Psalms as Torah: Reading Biblical Song Ethically (Studies in Theological Interpretation)

I love reading the Psalms and books about the Psalms, so when I noticed Wenham had published this little volume on Psalms as Torah, I was excited to read. I think this is one of the best books I've ever read on the Psalms. I confess that I am a student of Torah, so focusing on Torah definitely gets my attention.What makes Wenham's volume so rich is the integrated discussion of Psalms in light of the rest of Scripture and history. Wenham offers a short history of psalm singing in ancient Israel and in the church, which provokes the question, "Why don't we sing the Psalms anymore?"Wenham argument for the ethical influence of the psalms is particularly interesting. He emphasizes the aspect of worship and personalizing (by writing many passages in first person). The worshipper takes the words into their lips and hearts causing them to identify with the call to live by the way that is sung, prayed, and remembered throughout the Psalms.Wenham also grounds the act of memorizing Psalms in history. Presenting an argument for writing as a means of preserving texts for memorizationWhile this book offers a depth of historical, ethical and theological analysis, it still provokes my heart to worship as I meditate on the riches of this ancient prayer book.

Wenham begins his books by exploring the academic approaches to the Psalms. We learn through this that the Psalms were used in public worship in the original temple. That choruses of priests and Levites led the people in singing the Psalms.We further learn that because of how the Psalms are written that when the individual prays or sings them they ask for buy into the overall message because of their first person approach.We learn that the Psalms carry much of the Torah in them as part of this message. They serve as a means of teaching and spreading both worship of God and His law.We also learn that contrary to contemporary thought liturgical responsive readings of praise and confession come in a direct line from the Bible. The community was central in the Bible not the individual. Faith was not personal and private but lived out in community. The church of today pays a price for ignoring this and drifting away from using the Psalms, themselves in worship.

This is a really great book. Full of insight and challenge. I downloaded this on Kindle (because I ordered it before it was paper-published. The real problem with Kindle is that for technical and academic books, where the index is really important; Kindles doesn't allow you to go to the pages in the index. There are ways around this....but it's a bit of a pain) This is Kindle's problem not the author's. They should sort it out!!

Useful and insightful

Great deal!

Gordon Wenham is writing something of a sequel to his previous work, Story as Torah, this time focusing on the "ethic taught in the liturgy of the Old Testament, the Psalter" (1). Wenham points out that the songs we sing "both implicitly and explicitly" teach theology and ethics (3). With this in mind, he wants to investigate the theology and ethics taught in the Psalter since "they must give an important window into Old Testament theology and ethics" (5). His book serves then as "an attempt to begin to deal with a blind spot in current biblical and theological thinking" (7).The first chapter details various Jewish and Christian approaches to the Psalms. Rather than focus on "critical debates about the date of the psalms of the historical reliability of the narrative accounts of Old Testament worship," Wenham is concerned to "simply record what the canonical texts say about the use of the psalms in Old Testament times" (11). Essentially, this opening chapter gives a broad overview of the history of the usage of the Psalter and concludes with our modern state where "songs with catchy tunes have tended to displace the psalms, which not so easy to sing" (25).Optimistic that this is just a "blip" in the history of the usage of the Psalter, Wenham presses on to unpack their traditional function. Chapter 2 digs into critical approaches to the Psalter and settles on using a canonical approach to interpreting them, which "builds on the insights of earlier form-critical studies of the psalms" (40). At this point, the stage is set for Wenham to begin examining the ethical and theological functions of the Psalter.Chapter 3 opens with a short history of how sacred texts were used in the ancient Near East. He notes that the Psalter fits into the category of an anthology, and drawing attention to the work of Paul Griffiths, points out that "religious anthologies are meant to be memorized" (49). In the age of the printing (and now digital) press, it is sometimes lost on us why you would memorize something you could just easily have on your shelf. But in a time when manuscripts were hard to come by, important things were memorized, not just read and shelved. With respect to the Psalter, it was often memorized, particularly by people in my position in the church. As Wenham concludes, "the written text's main purpose was to ensure that the work was correctly memorized by those who would later recite it or sing it to the people" (56). It would appear then I have my work cut out for me!Chapter 4 examines how prayed ethics makes unique claims on the speaker. Drawing on speech-act theory, Wenham points out that "using this categorization of speech acts...one could say that praying the psalms involves the worshiper in many commissive speech acts: the psalms as prayers are really a series of vows" (67). While there are "no major attempts to use speech act theory to illuminate the ethics of the psalms," this chapter is definitely a step in the right direction. In praying the psalms, the worshiper is committing himself to God in both behavior and attitude.Chapters 5-7 turn the focus to how "law" functions in the Psalter and constitute the heart of the book. Chapter 5 suggests the Psalter itself is framed by "law" and much of the material within it is focused on the law as the supreme revelation from God. Chapter 6 then presents a fascinating survey of the Decalogue's role in the Psalter. Wenham shows the various places each command from the Ten Commandments shows up and is meditated on within the Psalter. While not an exhaustive survey, it illustrates well the point that the Ten Commandments are "at the heart" of the ethical thought in the Psalter. Finally in chapter 7, Wenham provides an overview of the Psalms' use of pentateuchal narratives. In doing so, the Psalter draws out that "the national tendency to sin and the disasters that ensue," as well as "the long suffering mercy of God, whose steadfast love endures forever" (137). In this way, the Psalter provides a commentary on the history of the Old Testament that Wenham sees justifying Martin Luther's assessment of the Psalter as a "mini-Bible."Chapter 8 goes into a little more detail about how the Psalter treats various vices and virtues in addition to the law. Here, special focus is placed on the role of the wicked and the righteous in the Psalter. Chapter 9 turns to the role of prayers for divine intervention in the Psalter and deals with how we are to appropriate imprecatory psalms in our current cultural context. Wenham makes the important point that while the psalmist will pray for judgment on his enemies, there is no hint that he will be the one to carry it out. Rather than looking at these psalms as expressing desires for vengeance and destruction, they can be seen as expressions of dependence on God to execute justice and trusting that He will do what is right. Finally in chapter 10, Wenham draws connections between the ethics taught in the Psalter and what we find in the New Testament. His conclusion is that the Psalter "had a strong influence on the New Testament writers, especially in the formulation of their ethic" (202).Overall, I found this book extremely insightful and immediately practical. It basically changed my approach to devotional reading to be more "Psalm-centric," and after reading through the Psalter over the course of last month separately, my wife and I are reading through the Psalms daily together this month. I've been particular guilty of neglecting the Psalms, but Wenham's book has shown me the importance the Psalms have in the Christian life and inspired me to study them more diligently. I would hope if you pick up a copy of this book it would do much the same for you. Though some of the other books in this series can be rather technical in nature, this book is well suited in style, and for the most part in content, for the average reader. It would make a great study for a small group or a church staff, and hopefully many people will do just that!

This is a companion volume to the author's 'The Psalter Reclaimed', which was intended for a wider, more general audience. This work is more intentionally academic in focus, but not narrowly so: it should be readily accessible to a wide range of biblically informed readers, including those who have begun to find their way around the Psalter. There is inevitably some overlap between the two books, but whereas the first book gives a good deal of attention to historical issues concerning the interpretation of the Psalms and their historical and contemporary use (or neglect) in Christian worship, the focus of this book lies instead on the constructive task of framing the kind of biblical ethics that arises from reading, singing and praying the Psalms. In this way, the book parallels the author's earlier monograph 'Story as Torah, which showed how biblical narrative texts can inform Christian moral teaching. Among Wenham's conclusions and proposals are: that the Psalter is a collection first and foremost to be memorised and sung; that speech-act theory casts valuable light on the 'behabitive' and 'commissive' nature of worship-language; that the ethical emphases of the Pentateuch and Psalter are similar, and therefore both works function as ethical 'teachers' to the body of believers; and the New Testament is steeped in the ethical outlook of the Psalter. There are also very helpful comments on the so-called imprecatory psalms, drawing on the insightful work of Erich Zenger. Wenham's plea, that the Psalms should once against be restored to popular Christian worship and devotion, a position they enjoyed historically and in the New testament Church, is bolstered by this illuminating and very accessible study.

excellent

I read this for a Psalms class as extra reading. Wenham reads the Psalms through the lens of Torah and shows convincingly that Torah is all through the Psalms, both explicitly and implicitly. Because the Psalms are supposed to be meditated upon, as well as prayed and sung within a corporate setting, they have a character-forming and community-shaping heft to them that reading the commands of the Torah quietly to one's self does not. The Psalms are the way God's law gets written on the heart and conscience; how they become part of who a person is. Of course this all assumes that the Psalms are actually sung and prayed, both practices which are not common in modern evangelical churches. I recommend this book not only for the material presented but also for the process Wenham uses to read the Psalms through a specific lens or from a certain vantage point. Its not the only vantage point, of course, but it is an aspect that enriches one's understanding of the Psalms and, if put into practice, one's own spiritual life.