 72:20 may hint of an early collection of some of the psalms when it says, “The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.” It may be that an early collection of psalms was named The Prayers of David.
The title of the book in Rabbinic and subsequent Hebrew literature is Book of Praises or simply Praises (tehillim). Although this word (in the singular) is used to title just one psalm (Ps. 145), its later use as a title for the book itself derives from its content—the book of Psalms is a book of praises. Psalms of all specific genres, even laments, are regularly couched in praise.
The Hebrew word for psalm occurs dozens of times in the book, and the Septuagint (Codex Vaticanus) picks this up in the plural as the title of the book: Psalmoi. In Codex Alexandrinus, the title given is Psalterion (an ancient stringed instrument) from which we have the name Psalter. Then, in Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, it became Libra Psalmorum, The Book of Psalms. So the English title, The Book of Psalms, comes to us from the Greek through the Latin. The Hebrew word psalm denotes a liturgical song sung to an instrumental accompaniment, but because the note of praise is so dominant in these psalms, the word has come to denote simply a song of praise, a sacred song, or a hymn.
2. The Book of Psalms Is a Universal Favorite
The evidence for this assertion is overwhelming and has been so from the church’s earliest days. Jesus and his apostles cited verses from the Psalms so frequently and with such ease and immediate grasp that they appear to have spent their lives in the Psalter. In the early centuries of the church, ministers memorized the entire collection. And all throughout the history of the church, the Psalms has been among the first books of the Bible translated and the most commonly read and memorized. Many verses from the Psalms seem lodged in the memory of virtually all Christians, and Psalm 23 is probably the most well-known text in the world. From Jesus to us, the Psalter has been the treasure of God’s people everywhere.
3. Psalms Are Poetry, and They Must Be Read as Such
Poems are not narrative, and we can’t read the Psalms (profitably) if we read them like we read, say, the books of Samuel or Acts. We read narrative linearly, following the story along rather common lines of thought (protagonist, antagonist, challenge or threat, etc.) to the climactic end. Poetry is not laid out quite that way. The lines are brief and compact and often convey the message only subtly and with figures of speech. And with Hebrew poetry in particular, like the psalms, the verses consist of parallel lines to convey the thought. If the verse has two lines, the second in some way informs the first. If the verse has three lines, the send and third inform the first. To read a psalm profitably we cannot just gloss over the lines quickly to the end, or much will be missed. We must pay attention to the details. We must ponder the figures of speech to grasp the reality they reflect, and we must consider thoughtfully how the compressed lines inform one another.
It has been said that you can tell it’s poetry by all the white space on the page. There is not as much to read, but ironically the compacted details demand closer attention.
4. Psalms Have a Variety of Recognizable Forms
It has long been recognized that not all the psalms are alike. There are different moods and varying circumstances reflecting every human emotion brought before God. Some psalms are given to praise, and some are given to lament and petition. Some are given to express trusting confidence in the Lord of providence, and some look back with grateful praise for what he has done. And then there is Psalm 110, pure prophecy.
What has not always been recognized is that some of the psalms follow common forms. Just as English poetry has some standard genres (cf. the limerick), so also certain types of psalms follow common forms with common components. The praise psalm typically has 1) a call to praise, 2) a cause or reason for praise, and then 3) a renewed call to praise. The lament psalm typically consists of 1) a direct address (“O God!”), and this often with an introductory lament and/or call for help; 2) the lament; 3) an expression of the psalmist’s confidence or trust; 4) the psalmist’s petition; and 5) a conclusion or praise.
There are other psalm forms also, such as songs of trust and individual psalms of grateful praise.
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Our Lord, assigns us various “subordinate identities” under our primary identity as Christians…In a generation that likes to play dress-up with our own identities, we do well to regularly rehearse what our actual, objective identities are, rather than those that are aspirational, subjective, and not yet actual….He determines our nationalities, our families, our vocations, and the various “stations” in which we are placed.

Any big life updates? It’s a question that I ask old friends when we reconnect over the phone or at a conference or reunion. Taking a new job, moving to a new home, planting a church, getting married, having children—these are among the big life updates that we communicate in catch-you-up conversations and Christmas letters.
We live in especially mobile and transitory times. Now, in addition to the ageless major transitions of human life, many people regularly move from job to job, even town to town and church to church. Added to this complexity is the modern confusion about life’s givens and chosens. Our society has come to feign plasticity in precisely the places where we’re hardwired (such as biological sex) and to pretend hardwiring in the places where we’re actually plastic (desires and delights). We pretend that our desires are fixed while presuming that our stubborn, external worlds should adjust to the preferences of our inner self. In reality, the inverse is true. Our desires are far more plastic than we often assume, and the external world is far more fixed than we care to admit.
How, then, as Christians do we approach the big chosens in life, such as getting married or taking a new job? We want to live with Christ-honoring contentment in whatever station and season we find ourselves. How might we be content in Christ and yet move toward, and through, the various transitions in our lives?
Christ Assigns Our Stations
Before addressing the practical question, let’s first establish that Christ, our Lord, assigns us various “subordinate identities” under our primary identity as Christians, and let’s clarify what these secondary identities are. In a generation that likes to play dress-up with our own identities, we do well to regularly rehearse what our actual, objective identities are, rather than those that are aspirational, subjective, and not yet actual.
As Christians, we have our fundamental identity “in Christ,” servants of the Master, assigned to various stations in life. Paul’s orienting word to the Athenians in Acts 17:26 remains true for us today in all the complexities and confusion of the twenty-first century: God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.” You live when and where you do by God’s good providence and design. He determines our nationalities, our families, our vocations, and the various “stations” in which we are placed, however temporarily or indefinitely.
Writing to the Corinthians, and for all Christians, Paul says: “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches” (1 Cor. 7:17). Paul does not mean that some aspects of our assignments never change (more on that below), but he cautions us against overlooking or minimizing the posts where God has stationed us at this moment. So what are the various identities and stations He assigns?
Humanly speaking, our first identities are those into which we are born, in our homes and families. We are born either male or female, a son or a daughter. Also, many of us were born as brothers or sisters or cousins. Then, while still growing up, we acquired other secondary identities: student, congregant, teammate, employee, voting citizen. Later came leaving mother and father and cleaving in marriage to establish a new home and family—and so we become husband or wife, and then father or mother. With age and maturity come other identities as well: teacher, employer, governor, coach.
Among these various subordinate identities are peer relationships, such as brother, sister, cousin, teammate, fellow student, and fellow worker. But other identities are ordered, or we might say complementary, even hierarchical: wife to husband, child to parent, student to teacher, employee to employer, player to coach. So, too, in church life we find both symmetrical and asymmetrical relationships: fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters in the faith (1 Tim. 5:1–2).
Many of us today are quite comfortable with peer relationships. We have learned a leveling, democratic instinct, and we expect profound (though not perfect) equality. At least in principle, we understand and appreciate largely symmetrical relationships among friends, brothers, sisters, cousins, and teammates, even as we acknowledge that among these, various small asymmetries are inevitable, depending on age, maturity, and other factors.
But many today struggle with the ordered, complementary, and asymmetrical identities. We have learned the leveling impulse so well. Our noses have been trained to sniff out inequalities in the more ordered and hierarchical relationships. These can make us uncomfortable, and in doing so, they reveal particular places in Scripture where we might freshly recalibrate our minds to be faithful to our callings.
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Written by Benjamin L. Gladd |
Monday, August 12, 2024
The Gospel writers include only the most pertinent information in their narratives. They don’t give us every historical detail at their disposal. For example, here in Mark 16:5, only one angel is found in the tomb, whereas Luke 24:4 says there were two. Is this a contradiction? No, Mark doesn’t claim there was only one angel. He simply aims his spotlight on the one angel and how that angel functions in the scene. The evangelists only included details that hold interpretive value.

Good stories often include odd details. But what first strikes the reader as odd or random may later turn out to be interesting and insightful. Have you noticed, for example, that Doc Brown’s bandana in Back to the Future Part III is made from the same material as his shirt in Part II? What appears to be a run-of-the-mill piece of clothing takes on new significance when it’s viewed in light of the larger narrative.
There’s a similarly odd but significant detail in Mark 16. The ending of Mark’s Gospel has long been problematic for some commentators because it lacks an explicit resurrection appearance (vv. 1–8). Matthew, Luke, and John narrate Jesus appearing to the disciples and to two women. But an odd detail in Mark’s ending may be one reason Jesus doesn’t make a post-resurrection appearance in this Gospel. Could an angel’s enigmatic posture hold an important clue?
Vivid Description
Mark 16 opens with three women—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of John and James, and Salome—approaching Jesus’s tomb at dawn on Sunday (vv. 1–2). On their way, the women wonder who could roll away the large stone that sealed the tomb. But when they arrived, to their surprise, the stone had been rolled away (vv. 3–4).
The women ventured into the tomb and observed “a young man sitting on the right side [kathēmenon en tois dexiois], dressed in a white robe” (v. 5) Mark divulges three vivid details here: the presence of an individual (“young man”), the man’s apparel (“white robe”), and the man’s posture and location (“sitting on the right side”).
Repeated Wording
These concrete details certainly underscore the three women’s eyewitness account, but perhaps there’s another significant reason Mark mentions them. He may have included the odd detail of the angel’s “sitting on the right side” (kathēmenon en tois dexiois) because of its symbolic significance.
A literal rendering of the phrase is “seated on the right.” Often, the adjective “right” (dexios) occurs by itself and lacks a noun, so the context determines the implied noun (e.g., Matt. 6:3; Mark 10:40; Luke 1:11). In Mark 16:5, the “right” likely means the “right side” of the bench inside the tomb. But “sitting at the right” only occurs two other times in Mark’s Gospel:
David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared, “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand [kathou ek dexiōn], until I put your enemies under your feet.’” (12:36)
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