a little something on the Psalms

Do you study the Psalms? There is rich treasure here to lift your spirit in worship to God. We are studying the Psalms in our Wednesday evening service. We started this a couple of months ago. Each Sunday, I read the upcoming Psalm as our scripture reading in the AM service. I encourage our people to read ahead and think of the theme and the divisions (or outline) of the Psalm before they get there on Wednesday night.

On Wednesday’s, we begin with 15 minutes of favourites, then we launch into a guided discussion. I come away from these sessions extremely uplifted. Our people are showing good insight and I am deepening my understanding of ‘David’s hymn book’.

Tonight’s Psalm is Psalm 8.

Give it a read, but do study the NT tie-ins. They open the Psalm up fully. Truly, ‘how majestic is thy name’!

For your own study, I would like to recommend a couple of resources. The first is Derek Kidner’s fine commentary on the Psalms. His notes are brief, but every one is full of insight. If you are a preacher, you will find good help here for sermon preparation. I think that anyone would benefit by having a clearer understanding of the Psalms through using his commentary.

Kidner comes in two volumes. Here is a link for Volume I and one for Volume II.

Another resource is E. W. Bullinger’s The Chief Musician or, Studies in the Psalms, and Their Titles. Bullinger presents a unique point of view on the titles of the Psalms. The comments on the titles in various commentaries are all over the map on their meaning. I tell our people that means [usually], ‘Nobody knows!’ That is probably true about the titles of the Psalms, but Bullinger proposes an interesting theory he learned from a still earlier teacher, James W. Thirtle.

The theory is that the Psalm titles are being divided the wrong way in our versions. In the Hebrew, there were no breaks between the Psalms, just line after line of text, including the titles. Comparing Hab 3, Bullinger suggests that generally the Psalms should have superscripts and subscripts – in other words the titles should be divided between the preceding and following Psalms.

For example, in Psalm 8, the superscript before the Psalm is “For the choir director; on the Gittith. A Psalm of David.” Bullinger assigns “For the choir director; on the Gittith” to Ps 7 and “A Psalm of David” to Ps 8. Before Ps 9, we have “For the choir director; on Muth-labben. A Psalm of David.” This title should be divided the same way, the first half the subscript of Ps 8, the second the superscript of Ps 9.

In his elaboration of the terms in the titles, Bullinger, seizing upon ‘muth-labben’, connects the Psalm with David’s conquest over Goliath. Since the Psalm speaks of man’s dominion, and is connected to The One True Man’s dominion in the end of the Age (see Heb 2.5-9), seeing the Psalm in light of the conquest over Goliath seems to add to the high sense of worship the Psalm conveys all by itself. Or so it seems to me.

I don’t know if Bullinger’s theories are 100% correct, but they certainly do add a good deal to one’s consideration of the Psalms. I commend his work to you for your own study of the Psalms.