Category Archives: Scripture

On Memorizing Scripture, II

[This post continues the thoughts I started here…]

4. Conscious and Unconscious Shaping

One of the reasons the Church Fathers put so much emphasis on memorizing Scripture is that the more Scripture you had in you, the less space you had in your head for other things and the greater influence Scripture could have upon you. These folks were firm believers in the power of Scripture: that contact with Scripture was itself transformative, and it had an ability to exercise a shaping power upon the will and soul through its presence.

John Cassian describes it like this:

Hence the successive books of Holy Scripture must be diligently committed to memory and ceaselessly reviewed. This continual meditation will bestow on us double fruit. First, inasmuch as the mind’s attention is occupied with reading and with preparing to read, it cannot be taken captive in the entrapment of harmful thoughts. Then, the things that we have not been able to understand because our mind was busy at the time, things that we have gone through repeatedly and are laboring to memorize, we shall see more clearly afterward when we are free from every seductive deed and sight, and especially when we are silently meditating at night. Thus, while we are at rest and as it were immersed in the stupor of sleep, there will be revealed an understanding of hidden meanings that we did not grasp even slightly when we were awake. (John Cassian, Conferences 14.8.4)

He’s talking here at the end about the assimilation of the memorized material into the subconscious mind… The Desert Fathers due to their simplicity of practice and brutal honesty about conscious and subconscious motivations communicated a grasp on the inner workings of the human mind that would not be rivalled again until the 19th century and the rise of psychology as a scientific discipline.

Cassian continues to drive home his point:

But as our mind is increasingly renewed by this study, the face of Scripture will also begin to be renewed, and the beauty of a more sacred understanding will somehow row with the person who is making progress. (John Cassian, Conferences 14.9.1)

As the mind itself is conformed to Scripture, the more Scripture it will be able to understand.

An example of the belief in the power of Scripture to transform the soul is exhibited in King Athalaric’s letter to the Roman Senate confirming Cassiodorus as Praetorian Prefect. In speaking of Cassiodorus’s character, the letter says:

[Cassiodorus] showed good will to all, was moderate in prosperity, and knew no anger, unless gravely wronged. Although he is a man of strict justice, he does not refuse, in his severity, to forego wrath. He is remarkably generous with his goods, and, while incapable of pursuing others’ property, he knows well how to be a lavish giver of his own. Now this disposition his studies in divinity have confirmed, since affairs are always well conducted if the fear of heaven is opposed to human impulses. For thence is derived the clear understanding of every virtue; thence wisdom is flavoured with the season of truth. Thus, the man imbued with the discipline of heaven is rendered lowly in all things. (Cassiodorus, Variae 9.25.11).

The bolded phrase requires a second look. Barnish’s translation is a loose one here. The Latin is “Hos igitur mores lectio diuina solidauit” (Therefore these habits have been established through sacred reading). Thus, it is the practice of lectio divina itself that is identified as the source of these virtues (with the possible exception of humility—Cassiodorus penned the letter himself…).

Augustine, in fact, believes in this formation of character so strongly as to make the bold assertion that if a person achieves the pinnacle of perfect love, they will have transcended the Scriptures themselves. He builds to this crescendo over the course of several sections at the end of Book 1 which I’ll abridge here to concentrate his main point:

The sum of all we have said since we began to speak of things thus comes to this: it is to be understood that the plenitude and the end of the law and of all the sacred Scriptures is the love of a Being which is to be enjoyed and of a being that can share that enjoyment with us, since there is no need for a precept that anyone should love himself. . . Whoever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine Scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God and neighbor does not understand it at all. . . Thus there are these three things for which all knowledge and prophecy struggle: faith, hope, and love. . . Thus a man supported by faith, hope, and love with an unshaken hold upon them, does not need the Scriptures except for the instruction of others. And many live by these three things in solitude without books. . . In them, as if by instruments of faith, hope, and love, such an erudition has been erected that, holding fast to that which is perfect, they do not seek that which is only partially so—perfect, that is, in so far as perfection is possible in this life. (Christian Teaching 1.35.39-1.39.43, selections)

5. Rumination through out the Day

As the John Cassian quote above notes, the process of memorization is not restricted to the period of time when the book is passing before the reader’s eyes . Rather, it requires a rehearsal of the memorized material to ensure its retention (“diligently committed to memory and ceaselessly reviewed”). 

Cassiodorus state emphatically the need for repetition and meditation apart from the text: “Therefore pray to God, the source of all that is useful; read, I pray, constantly; go over the material diligently; for frequent and intense meditation is the mother of understanding.” (Institutions 1.Pref.7).

In one of my favorite and often-cited vignettes of the Desert Fathers, Abba Lucius clarifies how monastic manual labor participates within the lectio process and furthers the command to “pray without ceasing”: 

I will show you how, while doing my manual work, I pray without interruption. I sit down with God, soaking my reeds and plaiting my ropes, and I say “God, have mercy on me; according to your great goodness and according to the multitude of your mercies, save me from my sins.” [Psalm 51:1]

The time set aside for manual labor in the monastery, therefore, is not a time to stop praying, but a shift into a different mode of prayer. Distinct from the formal prayer of the Daily Office or the memorization of lectio, this is a time to recall those things which had been memorized to fix them in the mind and to occupy the thoughts with God’s words rather than idle brain-flittings.

That’s why silence is key within the monastic enclosure. If you’re talking to another person, the less likely it is that you’re talking to God as well. Certainly that’s how the Rule of the Master understands it, specifically directing “silent labor” several times and clarifying the command this way:

Now, the reason we say that the brethren must always observe silence is that sins of the tongue are not committed when the mouth is at all times kept from speaking. However, the brothers while working are to keep silence as follows: They must refrain from uncontrolled chattering and from worldly matters and from idle words which are out of place. But the brothers may have permission at any time, provided the abbot is not present, to rehearse the psalms and to repeat the Scriptures and to speak about God if it is done humbly and quietly (RM 50.24-26).

The rule goes on to direct that if a large group of brothers are working together a reader who is physically unable to work should read to them to keep their minds on track!

Carolingian sources confirm this intention—that the time of work is a time for recalling Scripture. Smaragdus’s commentary on the Rule of Benedict quotes the rules of Waldabert and Isidore on this point which evidently do not enjoin complete silence during work times:

…[W]hile their hands are occupied outwardly in what is of temporal benefit, their minds should be sweetened with the tongue’s meditation of the Psalms and the remembrance of the Scriptures. If someone breaks this rule and takes pleasure in storytelling, he should be chastised with the penalty of silence. . . Now the monks as they work should meditate and sing psalms so that they may lighten the work itself with song and with delight in God’s word. But especially in the time of Lent they must work with the body, the mind’s attention being fastened on God. And the hand must be engaged in the daily work in such a way that the mind is not turned away from God. (Smaragdus, Commentary 48)

So—going back over the memorized material fixes it in the mind and gives the mind something with which to occupy itself so that the recollection of God can be a continual activity. Without Scripture resident in the memory, it cannot be pondered and ruminated upon. Again, there’s no way that a collection of prooftexts can provide fodder for the kind of long-term mind-occupying material the monastic teachers are describing here. Psalms and larger blocks of text are definitely in mind.

6. Memorization begins with the Psalms

Following everything that has been said and cited up to this point, it’s a complete no-brainer that the process of memorization enjoined by the Church Fathers  and inherited by the monastics starts with the Psalter. As I alluded in the previous piece, if all 150 psalms are being sung every week and many of those are sung multiple times a week or even a day, they’ll get memorized pretty quickly.

Many reasons recommend the psalms for this role. I’ve written on this a fair amount in the past so I won’t go through all of that again except to summarize in brief the reasons Athanasius lays out in his Letter to Marcellinus:

  1. The Psalms are a microcosm of Scripture itself, containing all of the scriptural genres within its pages: prophecy, law, wisdom, Gospel. To memorize the Psalter, then, is to possess a summary of Scripture.
  2. The Psalms are an example of proper prayer to God spoken by the Holy Spirit through David expressing the thoughts and feelings of his descendent Jesus.
  3. The Psalms are a mirror that teach us the Christian affections and provide language for how to communicate and understand them.

But where do we go from there?

Jerome helpfully lays out his preferred order in a letter that instructs a woman hw to prepare her daughter who she is raising to be a virgin (the category of “nun” did not yet exist, but that’s what we’re talking about…)

Let her begin by learning the psalter, and then let her gather rules of life out of the Proverbs of Solomon. From the Preacher [Ecclesiastes] let her gain the habit of despising the world and its vanities. Let her follow the example set in Job of virtue and of patience. Then let her pass on to the gospels never to be laid aside one they have been taken in hand. Let her also drink in with a willing heart the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles. As soon as she has enriched the storehouse of her mind with these treasures, let her commit to memory the prophets, the heptateuch, the books of Kings and of Chronicles, the rolls also of Ezra and Esther. When she has done all these she may safely read the Song of Songs but not before.  (Jerome, Letter 107.12)

After that he recommends the writings of Cyprian, the letters of Athanasius, and the treatises of Hilary.

 So, the order given here is 

  1. Psalms
  2. Wisdom literature (minus the Song of Songs!)
  3. Gospels
  4. Acts
  5. NT Epistles
  6. Major & Minor Prophets
  7. Genesis – Judges
  8. Ruth – 2 Kings
  9. 1 & 2 Chronicles
  10. Ezra, Esther, & the Song of Songs

And, yes, that’s a lot of stuff!!

What it does, though, is emphasize the principle of moving from milk to meat, beginning with the easier material that conveys clearly directives for virtuous living, then highlighting the gospels and epistles before moving into the prophets and histories. If the memorizing of Scripture is to form the character into the virtues of Christ, then start with a strong foundation of Wisdom first.

Cassiodorus, for his part, identifies his own canon-within-the-canon; his pattern of citation generally confirms what he says here except that the gospels do show up in large amounts as well, Matthew and John in particular:

Although all Divine Scripture shines with heavenly brilliance and the excellence of the Holy Spirit appears clearly in it, I have dedicated my efforts to the Psalter, the Prophets, and the Apostolic Letters, since they seem to me to stir deeper profundities, and to contain, as it were, the glorious citadel and summit of the whole Divine Scripture.

While he does identify the Psalms as the first text to be memorized, he doesn’t provide an order beyond that, but rather implies that these are the parts to be worked over next, his order of citations suggesting the Epistles [and Gospels] before the Prophets. He quotes from the Wisdom books surprisingly little.

To be continued…

On Memorizing Scripture

I woke up today with Imagine Dragon’s “Natural” in my head.

Not even the whole thing, but the hook and part of the chorus. It was on repeat for something like two hours or so.

That’s not a terribly unusual state of affairs for me. I live in a very musical household. We listen to it, we talk about it, we make it, we listen to it some more. I have a lot of songs memorized in my head and—like this morning—they tend to just leak out at points. A particular feeling or temperature or smell will call to mind a song, a lyric, or a riff. (I remember one conference I was doing with the bass line of Gojira’s “Backbone” playing constantly in the background…)

But it’s not just music. Sometimes it’s a sentence or part of one, sometimes just a small clump of words—some well-turned phrase that has gotten stuck in my mind like a piece of popcorn jammed up between two teeth.

More frequently than not it’s a psalm fragment—and that’s not really on accident either on my part or the church’s: it’s what the liturgy, the Daily Office in particular, is intended to do. Intended, but insufficient. The Office certainly exposes us to the Psalms, but what monastic spirituality asks is that we take the next step to be intentional about the process.

Because that’s the point we’re heading too here: things have a hard time bubbling up at odd times in your head if they don’t already have a home there. And that’s a key reason why monastic teachers and the Church Fathers advocated for memorization so strenuously. Because your mind can’t be molded and shaped by something that’s not inside of you.

In today’s American context, memorization gets a bad rap. It’s frequently denigrated as “rote learning,” and eschewed in favor of critical thinking skills. In Christian circles, it’s usually associated with the collection of proof texts or clobber verses that are pulled out of context to win an argument rather than to edify.

Despite these concerns, memorization was identified as a powerful and important tool in Christian formation by the Church Fathers & Mothers and their monastic heirs, and a critical part of spiritual development. However, this activity must be seen within the broader scope of their method for achieving biblical literacy.

Thus, I’ll set out a number of key points that hopefully sketch a clearer picture of how these things worked together:

  1. The first goal of patristic Bible reading was comprehensive familiarity, not necessarily understanding.
  2. Memorization was not a substitute for comprehensiveness, but worked alongside it.
  3. Memorization was at the pericope level at the least and, more typically, at the book level.
  4. The purpose of memorization is the shaping of the mind and habit both consciously and subconsciously.
  5. Memorization enabled rumination and contemplation throughout the day.
  6. Memorization follows a progression that starts with the Psalms.
  7. The order of memorization underscores and enables the twofold division between the “practical” and the “theoretical” arts of interpretation.
  8.  The “higher arts of interpretation” are reserved until after a substantial amount of Bible was read and memorized.
  9. The patristic method implies but does not require a quasi-monastic lifestyle; it’s possible to do this as an active layperson—but challenging, requiring solid planning! 

Now I’ll elaborate on each of these points…

1. Familiarity, not necessarily Understanding

The starting place for the patristic method was to read a lot of Scripture. Augustine makes clear that a functional familiarity with the biblical text is essential: “He will be the most expert investigator of the Holy Scriptures who has first read all of them and has some knowledge of them, at least through reading them if not through understanding them” (Christian Teaching 2.8.12). However, he is also concerned lest the beginning readers get lost in the weeds. He emphasizes that the purpose of this initial step is not understanding, but establishing familiarity. That is, don’t get hung up on what seems strange, unusual, or things that just plain don’t make sense—they’ll be plenty of time to deal with those things later.

One of the reasons why he downplays understanding at this stage is because of the conviction of the fullness of the Scriptures. There are some teachings, doctrines, and truths that are immediately graspable and applicable. We read, we say, “oh, yeah!” and we do. He and his fellow teachers also believed that there were deeper and more complicated truths in the Scriptures that we could neither recognize nor apply until we had mastered the basic skills and until our minds and wills had been conformed to the pattern of Scripture. The more deeply you take in Scripture, the more layers and levels you would be able to perceive. That is, part of spiritual growth is the increasing capacity to discern deeper truths within Scripture.

This is clarified as Augustine lays out his method more fully:

In all of these books [of the Bible] those fearing God and made meek in piety seek the will of God. And the first rule of this understanding and labor is, as we have said, to know these books even if they are not understood, at least to read or to memorize them, or to make them not altogether unfamiliar to us. Then those things that are taught openly in them either as precepts for living or as rules for believing are to be studied more diligently and more intelligently, for the more one learns about these things, the more capable of understanding he becomes. (Christian Teaching 2.9.14)

Cassiodorus too insists upon this familiarity—and even memorization—before he begins teaching the higher arts of reading:

…the recruits of Christ, after they have learned the Psalms, should study the divine text in corrected books until, by continuous practice, with God’s help, it is well known to them. The books should be corrected to prevent scribal errors from being fixed in untrained minds, because what is fixed and rooted in the depths of memory is hard to remove. Happy indeed is the mind that has stored such a mysterious treasure in the depths of memory with God’s help… [A]fter the soldiers of Christ have filled themselves with divine study and, grown strong by regular reading, have begun to recognize passages cited as circumstances indicate, then they may profit by going through this guide. (Institutions of Dive & Secular Learning, 1.2, 3)

So—the fundamental level is familiarity which is achieved by reading. To get better at reading Scripture, read more Scripture! Liturgically, this was enacted by the goal of reading all of Scripture every year in the monastic Night Office with the spill-over absorbed by out-loud reading during the otherwise silent mealtimes.

Practically, this is what the scripture is for us in the Daily Office. It’s not a Bible study; it’s not lectio. It’s reading at the speed of proclamation which only enables us to hear it and get a sense of it, not to ponder it, dig into it, or memorize it. And that’s ok because its our regular rehearsal for the sake of familiarization. The time for Bible study and lectio is outside of prayer time! And this leads directly to the next point:

2. Memorization alongside Comprehensiveness

Memorization is a different activity than reading for familiarity or information. This is why Benedict talks about a balancing of three fundamental activities: the Divine Office, Sacred Reading, and Manual Labor. Here’s the secret: all three of these are about Scripture and its internalization! But all three are operating in different modes—and that’s what we tend to lose sight of.

In the Divine Office, only the psalter can get memorized, and it is memorized through the vehicle of song. Just as I pick up a song heard frequently on the radio, singing all of the psalms every week—including several that are repeated many times each week (Psalm 51, I’m looking at you…)—monastics praying in community acquire the psalms through this same mode. The other Scripture can certainly be heard, but—as mentioned above—it’s at the level of familiarization.

A separate block of time for Sacred Reading (Lectio divina) was appointed for active, intentional memorization. Benedict’s rule directs that each monk be given a book at the beginning of Lent. The rule is a little ambiguous here: it doesn’t say what kind of book, and it doesn’t say when the monk has to give it back. One common way to read this passage suggests that monks get some special devotional reading specifically for the days of Lent. Reading this in context of patristic reading and monastic practice more generally suggests a different interpretation: the book is a book of Scripture assigned to be memorized, and at least one should be memorized each year—more if possible. And this leads us smoothly into:

3. Memorization of Large Sections

The memorization we’re talking about here is not about out-of-context verses to be tossed around as proof-texts. Instead, we’re normatively talking about reading at the book level.

It would be inaccurate, though, to claim that all memorization was at the book level. While that seems to be preferred and assumed by several authors—Augustine, Jerome, Cassiodorus—it’s also valuable to look at certain pieces of early monastic legislation that throw some light on this subject. And the place I’ll begin is with a literalization of the metaphor I just used…

We moderns take light for granted. We just assume that whenever we’re in the dark we can reach for a switch to alleviate it and illuminate our surroundings. We expect clear strong lighting—especially in places where we have to read. Now place yourself imaginatively into a Romanesque church building at 3 AM in the 6th century in a mountainous region of Italian wilderness. The few windows in the thick walls are small and wouldn’t be much help even if there were light coming in from the outside. At best, they’re openings to draw off the smoke from the few guttering rushlights—not even candles—that you and your fellow monastics have to light the one large book you’re all sharing, propped up on a stand several yards away. (And glasses have yet to be invented…) Light and visibility is precisely what you don’t have! Furthermore, the book you’re working off of is a manuscript: hand copied, not printed to an exacting standard.

Memorizing the Psalms doesn’t just have a spiritual purpose but a practical one as well—you don’t have to strain to read them if you already have them committed to memory! And the same is true of other biblical passages appointed to be read in church as well…

The Rule of the Master, the monastic instructions of which Benedict’s Rule is the abridged version, gives us some helpful insight into what is supposed to happen during lectio: it shows new monks learning their letters within their deanery (group of ten lead by a more experienced dean). Then they are assigned a psalm which they copy out onto their wax tablet and memorize, then, once their dean is satisfied, they recite it for the abbot and his staff who then assigns another until all of the psalms and canticles are memorized (RM 50). The rule doesn’t immediately state what comes next, but a clue a few chapters on and evidence from later  in the early medieval period gives a strong recommendation of next steps. Here’s what it says about monks going on a long journey:

If a brother is sent out on monastery business in the morning and, because of the demands of the trip, does no reading between Prime and Terce in winter, or between None and Vespers in summer, and returns to the monastery the same day, let him take his meal at whatever time he gets back, and let him do at least a little reading or memorizing, to show that he is observing the rule that day too. But if he is sent on a longer journey, let him take with him from the monastery a small book containing some readings, so that he can do at least a little reading whenever he takes a res along the way. But only if he knows his psalter. (RM 57.1-6)

Keep in mind that monastic libraries—especially in the Italian early 6th century—are nothing like what you might see in Name of the Rose, housed in towering buildings dedicated to books. No, studies of monastic holdings in the Anglo-Saxon era reveal that most monastic libraries numbered around 25 volumes. They were contained not in a special building  but within a single large wooden chest! The books they had multiple copies of were liturgical books: psalters and lectionaries…

Later on in the early medieval period we see directives that after the psalms are memorized the next texts given the monastics newbies are the Epistle and Gospel pericopes read in church. Indeed, the perfect candidate for “a small book containing some readings” is an old lectionary. In these later sources it’s a practical matter: ordination up the ninefold grades became standard and teen-age boys were often ordained as subdeacons—the grade responsible for reading the Epistles at Mass. Memorizing the liturgically appointed Epistle pericopes is a matter of good policy given, again, issues around lighting, visibility, and potential book quality. Liturgical proclamation, then becomes more of an exercise of memory aided by the book rather than a dependence upon it.

And, recognizing how few single-volume Bibles existed in the early medieval period, it’s likely that most biblical knowledge started with the Psalms, the liturgical Epistles and Gospels, and spread out from there. (Indeed, I haven’t done this yet, but I bet that if you were to go through the many biblical allusions that litter St. Patrick’s Confessio, I’d wager that the majority of them come from these appointed liturgical sources…)

So—all of that is to say, evidence shows us that the fathers and the monastics following in their footsteps preferred to read and memorize at the level of the biblical book. Barring that, memorizing at the level of liturgical pericopes was also quite practical. The key point is that the memorization here is not about collecting disconnected verses or prooftexts, but acquisition of big chunks of material.

Ok—that’s all for now; I’ll take up the rest a bit later.

Patristic Biblical Interpretation

…is largely taught wrong to those few to whom it is taught.

Ok—so that’s kind of a bomb-throwing intro. Let me back up a little, clarify, and offer an alternative.

First, patristic biblical interpretation is largely ignored in most seminary curricula. Thanks to a variety of factors, chiefly Academia’s propensity to segment information into fields, “Biblical Studies” and “Patristics” are in two different areas—Biblical Studies and either History or Theology. There are folks who do both, but usually not. Patristics is generally presented as a subdiscipline of Systematic Theology because of the emphasis on patristic writings around the councils and issues of the Doctrine of God & Christology. If the point is what these folks said about God, few folks are interested in how they are working directly with the biblical text.

Second, when biblical people look at patristic readings, we tend to do so from a skills perspective within the frame of the history-of-ideas: what did they think and pass on to other people who thought? What is tends to get taught, then, are the same sections of Origen’s De Principiis, John Cassian’s Conference 14, and Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana. These are important texts and ought to be taught. In fact, I’d argue that they present clearly the heart of patristic biblical interpretation—but even there, most people completely miss the forest for the trees.

What gets focused upon in Origen’s anthropological model of the text: Scripture has a body soul, and spirit that correspond to the literal, moral, and allegorical meanings; all Scripture has a spiritual meaning, but not all of it has a literal meaning. John Cassian extends this to create the “quadriga” that would become standard throughout the medieval period with a helpful example of how these apply to the term Jerusalem: the literal sense, the allegorical (spiritual), the anagogical (purpose or telos), and the tropological (moral). Then Augustine talks about the difference between the literal and the figural with an emphasis on the figural.

This is skills stuff—interpretive techniques.

From there biblical classwork usually jumps directly to the Scholastics…

All of these things are true, but the shape, focus, and scoping distorts what I’m increasing seeing as the far more important and applicable piece.

I’ve just completed filming two videos for a colleague teaching the intro Biblical Studies class at St. Mary’s and they’re up on my YouTube channel: History of Interp 1 and History of Interp 2. Filming these pushed me to clarify insights and thoughts that have been percolating over the last couple of years in some helpful ways.

First, the standard approach rarely drives into why patristic readers did what they did. The assumption in the modern biblical studies field is that the literal view is to be preferred above anything else bolstered and supported primarily by the tools of historical criticism and secondarily by the tools of literary criticism. A “preferential option for the literal” comes baked in especially given the Protestant conviction on the perspecuity of the Scriptures (that they are clear and easy to read by all assuming the assistance of the Spirit).  In the usual instructional method, “allegory” is brought up to be dismissed. But why did these smart people decide that was a useful and helpful strategy?

Second, the narrow focus on a couple of interpretive techniques misses the more important aspect: the pattern, shape, and general method of how the Church Fathers taught that Scripture needs to be approached.  And this is the piece that modern students and especially present/future Episcopal clergy need to hear.

The patristic model as championed by Origen, Cassian, and Augustine—yes, even in the texts that we look at—places applying interpretive skills in the third place. The first step is reading and memorizing large portions of Scripture. This is what lectio divina is; Guigo’s fourfold method in the Ladder of Monks has been misread on this point because he doesn’t bother to state the obvious: the purpose of lectio is reading at the speed of memorization. The second step is enacting the plain directives of Scripture. It’s living life better! This is an essential pre-condition to biblical understanding as the Fathers teach it. Only then do we move to the third step: applying interpretive tools and techniques. The first two steps are all about forming and training the mind, will, and heart into Scriptural patterns. Only then do they get unleashed on the tools.

If we want to learn to read from the Fathers, steps 1 and 2 are at the center. We absorb as much Scripture as possible, and conform our wills and minds to it. That’s the true starting place.

 

Money Autobiography: Qoheleth

My parish has a periodic group that meets to consider topics around how we integrate living out the Gospel and how we use our resources. Much of the discussion is sparked by materials from the Faith & Money Network. For the latest meeting, they decided to use the concept of the Money Autobiography, but to incorporate biblical materials by presenting Money Autobiographies of biblical figures. I was asked to write and present a piece so I selected Qoheleth.

Qoheleth is the Hebrew word meaning “the Teacher” or “Preacher” which is the name by which the narrative voice of Ecclesiastes identifies himself. All of the details offered lead readers to identify Qoheleth with King Solomon but Ecclesiastes never quite comes right out to say it. To compose this, I looked over the questions in the Money Autobiography, selected several, then answered some of these imaginatively from the Samuel/Kings narratives, and cobbled together selections for Ecclesiastes itself for the others.

Following the style of Qoheleth, I don’t identify his family members by name, but only by role. (I will footnote them, though.)

Money Autobiography: Qoheleth (King Solomon as seen through Ecclesiastes)

Have you ever stood in an empty plaza, a market-square that you remember full and bustling with life? Your memory recalls smells and sounds that delight the senses and call to mind the vibrant fabrics, the flashing glances, the pagentry of the daily moment, but your eyes see only the vacant space with crumbling walls, weeds creeping through between flagstones, and the dust and broken crockery pushed to the corners.  Then a breeze flows over the hills from the desert, and caught in the corner, catches up the dead leaves and dust and whirls them in a cloud that passes by and over you and grit pelts your skin and attacks your eyes. And, just for a moment in the sound of its passing you think you catch the sounds of voices long dead of, opportunities left behind, of experiences fading. And a tear forms at the corner of your eye to wash the grit or—perhaps—to cleanse the memory as the circling eddy of wind with its muttering breath passes along its way. And—just for a moment—you think to grasp at it, to hold on to trap that moment, all that which is now past and gone but that is simply a vanity. It is a chasing after the wind.

So it is—in my experience—with the grasping after wealth.

I never lacked for wealth as a child, and in my youth walked the corridors of privilege and ease. Whatever I desired I could lay my hands upon. I made a test of joy and experience and “I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself; I made myself gardens and parks and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house; I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and of the provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, and many concubines. So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was the reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” (Eccl 1:4-11).

My unhappiest childhood memory is remembering flight in the night from the hands of my brother. He had risen in arms against my father—because my brother desired what he did not have. He wanted wealth, yes, he wanted power, but more than that he wanted the revenge that these things could give him and in his youth and blindness thought that the power to continue his revenge would heal the hurts of his sister. While he had slain his brother who had raped her, he still blamed our father for not giving her the justice she was due.*

I do not know how my mother felt about wealth but I do know this: There would be nights was I was young when she thought I slept. She would remove her rich robes, take the jewels off her neck and ears, and sweep them from her table to the floor and, putting on a simple dress of Hittite pattern, would cry with her face to the north.

As for my father his wealth was his security. He would shower it on his men with an easy smile, buying those whose spears would bring him safety. He was a man of excesses and contradictions. A man’s man—virile, dashing, and handsome—who had elevated himself from following the sheep to Jerusalem’s throne by his own hand. A lover of women, of battle, and of the God whom he honored even when he acted against his God’s command. Having come from nothing, he could return to nothing, casting mere things aside to melt into the desert, trusting in his canny craft to regain his throne again—which he did at the cost of my beloved brother.

Once my father passed, I stepped into his place. Wealth flowed freely in and out of my coffers. Counting it was important and I had teams of scribes to account for my gold and silver and precious goods, patiently marking tablet after tablet to describe my riches. For only then would I know how I could move and spend it, to turn it from glittering coin to stout carven stone. In my middle years, I kept a close eye on my money. Not because I craved it, but because of the power it allowed me to project. With my money I bought masons and supplies and costly materials with which to build. And build I did, straining my treasure and the will of my people to build great buildings. A temple, yes, the likes of which had never been seen before in Jerusalem but not only the temple. Walls and fortifications and towers were raised at my command. The overseers’ whips cracked as I forced my people to labor, mothers wailed as I sold my own people into servitude in Egypt for horses and chariots, acquiring the military hardware that would keep my nation safe and secure. Protecting my people even as I sold their bodies to purchase my weapons of war.

But—even then—as time would tell—all of my efforts at security would be but vanity and chasing after the wind. For my works of building, my projects of forced labor, so alienated and enraged my people that the northern tribes would grow embittered and in the lifetime of my son would split the kingdom I had spent so deeply to protect.

All of it was a vanity and a chasing after the wind.

Opening my eyes, seeing my own follies, “I saw all of the oppressions that are practiced under the sun, Look, the tears of the oppressed—with no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power—with no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead who had already died, more fortunate than the living, who are still alive; but better yet than both is the one who has not yet been, and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun. Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from one person’s envy of another. This also is vanity and a chasing after wind.” (Eccl 4:1-1)

“Again, I saw vanity under the sun: the case of solitary individuals, without sons or brothers; yet there is no end to their toil, and their eyes are never satisfied with riches. ‘For whom am I toiling,” ‘thy ask, ‘and depriving myself of pleasure?

This also is vanity and an unhappy business.” (Eccl 4:7-8).

“There is a grievous ill that I have seen under the sun: riches were kept by their owners to their hurt, and those riches were lost in a bad venture; though they are parents of children, they have nothing in their hands. As they came from their mother’s womb, so shall they go again, naked as they came: they shall take nothing for their toil which they may carry away with their hands. This also is a grievous ill: just as they came, so shall they go; and what gain do they have from toiling for the wind? Besides, all their days they eat in darkness, in much vexation and sickness and resentment.

This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of the life that God gives us; for this is our lot. Likewise all to whom God gives wealth and possessions and whom he enables to enjoy them, and to accept their lot and find enjoyment in their toil—this is the gift of God.” (Eccl 5:13-19).

Now—I have heard it said “The righteous are delivered from trouble, and the wicked get into it instead” (Prov 11:8); I have heard it said, “Be assured, the wicked will not go unpunished, but those who are righteous will escape” (Prov 11:21). I have heard it said  “Misfortune pursues sinners; but prosperity rewards the righteous” (Prov 13:21). I have heard it said, “The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life” (Prov 22:4). But this too is vanity and a chasing after the wind. “In my vain life, I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing” (Eccl 7:15). “There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people who are treated according to the conduct of the wicked, and there are wicked people who are treated according to the conduct of the righteous I said that this also is vanity” (Eccl 8:14).

As the gold slips through my fingers I know that it is not worth a puff of wind for it gives me not one more puff of wind into my breath. My wealth cannot save my life. “The lover of money will not be satisfied with money; nor the lover of wealth with gain. This also is vanity. When goods increase, those who eat them increase; and what gain has their owner but to see them with his eyes? Sweet is the sleep of laborers, whether they eat little or much; but the surfeit of the rich will not let them sleep” (Eccl 5:10-12).What gives me joy at the end of my days—at the end of my life—are the simple pleasures that cost but a handful of copper: “So I commend enjoyment, for there is nothing better for people under the sun than to eat and drink and enjoy themselves for this will go with them in their toil through all the days of life that God gives them under the sun” (Eccl 8:15). “Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going” (Eccl 9:8-10).

“Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, ’I have no pleasure in them’ : before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel is broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, all is vanity” (Eccl 12:1, 6-8).

 

  • This is a reference to Absalom’s uprising against his father (and Solomon’s father) King David. Absalom’s anger against his father began when his half-brother Amnon raped then rejected Absalom’s full-sister Tamar. Absalom slew him after King David refused to punish Amnon’s crime. Solomon’s mother is Bathsheba; the mention of the “Hittite” dress is a reference to Bathsheba’s first husband Uriah whom David killed—with Bathsheba’s collusion.

PC: David the Man

Of all of the figures of the Old Testament, David is the richest and most complex. His story begins in 1 Samuel 16 and extends through the remaining 15 chapters of 1 Samuel, though all 24 chapters of 2 Samuel, and even into 1 Kings where David’s death is recorded in 1 Kings 2:10. Through almost 1,200 verses, we get a deep and intimate portrait of this pivotal king of Israel.

On one hand, there are signs that certain portions of his story have the air of political propaganda: the image of the handsome young shepherd boy fighting the Philistine Goliath with just a sling is calculated to play well in its Ancient Near Eastern setting. Kings were referred to as “shepherds of their people” and were expected to be successful warriors. Emphasizing David’s youth and apparent naivety implies that it would take a (literal) miracle for him to win, and thus his victory is a demonstration of God’s favor, recalling other divinely sanctioned victories against overwhelming odds like Gideon’s (Judges 7). But contrary to this portrait (and every Sunday School illustration you have ever seen), David is described to Saul the chapter before the Goliath episode as already being a full-grown and accomplished figure: “One of the young men answered, ‘I have seen [David,] a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who is skillful in playing [the lyre], a man of valor, a warrior, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence and the Lord is with him’” (2 Sam 16:18). Saul—already on the lookout for “any strong or valiant warrior” (2 Sam 14:52)—not only brings David into his household to play the lyre but also promotes him by the end of chapter 16 to be his own armor-bearer, a position of importance and trust. Thus, it’s odd that Saul barely recognizes him in chapter 17.

The fact that there would be this kind of idealization of David comes as no surprise at all. After all, he was the founder of a dynasty, the man who freed Israel from Philistine control, united the divided north and south, captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites, and established it as the centralized capitol of his kingdom. Rather, what does come as a surprise is that we hear of so many things that David did wrong! From his days as a bandit captain to his sinful taking of Bathsheba to the revolt of his son Absalom, we hear of all kinds of things that could have been covered up and expunged from the historical record altogether—but weren’t. The picture we get is far more interesting because of the ways that it wasn’t sanitized by court historians. We are shown a fully human David, warts and all.

The David we meet in the books of Samuel and Kings is a shrewd, rakish fellow who lives by his wits, his sword—and also his faith. He is a complicated person: a canny opportunist, a lover of many (married!) women, a wise king, and a loving father who we see grieving the death of an infant son and the betrayal and subsequent death of another. He is a devoted follower of the God of Israel and—despite his many moral lapses—is nevertheless a man after God’s own heart. He is the only character in the Old Testament with such a complete emotional spectrum. After all, we don’t see Moses feeling a lot, and the only feelings we get from Job are bad ones! Add to this portrait the several references to David as a musician and it’s no surprise that not only is a large early collection of psalms named after him, but that they are interpreted through and connected with episodes in his life.

The David featured in 1 Chronicles adds a whole extra layer to our picture of the man. The two books of Chronicles are a post-Exilic rewrite of the history of Israel from a liturgical perspective. That is, it’s most interested in what’s going on with the Temple, who has been appointed to do what, and how all of the various priests and Levites are organized. In the book of 1 Kings, it’s pretty clear that Solomon was the ruler responsible for building the Temple in Jerusalem and setting up worship. In Chronicles, Solomon is simply carrying through on all of the detailed plans that his father David had orchestrated. David is the worship planner par excellence especially when it comes to establishing the rota the levitical singers and, by implication, what they ought to be singing. Chronicles is an interesting addition to David’s legacy. That’s not because it gives us any new, accurate, historical information about David (after all, it was written some six hundred years after his death!); instead, it shows us the reverence with which David was seen amongst the liturgical musicians, the pre-eminence given to him and his memory. This will only grow throughout the Second Temple period including into the time of Jesus and the early church. The Jewish liturgically-obsessed sect that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls attributes to David some 4,050 fifty songs which included 3,600 psalms as well as songs to be sung at temple worship every day of the year, and even 4 therapeutic songs of exorcism to be sung over the demon-possessed (hearkening back to his original role at Saul’s court in 2 Samuel 14).[11Q5, col. XXVII (Martinez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated, 309).]

This is David the man. But there’s more to the biblical picture of David than this—and that’s what we have to turn to next. We must reckon not just with David the man, but also with David the ideal.

PC: Hearing the Psalms in other Voices

Here we go again…

In this section, I’m tackling a key question about the way the Church Fathers read the Psalms. They heard them in the voice of Jesus. But can we do that? Is this an appropriate reading strategy based on what we know from modern biblical scholarship? This is the first of four sections on this topic.

Is this a legitimate way to read the Psalms? Coming from a modern perspective, grounded in the insights of the scientific study of the Scriptures, is this a means by which we can approach them?

There are a couple of angles we can use to think through this question. The first is to come at it from the perspective of the historical critical method, the method that was the centerpiece of the academic study of Scripture from the nineteenth century until the last quarter of the twentieth century. This approach privileges the idea of authorial intent—what was the  original author intending to communicate to the people they expected to be reading or hearing this material? Was the original author of any given psalm writing it with the idea that it should be heard in the voice of Jesus? The quick and simple answer to this question is no, of course not. Remember, a fundamental premise of the academic study of Scripture is that supernatural causes or authors are outside the realm of this form of research; we can’t assume or refer to supernatural knowledge on the part of the authors. Scholarship cannot make an appeal to the Holy Spirit to suggest that a psalmist of the ninth century BC was either consciously or unconsciously writing about Jesus. As a result, this form of biblical research must answer this specific question in the negative: no, the original authors did not have Jesus in mind as they wrote, nor would their original audience have thought of Jesus when they heard or read these psalms.

That having been said, even though this form of research would deny this kind of reading in its specific application, it may give it a cautious go-ahead based in its general application. Let me explain what I mean by that. Put simply, Jesus is not mentioned by name in the Psalms for obvious temporal reasons—his Incarnation occurred centuries after the last psalm was written. However, a key feature of the psalms is a studied generality. Think back to the psalms you know. Many of the lament psalms talk about the troubles that their authors were or are in. But what specifically are these troubles? Does any psalm refer to the threat of poverty because a band of Amorite raiders seized a caravan of goods coming up from Egypt that the author had spent his last shekels on? Does any psalm talk about the political danger the author is in because he knows that Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah have heard a false rumor about him and suspect him of disloyalty in the current difficulties with the Neo-Babylonians?  No—none of them do. One of the things that makes each psalm so hard to date is the lack of specificity within them. Rather, the psalms as we have received them speak in vague generalities about the trials, tribulations, and narrow escapes of the righteous. They are general enough that anyone can find themselves within their troubles. Everyone has experienced tribulations, and the laments are crafted in such a way that each of us can hear their situations through our own experiences. As a result, the psalms taken as a whole can be read as the praise and lament of the a righteous one—a righteous one who has suffered greatly yet still praises God.

Furthermore, royal figures appear frequently in the psalms. If we wanted to group the many references to kings, we would end up with three major groups: foreign kings, usually enemies of Israel;[See Psalm 2:2, 10; Psalm 48:4; Psalm 68:12, 14, 29; Psalm 72:10-11; Psalm 76:12; Psalm 89:27; Psalm 102:15; Psalm 105:14, 20, 30; Psalm 110:5; Psalm 135:10-11; Psalm 136:17-20; Psalm 138:4; Psalm 148:11; and Psalm 149:8.] Yhwh, the God of Israel who is also the true king of Israel;[See Psalm 5:2; Psalm 10:16; Psalm 24:7-10; Psalm 29:10; Psalm 44:4; Psalm 47, Psalm 48:2; Psalm 68:24; Psalm 74:12; Psalm 84:3; Psalm 93; Psalms 95-99; Psalm 145; and Psalm 149:2.] and the human king of Israel/Judah[See Psalm 2:4; Psalm 18:50; Psalm 20:9; Psalm 21:1, 7; Psalm 33:16; Psalm 45; Psalm 61:6; Psalm 72; Psalm 89; Psalm 119:46; and Psalm 144:10.]. And yet, despite all of these references in the first and third groups, only three kings are ever mentioned by name—David, Sihon of the Amorites, and Og of Bashan—and one by implication—the unnamed Pharaoh of the Exodus. There’s no Hezekiah or Joram or Manasseh or any of the other kings of Israel or Judah mentioned in the historical books. Too, the royal psalms 45, 72, and 89 speak in hyperbolic terms about the relationship between God and the king, portraying a set of expectations that seem far beyond what any human person and accomplish or achieve! These appear to portray less historical figures and more aspirational messianic figures, a future unnamed figure of the line of David who will bring peace, prosperity and security to God’s people. What would a reader of the time hear? Is this political propaganda exalting the current occupant of the throne, or an aspirational vision of who a king could be—who is, in any case, a client king of the Yhwh, the true king—that qualifies and challenges any current occupant of the throne?

As much as a scholar working within the historical method would deny that any of the psalms were written to be placed in the mouth of Jesus, it is nonetheless a true statement that the psalms were written (or edited) in such a way that they can be seen as the words of any suffering righteous person and that they refer to an aspirational messianic king of the line of David.

But the historical method is not the only approach that modern scholarship offers. In recent decades the historical method has been joined by other methods that expand our view on the text by asking different questions that complement the historical ones but open other lines of inquiry. Reader-response and reception history take seriously how readers would have heard these texts and look for evidence about how they were actually received, understood, and put into practice. These are particularly fruitful approaches for what we’re talking about. Again—these shouldn’t be seen as an either/or, either we use one approach or we use another; rather, the most edifying perspective is a both/and. There is no single right answer about what a biblical text means—there are a multitude of questions that can be asked, some questions are better than others, and taking the answers to the better questions together can help us gain clarity about what we see in the text and how we act as a result of it.

If we come at this question—is it legitimate to read the psalms in the voice of Jesus or the church—from the direction of reader-response and reception history, we will discover some fascinating material to put into the mix.  The first question we will tackle is whether it is appropriate to read individual psalms as the voice of a community. We’ll take this on first because it is the easiest to answer: according to the psalms themselves, the answer is a resounding yes! Specifically, in and amongst the Songs of Ascent (Psalms 120-134), there are psalms that invite all of Israel to hear themselves in the “I” and “we” of the psalms:

If it had not been the Lord who was on our side —let Israel now say—If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, When our enemies attacked us… (Psalm 124:1-2)

“Often have they attacked me from my youth” —let Israel now say—“Often have they attacked me from my youth, Yet they have not prevailed against me. (Psalm 129:1-2)

The easy slippage between the singular “I,”  plural nouns like “tents of the righteous,” and collective nouns like “Israel,” “house of Aaron,” “those who fear the Lord” in a text like Psalm 118, supports the notion that even psalms written in the singular are intended to evoke the whole community’s experience. Moving outside the Psalter, Isaiah’s servant songs function in a similar way—although they are written about an exemplary individual, internal clues show that their author intended them to refer to the whole community as well: “And he said to me, ‘You are my servant,/ Israel in whom I will be glorified’” (Isaiah 49:3). Thus, the psalms themselves invite their readers to investigate plurals as singulars and singulars as plurals.

Next, let’s look at the more complicated question about hearing the psalms as the voice of a particular individual. The place to start is by turning our attention to the superscriptions—those brief taglines that appear before the psalms in most translations.[It’s worth noting that some liturgical translations of the psalms—like those found in the Books of Common Prayer—leave these out.] As we discussed in our initial look at the psalms back in chapter XX, there are a couple of different kinds of superscriptions. There are those that identify the collections that were edited into the final form of the Psalter. There are others that identify tune names or are directed to the leader of the Levitical choir. Then, there are contextualizing superscriptions—superscriptions that attempt to locate certain psalms within a particular event in the life of David or another biblical figure. These are the earliest examples of prosopological interpretation of the psalms: before the canon was even closed, the psalms have been interpreted by placing them in the mouth of a specific individual expressing that person’s thoughts and feelings in the midst of a given experience. Most scholars believe that the superscriptions were not original to the psalms; they were not part of the process of composition but rather are part of the editorial work of the unknown Levites or priests who gathered these poems into collections and wove those collections together into the book that we now have. An important piece of evidence that supports this is the freedom in the Septuagint to alter and add superscriptions in ways that other parts of the biblical text are not altered.

Thirteen psalms receive historical notes in their superscriptions connecting them to events in the life of David, most of which are described in the books of Samuel; a fourteenth (Psalm 30) is unclear:

We see a lot of these historical superscriptions at the beginning of the psalter—in that initial “Book of David” collection. Even though there are many connections between these superscriptions and events listed in the biblical books as we have received them, there are enough differences to make us wonder if the editors were looking at a different version of these books. Second, the connection between the psalms and the referenced events varies in quality amongst them. For instance, the connection between David’s repentance and Psalm 51 is a great one. Liturgically speaking, Psalm 51 is considered the penitential psalm par excellence, and is eminently appropriate for this episode in David’s life. The connection between the betrayal of the Ziphites and Psalm 54 is a bit more puzzling. Despite these curiosities, these superscriptions set a pattern that would be extended both farther and deeper. Farther in the sense that David was not the only biblical figure to whom specific psalms were assigned. (I leave aside here those referring to David, Asaph and the Korahites here because these superscriptions are best seen as referring to collections rather than being prosopological connections of the sort we’re discussing here.):

The anonymous figure in Psalm 102 is interesting because it suggests a process: read the psalm, construct a emotional profile based on the content, then consider who and where in the biblical records such a person might be found. For Psalm 102 at least, the first few steps have been accomplished, but the process as a whole has not been completed.

The Septuagint, though, that translation into Greek by Egyptian Jews in the 3rd or 2nd century BC, took this idea and added to it (The bolded words in this chart shows what is in the Hebrew; the regular type is what was added in the Septuagint’s psalter):

So—what do we make of all of this?

The evidence that we see here tells us that people started interpreting the Psalms prosopologically—hearing them in the voices of particular people at particular times—early in the collecting and editing of the Psalter. They were pre-eminently tied into the life of David, but other biblical figures received attributions as well. This trend only increased as time went on. The evidence of the Septuagint shows that the editors of that tradition were comfortable doing both things: connecting more psalms with events in the life of David, and connecting them to other people and events including post-exilic people (like Haggai and Zechariah) and situations (the resettlement of Israel).

The psalms themselves invite us to hear and pray them in our voices and in the voices of biblical figures. Understanding how the early church found Jesus within them requires us to take a deep dive into David which we’ll do next.

Liturgical Look Hiatus

I really don’t want to do this, but for the sake of my sanity, I’m taking a break from the Liturgical Look Forward series.

Two main factors are driving this. The bigger reason is life changes. As some of you know, I recently changed jobs. After a decade in the corporate IT world, I am going to be teaching Computer Science and Math to high-schoolers as my day job. (I’ll still be teaching Church History & Scripture to Master’s students in the evenings.) As the new semester approaches at rocket speed, I’m trying to wrap my head around five new class that I’ll be teaching in the Fall while tying up some loose ends like—finishing Psalming Christ and a big web site project that you’ll hear more about once it’s implemented.  As much fun as “The Liturgical Look Forward” is, I can’t commit the time to it until some of these other things get fully finished and I get my bearings in the new job.

The other factor is that I’m still not completely pleased with the format or the reception of LLF. I think I’m still missing some key elements, but I’m not entirely sure what they are. I believe the concept is sound, but it hasn’t connected with people in the way that it could or should. So, I need to do some thinking around that as well. In my spare time…

PC: The Psalms and the Wisdom Literature

Following on the heels of the previous post that introduces the idea that reading more Bible helps you interpret better, here’s an exploration of how reading the wisdom literature in the Bible can help you pray the psalms better.

Wisdom literature is an ancient genre, older than the biblical writings. We possess Egyptian and Babylonian wisdom texts from the third millennium BC—some two thousand years before King Solomon and his scribes. Originating in early scribal circles at royal courts, wisdom literature offers advice on how to live life best including how to survive the complexities of court intrigue. Often a mix of ethical instruction and sound moral philosophy, its authors traced its source back to two related sources. The first was, of course, the wisdom of the gods, but the second was the order and patterns perceived in the natural world: revelation of the gods’ divine ordering of things. To be a successful sage, then, was to observe the natural world and to draw from it lessons for how the gods intended humans to behave. Wise living and righteous living went hand in hand. When wisdom arrived in Israel—initially brought by the scribes Solomon attracted to himself—it came from these international sources; the section entitled “Sayings of the wise” in Proverbs 22:17-24:22 appear to be a Hebrew translation of the Egyptian “Instructions of Amenemope” written during the times of the Ramsesside pharaohs (roughly 1300-1075 BC). In the early Solomon collections, Proverbs 10-22:16, we see the same themes appearing as in the Egyptian and Babylonian sources. As it matured, the wisdom tradition adapted to the Israelite religious environment and took on some new themes relating to God of Israel.

Stylistically, it’s worth noting how the proverbs were written. The early maxims appear in a very familiar format—a two-line thought where the second line either restates the first, states the contrary of the first, or continues the thought of the first.

Restating (Proverbs 19:8) Contrary (Proverbs 15:1) Continuation (Proverbs 16:4)
“To get wisdom is to love oneself;
To keep understanding is to prosper.”		 “A soft answer turns away wrath,
But a harsh word stirs up anger.”		 “The Lord has made everything for its purpose,
Even the wicked for the day of trouble.”

If this looks familiar, it should! This is the exact same kind of poetic structure and parallelism that appears in the psalms.

The two-line form means that there is no room for gray area in the contrary statements: “A wise child makes a glad father, but the foolish despise their mothers” (Prov 15:20); “Folly is a joy to one who has no sense, but a person of understanding walks straight ahead” (Prov 15:21); “The righteous are delivered from trouble, and the wicked get into it instead” (Prov 11:8); With their mouth the godless destroy their neighbors, but by knowledge the righteous are delivered” (Prov 11:9). The result is that wisdom literature features a lot of rhetorical binaries: the righteous/the wicked; the righteous/the godless; the wise/the foolish. The terse structure gives no opportunity for nuance. There are no “wise but misguided” or “people making hard choices” or “basically good people who made a few dumb mistakes” in these two-line maxims: you’re either wise or foolish, righteous or wicked. The psalms are going to share this characteristic—remember it, it’s going to be important later on.

Another feature of these maxims is a clear but simple moral code: do what is righteous and things will go well for you; do what is wicked and you will face the consequences: “The righteousness of the blameless keeps their ways straight,/but the wicked fall by their own wickedness./The righteousness of the upright saves them,/but the treacherous are taken captive by their schemes” (Prov 11:5-6). “The perverse get what their ways deserve,/and the good, what their deeds deserve” (Prov 14:14). In one sense, this is common sense borne out of observation of human nature playing itself out in societies with a healthy belief in retribution. If you kill or defraud someone, his family is going to come looking for you and things won’t end well for you! This retributive justice doesn’t necessarily come from a divine source—it’s just the natural course of things playing themselves out. However, the principle is also expressed theologically: “The eyes of the Lord are in every place,/ keeping watch on the evil and the good” (Prov 15:3). “The Lord is far from the wicked,/ but he hears the prayers of the righteous” (Prov 15:29).

From these brief couplets it is not hard to extract a pair of simple principles: 1) the righteous will receive a reward for how they act; 2) God rewards the good. The fusion of these two gets expressed in a number of proverbs: “Misfortune pursues sinners;/ but prosperity rewards the righteous” (Prov 13:21). “The righteous have enough to satisfy their appetite,/ but the belly of the wicked is empty” (Prov 13:25). “In the house of the righteous there is much treasure,/ but trouble befalls the income of the wicked” (Prov 15:6). “The reward for humility and fear of the Lord/ is riches and honor and life” (Prov 22:4). On one hand this makes a lot of sense: keep your nose clean, work hard, and you will earn the rewards of your labors. Act like an idiot, be lazy, cheat and defraud people, and you’ll get what’s coming both in retribution and from shirking honest labor. On the other hand, this can set up a theologically treacherous premise based on simplistic logic: if you are righteous, God will reward you with wealth; if you are wealthy you must therefore be righteous. Or, if you do good, good things will happen to you; if bad things happen to you, you must have done something wrong.

It’s worth noting that there’s push-back against this notion in Proverbs itself, recognizing that wealth isn’t always the fruit of righteousness and holds its own dangers: “Better is a little with righteousness/ than large income with injustice” (Prov 16:8). “Riches do not profit in the day of wrath,/ but righteousness delivers from death” (Prov 11:4). “Those who trust in their riches will wither,/ but the righteous will flourish like green leaves” (Prov 11:28). “The rich and poor have this in common:/ the Lord is the maker of them all” (Prov 22:2)  “Better to be poor and walk in integrity / than to be crooked in one’s ways even though rich” (Prov 28:6).  These maxims qualify and question an easy equation between righteousness and wealth.

This notion presented by the maxims that God rewards the righteous with riches and ease and punishes the wicked with poverty and problems has been labeled “wisdom orthodoxy” by modern scholarship. Not all wisdom literature is packaged in these two-line maxims, though. There are also hymnic structures present in the wisdom literature. The opening chapters of Proverbs (Proverbs 1-9) are in poetic hymn form. While the two-line thought structures still show up in some of the hymnody, the longer format allows for more nuanced theological thought. That’s what leads to a direct challenge to this wisdom orthodoxy.

The book of Job is a wisdom book that tackles the simplistic wisdom orthodoxy, challenging it by constructing a hypothetical situation. A folk-tale like frame introduces us to Job, the prototypical righteous man. He is rich, he is righteous, he does all the right things and has all of the material benefits that wisdom orthodoxy promises. He is a cartoon figure of “the good guy.” But then, through no fault of his own, everything is taken away from him: his wealth, his family, and his heath. His three remaining friends come to console him. After sitting in silence together for seven days and seven nights, the cartoony introduction comes to an abrupt end as Job breaks out in a stylistically and theologically complex wisdom hymn describing his woe and proclaiming his innocence. His friends respond by insisting that he had to have done something wrong for so much ill to befall him. They go back and forth until finally God steps in with some poetic splendor of his own. God reveals that the problem is their paradigm; both Job and his friends are stuck in the same narrow, wrong-headed framework. Returning to the wisdom theme of observing the principles of creation, God directs Job to observe the presence of chaos within the creation, both in the natural world as well as in human affairs. If chaos is created into the fabric of things, no easy or trite formulations—like a simplistic wisdom orthodoxy—will ever be able to account for the complexities of real life. A final return to the cartoonish frame almost blunts the power of the poetry by having God restore all of Job’s riches.

Along with Job, Ecclesiastes likewise challenges wisdom orthodoxy by casting doubt on its easy equations. More skeptical and pessimistic in outlook, Ecclesiastes warns against any attempts to correlate actions too neatly with results. At the end of the day it advocates an appreciation of the simple joys of life accompanied by virtue—not because of any divine benefits thereof, but because virtue is the better path. Taken together, Job and Ecclesiastes represent a stance of “wisdom in revolt” that offers a canonical alternative to wisdom orthodoxy potentially extracted from Proverbs.There’s further development to the wisdom tradition that is important for its connection with the Psalms.

The Apocrypha—those books related to the Old Testament known to the early church in Greek and not Hebrew—contains two later wisdom texts, the Wisdom of Solomon and The Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sirach (also referred to as Sirach or Ecclesiasticus). If you remember, the earliest wisdom literature identified the initial source of wisdom as the gods or God and its secondary source as the observation of creation. These later books, composed by Jewish believers around 180 BC (Sirach) and between 100 BC and AD 50 (Wisdom of Solomon), identify that initial source of divine wisdom with the Old Testament generally and the Torah specifically. If you want to know what “righteousness” ought to look like, study the Torah and its legal and ethical demands. Study the prophets and the histories, and see how the wise leaders of the past acted in accordance with God’s will.

Reading through the wisdom literature will help you pray the psalms better for several reasons. First, there is a deep relationship between the wisdom hymns and the psalms. Indeed, some psalms are best understood as free-floating wisdom hymns. Consider the start of Psalm 49:

Hear this, all you peoples;
give ear, all inhabitants of the world,
both low and high,
rich and poor together.
My mouth shall speak wisdom;
the meditation of my heart shall be understanding.
I will incline my ear to a proverb;
I will solve my riddle to the music of the harp.

Why should I fear in times of trouble,
when the iniquity of my persecutors surrounds me,
those who trust in their wealth
And boast of the abundance of their riches?
Truly, no ransom avails for one’s life,
there is no price one can give to God for it. (Psalm 49:1-7)

This is clearly rooted in the wisdom tradition. It uses the technical terminology of wisdom found in such writings: “wisdom,” “meditation,” “understanding,” “proverb,” and “riddle”. It also addresses familiar themes, the rich and the poor, the righteous and the wicked, putting one’s trust in God rather than wealth. Another wisdom psalm starts like this:

Do not fret because of the wicked;
do not be envious of wrongdoers,
for they will soon fade like the grass,
and wither like the green herb.

Trust in the LORD, and do good;
so you will live in the land, and enjoy security.
Take delight in the LORD,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the LORD;
trust in him, and he will act.
He will make your vindication shine like the light,
and the justice of your cause like the noonday. (Psalm 37:1-6)

Do you notice the difference between them just from the few verses of each that I have cited here? The second, Psalm 37, appears to represents a wisdom orthodoxy perspective in line with the general stance of Proverbs. As you continue through the psalm you will find this initial suspicion confirmed by verses like these:

Our steps are made firm by the LORD,
when he delights in our way;
though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong,
for the LORD holds us by the hand.

I have been young, and now am old,
yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken
or their children begging bread.
They are ever giving liberally and lending,
and their children become a blessing. (Psalm 37:23-26).

I live in urban Baltimore. Every morning when I drive my daughter to school we pass through at least four intersections where I know there will be homeless people on each corner, walking the lines of traffic, begging bread. I could assume that they are “the wicked,” that their condition is their fault because of laziness, addiction, or unrighteous life choices. While those assumptions might hold true in some cases, another alternative is to see this psalm borrowing the simplistic aphorisms of wisdom orthodoxy. Wisdom orthodoxy is not wrong to state that the way of righteousness—living life in accordance with wisdom, virtue, and God’s will—is a better path than competing alternatives. But we can also recognize that the promises of divine assistance for the righteous are part of a rhetorical strategy designed to make this way look more attractive rather than a value-judgment upon the poor and afflicted.

Psalm 37 is rightly read against the context not only of the wisdom orthodoxy of Proverbs, but also the wisdom in revolt tradition of Job, Ecclesiastes—and its canonical cousin Psalm 49. The riddle that Psalm 49 promises to address in verse 4 is precisely the question of wealth. Echoing themes from Ecclesiastes, it observes the fleeting nature of riches and all human possessions:

When we look at the wise, they die;
fool and dolt perish together
and leave their wealth to others.
Their graves are their homes forever,
their dwelling places to all generations,
though they named lands their own.
Mortals cannot abide in their pomp;
they are like the animals that perish. (Psalm 49:10-12)

The fact of mortality renders wealth existentially irrelevant. Fidelity to God, on the contrary, is of enduring value.

Reading the breadth of the wisdom literature helps us pray the psalms better because it helps us recognize some important things about language and rhetoric.  First, binary language in the psalms—good/bad, righteous/wicked, rich/poor—is the rhetorical heritage of the wisdom literature. It is inherently simplistic and reductive. We need to acknowledge that just because binaries are required by a scheme of two-line parallels does not mean that either our thinking or theology need to be similarly simplistic. Second, assertions based in wisdom orthodoxy (“The righteous shall be kept safe forever,/ but the children of the wicked shall be cut off” Psalm 37:28b) should be read for what they are: hyperbole intended to encourage us to lives of godly virtue. They are not, however, the only biblical perspective. The wisdom in revolt tradition both in and outside the Psalter is a biblical witness that stands against this problematic notion that seeks to intertwine faithfulness and wealth.

PC: The Psalms and the Old Testament

One of the big arguments I’m making in Psalming Christ about how the Church Fathers prayed the psalms and what we can learn from them is the basic concept that the single best way to get better at reading Scripture is to read more Scripture. Since I’m also approaching this from the standpoint of modern biblical scholarship and how and why it reinforces the patristic wisdom, I’m spending some time talking about the relationship between the Psalms at the Old Testament in order to build the case that you be able to pray the Psalms better the better you know the Old Testament. In service of that, here’s a discussion of the relationship between the Psalms and the Old Testament as we know it.

I realize that I’m covering a lot of ground fairly quickly in this section. What are parts that don’t make sense or connections that don’t click?

When I learned the faith as I was growing up, I inherited a fairly simple model of understanding how the Bible came together. As it’s laid out, it moves in roughly chronological order: Genesis talks about the beginning of things, Revelation talks about the ending of things and everything more or less falls in line from there. The main historical thread moves through the first seven books (the Heptateuch) which gets the Israelites into the Promised Land and up to the point of having kings, then the books of Samuel & Kings take up the thread until the Exile in 587 BC, then Ezra and Nehemiah take over with the apocryphal Maccabees as the bridge between the Old Testament and New.

My general unconscious assumption was that the order that was followed was more or less the order that things were written in.

I didn’t worry much about the question of authorship. I had been told that Moses wrote the Torah—the first five books—on the strength of Deuteronomy (“When Moses had finished writing down in a book the words of this law to the very end…” Deut 31:24). I assumed that the prophets had written their prophetic books, and that was that.

As I got older, though, a thought occurred to me. I knew that the Israelites were a group of nomadic herdsmen; I couldn’t see them carrying libraries of books lashed onto the backs of donkeys as they moved from one pasture ground to another. As I started exploring and learned more about cultures, technologies, and the development of the Bible, I realized that my simplistic model need to be revisited and revised.

In the Ancient Near East (and most other places too!) the technology of writing is tied to two other technologies: agriculture and the monarchy. It makes perfect sense if you think about it—herdsmen can count their cattle just fine, but once you start having crops that are stored and a governmental structure that requires formal taxation, you need to be able to keep written records. Once you start using writing to keep track of who owes what when, it makes sense to start writing down other things too, gathering the collective wisdom of what works and what doesn’t so you are not constantly reinventing the wheel (whether metaphorically or literally!).

The historically plausible way to understand the composition of the Bible takes the social and technological factors into account and connects them with clues in the biblical account itself. King Solomon’s reputation for wisdom makes a lot more sense when you recognize that the biblical account itself identifies him as responsible for a wave of technological, engineering, and social innovations learned from Israel’s neighbors. Modern scholarship suggests that a scribal school established at Solomon’s court was likely the beginning of formal record-keeping and literacy in ancient Israel. Hence, the wisdom literature like the book of Proverbs may be some of the earliest biblical material committed to writing. Once the Temple was constructed—under Solomon—material regarding temple policies and sacrificial practices were likely written down as well. We know that historical records were kept from this point too: there are scattered references to some texts that were incorporated into the Samuel-Kings accounts like “the book of the Acts of Solomon” (1 Kings 11:41) and, once the kingdom split into two after the death of Solomon, “the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Judah” (1 Kings 14:19) and “the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel” (1 Kings 14:29).

Thus, the beginning of the writing of what would become our modern Bible likely started in the reign of Solomon (960-930 BC?) with some of the wisdom literature, some of what would become legal material, and the start of the histories. What makes this even more complicated is that we know there was a significant amount of oral tradition being handed down as well in parallel. After all, that’s how nomadic herdsmen actually do carry their collective memory around—through stories and songs, not bookshelves perched on donkeys! The stories of the patriarchs and the judges would have been told and memorized around campfires. Legal practices and community norms would likewise have been handed down verbally. Last but certainly not least for our purposes, songs would have been composed and transmitted that combined many of these different things together. It’s no accident that the lost books that describe historical events before the reign of Solomon—the Book of the Wars of the Lord (Numbers 21:14) and the Book of Jashar (Joshua 10:13)—are poetic; every time they are cited, they give a snippet of a song.

By the time of the prophets (the 8th through the 6th centuries BC), some of the legal material was written, but some of it was still oral. When they reflected on the “law of God” and on God’s covenant, it was likely this mix they were referring to. That’s the irony here—some of the prophetic reflection on the Law likely pre-dates certain portions of it actually being written down! We know that these traditions were documented more fully as time went on; Proverbs refers to “the officials of King Hezekiah” (Prov 25:1) which reflects some active scribal work during his rule (715-687 BC), and the “Book of the Law” found in the temple at the time of Josiah (640-609 BC) strongly parallels sections of Deuteronomy.

Most scholars see the Exile in Babylon (597-538 BC) as an incredibly formative time for the written Old Testament as we know it. This is likely when the oral traditions were captured and written down lest they be forgotten forever, and the scattered written accounts were collected and edited into something more like the books we have today. We get a sense of everything coming together in the Book of Nehemiah. After the return from Exile and the rebuilding of the Temple, Ezra gathers the people together and reads to the whole populace the “book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel” (Neh 8:1-8). We then get a prayer to seal the renewed covenant from Ezra that summarizes the contents of the book in Nehemiah 9:6-38. The narrative begins with creation and continues through the prophets and the Exile down to their present day (444 BC). At this point we can say that most of the Old Testament was in the form that we know it.

Ok—so what does all of this have to do with the Psalms and how we pray them? A couple of points.

First, the psalms are poems. Poetry is capable of being passed down a long time before it is committed to writing. When a poem or psalm was composed and when it was written down may be two very different dates.

Second, David is thoroughly connected with poetry, singing and the psalms, both in the text of the Psalter in its final edited form and in the historical books which refer to him as musician (1 Samuel 16:14-23) and a divinely-inspired poet (2 Sam 23:1-2). We know that some compositions attributed to him were preserved in the lost Book of Jashar (2 Samuel 1:18). This suggests that a collection of his songs were likely written down in Solomon’s time in that first flourishing of Hebrew literacy. (This is probably the source of the “Songs of David” collection that form the core of the first parts of the Psalter.)

Third, many of the psalms are connected to the Temple in some way. Because the Levites were in charge of singing psalms during the sacrifices there had to be a body of material for them to sing. Furthermore, other psalms were composed in or for the Temple: some are probably the written accounts of vows of thanksgiving promised to God if he would get their author out of a tight spot; this seems to be the impetus for Psalms 66 and 116, telling of God’s deeds that accompanied a sacrifice of thanksgiving.

Fourth, it’s entirely possible that some of the psalms reflect religious oral traditions that were captured first
in their psalm form before they found written expression in the Law or the histories or other places. The prophets—many of whom were both priests and poets (like Isaiah and Ezekiel)—may have been more influenced by the psalms which they had and knew rather than the form of the Law and Histories as we know them which were written after their time.

The bottom line is this: the Psalms are a collection of religious poetry that contains all of the same genres to the Old Testament does—legal material, wisdom material, prophetic material, historical material. We should think of the psalms as being composed in a dynamic relationship with the emerging books of the Old Testament. Some of the later psalms are riffing off of written material; some of the earlier psalms pre-date the finished books that we know. (This is obviously the case with Psalm 18 which is incorporated completely in 2 Samuel 2-51!) The psalms contain unsystematic crystallizations of bits of the religious tradition that stretch from the beginning of the Temple and written Hebrew culture in the days of Solomon down to the return from Exile and the building of the new Temple a span of roughly 600 years. Just as there are both relationships and tensions between certain biblical genres (sometimes the prophets enforce the Law; sometimes they appear to critique it) so the psalms contain some of these relationships and tensions between one another and with the larger biblical material.

PC: Theological Challenges in the Psalms 1

I’ve been furiously writing since I’m coming up on a deadline for Psalming Christ. I put up a section on Patreon yesterday for those who support me, but I thought I’d put this up here too, because I need some feedback. I’m tackling a touchy issue—how to address some of the theological challenges that modern Christians are bound to encounter in the psalms. Here, at the risk of offending many, I tackle what may be a favorite psalm, discuss my problems with it, then how I come to terms with praying it.

Please—let me know what you think.  Does it bother you? Does it offend you? Or, conversely, does it help you? Let me know!

(The next Liturgical Look Forward will follow later today…)

After years of negotiation, Psalm 91 and I have finally come to an arrangement. I promise to pray it faithfully when it comes around in the psalm cycle; it—in turn—has agreed to be about feelings.

The reason why this accord was necessary is because I find Psalm 91 to be one of the hard psalms in the psalter to pray. I realize that this may well be an unusual psalm to have problems with; there are no babies getting their heads bashed in (Ps 137), no calls to slay the wicked or a desire to hate with a perfect hatred (Ps 139), nor even a wish to bathe my feet in the blood of my enemies (Ps 68). No—my issue is the picture it paints of the divinely-charmed life. Consider the first several verses:

You who live in the shelter of the Most High,
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress;
my God, in whom I trust.”
For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
and from the deadly pestilence;
he will cover you with his pinions,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
You will not fear the terror of the night,
or the arrow that flies by day,
or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
or the destruction that wastes at noonday.

A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
You will only look with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked. (Ps 91:1-8)

The picture it paints is of the blissful protection of the faithful by God, whatever may come.

I have dutifully read this psalm for years. It is one of the standard psalms for the Compline office (Night prayer) which means that I sometimes pray it several times each week. Now, I’m certain that there are people who love this psalm deeply—and I’m not trying to take that away from anyone. It is beautiful; it is comforting. Perhaps it’s due to my own issues and temperament, my own lack of absolute trust, but I take exception to the literal sense of the text: trust in God, and you will be protected from all harm. That faith in God will act as some kind of magic charm that will save you from all adversity.

In the Episcopal tradition, the psalms can be prayed through every month with set psalms assigned for morning and evening prayer of each day; Psalm 91 is appointed for use at Morning Prayer on the 18th of each month. On the night of July 17th, 2015, a White Supremacist hoping to spark a race war opened fire at a Bible study inside Mother Emanuel Baptist Church in Charlotte, murdering nine and wounding three others. The next morning, the lectionary forced me to pray Psalm 91.

I couldn’t.

Those who love me, I will deliver;
I will protect those who know my name.
When they call to me, I will answer them;
I will be with them in trouble,
I will rescue them and honor them.
With long life I will satisfy them,
and show them my salvation. (Ps 91:14-16)

While I respect the literal sense of the biblical text—the basic meaning of the words on the page—I do not know a way to pray this psalm in its literal sense and to believe it. Because, to take this psalm literally means one of two things: either God failed those nine people in his promise to protect them, or that they were not faithful enough, not good enough, not loving enough for God to honor that promise—and I simply refuse to believe that.

Psalm 91 is just one of a number of psalms that promise tangible, material benefits to the faithful. Some psalms promise physical safety and security to devotees who keep God’s covenants. Alternatively, other psalms request such aid and protection, often promising vows of sacrifices or praise of God in the midst of the assembly in return.

What do we do with these? How do we understand these promises and requests?

Part of the art of biblical interpretation, the work of hermeneutics, is figuring out how to hear these words for the up-building of our faith and those around us. Do we try to take these texts literally—at their word—and how do we understand the results when the hoped-for outcome does not happen?

One approach to hermeneutics uses the image of a three-legged stool: that Christian understanding of God’s ways is rooted in Scripture, tradition, and reason—and that all three are necessary. (A formulation attributed to Methodist founder John Wesley—the Wesleyan Quadrilateral—includes “experience” as a fourth part.) Sometimes this “three-legged stool” is invoked in order to discount the importance of Scripture, suggesting that if our experience doesn’t match what we read in the text, Scripture can and should be jettisoned and our own reason (or experience) should become our primary guide in the spiritual life. But that’s not what this phrase means, and is not how it was intended to be used. Rather, Scripture is always the foundation, and the other two (or three) help us as we wrestle with it: tradition (how the Church has read this text in the past) and reason (how we think through the text as informed by our own God-given mental faculties and assisted by the Holy Spirit) guiding our encounter with the Word of God.

When we read these psalms alongside the Church, we read them with and through the Christian experience of martyrdom. The nine faithful gunned down in Charlotte that dreadful night were neither the first nor the last to be killed for their faith or in its exercise. Every Christian sanctoral calendar recognizes the presence of martyrs through the centuries: those witnesses who would rather die than betray the faith. The formative years of the church in the first few centuries of its existence were scarred by persecution and death which did not hinder its growth but, paradoxically, accelerated it leading Tertullian to proclaim “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.[Paraphrase of Apology 50.13. Technically the line just says “the seed is the blood of Chistians” but the common expanded version conveys what Tertullian intended.]” Indeed, in those early days martyrdom was seen as a primary means of imitating Christ. Let’s not forget the very origins of our faith—the confession of a crucified Messiah by twelve apostles who, according to church tradition, all likewise suffered martyrdom with the exception of John who died in exile.

Speaking of Jesus himself, it’s not an accident that Psalm 91 plays a central role in the stories of his temptation as told by both Matthew and Luke (Matthew 4:1-11|Luke 4:1-13). The way I read these stories, not only is Jesus rejecting the temptations directly offered by Satan—sustenance, safety, and power—but also the literal meaning of the psalm itself. Jesus turns his back on a reading of the psalm that promises security and protection to those who align themselves with God’s will; instead he calls his followers to daily take up their cross and follow him. If Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God—and Christianity insists that he is—then we cannot read the psalms in a way contrary to the experience of Jesus, the righteous sufferer.

Since this is the grounding of the Christian tradition and experience, we have to be able to read the language of this psalm in more than literal ways. Be careful here: I’m not suggesting that we ignore the literal sense. I do believe that God helps and protects those who call on him. But I also acknowledge that that’s not always the way things work out, and that such a result should not be attributed to a lack of faith or integrity on the part of the fallen. It’s not our place to judge the fidelity of others. Rather, we need to be open to other ways to hear these texts, and understand God’s faithfulness towards us.

The way that I’ve made peace with Psalm 91 is to hear it as a description of how the experience of faith can make us feel—has made me feel. There are times in our religious experience where we feel so completely covered by the love of God that we feel as if nothing in the word can touch us, when we experience so directly Paul’s words that nothing can sever us from the love of God (Romans 8:38-39). I hear Psalm 91 not as a contract—believe in God and God will keep you safe—but as a description of the way that faith can make us feel—intoxicated with the love and presence of God.