The Structure Of The Book Of Psalms -- By: Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 174:693 (Jan 2017)
Article: The Structure Of The Book Of Psalms
Author: Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.


The Structure Of The Book Of Psalms*

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 Psalm...

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