Several other psalms share this constellation of motifs wherein Yahweh is portrayed as the God of the skies/storm (a) who prevails over the waters/seas and rivers (rendered “floods” in some English translations), (b) who is then acclaimed as “king,” and (c) whose temple/palace (hekal) resides on the sacred mountain (Pss 29; 74; 93; 97; 104).
This storyline is unlike the historical one familiar from the Pentateuch, where the God of Abraham brought Israel out of Egypt to His sacred mountain at Sinai, where He disclosed His covenant and law, and then led His people through the wilderness to the promised land. But this cosmic storyline is common in the ANE, most notably in the Baal Myth of the eastern Mediterranean (KTU 1.2.4.7–32; 1.4.6.16–38) and in the Enuma Elish of Mesopotamia (4.31–134; 5.85–88, 117–124). Psalm 29, in fact, contains some expressions that are more at home in the wider Canaanite world than in Israel’s (e.g., the “sons of gods” in Ps 29:1, the geographic word pair of Lebanon and Sirion, the sevenfold thunderous voice that comes with lightning, and the frequent alliteration with the consonants of Ba’al). Evidently the biblical psalmists spoke through the Semitic cultural idiom of their time to acclaim Yahweh as the true divine king who vanquishes the forces of chaos and so establishes “right order” (צֶדֶק, tsedeq or צְדָקָה, tsedaqah).
They did, however, extend this idiom in revealing ways. Psalm 29, for example, after hymning the cosmic king’s strong, earth-shaking voice, closes with a petition that is uniquely Yahwistic: “may Yahweh give strength to his people; may Yahweh bless his people with peace.” This seemingly random power displayed in a violent thunderstorm is now to be channeled specially to His people for their well-being.
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(b) Songs of Zion. The Songs of Zion are an extension of the divine kingship tradition. They commemorate the sacred mountain of the God of the skies (76:2, 8) who utters His thunderous voice (46:6). In fact, Mount Zion is explicitly compared to “the height of Zaphon” (48:1–2), which was the sacred mountain of Baal to the north in modern-day Syria (KTU 1.3.3.28–31). Another Song of Zion describes a “river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High” (46:4) in terms that echo “the mountain of El,” which lies “at the source of the rivers, amidst the springs of the deeps” (KTU 1.4.4.20–23).
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(c) Royal Psalms. In the Royal psalms the fundamental tradition legitimating Davidic rule is, of course, the Dynastic Oracle (Ps 89:19–37), but even here David’s political kingship is predicated on Yahweh’s cosmic kingship, hymned in verses 5–18. Similarly in Psalm 2, the source for the prophetic oracle, “I have consecrated my king upon Zion my holy mountain,” is identified as “the one seated in the heavens/skies.” In royal psalms referring to battle, Yahweh’s saving help is both from “Zion” (Ps 20:2) and “from his holy heavens/skies” (Ps 20:6).
The king’s rescue is based on a theophany of the God of the skies, who “rode on a cherub and flew” (Ps 18:7–15).
(d) Psalms alluding to Israel’s armies. These psalms draw from traditions principally found in the ancient victory songs, not from the Pentateuch. In Psalm 44 Israel clearly has “armies,” who are defeated in battle, a feature that limits its origins to the pre-exilic period. It explicitly invokes the historical memory of the conquest of Canaan (Ps 44:1–3). But much of the terminology echoes not the book of Joshua but the ancient Song of the Sea, where God’s agency overshadows any efforts of the Hebrews (Exod 15:6, 9, 12, 16–17). Psalm 80, which refers to Yahweh’s cherubim-throne and to Israel’s king, portrays a battle defeat in the image of a wild boar that feeds on an unprotected vine that Yahweh had “uprooted” from Egypt and “planted” in the land. This portrayal of the exodus and conquest is unlike the Pentateuchal narrative, but it likely combines pastoral images from Jacob’s blessing of “Joseph” (Gen 49:22–26) and the Song of the Sea (Exod 15). As the divine Shepherd leads “Joseph” in the psalm’s opening invocation, so God is named Shepherd (Gen 49:24) and “leads” His people to His sacred sheepfold (Exod 15:13) in these two ancient poems. As Joseph is likened to a fruitful bough with spreading branches (Gen 49:22), so God’s people are likened to a vine “planted” (Exod 15:17) with overflowing branches in Psalm 80.
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(e) Prayers of the Individual. The prayer psalms of the individual lack allusions to the corporate traditions evident in other psalms. They reflect a much simpler piety, which is expressed in their favorite divine title, “my God.” Claims to having a personal, guardian deity are not unique to ancient Israel (see, e.g., “Prayer of Kantuzilis,” ANET, 400–401, and “Man and his God,” ANET, 589–91).
Prayers of the individual are based on the “my God” tradition, where one’s personal, guardian deity is expected to answer when called upon.
But what is exceptional to these biblical psalms is that the Israelite’s personal, guardian deity is none other than Yahweh, the Most High who is incomparable to all spiritual beings.
Simply put, the substance of this tradition is that “my God” answers when called upon (see esp. 22:1–2, 9–10; 38:15; 140:6). This epithet appears in immediate connection with the petitioner either calling, trusting, or praising. The obligation of “my God” is to answer with deliverance, especially from premature death.
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(f) Summary. The key function of these psalmic liturgies was to serve as songs that lead to prayer and the worship. Their interest lies in promoting an encounter with and an experience of the Transcendent. And so as poetry, they engage imagination. At Yahweh’s temple-palace the most ready metaphor is that of Yahweh as divine king. Where the pre-exilic psalms do echo earlier historical traditions, it is usually found in the ancient poems of the Song of the Sea (Exod 15), the Song of Moses (Deut 32), the Blessing of Moses (Deut 33), and the Song of Deborah (Judg 5).
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While pre-exilic psalmody portrays Yahweh through the wider Semitic idiom of the God of the skies, it applies and develops it significantly in two distinct contexts. First, Yahweh’s theophany is incorporated into “thanksgiving” for saving His people in military contexts (Ps 18; 68). Unlike Baal, Yahweh has “his people,” on whose behalf He intervenes (notably 29:11). Second, the appearance of the God of the skies is to vanquish the wicked and to bring the establishment of justice in legal and moral contexts (Pss 50; 97; cf. Ps 68). In Israel the cosmic king establishes “right order” in both nature and human society. Yahweh saving activity, whereby He puts things “right,” extends into the human realms of history and justice.
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Exilic Psalms and the Formation of Torah
Despite the temple’s destruction, the people of God still gathered for prayer during the exilic period (cf. Zech 7:3; 8:19). Exilic psalms echo some of the same traditions as the pre-exilic psalms. Both Psalms 74 and 79 lament the destruction the Jerusalem temple. Some of their expressions are reminiscent of the Song of the Sea (e.g., cf. 74:2 and Exod 15:13, 17). The hymnic segment that forms the basis of Psalm 74’s appeal for help remembers not the exodus in particular but the cosmic tradition of the divine king’s victory over the “sea” and “Leviathan” in the act of primeval creation (cf. 74:12–17 and KTU 1.5:1:1–4, where Baal is said to have vanquished Litan, and KTU 1.3.3.38–42, where Anat claims to have vanquished the serpent).
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The prayer psalms of the individual do not incorporate national traditions until the exilic and postexilic periods. As noted above, the pre-exilic individual prayer psalms simply appeal to the tradition that “my God” answers when called upon. Corporate traditions and concerns, such as Zion and the exodus, do appear in the longer individual prayers of Psalms 22, 51, 69, 77 and 102, but in each case they are found in a discrete section within the psalm. These psalms—in their final, edited form—show a particular affinity to the exilic or early postexilic periods.
Because the corporate traditions in these individual prayers appear to be later insertions, it is likely that earlier pre-exilic individual prayers were used as vehicles of lament for the communities of the exilic period—for the exiles in Babylon and for those who remained in Palestine. A clear example of this phenomenon, is Lamentations 3, which laments the destruction of Jerusalem using the literary form of individual lament.
The Babylonian destruction of the temple shifted the focus of Israelite religion from temple to Torah, from liturgy to literature. The psalms survived as scrolls.
The Babylonian invasion of 587 BC brought a sudden end to the worship at the temple and the performance of psalms. Yet the fact that psalms performed at the Solomonic temple were retained in the Bible testifies to their being “rescued” on scrolls taken into exile. The psalms transitioned from liturgies to literature.
This event marks a decisive turn in Israel’s religion, where the publication of their faith begins to shift from temple to Torah. Sacred space will give way to sacred scrolls. Seeing the temple symbols and rituals recedes, while hearing the word takes center stage. This development is evidenced in the postexilic “Torah psalms” and the formation of the “Book of Psalms,” discussed below.
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During the pre-exilic period the psalms, as liturgies sung at the pilgrimage festivals, were the principal means for “publishing” the faith traditions of the people of Yahweh. Odd as it might sound, the notion of written Scriptures is anachronistic to the period of the Old Testament itself. When sacred scrolls were read aloud publicly, it is clear that their contents were not known to their audience. In Exodus 24:3–7 Moses read the “words” (20:1) and the “judgments” (21:1) of “the book of the covenant” (Exodus 20–23) to the generation of the exodus at Mount Sinai. Some 600 years later a high priest happened to discover “the book of the law”—probably an early edition of the book of Deuteronomy—hidden in the temple archives. Upon hearing it read aloud, King Josiah tore his garments after learning how far God’s people had strayed from God’s instruction. Over 160 years later and after the exile, the scribe Ezra read “the book of the law of Moses”—probably some form of the Pentateuch—in Nehemiah 8 and the people wept in response. In other words, the public reading or publication of written Scriptures was the exception, not the rule, during biblical times.
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Hence, without temple, king, or land, a scribal culture became the driving force of Israel’s faith and religion. There was no centralized temple for the people of God to gather in worship to hear the Levitical choirs singing the liturgies and hymns from which they had learned of their faith during the pre-exilic period. Based on “the book of the law,” there developed the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1–2 Samuel, and 1–2 Kings), books that share the language, themes, and theological perspective of Deuteronomy. In addition, other scrolls were compiled and edited into their nearly complete editions, such as the prophetic scrolls and the Pentateuch, later read by Ezra the scribe after the return from exile. The gradual shift from temple to torah can be illustrated in the postexilic Chronicler’s rewriting of first temple traditions found in 1–2 Kings. The pre-exilic phrases, “before me” (1 Kgs 8:25) and “the sight of the LORD” (1 Kgs 14:22), which principally refer to God’s presence at the Temple, are replaced with expressions referring to the God’s “law” or “torah” (2 Chr 6:16; 12:1).
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Second Temple Psalms and the Book of Psalms
It is in psalms that are evidently postexilic (note, e.g., the petition for restoration from exile in 106:47 and the distinction between the houses of Aaron and Levi in 135:19–20) that the recital of the Pentateuchal storyline comes center stage (Pss 105; 106; 135; 136). In Psalm 135 the exodus-conquest sequence is prefaced with claims of Yahweh as cosmic king and God of the skies, implying that Yahweh’s cosmic sovereignty is now evidenced in the historical events of Yahweh’s “signs and wonders against Pharaoh” and His “striking down” of “many nations” (see the same pattern in Ps 136).
Historical psalms in this period begin to echo the pentateuchal storyline. Yahweh, the cosmic king (God of the skies), becomes the political king over the nations. Yahweh's kingdom eclipses the former Davidic kingdom.
In fact, the psalms that assert Yahweh’s sovereignty over the nations most forcefully are these two psalms, along with Psalm 115 (115:2–3; 135:5–6; 136:2–4). The combination of the cosmic tradition of Yahweh as divine king and the historical traditions of the pentateuchal storyline makes possible a symbiosis that generates a radically new theology of Yahweh. Yahweh, by becoming cosmic king over all divine beings in the heavenly council, becomes the political king over all nations, as evidenced by the repetition of the “kings” and “kingdoms” vanquished in Canaan and especially in Transjordan (135:10–11; 136:17–20). Hence, postexilic psalms are the first to refer to Yahweh’s “kingdom” (103:19; 145:11–13).
"Torah psalms" emerge and the five-fold Book of Psalms is formed.
With the emergence of the scriptures and of pentateuchal Torah in particular, the Torah Psalms (Pss 1; 19:7–19; 119, discussed further below) reflect a newfound devotion to the meditative reading and study of the written Torah. Indeed, this development is evident in the final compilation of “the Book of Psalms” itself, wherein the earlier collections were compiled so that the Psalms became a Torah in their own right, mirroring the five books of the Pentateuch.
Each book is marked off by a concluding doxology, such as “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! Amen and Amen” (41:13; and 72:18–19; 89:52; 106:48). The imperatival hymn of Psalm 150 serves as a doxology not only to Book V but also to the Book of Psalms as a whole. It was probably in this final stage of editing that Psalms 1 and 2 were placed at the head of the collection. Their lack of a psalmic superscript marks them off from the rest of the psalms in Book I. Psalm 1 had originally been a Torah Psalm, where “the law of the Lord” referred to the Torah of the Pentateuch. But now in its new location introducing the five books of the Psalms, it encourages meditation on the psalms as literature.
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There are signs of even earlier stages of editing or redaction in the collection of the psalms. Noted in some of the psalms superscripts are “Davidic” psalms (Pss 3–41, except Pss 10 and 33; 51–65; 68–71; 86; 101; 103; 108–110; 138–145). This royal collection is distinct from the two Levitical collections found in the psalms of “the sons of Korah” (Pss 42–49; 84–85; 87–88) and the psalms of “Asaph” (Pss 50; 73–83). Korah psalms appear in Books II and III, and Asaph psalms principally in Book III. In Book V there are the “Psalms of Ascent” (Pss 120–134), which probably formed a prayer book for pilgrims to the postexilic temple. Generally, most of these later, postexilic psalms appear in Book V. An analysis of the Psalms scrolls found at the Dead Sea shows that the order of Psalms 1–89 had been fixed by the time of the Qumran community (before the first century BC), but the ordering of the remaining psalms was fluid until the end of the first century AD (see Peter Flint, The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls. 135).
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Overlapping Books II and III is the “Elohistic Psalter” (Pss 42–83), where the generic Hebrew name for God, “Elohim,” is preferred five times over the divine name Yahweh, usually rendered “the Lord” in most English translations. This is the opposite proportion found in the rest of the Book of Psalms. This preference is especially evident in duplicate psalms. Psalm 14 is nearly identical to Psalm 53, yet the former uses the divine name, Yahweh, and the latter the generic name, Elohim. The same is true for Ps 40:13–17 and Psalm 70. Although all four of these psalms are “of David,” these duplications imply that these Yahwistic and Elohistic psalms had circulated in separate collections before being collected into the Book of Psalms.
Info Box: David and the Psalm Superscripts
In the superscripts the phrase, “of David” (leDavid), occurs 73 times, 28 of which appear as “a Psalm of David” and 7 of which as “Of David. A Psalm.” Its precise meaning is ambiguous. The name “David” itself can mean either the historical individual or a king of the Davidic dynasty (Jer. 30:9; Ezek. 34:23–24; 37:24–25; Hos. 3:5). The prepositional phrase could be understood as “for David” or “(dedicated) to David.” It could also be interpreted as “(belonging) to David,” in the sense of ownership, either as author of the psalm or royal patron of the songs of the sanctuary at the nation’s capital. The phrase could also denote “belonging to a Davidic collection,” thus reflecting the royal patronage of the temple, as distinct from the Levitical collections of Asaph and Korah. We cannot assume that this Hebrew preposition (l) denotes authorship, because the same preposition appears in the phrase, “to/for the (choir) director/overseer/supervisor,” which appears in many of the same superscripts as “of David.”
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Thirteen of these superscriptions also refer to historical events in David’s life (Pss. 3, 7, 18, 34, 51, 52, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 63, 142), suggesting these psalms could be read as composed by him on these occasions. This hypothesis, however, is at variance with the observations above that psalms have been composed generically—from the outset—for typical, recurring human needs and services of worship. In fact, many of these “Davidic” psalms mention developments that took place after David’s lifetime, such as the construction of the temple (5:7; 68:69; 138:2) and its courts (65:4), though it is possible these expressions are simply editorial updates of earlier psalms. Some of the historical superscriptions seem to be at variance with the contents of their psalms. The superscript to Psalm 63 points to David’s flight from Saul while “in the desert of Judah” (1 Sam 23–26), but the claim within the psalm that “the king will rejoice in God” seems out of place in reference to king Saul. The superscript of Psalm 59 is a citation of 1 Samuel 19:11, which narrates internal political intrigue, but the scope of the psalm itself is international where God is implored to “punish all the nations” and where the downfall of the enemies would make “known to the ends of the earth that God rules over Jacob.”
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Further light on these psalms superscripts may be found by examining where and how the other technical terms are used elsewhere in the Bible. In each case they point to the postexilic period for the origins of the superscripts. The only other appearances of the term “director/overseer/supervisor” are Hab 3:19; 2 Chr 2:1, 17; 34:13. (Other forms of this Hebrew Piel verb occur only in 1–2 Chronicles and Ezra, all postexilic books.) Some of the technical musical terms, such as “alamoth” (Ps 46) and “sheminith” (Pss 6; 12), are found elsewhere only in 1 Chronicles (15:20–21). Indeed, some of the chief Levites, namely Heman, Asaph, and Ethan, named in other psalm superscripts (Pss 50; 73–83; 88; 89) are also referenced here (1 Chr 15:19; regarding Korah, see 2 Chr 20:19).
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In this larger passage David institutes the singing of a psalm (16:8–36), which is actually a composite of three separate psalms of three different genres found in the Book of Psalms (105:1–15; 96:1–13; 106:1, 47–48). These psalms evidently originated after David’s lifetime, as the Chronicler removed anachronistic references to the Solomonic temple. He replaced “his sanctuary” and “into his courts” (Ps 96:6, 8) with the generic “his place” and “before him” (1 Chr 16:27, 29). And the citation of Psalm 106 includes verse 48, which is actually the doxology that closes Book IV of the Psalter and was thus added no earlier than the postexilic period. Close comparison of this wider narrative, in which David brings the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem (1 Chr 13–16), with its parallels in 2 Samuel shows that the Chronicler recasts the David of 1–2 Samuel as an exemplar of Jewish piety. Thus, as 1 Chronicles presents David as a model worshiper and a composer of psalms, so the psalm superscripts probably reflect the same mode of reinterpretation, as is probably the case for Psalm 51.
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The probability that David’s deepening association with particular psalms was a postexilic phenomenon increases once we consider the LXX. It prefaces the equivalent phrase, “of David,” to 85 psalms (adding Pss 33, 43, 71, 91, 93–99, 104, and 137, though dropping Pss 122 and 124).
Once the Psalms became sacred literature and were incorporated with other scriptures in the exilic and postexilic periods, the psalms “of David” were probably correlated with the David of 1–2 Samuel. Some of these superscriptions thus invite readers to reinterpret them as psalms “by” David. Since he was “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14; Acts 13:22), his prayers became exemplary prayers for the people of God. Thus, Davidic authorship of psalms is indeed biblical, so long as it is recognized that this forms a reinterpretation of liturgical psalmody, in order to personalize and embody the pious Jew loyal to God.
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Whether or not David was their author, the psalms were preserved, not to give us historical information about David, but to serve as models of prayer and praise for the people of God. It is as open-ended poetry that the Psalms have retained their universal appeal over the millennia, making them suitable to any worshiper at any time and from any place.