Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 22:2 (Summer 2018)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

Bruce K. Waltke, James M. Houston and Erika Moore, The Psalms as Christian Lament: A Historical Commentary, Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan 2014; ISBN 978–0–8028–6809–1; pb. 312 pp., price $28.00

The Book of Psalms has a special place in the Bible. It has more than once been called a Bible in miniature. All the great themes of the Old Testament (OT) have their place in the Psalms: creation and redemption, the expectation of the coming Messiah, the longing for Zion, the desire that Zion will be rebuilt. In the Psalms, we find laments, confessions of guilt, but also thanksgivings and praises. The Psalms are given us by God both as a directory of worship and as a prayer book. When we worship God, we ought to give a special place to the Psalms in both individual and corporate worship. Our prayers ought to be full of the words and phrases of the Psalms.

As well as having a special place in the Bible itself, the Book of Psalms has also had a special place in the life of the church over the centuries. As Protestant Christians, we reject the phenomenon of monasticism, but we cannot object to the custom that in the monasteries the Psalms were prayed daily; praying through the whole book of Psalms just in a week or a month. Psalm 51 was prayed daily. Luther, the great sixteenth-century Reformer, was originally an Augustinian friar. Towards the end of his life, it was his habit, just as he had done when he was a friar, to pray the Psalms daily.

Many commentaries have been written on the Psalms over the centuries. It can only be to our spiritual disadvantage if we neglect the great treasures to be found in commentaries, tractates and sermons penned in former ages. Even leaving aside other aspects, it is theologically that the old material very often surpasses contemporary commentaries. In particular, when commenting on psalm, the depth or shallowness of one’s own Christian experience will influence the way in which he interprets the psalm. More than once, the contemporary Christian reader will find cause enough for lament over his own shallowness when comparing his own theological insight on a psalm with that of a commentator from the past.

In the postmodern era, the notion has arisen that each biblical scholar

and exegete reads Scripture by operating from the perspective of a certain tradition. This has denied the stance of the Enlightenment that one can read the Bible in a purely neutral way: even what has heretofore been regarded as neutral study of the Scripture must now, it is asserted, be seen as standing within a given tradition. In this climate, fresh attention has been pai...

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