The Canonical Arrangement of the Psalms

Since the development of a canonical approach to biblical interpretation pioneered by Brevard Childs (see his Introduction, pp. 511–25), the interpretation of the Psalms has changed drastically from the trajectories set by Gunkel and the early form-critical project. Using such a canonical approach specifically for the book of Psalms, Gerald H. Wilson’s Editing the Hebrew Psalter and subsequent work sought to uncover the editorial intention in the arrangement of the whole Psalter. The result of Wilson’s work was, very broadly, a sense that the Psalms cannot be a haphazard heap of poems. Rather, the Psalms as a whole have a “shape,” something akin to a narrative arc. The various sections (“books”) within the whole collection of Psalms then take on new significance, and the understanding of these groups of psalms in their canonical order reveals more than might at first meet the eye. Likewise, individual psalms become endued with new possibilities of meaning within their group and as part of the overall shape of the whole collection.

For an overview the canonical approach applied to the Psalms, especially over-against other forms of biblical criticism, see Waltke and Houston, Psalms as Christian Worship, pp. 100–104; VanGemeren, Psalms, pp. 34–40.

Of course, this “innovation” of the twentieth century has an analogue in ancient interpretation. There is an appreciation of the arrangment of the five books of the Psalms among Christian interpreters as early as the fourth century AD. In a treatise On the Inscriptions of the Psalms, Gregory of Nyssa considered how the five books bring readers through a stepwise ascent of the soul through virtue into eschatological blessedness, culminating in the reuniting of human and angelic natures (9.81–83 [PG, Vol. 44, Col. 484b–c]). If that sounds strange, consider Jesus’s words to the Sadducees: in the resurrection, the blessed will be ὡς ἄγγελοι, “like angels” (Matt 22.30//Mark 12.25), or ἰσάγγελοι, “angel-like” (Luke 20.36). Anyway, the point is that understanding the Psalms to have a canonical shape that is “going somewhere” has ancient pedigree.

For the Greek and Latin of Gregory of Nyssa's Tractatus in Psalmorum Inscriptiones, see Patrologia Graeca, vol. 44, col. 434–608. For an English translation, see Heine, Gregory of Nyssa’s Treatise on the Inscriptions of the Psalms: Introduction, Translation, and Notes.

Psalm 90 as the Beginning of the Fourth Book in the Psalms

The Import of Psalm 89 for Psalm 90

Supposing a canonical shape like the one proposed by Wilson, much is made of the transition from Book 3, ending with Ps 89, to Book 4, beginning with Ps 90. In Ps 89, Ethan the Ezrahite rehearses the tremendous promises of God’s covenant with David, the apparent failure of Solomon and the other Davidides, and the disasters that would follow. There was no apparent solution to the questions that Ethan posed at the end of Ps 89:

• Verse 46 (47 MT): How long will God “hide” and wrathfully allow his people to suffer the covenant-curses?
• Verse 48 (49 MT): Is there anyone who can live forever or rise from the domain of the dead?
• Verse 49 (50 MT): If God made promises to David according to his covenant-love (חסד, vv. 24, 28 [25, 29 MT]), which is inseparable from his constancy (אמונה, v. 1 [2 MT]) and lasts forever (v. 2 [3 MT]) and will not be removed (v. 33 [34 MT])—then where is this covenant-love now?

Here I have paraphrased the questions in a set of three, as they occur in three verses. VanGemeren (Psalms, pp. 687–88) breaks them down into five, and he insightfully shows how the five questions are answered in Book 4 of the Psalms—that is, in Pss 90–106.

All that Ethan could fall back on was the plea for God to “remember” certain things:

• Verse 47 (48 MT): Ethan pleads that God would remember what this world is like and how the curse-condition renders human life apparently worthless.
• Verses 50–51 (51–52 MT): Ethan pleads that God would remember the taunts and mocking hurled against his people, against Ethan himself, and against the anointed one.

For the faithful, such a plea for God to remember is a heart-cry in the face of a whelming flood of sorrows and threats in this sin-cursed world. The heart-cry is not indicting God as forgetful but appealing to God’s constancy, which complements his covenant-love (see summary of Ps 89.49 above). Ethan’s pleas run together with his unanswered questions. The questions are unanswered, but the pleas are proof that Ethan knows that there is an answer. The faithful heart knows that such an answer is only God’s to give. Somehow—Ethan seems not to know exactly how in Ps 89—God’s covenant-love will reappear, and its reappearance will be a function of his constancy and will accord with how God has always dealt with his people in the covenantal-historical records. Amid present questions and uncertainties, Ethan leans on God’s past dealings with his people in order to keep a life-from-the-dead, hope-against-hope expectancy for the future. If God would take account of the weaknesses of his people under the conditions of the curse, caused by their sin, and the ridicule that his people and his anointed one receive from other nations—then one might expect an answer to the questions posed:

• God will not hide forever or allow them to suffer to utter destruction.
• There is someone who can live forever and who can do so by rising from the dead, so proving God’s power to rescue Israel (e.g., Acts 2.14–40; 1 Cor 15.16–23; cf. Ezek 37.1–14).
• God’s covenant-love is still in force, including the restoration at its terminus and fulfillment, promised after the curses are executed (cf. Deut 30.1–10).

Enter Psalm 90, which is “a prayer of Moses, the man of God.”

A Prayer of Moses to Follow Psalm 89

From the canonical and covenantal-historical perspectives, the form-critical approach of Gerstenberger misses the mark with its ambivalence toward Ps 90’s attribution to Moses: “Perhaps the late collectors and editors of the psalms wanted to mark a new beginning of Israel, after the downfall of the monarchy, as a Torah-centered community, [. . .] or were dwelling on some affinities of Psalm 90 to the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32), or they simply thought of Moses as the most ancient hero of their history” (Psalms Part 2, p. 158). Gerstenberger’s psychologization of the editors ends up in a superficial analysis, and his nonchalance seems to me to betray a lack of seriousness. For him, it really does not matter that this psalm is attributed to Moses or that it is placed where it is in the Psalter. But from the canonical perspective, Moses’s prayer is not placed after Psalm 89 to communicate a “new beginning” or to privilege Torah over monarchy (as if a Torah-centered community could not also long for a true and godly king) or to make a neat literary connection or to lend weight to a prayer that was not weighty enough already. Or if there is a “new beginning,” it comes by way of a return to Israel’s constitution in the days of Moses, a remembrance of the true foundations of Israel and of Israel’s original and continual need for God’s grace and intervention.

At the precipice of despair, the inspired editors of the Psalter chose a prayer from Israel’s great intercessor. The title given to Moses, “the man of God” ((cf. Deut 33.1; Josh 14.6; 1 Chron 23.14; 2 Chron 30.16; Ezra 3.2), does indeed point to Moses’s intercessory and mediatorial role, as noted by Gregory of Nyssa (On the Inscriptions of the Psalms 1.7). The intercession of Moses had saved the children of Israel from utter destruction after its lowest moment of rebellion (e.g., Exod 32.11–14; Deut 9.18–20, 26–29), so here again after Ps 89 we find Moses standing in the gap (cf. 106.23) to call upon God’s mercy (90.13). In the minds of the inspired editors of the Psalter, a prayer of Moses on behalf of the children of Israel in their wilderness wanderings is exactly the prayer that’s needed for Israel facing or recovering from exile. With Moses’s intercession, a remnant of Israel will surely make it through the exile, just as a remnant made it through the wilderness.

This last point is made in Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty, p. 199.

Psalm 90 Setting the Theme for the Fourth Book of the Psalter

It is often remarked that the Fourth Book is “Mosaic” since Moses is mentioned seven times (Pss 90.0 [1 MT]; 99.6; 103.7; 105.26; 106.16, 23, 32)—and only once elsewhere in the Psalter (77.20 [21 MT]). The word-frequency is, in this case, very revealing. Still, we would miss the point if we do not also spell out why it is important that psalms reflecting on and reacting to Ps 89 are called “Mosaic.” Moses points beyond himself. As the psalmists look back to Moses, to the contitution of Israel as God’s holy people, they are also looking upward to God’s kingdom (e.g., Ps 103.19) and forward to a new exodus (n.b., 105.43–44) and to the reconstitution of Israel (e.g., 106.47), which had nearly died out again in the wilderness-wandering of exile. So I think Futato is right when he says that “the Mosaic flavor” of the Fourth Book signals a call “to live eschatologically” (Interpreting Psalms, p. 86).

As Ps 89 reflects on the utter failure of the sons of David and the threat of Israel’s dissolution, the Fourth Book, with “a prayer of Moses” at its head, “teaches that we are to live by faith in the reign of God even when the evidence is to the contrary” (Futato, “Psalms,” BTIOT, p. 352). Psalm 90 in its canonical context looks forward to the day when God will come to dwell with Israel in a new way so that they will have renewed and heightened access to God as their dwelling place (cf. v. 1 [2 MT]), when the evening of death will be overcome by a new and evening-less morning of resurrection (cf. vv. 14–15), when the work of God’s servants will be given eternal significance (cf. v. 17).

Psalm 90 is “a prayer of Moses” for the final and true “man of God,” Jesus Christ.

Bibliography

• Childs, Brevard S. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1979. ABE Books.
• Dempster, Stephen G. Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible. NSBT 15. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004. WTS Books.
• Gerstenberger, Erhard S. Psalms, Part 2, and Lamentations. FOTL 15. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001. ABE Books.
• Futato, Mark D. Interpreting Psalms: An Exegetical Handbook. HOTE. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2007. WTS Books.
• Futato, Mark D. “Psalms.” Pages 341–55 in A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the Old Testament: The Gospel Promised. Edited by Miles V. Van Pelt. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016. BTIOT. WTS Books.
• Heine, Ronald E. Gregory of Nyssa’s Treatise on the Inscriptions of the Psalms: Introduction, Translation, and Notes. OECS. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. OUP.
• Patrologia Graeca. Edited by J.-P. Migne. 162 vols. Paris: Migne, 1857–1886. PG. Public Domain: Patristica.net.
• VanGemeren, Willem A. Psalms. REBC 5. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008. WTS Books.
• Waltke, Bruce K. and James M. Houston. The Psalms as Christian Worship: A Historical Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008. WTS Books.
• Wilson, Gerald Henry. The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter. SBLDS 76. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985. ABE Books.