Preface
The Nature and Purpose of This Commentary
I am persuaded that the Psalms belong toJesus Christ. I believe that the Psalms themselves point to a fulfillment only possible in the divine-human person of Christ. Through its quotations and echoes of the Psalms, the New Testament bears witness to a textured understanding in which Christ is central. For the larger part of church history, this has broadly been the way Christians have read the Psalms. This commentary is therefore a Christ-centered commentary, in which I seek to see Christ front and center when reading the Psalms. I have attempted to explain and argue my case in volume 1,Introduction: Christ and the Psalms.
Since the so-called “Enlightenment” in the eighteenth century, Christ has been eclipsed in much Psalms scholarship and preaching. With a few notable exceptions, recent commentaries tend either to omit Christ from many or all of the Psalms or mention him as little more than an afterthought. But I have become persuaded thatJesus Christ is the subject and object of the Psalms, that his majestic divine-human person is woven into the warp and woof of the Psalter, and that he is the preeminent singer of psalms, the focus of the Psalter, and the one without whom the Psalms cannot be understood aright. I therefore want to place Christ in the foreground of our reading of every psalm and to do so in ways that are shaped by the New Testament. I want to set before us what the Psalms might look and feel like if in truth they do belong to Christ.
There is much you will not find in this commentary. My background is that of a preacher and pastor rather than a trained biblical scholar. I have sought to interact with a representative sample of writers across the centuries (surveyed in volume 1,Introduction: Christ and the Psalms) but have not, for the most part, attempted to interact with the voluminous and ever-growing secondary literature. I hope I am sufficiently aware of the more significant debates, but for a full study of these things, readers should consult one or more of the recent technical commentaries. I have worked from the Hebrew text but have no particular expertise in the language, especially as regards Hebrew poetry, translation of tense forms, and poetic parallelism. Much scholarly debate surrounds theories of the dating, possible contexts of origins, and putative redaction histories of various psalms. Too often it seems to me that scholars construct theories on the basis of inadequate evidence; furthermore, I am not persuaded that these debates are always useful to Christian disciples seeking to weave the Psalms into their lives of prayer and praise.
This commentary is not, therefore, a substitute for technical, scholarly commentaries. What you will find here, I hope, is the Psalms read with the breadth of a whole-Bible perspective allied with the depth of a clear focus on Christ, the center of history and the fulcrum of the Bible story. I thus hope to do four things:
1. To help you understand the lyrics of these songs, what the words mean and what the poetry signifies
2. To assist us in feeling the “tune,” that is, the affectional and emotional dimensions of these songs
3. To point to the volitional commitment that is asked of disciples when we join in the Psalms—for to say the Psalms means moving from the audience, wh