Midweek supplement to Psalms Group, April 22, 2020
1. God’s Word to His People:
The Book of Psalms is first and foremost God’s Word to his people. We hear the voice of God in each psalm, through the many moods of the Psalms, and the through the varied themes of the Psalms. The purpose of the Psalms is the same as that of any part of Scripture: the Psalms are “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim. 3:16-17)
A great value of the Psalms lies in their connection between the OT and the NT. They belong to the OT, as the psalmists lived among the people of God who served him at the temple and knew only of the kingdom of David and his heirs. The native setting of the psalm was the community of ancient Israel. Each psalm had a primary meaning in the experience of the psalmist, and understanding the historical, contextual, grammatical meaning of the text preferably precedes the analysis of the New Testament application to Jesus. A psalmist often described his own suffering or triumph. These descriptions, which may have seemed extravagant for the psalmist’s actual experience, later became true of Jesus Christ. The psalmists longed for the day of redemption, which draws closer in Jesus Christ’s incarnation, earthly ministry, passion at the cross, resurrection from death to life, ascension to glory, and present rule. The NT proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah of God, in whom all the promises of God are sealed, including his eventual messianic rule. This makes us different from the OT saints; we have more revelation. (Heb. 1:1-2)
2. The Psalms and the Early Church
The early church was profoundly influenced by synagogue practice in which psalms were read as scripture, recited as prayers, or sung as hymns. From the early church we have inherited a new way of reading the Psalms in the light of Jesus’ mission and work. The early church “baptized the Psalter into Christ.” Jesus and his apostles loved the Psalms, which witness to the suffering and deliverance of mankind and especially to the Son of Man. Jesus taught his apostles to interpret the Scriptures in the light of his coming (Luke 24:46-47). From the apostolic use of the Psalms, it is abundantly evident that they were used regularly in the preaching and teaching of the early church. The apostles already knew the primary meaning of each psalm in the history of Israel.
They established Jesus’ suffering, his claim to be the Messiah, his priestly ministry, his being the Son of Man, and the coming redemption and judgment on the Psalms. The early Christians used the Psalms in explaining Jesus’ ministry, resurrection, ascension, and present rule. With the knowledge of full revelation in Jesus Christ, one can look back to the Psalms, in fact to the entire OT and see that they often speak of Christ. ( Luke 24:27)
3. The Septuagint (LXX)
The early Christian community read its OT in Greek, the version known as the Septuagint. This is the oldest Bible translation and was made in Alexandria, Egypt, where the OT was translated from Hebrew into Greek for the benefit of the Greek-speaking Jews of that city. A Jewish community existed in Alexandria almost from its foundation by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C. In two or three generations the community had forgotten its native Hebrew language. These Jews realized they needed the Hebrew Scriptures translated into the only language they knew—Greek. Septuagint is from septuaginta, the Latin word for 70 (LXX). This name was selected because of the tradition that the Pentateuch was translated into Greek by about 70 elders of lsrael who were brought to Alexandria especially for this purpose. Only a few fragments of this version survive from the period before Christ. When Christianity penetrated the world of the Greek-speaking Jews, and then the Gentiles, the Septuagint was the Bible used for preaching the gospel. Most of the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are taken from this Greek Bible. The Septuagint was based on a Hebrew text much older than most surviving Hebrew manuscripts of the OT.
Toni Salmon, April 22, 2020