Psalms: Part 1
The 5 Books
As we move on with our wisdom literature series, it’s time we look to our next book after the book of Job. If you haven’t read through our Job series, I would encourage you to do so as it will paint a solid foundation as to what wisdom literature looks like in God’s Word. So what book comes next in this series that we will overview for the next two posts? That would be the book of Psalms. This will hands down be the most difficult book to overview because of how long this book is but we will certainly try our best to get the gist of what this book communicates. The book of Psalms is 150 chapters long which means we will try and do the most broad overview of what 75 chapters tell us in each of these posts. Again, I didn’t say this would be perfect, I just said we’ll do our best. As The Bible Project says about this great book, “Psalms is a collection of 150 ancient Hebrew poems, songs, and prayers that come from different eras in Israel’s history. The entire work has a unique design and message that you won’t notice unless you read it beginning to end.” Now obviously we aren’t going to dissect each chapter from beginning to end, but lucky for us, the book of Psalms is broken down into 5 sections. Throughout this book, you will notice 5 smaller headings that break down the Psalms into 5 smaller books. These 5 sections are what we will be going over in these two posts as we look at 2 ½ of these books in each post. With this in mind, let’s dive in.
Book One
Book 1 in the book of Psalms covers chapters 1-41 and deals greatly with God as the one true provider and God through His faithfulness. You will find many prayers in this section of the Psalms dedicated to specific issues with the purpose of showing how God alone is the one true God who can answer these prayers. One of the best chapters that communicates this point is Psalm 34. Psalm 34:4-6 says, “I sought the LORD, and He answered me, And delivered me from all my fears. They looked to Him and were radiant, And their faces will never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him And saved him out of all his troubles.” This Psalm in particular was written by David and shows us just how dependent mankind must be on God since He is the one true provider. In fact, pending on your translation of the Bible, the title of this chapter is The Lord, a Provider and Deliverer. What a beautiful reminder right in the middle of this first book that God and God alone is who we are utterly dependent on. This chapter even ends with a great statement on God being the sole deliverer as well. Psalm 34:22 says, “The LORD redeems the soul of His servants, And none of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned.” God alone is the one who can redeem mankind and those who are saved by Him will not be condemned. I can’t think of a better way to start the book of Psalms than with a reminder of how God alone is our chief provider and redeemer. This introduction is the perfect foundation we need in order to see what the rest of the book of Psalms has to offer us. This foundation is vital when it comes to looking at Book 2 and especially Book 3.
Books 2 & 3
That being said, let’s look at what Book 2 has to say. Book 2 of the Psalms covers chapters 42-72 and tells us of the future kingdom of Christ. This is why the first book is such a vital foundation. Without the foreknowledge of God being our sole provider, we wouldn’t know who to look to for the coming of Christ. But our Lord had the perfect plan for when to bring Christ into this world and when to establish His perfect kingdom as we will see in this second book. Now as you read through these chapters, you may think that what this book has to say has nothing to do with Christ at all. Just a bunch of prayers for God to punish the wicked and save us from our enemies. But this is precisely what the Kingdom of God will entail. The wicked will have no place in the Kingdom of God because they will not have access through Christ. Therefore, they will perish forever in God’s wrath, just as the psalmist alludes to here many times in this book. This is why Psalm 55 gives us a look as to why the elimination of the wicked is a key to the coming Kingdom of Christ. Psalm 55:10-11 says, “Day and night they go around her upon her walls, And iniquity and mischief are in her midst. Destruction is in her midst; Oppression and deceit do not depart from her streets.” This is the wicked that David is specifically praying about here, and newsflash, he doesn’t get softer with them either. He goes on to say in Psalm 55:15 “Let death come deceitfully upon them; Let them go down alive to Sheol, For evil is in their dwelling, in their midst.”
This prayer over the wicked is what leads us the the end of book 2 and the beginning of book 3 in Psalm 72. Psalm 72 is titled ‘The Reign of the Righteous King’ and I’m sure we can guess why. This is where the introduction to Christ comes into play. As Solomon speaks of this future king, look at how he describes Him in Psalm 72:11-14 “And let all kings bow down before him, All nations serve him. For he will deliver the needy when he cries for help, The afflicted also, and him who has no helper. He will have compassion on the poor and needy, And the lives of the needy he will save. He will rescue their life from oppression and violence, And their blood will be precious in his sight;” This is what Christ was when He came and this is who Christ will forever be when His kingdom comes in full. And thus begins our journey into the third book of the Psalms which will discuss Christ’s kingdom after the exile of His people. More on this will be discussed later in the week. For now, I hope that we were able to make the first 75 chapters as broad and understandable as one possibly can. May God bless your learning of His word as we continue to tackle the wisdom literature of the Psalms!
Sources
[1] Blue Letter Bible. (n.d.). Blue Letter Bible. https://www.blueletterbible.org/
[2] BibleProject. (2024, August 8). Guide to the Book of Psalms. BibleProject. https://bibleproject.com/guides/book-of-psalms/#psalms-42-72-summary
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