The Psalms
The Psalms have at all times been on the coronary heart of Christian worship. Believers sing, pray, and meditate on the phrases of the Psalms week in and week out, and so they have finished so because the basis of the church. This frequent devotion, nevertheless, is commonly solely partially shaped. We go to the Psalms seeking to discover ourselves, to place phrases to the feelings we already really feel or hope to really feel. We go to the Psalms as a voice for our coronary heart, as a counselor, as a consolation. None of that is unsuitable—it’s a part of why God gave us the Psalms—however it’s incomplete.
If we glance to the way in which the New Testomony makes use of the Psalms, we’ll uncover that along with an emotional outpouring to God, the New Testomony authors discover a wealthy theology of God within the Psalter. The Psalms, within the New Testomony’s studying, are the songs of the Son. The Father speaks to the Son, and the Son speaks in return.1 It’s not simply that some psalms predict issues about Jesus; it’s that in most of the psalms, we hear the voice of Jesus talking and the Father talking to him. The Son speaks in his preincarnate glory. He speaks in his earthly life and struggling. He even speaks within the function of his folks, taking their sin and their struggling onto himself.
Songs of the Son examines 9 psalms highlighted in Hebrews to disclose the preincarnate glory of Christ within the Previous Testomony.
Paul, the unknown creator of Hebrews, and Jesus himself all go to the Psalms to seek out Jesus, the Son of God, talking and being spoken to. In earlier eras, the church has been extra acutely aware of this, singing the Psalms frequently and discovering the phrases of Jesus of their mouths whilst they noticed Jesus singing their very own ideas, feelings, and confessions by means of the Psalter. Greater than some other e-book of the Previous Testomony, the Psalms presents us with the unity between Christ and his folks because the psalmists shortly shift between talking of the Son in his glory, in his humility, and in his illustration of his folks. Theophylact, a medieval Greek bishop whose New Testomony commentaries proved influential in each the Western and Japanese church buildings, would generalize from particular quotations and declare that Paul learn complete psalms as being about Jesus. This was possible uncontroversial. This isn’t to say that an interpretation is correct as a result of it’s outdated or was broadly accepted; however on this case, these Scripture-saturated Christians have been extra delicate to the Bible’s personal manner of studying itself. The Psalms are, of their fullness, the songs of the Son, the hymnbook of the higher David.
That is plain all through the New Testomony, however it’s notably poignant within the epistle to the Hebrews.
Learn by the Writer of Hebrews
Within the e-book of Hebrews, we’re introduced with the God who speaks. He speaks to us in his phrase and in his Son. However this isn’t all we see. The Father speaks to the Son, and the Son speaks again. The creator finds all through Scripture, however notably within the Psalms, this name and response inside the Trinity. A divine dialog performs out earlier than our eyes because the world is made, as salvation is completed, and as all issues are made new within the Son of God. Our God is a talking God, and earlier than he ever spoke to us, God has at all times been the one who speaks inside the Trinity. As this talking God turns to that which isn’t himself, all creation bursts into being and is sustained by that very same phrase. Inside historical past, God speaks many times, till ultimately that Son is available in whom God communicates completely and eventually. By grace, Hebrews provides us glimpses of this divine dialog. To take action, the creator turns to the language of the Psalms.
Inside historical past, God speaks many times, till ultimately that Son is available in whom God communicates completely and eventually.
Whereas any e-book of the New Testomony could possibly be used to assist us perceive God’s revelation within the Previous, few books supply as prolonged, deep, and specific an interplay with the Previous Testomony as does the epistle to the Hebrews. Particularly, on this one letter, we’re proven again and again how the Psalms kind our understanding of Jesus: his nature, his work, and his relationships. By means of paying shut consideration to how Hebrews causes with the Psalms, we’ll see Jesus extra clearly and be taught to learn the Psalms the apostles’ manner, because the songs of the Son.
Greater than some other impressed author, the creator of Hebrews develops his argument by reasoning with the Scriptures of Israel and notably with the Psalms. Excess of merely quoting the Psalms as illustrations or proof texts, the creator of Hebrews composes his complete letter as a collection of arguments from the Psalms and different Previous Testomony texts in gentle of Jesus’s life, loss of life, resurrection, ascension, ongoing work, and coming return.
Nowhere else do we now have such a dense and sustained interplay with one e-book of Scripture by one other. Whereas the creator weaves collectively texts from the entire Previous Testomony canon, deftly synthesizing the Legislation, the Prophets, and the Writings as he demonstrates the prevalence of Christ, it’s to the Psalms that he returns many times. At essential factors in his argument as he explains or applies or clarifies, the creator of Hebrews reaches constantly for the Psalms. Since that is the case, it’s notably useful for us to discover how the creator reads the Psalms.
It’s my conviction that if we learn the Psalms with the creator of Hebrews, we’ll be taught to learn the Psalms for what they honestly are. Their meanings will unfold as we see exactly how they witness to Christ: not solely as predictions to be fulfilled but additionally as testimony to the very voice of God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Within the voice of the psalmists, the Son reveals his nature, his mission, and his relationships along with his Father and his folks.
Notes:
- Whereas such a commentary is frequent within the older theological custom, in trendy scholarship on Hebrews it has been most clearly argued in Madison Pierce, Divine Discourse within the Epistle to the Hebrews: The Recontextualization of Spoken Quotations of Scripture (Cambridge: Cambridge College Press, 2020).
This text is tailored from Songs of the Son: Reading the Psalms with the Author of Hebrews by Daniel Stevens.
