Psalm Basics for Catholics: Seeing Salvation History in a New Way

By John Bergsma

In his third back-to-basics look at the Bible, popular theology professor and bestselling Catholic author and speaker John Bergsma highlights the presence of Jesus in the psalms and helps us understand their meaning in light of the story of salvation. Bergsma employs the same conversational style and simple illustrations found in Bible Basics for Catholics and New Testament Basics for Catholics to help bridge the gap between the world of contemporary Catholics and the ancient world of the Bible.

In Psalm Basics for Catholics, John Bergsma introduces us to King David, the story of Israel, and the salvation of the Jewish people through the coming of Jesus.

For more than two thousand years, Christians have sung, chanted, and prayed the psalms, a practice of worship inherited from our Jewish ancestors in faith. Whether prayed during Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, or in personal reflection, these ancient hymns continue to be a guiding light for Catholics. Yet rarely do we step back and look at how the psalms fit into the story of salvation revealed in the Bible the way Bergsma does here.

Bergsma also addresses common questions about the psalms, including

• Do the psalms really predict Jesus?
• What do we make of the so-called curse psalms?
• Why do we pray the psalms in the Liturgy of the Hours?
• How do I read and pray the psalms?

Bergsma's insightful, practical examination of the psalms helps Catholics see how their promise is fulfilled in Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ave Maria Press
• Release date: Mar 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781594717949

John Bergsma

John Bergsma is a professor of theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He served as a Protestant pastor for four years before entering the Catholic Church in 2001 while pursuing a doctorate specializing in the Old Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls from the University of Notre Dame. In addition to teaching scripture at Franciscan, Bergsma is a frequent guest on Catholic radio, and he speaks regularly at conferences and parishes nationwide. Bergsma has published a number of academic and popular works on the Bible and the Catholic faith, including Bible Basics for Catholics, New Testament Basics for Catholics, Psalm Basics for Catholics, and A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: Old Testament. He and his wife, Dawn, live with their children in Steubenville, Ohio.

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Notes

Introduction

Did you know that there is a book of poetry that is so popular it has a fan club of at least 1.2 billion people that sponsors daily, public readings of it? Some are probably taking place in several locations a short drive from you.

The fans of this poet are so enthusiastic they claim that his poems are not just inspiring but also inspired by God. In fact, they think his poems are themselves divine, God’s own words.

Some claim his poems have the power of physical and spiritual healing. Others memorize them to recite when waking up, when going to sleep, or before a test, a battle, or surgery. People have been known to chant his poems to help drive out demons or cure the sick. Some fans have died with the words of his poems on their lips.

Who is this poet who inspires such fanatical devotion?

It’s none of the usual suspects: Robert Frost, William Wordsworth, or John Keats.

Perhaps Shakespeare? Not even close. Maybe the ancient poets, Ovid, Virgil, or Homer?

Try more ancient than that.

This poet never had a day of formal schooling in his life. He was the youngest of eight brothers and grew up on a farm, raising sheep. He began writing poems by making them up in his head to pass the time while watching his flocks. Later, he enlisted in the army and worked his way up to become king of his people, a hill-country folk in olden times. You might call them ancient hillbillies of the Middle East.

As you may have guessed, the poet we are speaking of is David, and the book of poetry he wrote we call the book of Psalms, or the Psalter [SAHL-tur].

To be accurate, he only wrote about half of the poems in his book; the rest were added by later admirers who followed his style—fan fiction, if you will.

The whole collection of 150 psalms is far and away the most popular poetry collection ever published in world history. It has been translated into almost every human language. The Catholic Church and other Christian churches use these poems daily in worship and prayer. The book of Psalms is, in fact, the only book of the Bible usually read at almost every Mass.

So this book is a little introduction to the greatest book of poetry, ever.

What do these poems mean? Is there any rhyme or reason to the way they are arranged? Are any of them especially important? Do they actually speak of Jesus? Do they have meaning for our lives today? These are some of the questions we hope to answer along the way.

Are you ready to plunge in with me? I hope so!

One

What’s a Psalm? Who Wrote Them? and All That Stuff

A psalm is a poem sung to music from a stringed instrument you pluck, such as a harp or guitar. The word psalm comes from a Greek word meaning to pluck.

But the psalms weren’t written in Greek; they were written in Hebrew. In Hebrew, the word for psalm is mizmor [mizz-MORE]. Later folks translated them into Greek and pretty much every other known language.

The one who wrote them in Hebrew was, as we said, David. Here is David:

He is going to be our constant companion through this book.

David was famous for playing the lyre, an ancient kind of harp. To us, a lyre is a pretty tame instrument, so David appears to us like this:

Pretty tame.

But in ancient times the lyre was cool and popular, as is the electric guitar now. So to ancient people, David looked more like this:

He was the ancient King of Rock and Roll.

After all, he was king of Israel, and he was also their star musician (see 2 Samuel 23:1).

David grew up as a shepherd boy in ancient Israel around the year 1000 BC. He rose up in the ranks of the army of Saul, king of Israel, and after Saul died, David became king of Israel himself. Most would say David was Israel’s greatest king, and his sons and grandsons ruled in Jerusalem for four hundred years. He was an ancestor of Jesus, whom Christians still accept as king of their lives. So we could say that David’s descendant is still ruling today!

Tradition tells us that around seventy to eighty psalms were written by David.¹ That’s about half the total collection of 150. Who wrote the others? An ancient Israelite choir known as the Sons of Korah gave us about a dozen psalms. Two of these choir members, Heman and Ethan, are mentioned by name, and each wrote a psalm (Psalms 88 and 89, respectively). Another dozen psalms were composed by Asaph, a choir leader David appointed. Two psalms are of Solomon (Psalms 72 and 127), although the first is almost certainly about him rather than by him. And finally, Moses wrote one psalm (Psalm 90).

All these authors lived in the 900s BC, except for Moses, who was older, living around 1500 BC or 1200 BC, depending on which historian you believe.

Many psalms are anonymous, and many of these were written long after David. Especially in the later parts of the Psalter, we find psalms that were clearly written up to five or six hundred years after David, during the time when his people, the Judeans (later called Jews), were taken into exile in Babylon and then returned and rebuilt their nation.

So the psalms were written over centuries, largely between 1000 BC and 400 BC.

How Were They Written?

As we said, Psalms was written in Hebrew. There are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet, all of which are consonants since they did not write down vowels in ancient times. Some psalms begin each verse with the next letter of the alphabet.² (An alphabetic poem like that is called an acrostic.)

Hebrew has a few sounds that English doesn’t. The most important is the hard H, like the German "Bach." It’s a sound like clearing the back of your throat. It is the first sound in a very important word in the psalms, hesed, which we will discuss later.

Hebrew poetry doesn’t rhyme, but it does have rhythm.³ The basic part of a Hebrew poem is a two-line verse:

The wicked will not stand in the judgment,

nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. (Ps 1:5)

Usually the two lines say basically the same thing in two different ways, as above. But sometimes the two lines will say the opposite, like this:

For the L

ord

knows the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked will perish. (Ps 1:6)

At other times, the second line will finish the idea of the first line:

"I have set my king

on Zion, my holy mountain." (Ps 2:6)

Or it will add another thought:

Ascribe to the L

ord

, O sons of God,

ascribe to the L

ord

glory and strength. (Ps 29:1)

Scholars call the two-line verse a bicola. When the two lines say almost the same thing, it’s called synonymous parallelism. When they say the opposite, it’s called antithetical [ann-tee-THEH-tick-ull] parallelism. Any other relationship between the two lines, as in the last two examples above, is called synthetic parallelism.

Now, go impress your friends. Tell them you were reading a psalm and found a bicola with antithetical parallelism. They will think you are very smart.

It’s unlikely that King David wrote down his own psalms. Like other ancient royalty, he probably composed his poems orally and then recited them to a scribe. Ancient scribes in Israel wrote with black ink on parchment (animal skin) or papyrus, an ancient kind of paper made from marsh reeds. In fact, our word paper comes from papyrus.

Why Were They Written?

The psalms are religious poetry, and they were written for prayer, worship, and instruction. They fall into different categories.

Many of the psalms are called laments, which are prayers of a person who is suffering and crying to God for help. Laments can be of two kinds. Sometimes it is just one person, usually David, who is crying out to God in an individual lament.

At other times, it is a whole group of people, usually the nation of Israel.

Others are thanksgiving (in Hebrew, todah) psalms for giving thanks to God

Reviews for Psalm Basics for Catholics

[Jonathan Morse · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As always with John Bergsma clear and concise. Thank you