Relocating To Elfland

I’d like to resume a series of posts on the Psalter that I began a while ago: preceding installments are here, here, and here. The basic idea I’m exploring is that the Psalter’s structure (developed in five books) and its “gateway” (Psalms 1 and 2) indicate that the work as a whole is as much interested in the history of the world as it is in the devotional piety of individuals. This is worth exploring, because most readers of the Psalter (in my experience, at least) find it much easier to relate to than other Old Testament books, precisely because it is not full of history or prophecies about the future. When the Bible talks about the world, we’re kind of lost; when it talks about us and our feelings, it makes sense. The problem here lies not in thinking that the Psalter addresses feelings and experiences on the individual level: it does. The problem lies in a general ignorance of the biblical view of history, such that when the Psalter displays its historical/eschatological “face” (Vos’s term), we brush past it in favor of more individualistic concerns.

Psalm 1, as we have seen, speaks of “blessed” individuals who inherit the land (the new Eden) because they are rooted in the instruction (Torah) of Yahweh. Such individuals are not sinless, but they do not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers; they listen to a different voice, are in a different way, sit in a different place.

So far this all sounds very Abrahamic. Abraham believed God – he listened to and lived by every word that proceeded from the mouth of the Lord – and his seed inherit the earth. We come then to Psalm 2, the other door in the “gateway,” which opens up further dimensions of all this.

Psalm 2 situates the concerns of Psalm 1 on a global scale. The movement from the first psalm to the second looks something like this: (1) Yahweh wills that not merely individuals but also kings and nations listen to His voice, submissively trust in Him, and walk in His ways. (2) The rule of Yahweh has been “localized” in the person of His Anointed, and obedience to Yahweh must take the particular form of trusting (taking refuge) in His Son (see especially 2:12). (3) The judgment that befalls individuals who refuse to listen to Yahweh (1:5–6) will be visited on kings and rulers who seek to cast off the “bonds” of Yahweh’s Anointed (2:3), for He has given all things to His Son (2:8) and wills that all living things be united under the rule of His Son.

This globalizing of trust in Yahweh and obedience to Yahweh, coming to focus in reverence for and trust in His Anointed, opens the way into the rest of the Psalter. I will take that up in more detail in later installments, but for now I’d like to propose that Psalm 1 is a beautiful depiction of Old Testament piety, centered upon the Torah of Yahweh. It must be remembered, though, that Torah had at every point an eschatological focus: the future arrival of Messiah and of Yahweh’s “sabbatical” kingdom in Him. Though the psalmists could not have known just when and how this would occur in their future, we know from the standpoint of New Testament revelation that Messiah’s enthronement culminated when Jesus “ascended on high” and took His seat at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. It is appropriate, then, to read Psalm 2 retrospectively as an ascension psalm, and to understand much of the remainder of the Psalter as a description of what Yahweh’s Anointed will do during the days of His ascended reign.