Psalms 1–72: A Pastoral and Contextual Commentary

By Federico G. Villanueva

The Asia Bible Commentary series empowers Christian believers in Asia to read the Bible from within their respective contexts. Holistic in its approach to the text, each exposition of the biblical books combines exegesis and application. e ultimate goal is to strengthen the Body of Christ in Asia by providing pastoral and contextual exposition of every book of the Bible.

This commentary on Psalms 1-72 provides an exposition that the reader can engage with in their own community of faith in the Asian cultural context. Along with a commentary on each Psalm, Dr. Federico Villanueva provides cultural reflections on a wide variety of relevant topics that include the likes of lament, praise, creation, meditation, depression and natural phenomena. This commentary is an excellent resource for pastors, lay leaders and Bible students but will also be useful and relevant for any Christian committed to applying the Bible in their respective contexts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Langham Creative Projects
• Release date: Apr 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781783681495

Book preview

Series Preface

In recent years, we have witnessed one of the greatest shifts in the history of world Christianity. It used to be that the majority of Christians lived in the West. But now the face of world Christianity has changed beyond recognition. Christians are now evenly distributed around the globe. This has implications for the interpretation of the Bible. In our case, we are faced with the task of interpreting the Bible from within our Asian contexts. This is in line with the growing realization that all theology is contextual. Our understanding of the Bible is influenced by our historical and social locations. Thus, even the questions that we bring to our reading of the Bible are shaped by our present realities. There is a need, therefore, to interpret the Bible for our own contexts.

The Asia Bible Commentary (ABC) series addresses this need. In line with the mission of the Asia Theological Association Publications, we have gathered Asian evangelical Bible scholars in Asia to write commentaries on each book of the Bible. The mission is to produce resources for pastors, Christian leaders, cross-cultural workers, and students in Asia that are biblical, pastoral, contextual, missional, and prophetic. Although the Bible can be studied for different reasons, we believe that it is given primarily for the edification of the body of Christ (2 Tim 3:16–17). The ABC series is designed to help pastors in their sermon preparation, cell group leaders or lay leaders in their Bible study groups, Christian students in their study of the Bible, and Christians in general in their efforts to apply the Bible in their respective contexts.

Each commentary begins with an introduction that provides general information about the book’s author and original context, summarizes the main message or theme of the book, and outlines its potential relevance to a particular Asian context. The introduction is followed by an exposition that combines exegesis and application. Here, we seek to speak to and empower Christians in Asia by using our own stories, parables, poems, and other cultural resources as we expound the Bible.

The Bible is actually Asian in that it comes from ancient West Asia and there are many similarities between the world of the Bible and traditional Asian cultures. But there are also many differences that we need to explore in some depth. That is why the commentaries also include articles or topics in which we bring specific issues in Asian church, social, and religious contexts into dialogue with relevant issues in the Bible. We do not seek to resolve every tension but rather to allow the text to illumine the context and vice versa, acknowledging that in the end we do not have all the answers to every mystery.

May the Holy Spirit who inspired the writers of the Bible bring light to the hearts and minds of all who use these materials, to the glory of God and to the building up of the churches!

Federico G. Villanueva

General Editor

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The writing of this commentary started about five years ago. But the journey goes further back to my years as a pastor. It was in the context of worshiping communities that some of the core ideas in this commentary were conceived. Before I began writing, I was already preaching on the psalms and discussing the psalms of lament with cell groups and prayer meetings. My nine years of pastoral ministry at Life Gospel Church and the many opportunities to preach on Psalms in various local congregations have been a tremendous help in my writing. I am grateful to God for Life Gospel Church, St. Mary Magdalene Church (Bristol, UK), Jesus Cares Christian Fellowship (Bristol), Aikape Christian Church, Capital City Alliance Church, United Evangelical Church of the Philippines, and to my present church, Christian Alliance Fellowship East.

My years as a seminary student and later as a PhD student have also helped me. I thank my mentors: Dr. Rick Love, who not only became my mentor but also my friend; Dr. Russ Stapleton, who co-supervised my ThM thesis; Professor Gordon Wenham (Trinity College, Bristol), for supervising my PhD dissertation on the Psalms and encouraging me in my writing; and Professor John Day (Oxford University) for co-supervising my PhD.

It is said that one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it. Along with preaching, I have also had the privilege of teaching about the Psalms in seminaries and Bible colleges. I would like to thank my students at Alliance Graduate School; Asia Graduate School of Theology; International Graduate School of Leadership; Asian Theological Seminary; Faith, Hope, and Love Seminary; East Asia School of Theology, Singapore; Divine Word Seminary Tagaytay (SVD); and Loyola School of Theology (LST), Ateneo de Manila University. I hope that this commentary will remind them not only of the lectures I delivered but also of deep reflections that came out of our times of learning together.

I thank Dr. Jonathan Exiomo and my colleagues at Alliance Graduate School for allowing me to teach a course on Psalms for Life and Ministry and for their support and encouragement. I am blessed to be part of an institution that allows its scholars to devote time to writing. This is important, for while preaching assists us in forming our ideas, we need time and space to put them down in writing.

My writing would not have been possible without the prayers and generous support of a number of individuals and groups and institutions.

Accordingly, I would like to express my special appreciation to:

Langham Partnership for giving me a grant so that I could devote time to writing, and for its postdoctoral program – the International Research Training Seminar (ITRS). The ITRS provided me not only the space to do my research, but more importantly, a community where my research skills could be further developed. I have richly benefited from and enjoyed the company of my fellow Langhamites. I thank Ian Shaw, the coordinator of the ITRS, for his leadership and encouragement.

Wheaton College, Wycliffe Hall in Oxford, and Trinity College Singapore for hosting me as a research fellow.

Trinity College Bristol, for welcoming me as a research scholar in October 2012.

My writing group, RootWord, with Dr. Rod Santos and Dr. Mona Bias, for times spent together in writing.

St. Mary Magdalene Church, through Peter and Jenny Robottom, for their prayers and support.

Asia Theological Association (ATA) through Dr. Bruce Nicholls.

I thank Dr. Bruce Nicholls for inviting me to write this commentary and the editorial board of the ABC (Old Testament) series – Dr. Joseph Shao, Dr. Andrew Spurgeon, and Dr. Tim Meadowcroft. I am blessed to have a wonderful team in the ATA Publications, with Bubbles Lactaoen who carefully checked the final draft of the manuscript, and Alex Lactaw, our Administrative Assistant. The valuable suggestions of Isobel Stevenson, Dr. Michael Malessa, and the efforts of our English editor, Rose Yu, have been of immense help in improving this book.

As I reflect back, I realize that actually the journey into the writing of this commentary goes back even further: to my father, Bishop Butch Villanueva, from whom I first heard the Bible preached; my mother, Melita Villanueva, who first taught me the stories of David; my brothers Pastor Demo and Pastor Jojo, for their prayers and encouragement; to my children, Emier and Faye, for their patience and love; and most especially to my wife, Rosemarie, who continues to journey with me through all the lament and praise not only in the writing of this book but in life itself. It is to her that I dedicate this book.

To God be the glory!

List of Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

We Filipinos have two treasures: our music and our faith.[1] Commenting on this in his welcome address to Pope Francis, Cardinal Tagle said: Our melodies make our spirits soar above the tragedies of life. Our faith makes us stand up again and again after deadly fires, earthquakes, typhoons, and wars.[2] Thus the book of Psalms, which combines songs and prayer, is very important to us. It is read regularly in the masses attended by Filipino Catholics, who make up more than 80 percent of the population. Pope John XXIII specifically advised Filipinos to read the book of Psalms when representatives from the Philippines had an audience with him in 1959.[3]

Nor is it only Filipinos who love the Psalms. As Professor James L. Kugel of Harvard University remarks:

No book of the Bible seems to summon up the concerns of spirituality in the biblical period more than the book of Psalms. Its prayers and songs of praise have long served as a model and focus of the spiritual concerns of later ages, and its words have been incorporated into, and indeed have shaped, liturgies in Judaism and Christianity for two millennia.[4]

A Book of Praises and Lament

Psalms is a book of songs. Its English title comes from the Greek word psalmoi, which means songs or psalms.[5] This was the word that ancient Jewish translators chose to use for this book when they translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. But in the original Hebrew, the book of Psalms is called Sefer Tehillim, which means Book of Praises.

Although Psalms was called the Book of Praises, it includes more than just songs of praise. It also includes hymns, royal psalms, psalms of thanksgiving, individual laments, and communal laments.[6] In fact, there are more psalms of lament than psalms of praise! The lament is the most common among the different types of psalms. Although many of the lament psalms contain praise or move on to praise at the end, still the space given to lament in these psalms is remarkable.

The emphasis is similar in our songs. Most traditional Tagalog songs depict a solemnity of pained somberness indicating a theme of struggle.[7] One reason for this is our own experience of suffering. On average, the Philippines experiences about seventy typhoons a year. Recently, the strongest typhoon in recorded history devastated the country, leaving thousands dead and communities destroyed.

In addition we have had a long history of colonialism, an experience we share with many other countries in Asia, and with the ancient Israelites. They too were subject to foreign powers for many years before and after their exile in 586 BC. Though the psalms were written over a long period of time, it was only after the exile that they were brought together into a book. Those who put the book together must have been greatly affected by the experience of exile (see, e.g. Psalm 137). That is why they gave such prominence to laments in the book of Psalms.[8] They knew that in the end God wins and so there is praise. But they knew through their own experience that the road to the land of praise leads through fields of lament.

Superscriptions and Suffering

Those who put the book of Psalms into its final form saw their own experiences of suffering reflected in David’s life. This can be seen in the superscriptions, the short notes found before the first verse of each psalm. Usually, the superscriptions simply identify to whom the psalm is attributed (e.g. Of David).[9] But the superscriptions of thirteen psalms (3, 7, 18, 34, 51, 52, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 63, and 142) give brief historical background linking the psalm to an incident in the life of David. For example, the superscription to Psalm 3 reads, A Psalm of David, when he fled from his son Absalom; and that of Psalm 51 reads, A psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.

Why do the superscriptions refer to David’s struggles rather than to his victories? The answer is because his struggles resonate more with people’s experiences. Like David, we are plagued by many difficulties and we can see in him a model for dealing with our own troubles. As Old Testament (OT) scholar Brevard Childs puts it:

The incidents chosen as evoking the psalms were not royal occasions or representative of the kingly office. Rather, David is pictured simply as a man, indeed chosen by God for the sake of Israel, but who displays all strengths and weaknesses of all human beings. He emerges as a person who experiences the full range of human emotions from fear and despair to courage and love, from complaint and plea to praise and thanksgiving . . . The psalms are transmitted as the sacred psalms of David, but they testify to all the common troubles and joys of ordinary human life in which all persons participate.[10]

This is the reason why many people today are drawn to the psalms. In their words we not only see our own struggles; they also lead us to the God who is able to accompany us in our difficulties.

Praying the Psalms

All of us are confronted by uncertainties and situations that are way beyond what we can manage. And so we often cry to God for help. Thankfully, the Psalms is not just a book of songs; it is also a book of prayers. While "most of Scripture speaks to us, the Psalms speak for us."[11] In times when we do not know what to say because of the troubles that overwhelm us, we can take the words of the Psalms and make them our own. In doing this, we are following the example of Jesus, who himself prayed the psalms on the cross (Matt 27:46 quotes Ps 22:1; Luke 23:46 quotes Ps 31:5). Thus he also invites us to do the same.

Moreover, when his disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he did not give them a lecture on prayer. Instead, he gave them a prayer: the famous Our Father (Luke 11:1–4; see also Matt 6:9–13). It has been suggested that his answer to their question is a precedent for turning to the specific prayers in the book of Psalms.[12]

Believers in the New Testament (NT) took heed of Jesus’ invitation.[13] The Apostle Paul speaks of believers singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (Eph 5:19). The book of Revelation gives us a glimpse of the martyrs praying with words very similar to those found in the lament psalms: How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood? (Rev 6:9–10; compare Ps 13:1–2).

Centuries later, St. Benedict (sixth century) introduced the practice of reciting specific psalms at six designated hours for prayer. This meant that each monk prayed the entire book of Psalms at least once a week! The Protestant reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin also had a high regard for the Psalms. Calvin referred to the book as the anatomy of all the parts of the soul because in it every emotion is represented before God. Luther considered the Psalms a mini-Bible because it contains the whole message of the Bible.

It was only from the eighteenth century onwards that the use of the Psalms in worship and prayer started to fade as people like Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley composed hymns. At first, Christians sang the hymns as well as the Psalms. But with the arrival of choruses and the so-called praise and worship movement, the Psalms were dropped from the worship of most Protestant groups. Such was not the case with the Catholic churches where the Psalms continue to be read.

The neglect of the Psalms in Protestant congregations has led to a distorted view of prayer. As Wenham comments: I am not against hymns or modern worship songs. Some of them are really great, but if we sing only them, I think we get a very limited experience of worship, indeed a harmful imbalance in our praying and singing.[14] The Psalms provide us with important models for our prayers. Even though we have instructions or teachings on prayer in the NT, we seldom find an actual prayer. We need to go to the OT, especially to the book of Psalms, to find the actual prayers which can serve as our pattern for praying.[15] For instance, the NT instructs us to pray for kings and rulers (1 Tim 2:1–2). In Psalm 72 we have a prayer for a king (see comments in Ps 72). The NT teaches about confession of sins (1 John 1:9; Jas 5:16). But what does an actual prayer of confession look like? Psalm 51 and the other prayers of penitence (e.g. Ps 32) provide us with an excellent model. Thus, the NT teachings on prayer and the Psalms complement each other. Psalms also contains prayers for specific needs. There is a psalm for a sick person (Ps 38), for an elderly person (Ps 72), and for others. Indeed, there is a psalm for every season of life.[16]

Living the Psalms: The Psalms as God’s Word

What makes the book of Psalms unique is that it contains both the words of people to God (prayers) and God’s word to his people. Because this book is part of Scripture, Christians believe it is also a message from God (2 Tim 3:16). The Psalms is a place where God and his people can converse. As we pray the words of the psalms, God is also revealed to us. The prayers and songs preserved in the Psalms reflect the kind of God we serve, for the words that the faithful utter to God are like a mirror that reflects God himself.[17]

For example, the requirements set for entrance to God’s holy hill in Psalm 15 indicate the kind of worshipers God wants, and thus tells us the kind of God we have. Since God is holy, those who come into his presence ought to live holy lives. The lament psalms, which contain some of the most disturbing words of prayer, reveal the character of God as one who is compassionate and merciful. Like a good counselor, he allows those who go through extreme difficulties to pour out their hearts to him, even uttering words ordinary humans would not allow. Cries of abandonment become the embrace of the loving Almighty. Likewise, the songs of praise highlight the God of power and might who has worked in and through the lives of his people. Thus the book of Psalms contains both prayer and theology.

The very structure of the book of Psalms signifies that those who put it together considered it God’s word. These unknown editors took the individual psalms composed by various writers and arranged them in five books, each of which ends with a doxology:[18]

By dividing the psalms into five books, the compilers seem to have been attempting to link them with the five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). They were asserting that like these books, the words of the Psalms are a message from God. It is thus no coincidence that the very first psalm (Ps 1) speaks about the law of the LORD and that this is also the topic of the longest psalm (Ps 119).[19] Thus the Psalms is not just a book of prayer and praises; like the Torah it also teaches us about God’s law. It follows that the Psalms not only help us in our prayers; they also teach us how to live.

As God’s word, the psalms are both effective and challenging. The very act of praying them orients individuals and communities and challenges them to realign their lives in accordance with the sentiments expressed. John Chrysostom, the fourth century archbishop of Constantinople, makes this point well when commenting on the refrain in Psalm 42:

Do not think that you have come here simply to say the words, but when you make the response, consider that response to be a covenant. For when you say, ‘Like the heart desires the watersprings, my soul desires you, O God,’ you make a covenant with God. You have signed a contract without paper or ink, you have confessed with your voice that you love him more than all, that you prefer nothing to him, and that you burn with love for him.[20]

Here lies the challenge of the book of Psalms. We are called not just to pray its words but to actually live them out. This is very important in our Filipino-Asian context. For though we are very religious, our country is also very corrupt. We like to pray but we are not prepared to follow the Way. One reason for this is that we have not deeply interiorized the word. As the Carmelite nun Josefina D. Constantino writes: The Word of God has come to people only in Gospels read or sermons preached during Sunday mass; but meditation as a way of listening to the Word speaking to the heart and to the conscience of man has been a very recent awakening in the Philippines.[21]

Meditating on the Psalms

Although the book of Psalms contains teaching and preaching material, its teachings are embedded in poetry. We are drawn to its words of beauty. To meditate on and apply the book of Psalms we thus need to appreciate its nature as a work of poetry which can open our eyes to new ways of seeing our world.

As a means of communication, poetry is the most compact form of speech. According to Robert Alter, poetry . . . is an instrument for conveying densely patterned meanings, and sometimes contradictory meanings, that are not readily conveyable through other kinds of discourse.[22] Thus it comes as no surprise that poetry places greater demands on us than straightforward prose. It requires a more contemplative approach and requires more continuous interpretation than ordinary language.[23] Leland Ryken continues: Biblical poetry is a meditative mode. The point in reading it is not to finish as quickly as possible but to let the fullness of the meanings filter into our consciousness.[24]

When we read the Psalms, we need to pause. We cannot be in a hurry. We need to read each psalm slowly and carefully. Ryken instructs us to never be ashamed at staring at a poem . . . looking closely, long, and repeatedly at a poem until the patterns and meanings of the figures of speech start to reveal themselves.[25] Our goal is to be able to enter into the psalm.

Poetry is about experience: Poetry takes all life as its province. Its primary concern is not with beauty, not with philosophical truth, not with persuasion, but with experience.[26] We need to be able to identify with the experiences depicted in the imagery and feel the emotions expressed. When we read a psalm, we must pay careful attention to the shifts in mood within that psalm.[27]

Filipinos have been referred to as the most emotional people in the world, and so they may have little difficulty in responding to the emotional aspects of the poetry of the psalms. But on a practical level, our appreciation of the poetry will be deeper if we have some knowledge on how Hebrew poetry works.[28]

The most common feature of biblical poetry is parallelism, which has traditionally been subdivided into synonymous, antithetical, and synthetic parallelism.[29] However, recent scholars have proposed that instead of limiting ourselves to these three categories, we should focus instead on analyzing how the second line develops the thought/idea in the first line.[30] Robert Alter puts it like this:

The dominant pattern is a focusing, heightening, or specification of ideas, images, actions, themes, from one verse to the next. If something is broken in the first verset, it is smashed or shattered in the second verset . . . A general term in the first half of a line is typically followed by a specific instance of the general category in the second half . . . What this means to us as readers of biblical poetry is that instead of listening to an imagined drumbeat of repetitions, we need constantly to look for something new happening from one part of the line to the next.[31]

Here are some examples that illustrate what this looks like in practice:

The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars,

the LORD breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. (Ps 29:5)

Notice that the voice of the Lord in the first line becomes the Lord himself in the second line. There is also a development from general (cedars) to specific (cedars of Lebanon).

Another example comes from Psalm 1:

But whose delight is in the law of the LORD,

and who meditates on his law day and night. (Ps 1:2)

The first line talks about the fact that the righteous person delights in the law of the Lord. But what does it mean to delight in God’s law? The second line provides the answer: it is in meditating on the law day and night. Those who say they delight in the law of the Lord but never spend time meditating on it do not actually delight in God’s law (see commentary of Psalm 1 below for further discussion).

As we read and meditate on the psalms, we should remember that the beauty of poetry is that it is not specific, and thus allows for various possibilities of meanings and application.

Biblical verse is elusive and open-ended; it adheres to some (known) poetic conventions, yet it also reflects much original and creative freedom of its own. Its diction is full of ambiguity of meaning. As with all poetry, but perhaps especially in this case, the concealing/revealing aspect of biblical verse means that any interpretation involves as much the power of imaginative insight as any so-called ‘objective’ analysis. On this account, contemporary meaning and a creative discourse between the text and the reader are not only possible but also desirable.[32]

Reading the Psalms in Asia

Because they are poetry, the psalms allow and even encourage readings that take into consideration the context of the reader.[33] This realization fits well with the growing recognition that we all read the text of the Bible from our own contexts. Given our differences in culture, language, geographical locations, and the like, our reading will inevitably have different shades of emphasis. There is no such a thing as a universal reading where one interpretation applies to all. Our interpretation will reflect our own needs, worldviews, and realities.[34]

Since this commentary has been written within the Asian context, it is important to consider what it means to read the Psalms in such a context, and specifically within my own Filipino-Asian context. I cannot speak for the whole of Asia, because Asia is very diverse. Moreover, even the very concept of Asia itself is complex.[35] Nonetheless, there are common things that bind us. One of these is that although many of us do not have many material resources, we are rich in life experiences. So let us look at these Asian resources we can draw on as we attempt to read the Psalms within our particular context.[36]

Our community

Asia is about people. The Asian people themselves are an important resource for interpretation. Samuel Rayan puts it well: Asians themselves, their experience of life and their rich humanness are the main source of an Asian theology. The courage and the strength that have enabled Asians to survive, despite material destitution and great physical and mental suffering . . . the hope that sustains them and the hope that they sustain[37] – this is one of our resources. We have a strong sense of community. The truth of John Donne’s no man is an island runs deep in the heart of every Asian. We have a saying in Filipino, "Sakit ng kalingkingan, dama ng buong katawan. (The pain of the smallest finger is felt by the whole body"). That is why we continue to survive despite our difficulties. Because we know what it means to have nothing, we have a deep sense of compassion, especially for the vulnerable.

Our deep spirituality

Our sufferings and our poverty make us more open not only to others but also to God, as reflected in our rich spirituality. Aloysius Pieris has even said that poverty and spirituality are the twin realities that define Asia.[38] All the world’s major religions were born in Asia. Constantino remarks: The Asian is a person full of soul or of the sense of the sacred. It is as though he is forever plugged into the life of the universe, into the source of all life, and because life is sacred, into the source of life: the Sacred.[39] Visit Indonesia even for a day or two, and you will be transported to a different world. You will hear chants and calls to prayer throughout the day, from before sunrise until after sunset. Visit Thailand, and you will be amazed by people in saffron robes, from children to the elderly, both Buddhist priests and those training to be priests. Religion and daily life, spirituality and the material world, are one and the same. There is no such thing as a dichotomy between the secular and the sacred. In Asia, religion is a part of life from the cradle to the grave.

Our experience of suffering

Sadly, life for many Asians has been full of hardship because of poverty and the consequences of colonialism. Many Asian countries were once colonies. They still bear the scars of abuse, oppression, and dehumanization.[40] The Philippines was under the Spaniards for more than three hundred years. Before they came and conquered our land, Filipinos had a high view of themselves.[41] When the colonizers came, our dignity was trampled to the ground. We became like a bird imprisoned in a cage. One of our Filipino lament songs expresses the agony of being a colonized people: "Ibon mang may layang lumipad, kulungin mo at umiiyak (Even a bird which has the freedom to fly cries when it is caged"). For many years our people cried for liberty, for freedom. We finally got it, but not before America and Japan had their turn as colonizers. Now we have our freedom, and many of the present generation are not even aware of our history of colonization. But those hundreds of years of subjugation have left their mark on us. We are a broken people. Even now we remain a suffering nation.

Unfortunately, in many churches in Asia we usually hear only testimonies about victory or success. The same thing is true with our songs. In many Asian evangelical churches, most of our worship songs come from the West. Though some of these are good, they do not speak to our experiences as a suffering people. As a result, some find it difficult to identify with them.

As mentioned above, one reason the book of Psalms speaks so powerfully and deeply is because it came out of the people’s experiences of suffering. We do not have to be ashamed of our own suffering, because this actually helps us understand the Psalms better. We are actually rich in resources for reading the Psalms. I suggest that we bring our deep sense of community, spirituality, and experiences of suffering with us as we approach the book of Psalms.

Reading the Psalms with Asian Resources

What reading of the book of Psalms will emerge when we bring our Asian resources with us?

Communal reading

First of all, I think that our reading will be more communal both in its overall approach to the book of Psalms and in its actual reading of a particular psalm.[42] This reading will tend to see the community rather than the individual. One of the biggest questions that occupied Western scholars studying the book of Psalms in the early part of the twentieth century was, Who is the I who speaks in the psalms?[43] They wanted to know whether the I is the king or another individual.

In contrast, I think Asians will ask a different question. Instead of the I, they will think of the we.[44] And this actually fits better with the way in which the I is perceived in the Psalms. The I is not someone who stands alone, separate from the others. The I is a representative of the community. Even when the I is speaking or praying, he is actually not praying alone; he is with the community or the community is with him. The individual suffers and rejoices with the community. Suffering alone in the privacy of one’s own room is alien both to the community of Israel and to Asians.

In his book, The Faith of the Psalmists, Helmer Ringgren refers to the religion of fellowship.[45] So central is fellowship for the Israelites that even in their prayer they anticipate the day when they can finally share with the great congregation what Yahweh has done. Blessings received are not only for private consumption; they are for the community to share. Ringgren writes, God’s gracious help is not a private matter; it concerns not only the individual but the whole community.[46] Similarly, Hans-Joachim Kraus observes, There is no private piety in the book of Psalms. Every expression has its roots and its presuppositions, its basis of faith and its assurance of fulfillment in the community of Israel.[47] Gerhard von Rad asserts that the individual in the book of Psalms does not suffer alone:

In the sphere of worship . . . the relationship of the individual to the type [lament] could positively not be abandoned, for in it and in it alone was his link with the community preserved. What the individual bemoaned was thus not exclusively his own distress. He never regarded it as his own alone, and he therefore expressed it in words and ideas taken from the liturgy. In so doing, he could enter the ranks of the invisible company of those who had had similar or comparable suffering and who had been heard, and in the words of such prayer others too might in turn ‘find a lodging for the night of sorrow.’[48]

Because of the individualism that has formed such an important part of Western culture for the past two centuries, most Western academics struggle to come to terms with this aspect of the book of Psalms, certainly in regard to suffering. Walter Brueggemann admits, We have learned [through the works of writers like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross] that letting go is fundamental to moving on. But we have yet to learn in any way about grief as a public practice.[49] This is where the poor in Asia have more resources; they know what it means to suffer together.[50] Without denying the ill effects of poverty,[51] John Dijkstra writes about the poor in Asia:

They have faith in their fellow poor, a rare value in non-poor individuals who isolate themselves from one another . . . They strengthen their mutual dependence and use their gracious human values to serve their community beyond individualistic desires and needs. Those who want to live egotistically among the poor cannot last long in these communities . . . The poor are more defenseless, vulnerable . . . are more cared for and served . . . They enjoy together any good that comes to their fellow poor . . . They know one another thoroughly . . . Their human potentials are allowed to be used together for their common good . . . The Asian poor have faith not only in their fellow poor but also in their caring God and Lord.[52]

Because of our situation of need that can be quite extreme, the questions we ask of the text tend to come from our actual experiences. Like the psalmist’s lament, they come from the depths. We do not have the time to speculate about how many angels can dance on a pin. We cannot afford to ask questions of the text which do not resonate with our own experiences. Ivory-tower speculation will have no place in our reading of the book of Psalms.

Spiritual reading

Springing from our deep sense of spirituality, an Asian reading of the psalms will be concerned with how they can draw us closer to God. It will be a spiritual reading. By this I mean a type of reading that is appropriate to the Psalms’ dual nature as prayer to God and word of God, spoken by the believing community but speaking to that community as well. As noted above, from OT times to the present, the book of Psalms has been the prayer book of the faithful.[53] It is also the word of God, so conceived by those who brought its texts together and so presented by virtue of its place in the Christian canon.

Unfortunately, since the Enlightenment, the book of Psalms, like the rest of the Bible, has often been read in a way that runs counter to its spiritual nature. With the historical-critical approach as the dominant method, the book of Psalms has been treated like a frog on a laboratory bench. In the process, as with the frog, we have learned a great deal about the psalms, but in the end our study of their text, like our dissection of the frog, has reduced a living thing to a corpse. The Enlightenment had little place for the supernatural and the spiritual, only for the historical, here understood one-sidedly in terms of human history.[54] George Soares-Prabhu is right: as long as the historical method is the dominant mode for reading the Bible, there will be no Asian theology.[55] And let me add, an Asian reading of the book of Psalms will be impossible. I do not mean to suggest that we should discard the historical method. As Soares-Prabhu points out, the historical method can help us to fight dogmatism, as it has in the West.[56] But the historical method cannot be our main approach to reading the book of Psalms. What we need is a kind of reading that can be described as spiritual or religious, in keeping both with the nature of the book of Psalms and with the deep Asian sense of spirituality.

One of our blessings as Asian Christians is that we are surrounded by people of other faiths who, like us, have their own sacred scriptures. These too are among our resources for doing theology and reading the book of Psalms.[57] We can learn much from the way those of other religions read their scriptures. In an important study, Paul Griffiths describes how early Buddhists and Christians interacted with those texts. Their reading was characterized by delight and a sense of reverence. They memorized what they read; their text was the memorized text. This contrasts sharply with the modern consumerist reading of such material:

Consumers treat what they read only as objects for consumption, to be discarded when the end for which they are read has been achieved . . . Academic readers consume the works of others and produce their own; they are defined and given status by the body of literature they control and upon which they are accredited to give authoritative (expert) voice for proper reward; they cite and mention (rather than religiously read), and are in turn judged largely by the extent to which the works they produce . . . are cited and mentioned.[58]

Religious reading is totally different. First of all, the work read is understood as a stable and vastly rich resource.[59] Religious readers consider the sacred text to be a treasure-house, an ocean, a mine.[60] For the religious reader, the work read is an object of overpowering delight and great beauty. It can never be discarded because it can never be exhausted.[61] The book of Psalms expresses the same outlook:[62]

Oh, how I love your law!

It meditate on it all day long. (Ps 119:97)

Religious readers therefore treat what they read with reverence.[63] Naturally, they consider the Scriptures to be authoritative. They recognize the three criteria of religious texts – comprehensiveness, unsurpassability, and centrality[64] – throughout the Scriptures. That is why approaches to the book of Psalms and to the Bible in general that tend to undermine its authority are actually alien to the Asian way of reading. This includes postcolonial interpretation, which arguably tends to diminish the Bible.[65] Moonjang Lee argues that postcolonialism’s suggestion that the Bible’s authority be relativized will not be supported by Asians themselves, who have a high regard for their Scriptures.

The attempt to relativize scriptural authority in