We are Wonderfully Made Psalm 139
Paul Edmondstone Psalms and Wisdom Literature Christ the King Seminary October 20, 2016
The Book of Psalms is one of the more underappreciated books of the Old Testament and perhaps of the entire Bible by Catholics today. Every time we celebrate the Eucharist we hear a Psalm either recited or sung. Even though we encounter the Psalms everyday in the liturgical life of the Church, we seem to ignore them, probably because we do not fully understand what they are. The hope of this presentation is to explain what the Psalms are, their development and history, and then explain why we should value the Psalms more than we do today in our life of faith.
If you have ever even so much as looked at the Psalms in the Bible or perhaps in a hymnal, you will notice that they are written much differently than the majority of the Bible. First of all, they are hymns. The word Psalm comes from the Hebrew word, tehillim, which means praise. The word Psalm in Greek means to play on stringed instruments.1 Therefore, we know that they were hymns to God and we also know that the psalms would have been primarily sung and not recited by the Israelites. The story of the Old Testament, the story of salvation history, is about God seeking us out. In the Pentateuch, amongst other books, God speaks to us. However, as Robert Miller notes in the Psalms, “the roles are reversed. God is the ‘you’, and the author of the Psalm (or its reader) is the ‘I.’”2 The Psalms, therefore, are our prayer to God. Furthermore, authorship is largely unknown, as some Psalms are older; some are Davidic, in that they may refer to David’s kingship, be a dedication to David, or in fact be written by him. Given this, we can see this as our own prayer to the Father because there is not one single author.
1 Miller, Robert. The Psalms as Israel’s Prayer and Our Own. (New Delhi: Christian World Imprints, 2013), 2.
2 Miller, 1.
2
The Psalms use different elements of poetry in the text. One of the notable characteristics of Hebrew Poetry is the use of meter.3 Though we know that the psalms are all poetry and that there was some form of metric rhythm, we do not know what the exact rhythm was that was used, because we have no recordings from Ancient Israel. However, Miller surmises that the meter “is based on number of accented syllables or stressed words in each stich.” He continues on to say that the most common meter would have been ‘3/3’- that is “three emphasized syllables followed by another with three, the two stichs make up one verse.”4 The kind of poetry that is largely employed throughout the Psalms is Parallelism, “which has emerged as the predominant feature of biblical poetry.”5 Robert Lowth defined the different categories of Parallelism as: semantic, synthetic, and antithetic.6 Synonymous parallelism is the use of similar words in the same verse.7 Psalm 51 is a good example of this, “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.”8 In order to make the psalmist’s contrition more profound, synonymous parallelism is employed throughout the entire psalm. Synthetic parallelism is the loosest of the categories, but it “accounts for parallelisms that lack exact correspondence between their parts but show a more diffuse correspondence between the whole.”9 Verse five of the 23rd Psalm is an example of synthetic parallelism. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”10 The two stichs of the verse are not opposites of each other and they are not
3 Miller, 3
4 Miller, 5
5 Berlin, Adel. “Introduction to Hebrew Poetry,” New Interpreters Bible 4, no 1 p. 304 6 ibid
7 ibid
8 Psalm 51:2 All citations are from the New Revised Standard Version translation Catholic Edition. Nashville: Catholic Bible Press, 1993
9 Berlin, 304
3
synonymous, but it makes clear that the Lord, the shepherd and king takes care of his people with lavish grace. The last kind of parallelism is antithetical parallelism, which sees the second line of the verse contradict the first line.11 Psalm 37:9 employs this kind of parallelism, “For the wicked shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.”12 There are other examples of Hebrew poetry found in the Psalter, however, these are the most common ones.
The Book of Psalms contains 150 psalms in total and is organized into five books, paralleling the five books of the Jewish Torah. The five books range from Psalm 1-41, 42-72, 73-89, 90-106, and 107-150. At the end of each book, there is a doxology given, which is a few verses of praise to God. In the celebration of the Eucharist, we have a doxology at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, the priest says or sings, “Through him and with and him, O God almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour are yours forever and ever.” The doxologies found at the end of each book, though different than this, are largely similar.
The early Fathers of the Church noticed the doxologies at the end of each book, which lead them to hypothesize that the Psalter was divided into five books. The most interesting example of the doxology comes after Psalm 89 because the doxology does not seem to fit in with the preceding Psalm. Psalm 89 largely concerns the loss of the Davidic monarchy and the cancellation of the covenant that the Lord had made with David. Psalm 89 concludes, “Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David? Remember, O Lord, how your servant is taunted; how I bear in my
10 Psalm 23:5 11 Berlin, 304 12 Psalm 37:9
4
bosom the insults of the peoples, with which your enemies taunt, O Lord, with which they taunted the footsteps of your anointed.”13 Immediately following this there is a doxology, “Blessed be the Lord forever. Amen and Amen.”14 The Psalmist is lamenting the loss of the Davidic monarchy on the one hand, but then blesses the Lord forever in the next breath. Clearly, the editors of the Psalter added this in to mark the end of book three. This means that the structure of the Psalter was made very deliberately. Upon reading it through, because they are not chronological or organized by genre, it may seem as if the Psalter was thrown together at random, created like a Jackson Pollack painting, but we have strong evidence to the contrary.
There are three main types of Psalms: hymns, laments, and thanksgivings. Psalms of praise reflect the gratitude we have for God and our desire to praise Him for his mighty deeds. Psalm 136 is an example of a hymn that “praises Israel’s God who has created the world in which Israel lives.”15 There is the recurring refrain, “for his mercy endures forever” after every invocation throughout the hymn. Miller notes, “a hymn praises God in general terms for his greatness and faithfulness as creator and ruler of the Universe,”16 while a thanksgiving is more specific. An example of a thanksgiving hymn is Psalm 30, which praises God for recovery from grave illness. It should be noted that there are superscriptions at the beginning of every Psalm, usually in italics. These superscriptions tend to give a title to the psalm and perhaps indicate if it is a Davidic psalm. Some translations count these as verses, such as the New American Bible, but
13 Psalm 89:49-51
14 Psalm 89:52
15 Bergant, Diane. “Psalms” in The Catholic Study Bible, 3rd ed., eds Donald Senior, John J. Collins, and Mary Ann Getty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 826
16 Miller, 34
5
others like the New Revised Standard Version do not. Back to Psalm 30, the Psalmist begins, “I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me.” The Lord has delivered the Psalmist from illness and they are now thanking and praising the Lord for his goodness and faithfulness. Both the hymns and the thanksgivings have an element of promise of future praise for the great works that God has done. The third major type of Psalm is Lament and it is the most common one. This certainly speaks to our human experience, we are natural complainers- but also because we are sinners and many of the Lament Psalms deal with sorrow for one’s sins, which is also a common human experience. Psalm 137 is a very famous psalm of lament, “By the rivers of Babylon- there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.”17 This psalm is set in the Babylonian exile, and is pining for the Zion of old, with the temple and the monarchy, not in exile in Babylon where they cannot even praise their God.
Hopefully, you have a better understanding of what the Psalms are- they are prayers to God and can be hymns, thanksgiving or laments and they reflect the daily life of the Israelites. The question then is, why should we value the Psalms today? As was already mentioned, in the Psalter, we speak to God. In the rest of the Bible and certainly the Old Testament it is the other way around where God speaks to us. If we believe that all scripture is divinely inspired, then we have to view the Psalms as God’s instruction to us on how to approach him in prayer. The word to describe this approach is honestly. In the psalms of lament, the psalmist really tears a strip off of God, if you will, the psalmist bears their soul to God. The psalmist reasons with God; in Psalm 30 the Psalmist reasons for God to heal him from illness by saying if I die, there would be no one to praise you.
17 Psalm 137:1
6
Then there are also exultant hymns of praise and thanksgiving for the wonderful works God has done.
Saint Athanasius says the Psalms have “this peculiar marvel of its own, that within it are represented and portrayed in all their great variety the movements of the human soul. It is like a picture, in which you see yourself portrayed and, seeing, may understand and consequently form yourself upon the pattern given.”18 Ultimately, the Psalms help us learn about ourselves in relation to God, who is the creator and source of all life. The Psalms teach us how to live with God and are “an invitation to be open to God’s instruction and to the reality of God’s reign in the world.”19
The three different types of Psalms reflect our relationship with God. Sometimes we just want to praise him without ceasing, sometimes we want to give thanks to him because He has blessed us in our lives, and in the struggles and sorrows of our life we cry out because we feel He is not there when we need Him most. It is very interesting that God wants us to approach Him in that way. Even though we approach God differently in our prayer based on our situation in life, the Psalms help us remember to approach Him because He is there and has not forgotten about us, so we must not forget about Him either. It is in the Psalms that we see a reflection of our souls and our relationship with God and for this great gift we give Him thanks.
18 Saint Athanasius, A Letter to a Friend. translated by a Religious of C.S.M.V. (London: A.R. Mowbray & Co Ltd, 1949), 5-6
19 McCann, Clinton M. A Theological Introduction to the Book of Psalms. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993) 27.
7
Psalm 139 is found near the end of the Psalter in the fifth book. It is “the second in a collection of eight psalms of David that occur at the end of Book Five.”20 Furthermore, scholars have classified Psalm 139 as an individual hymn of thanksgiving, “a psalm praising God for goodness to or on behalf of the psalm-singer, usually for deliverance from some trying situation.”21 The psalm employs heavy use of allegory to describe the presence and knowledge of the Lord in the life of the psalmist. The beginning of the psalm is fairly well known and some contemporary hymns have been adapted from this psalm, most notably “Yahweh, I Know You Are Near.” The Psalmist praises God for his omnipresence and his omnipotence and that the Lord uses theses attributes to love his people, not rule them. Scholars point to verses 19 to 22 as problematic verses for a thanksgiving psalm, as the Psalmist seems to will that God would solve the problem of evil. However, recent scholars have viewed these passages as the psalmist being “accused of unfaithfulness to God by the enemies mentioned in verses 19-22, and that the psalm is in some way connected with this ordeal before God, designed to test his innocence.”22 The Lord searches our hearts and knows us better than we know ourselves.
Exegesis
vv 1-6 – The All knowing Lord, knowing our words before we even speak them. (Declaration of Thanks)
vv 7-12 – The Omnipresent God, whose presence extends even to Sheol, we cannot flee from his love. (Testimony)
20 DeClaisse-Walford, Nancy. “Psalm 139” The Book of Psalms. Nancy DeClaisse- Walford, Rolf A. Jacobson, Beth Laneel Tanner eds. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 962
21 ibid.
22 Rogerson J.G. and J.W. McKay, The Cambridge Bible Commentary Psalms 101-150. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1977) p. 156
8
vv 13-16- The creator God who formed every part of us before we were born. (Praise v. 14)
vv 17-18- The mind of God is all knowing, we cannot count his thoughts. (Testimony) vv 19-22 Plea for help against those who persecute (Description of Past Distress)
vv 23-24- Search me once more and lead me to life everlasting (Praise)
vv. 1-6 The Psalmist uses the divine name LORD twice in the first six verses and then only refers to it once more in verse 21. “You have searched me and known me.” Nancy DeClaisse-Walford notes “knowing” or the Hebrew “yada” is a central theme in this psalm. Knowing “occurs seven times in the psalm, four times in vv 1-6.”23 She also notes that the verb knowing covers a vast range “from simple recognition to intimate sexual relationship.”24 This psalm is a proclamation of God’s omnipresence and omnipotence and so He knows the psalmist not in a formal way, but in an intimate way. For verse 2, “you know when I sit down and when I rise up” according to the Cambridge Biblical Commentary is “a Hebrew way of saying ‘whatever I do in every aspect of my life.’”25 This is affirmed in verses 4 through 6, where God knows even the unspoken words of the Psalmist in an intimate and personal way.
vv. 7-12 If verses 1-6 reflect the omniscience of God, then verses 7-12 reflect the omnipresence of God. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary sees the attributes of God as the structure of the whole psalm, “vv 1-6 (Yahweh is all knowing); vv 7-12 (Yahweh is all-present); vv 13-18 (Yahweh’s knowledge of the Psalmist; vv 19-24 (prayer against enemies)26 Verses 7-12 have some beautiful poetic elements in contrasting God’s
23 DeClaisse-Walford, 964
24 ibid
25 Rogerson and Mckay, 157
9
presence in both heaven and hell- he is always there. “If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea…” This means if the psalmist were to go to the farthest limits of the east and the farthest limits of the west God would still be there.27 This is a beautiful use of allegory to show the omnipresence of the Lord God, who not only knows his people but cares for them deeply.
vv. 13-16- “I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” The NRSV translates to “fearfully and wonderfully”, while the NABRE simply has “wonderfully” as its translation. Fearfully and wonderfully seem to be in juxtaposition to one another. However, the word that is translated as fearfully is “better understood as ‘reverence and awe.’” While, the word wonderfully “comes from the verbal root pala, which means ‘to be different, striking, remarkable- outside of the power of human comprehension.’”28 Therefore, we should be in awe at the striking and remarkable work of creation. Even more striking is that we are his creation, made in His image and likeness. We are that striking and remarkable creation, outside of the power of our minds. Thus, we should praise the Lord. Various commentaries also connect verse 15 with Genesis 2. “Intricately woven in the depths of the earth.” Whereas in Genesis 2:7, God creates Adam from the dust of the ground.29 God’s creation is remarkable and we are the highest beings in creation for we are created in his image and likeness, made for relationship with Him, for He seeks us out.
26 Kselman, John S. and Michael L. Barre. “Psalms” in New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, Roland E. Murphy eds. (London: Prentice Hall, 1990), 550.
27 Bergant, 828
28 DeClaisse-Walford, 965
29 Rogerson and McKay, 158
10
vv. 17-18- These two verses are connected to the first sixteen of the psalm, though are slightly different. They can be seen as somewhat of “a doxological close to the first sixteen verses of Psalm 139. The psalmist marvels at the thoughts (rea) of God”30 but the psalmist uses the same word for “thoughts” as in verse 2, where he speaks of God discerning human thoughts. This shows again the wonderment of God’s creative work in the world. He has indeed made us a little less than a god for our thoughts come from the divine mind. As we see in verse 18 though, while our thoughts are finite and limited God’s are infinite as “they are more than the sand.”
vv 19-22- These three verses have been contentious for biblical scholars and commentators. There is a noticeable shift in speech from the psalmist compared to the rest of the psalm. It seems to be a petition to rescue the psalmist from the evil and the bloodthirsty and to those who speak maliciously of the name of the Lord. This speaks to the tension between having this amazing God who created us and knew us totally even before we were created and living in a world that not only ignores him but outright opposes Him and persecutes those who live with and for the Lord. Since we cannot be loyal and serve both God and mammon, the psalmist “takes his stand on the side of God, and this inevitably leafs to mutual hostility between the psalmist and his enemies.”31
vv 23-24- The psalm concludes in a similar way to how it began, begging the Lord to search me and know my heart. Though instead of acknowledging that the Lord has done this as at the beginning of the psalm, the psalmist asks the Lord to search and know him. It is a beautiful way to conclude given the acknowledgement of the existence of evil in vv 19-22. The psalmist concludes, “see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the
30 DeClaisse-Walford, 965
31 Rogerson and Mckay, 158
11
way everlasting.” This is an implication that God’s ways are eternal, that the Lord brings us to everlasting life, while the evil and bloodthirsty men will perish. It is an invitation for all of us to reject the ways of the world, the ways of those who do not seek God and choose to live for the Lord, who made us and belong to Him.
Psalm 139 is a beautiful hymn that describes the love of God who is all knowing, ever present, and eternally loving to His people. In His divine wisdom and love he has created us, formed us from the earth and made us strikingly different from the rest of His creation and for this we praise Him. He knows all our thoughts even before we think them; He cares for us, for we are his awesome and wonderful creation. Even when evil and bloodthirsty people attack us because we are for the Lord, we know we can place our trust and our hope in Him because it is the Lord who will lead us on the everlasting way.
There are areas in the life of the Church that Psalm 139 can be used today. The first is in the prolife movement and in the debate about the sanctity and dignity of life generally. In Genesis 1, which is one of the most referenced scripture passages in the prolife movement, we hear how God created men and women in his own image and formed man from the dust of the earth. That is very profound and has many theological implications, however, Psalm 139 goes deeper. It tells us that God knows us intimately and knows everything about us because He created us. He formed even our inner parts; there is not one single part of us that He does not know deeply and intimately. He created us in His own image but made us to stand out, to be marvellously different from the rest of creation. We are not created in the same way the trees, the birds of the air, or the fish of the sea are created. Those things are created for utility; we are created for relationship- with God and with others. That is what makes us special as human beings. Certainly the
12
prochoice advocates probably will not be much convinced at an argument that is essentially just another part of the Bible that we can point to and make our case. However, this focus on relationship and that life is sacred because we are created precisely for relationship may be of some use in the ongoing dialogue between prochoice and prolife groups.
The other area in the life of the Church that Psalm 139 may be applicable to is the larger question of the existence of evil in a world that was created so wonderfully by God. The evil in question is a result of the consequences of the original sin of our first parents made freely. One of the wonderments of human beings is that we were created with free will, and so we can freely choose to know, to love, and to serve God. However, we can also freely choose to turn away from Him and sin. Psalm 139 shows how much love God had for us in creating us, how much love He has for us in caring for us day by day, and how much love He has for us in letting us follow him on the everlasting way. There is evil because we sin. We sin because we have free will and we have free will because God created us for a loving relationship with Him. It cannot be true love if He were to force us to love Him; He wants us to do so freely. Psalm 139, therefore, can be used to show the world the love of God who created us to love us and for us to love Him. In our increasingly individualistic society where the dignity of the human person is under attack and where many people have an apathetic view of God and His Church, Psalm 139 can be used to show how much we are loved and how much we ought to love God in return, for he has sought us out, known us deeply, and wonderfully created us from the beginning of the world.
13
Bibliography
Berlin, Adel. “Introduction to Hebrew Poetry,” New Interpreters Bible 4, no 1
Bergant, Diane. “Psalms” in The Catholic Study Bible, 3rd ed., eds Donald Senior, John J. Collins, and Mary Ann Getty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
DeClaisse-Walford, Nancy. “Psalm 139” The Book of Psalms. Nancy DeClaisse- Walford, Rolf A. Jacobson, Beth Laneel Tanner eds. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014).
Kselman, John S. and Michael L. Barre. “Psalms” in New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, Roland E. Murphy eds. (London: Prentice Hall, 1990).
Miller, Robert. The Psalms as Israel’s Prayer and Our Own. (New Delhi: Christian World Imprints, 2013).
McCann, Clinton M. A Theological Introduction to the Book of Psalms. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993).
Rogerson J.G. and J.W. McKay, The Cambridge Bible Commentary Psalms 101-150. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1977) p. 156
Saint Athanasius, A Letter to a Friend. translated by a Religious of C.S.M.V. (London: A.R. Mowbray & Co Ltd, 1949), 5-6
New Revised Standard Version translation Catholic Edition. Nashville: Catholic Bible Press, 1993
14
15