Hotline 2002

BIBLE STUDY SESSION 1:

From Scroll Discovery to Covenant Love

Moderator, members of the Assembly, when asked to lead the Bible studies I was encouraged to hear that the subject this year would be the Psalms. That in itself may have encouraged me to say yes. The Psalms are never far away from us as working ministers.

Way back in 1994, as part of a sabbatical, I was working in the library of the St. George's College, Jerusalem researching aspects of the Dear Sea scrolls and I came upon a description of the unrolling of the Cave 11 Psalm Scroll by Professor J.A. Sanders. As I read I could feel the tingle of excitement that must have captivated those early scroll scholars. The date was November 1961. The scroll had been securely stored in the Palestine Archaeological museum since being found in 1956. Before them was a caked object surrounded by bat dung and black mucous matter. One end of the scroll was clearly decomposed. How do you unroll something like? There were so many risks, as they teased it into revealing its secrets. They thought it would take months, but in fact it only took six days. They used a camel hair brush, a small penknife. The last section however appeared like a tight unyielding knot. So they set up a kettle of water on an oil stove and turned the whole room into a kind of humidifier. By the early afternoon of the sixth day - a creation story - the steam had done its work and the scroll was unrolled. There was a feeling a immense relief and excitement.

The scroll contained all or parts of 41 canonical psalms it also contained 7 non-biblical psalms.

As the scroll was translated they came across an appendix giving some added bits of information. This is what they found:

David, son of Jesse was wise and brilliant like the light of the sun. (he was) a scribe, intelligent and perfect in all his ways before God and men. YHWH gave him an intelligent and brilliant spirit, and he wrote 3600 psalms and 364 songs before the altar for the daily perpetual sacrifice, for all the days of the year; and 52 songs for the Sabbath offerings, and 30 songs for the New Moons, for Feast days and for the Days of Atonement.

In all the songs which he uttered were 446, and 4 songs to make music on behalf of those stricken. In all they were 4050. All these he uttered through prophesy which was given him from before the Most High.

Although the number of 4050 may be exaggerated, we can presume that the 150 psalms that we have in our Psalter are the result of quite a selection process. Syrian Christians had 155 Psalms in their biblical Psalter which interestingly enough included three of the seven extra ones found in Cave 11.

At the end of St. Luke's gospel we have these words:

Everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled. (Luke 24.44)

As Luke concludes his gospel, he puts the ministry of Jesus in the context of the whole story of the people of God. He uses the word psalms to stand for the entire third part, following the Jewish pattern of dividing the Hebrew scriptures into three parts. It was a curious use of the word Psalms.

However inaccurate it was for a description for the rest of the books of the Hebrew scriptures it still pointed to the major part the Psalms played in the life of the Christian and Jewish communities.

The word Psalm comes from a Greek verb ψάλλώ meaning "I pluck with strings". A Psalm is therefore a song sung to a plucked instrument. As David had a wide musical repertoire being a harpist, dancer and singer of the songs of Israel, his name was appended to many of the Psalms. A psalm of David does not mean that David was the author, rather was it a kind of copyright for a guild of psalm writers under the patronage of David. We can safely say that the Psalms were written over a period of 600 year plus. Guilds of singers and instrumentalists made it their role to develop their performance. It is likely that they were performed first, memorised and written down later. The congregation was not invited to sing except in one or two refrains and Hallelujah's. Some of the Psalms were put into collections and linked to the Guilds of singers. For instance, the Psalms dedicated to the Guild of Korah are interesting as many allude to the more lush geography of the north of Israel.

Many Psalms have titles and instructions for singing. I am old and grey enough to remember Hymn books that had notation marks in to remind us which verses were fortissimo and which pianissimo - a guide to organists and singers alike. Without them, congregations have been known to sing the words : "False and full of sin am I" with full throated rejoicing!

Now a word about the language of the Psalms.

One benefit of the Hebrew language is that it has comparatively few words or roots. We can usually find half a dozen or more words in English to follow one Hebrew root. So we inevitably change the style of poetry as we translate, and implant a Western view of poetry with lilt and rhyme and strophe, and great variation of language. We would regard it as bad style to use the same word, not so the Hebrew poet. The Psalms are therefore bound to lose of lot of originality in translation.

We must not forget that the Psalms are primarily Jewish texts. Yet from New Testament times, they were taken over by the Christian church and for generations have been used and adapted.

We may forget that there are actually five books of Psalms. The individual poems would have started as oral tradition, an individual's song of thanksgiving or lament, or corporate praise or meditation. As more and more were deemed worthy of being remembered and recalled, they were written down. Others added. One book eventually turned into five.

Book 1: Psalms 1-41

Book 2: Psalms 42-72

Book 3: Psalms 73-89

Book 4: Psalms 90-106

Book 5: Psalms 107-150

Each book had a doxology, Psalms 146-150 could be called a final doxology of praise. At the end of Book 2 (Psalm 72) one reads: "The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended" Someone thought they had enough to be going on with. Obviously such a decree was reversed as more and more came along.

With the wide variety of Psalms, it has been traditional to put the Psalms into categories: Psalms for Zion, Coronation Psalms, Laments, Wisdom Psalms, Songs of Ascents.

But in more recent years there has been a move away from the categorising of Psalms.  The work of Walter Brueggemann is significant in this respect. In the last 20 years he has been prolific writer on the Psalms. He looks into faith story of the writers and concludes that there is a clear visible pattern. The life of faith is focused on those times when a person's life goes through two significant areas of change.

The first change is from a time of what he calls orientation to disorientation. From a time when all is smooth and life is balanced and well ordered to a point where that equilibrium is suddenly shattered. When that happens a person is driven to the extremities of emotion and survival. But that is not the end of the matter. The third area is what Brueggemann calls new-orientation. This sees the end of dislocation and sees the emerging of a new way of looking at things, where fresh relationships are built including the renewal of the God-human covenant. This new orientation is not a return to things as they were before the trauma hit. Faith now is a lot stronger and the psalmist's relationship with Yahweh is on a new level.

Daringly I could put this in golfing terms. You stand on the first tee at St. Andrew's Old course and ahead of you is a massive fairway. Green pastures are before you. The sun is overhead, God is in his heaven and all is well with the world. There is a powerful feel-good factor. The golfer is orientated to enjoy a good game of golf. Even the bunkers are smiling at you! Your first drive heads off into the distance, your second iron shot neatly bounces over the burn and lands on the green. You two putt and everything feels good. Little do you know that somewhere ahead disorientation is going to hit. Whether it is on the 12th where the bunkers all face the other way and therefore are out of sight - they used to play that hole the other way round - or you meet serious trouble on the vast double greens but then you meet the dreaded 17th road hole. .  We could paraphrase the Psalmist: Lord, You have placed me in a pit as dark as Sheol and there is no way out. How do you ever get over that experience. In Breuggemann's language, what follows after that is what he calls new orientation. You don't go back to where you were at the beginning. Your experience at St. Andrew's will always leave its mark. You birdie the 18th find a new start, and life will never be the same again. The only other scenario is that the Lord tells you take up bowls.

Put the golfing imagery to one side, and you find a more serious and effective parallel. The life of Christ… The gospels will tell you of the Galilean springtime of Jesus's life, when popularity was high and the disciples were on a high. They seemed to have picked a winner in this carpenter from Nazareth. Not many months down the line, opposition and threats, confrontation and clashes with the authorities lead Jesus towards rejection and the worst kind of humiliation. Gethsemane sees Jesus facing Disorientation at its worst. The disciples also face the knock on effect. Disorientation for Peter in the courtyard, for Judas as he betrays Jesus and for all those who turned their backs on him and fled. But that was not the end of the story. Easter Day must be seen as the starting point of new-orientation. Out of the blue God acts. For the Christian the pivotal point of faith is the news of the resurrection.

This has been a very brief introduction to the spirituality of the Psalms. It is time to move to probably the best known of all Psalms as an example of a Psalm of a writer who has that initial orientation and trust in God.

Tomorrow we will move into the disorientation and new orientation of Psalm 22.

Psalm 23; A Bible study

It is interesting to ask the question why the Psalm holds such a genuine place in the hearts and experiences of people. It is also the most popular of all metrical Psalms and is asked for and used at the defining events of personal and family life.

I believe the Psalm is open always to new discoveries. None of us can have a monopoly of interpretation…. Like the green fairways before us, we can enter them and find new and unseen clues and evidence of God speaking through the Hebrew poet.

First let's take a very literal translation of the Hebrew;

Yahweh is my shepherd
I shall not be in want
In green fields He lets me lie
By quiet streams he leads me.
He restores my being.
He guides in paths of righteousness
For His name's sake.
Though I walk through a valley of deepest darkness
I fear no evil,
For You are with me,
Your rod and staff
They comfort me
You spread a table before me
In front of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil
My cup runs over
Surely goodness and covenant love pursue me
All the days of my life
And I shall dwell in the house of Yahweh for ever.

That literal translation has 108 words.

The Hebrew has 55 words.

I mentioned that one of our problems in the English language is that we have so many words we can use. Now I could have extended the translation into the realm of paraphrase and used many more English words. Nothing can match the 207 word version that five clever students at Christ Church Oxford came up with and offered it to the Times: it started with the words

The Lord and I are in a shepherd/sheep situation,
And I am in a position of negative need,
He prostrates me in a green-belt grazing area;
(He conducts me directionally parallel to non-torrential aqueous liquid.
He returns to original satisfaction levels my psychological make up;)
My beverage utensil experiences a volume crisis.
And I will possess tenant-rights in the housing unit of the Lord on a permanently open-ended time basis.
 

If we move back to the Psalm proper, we will find that we are immediately in a dilemma over the opening words.

They stand out: Yahweh. My Shepherd. There is no "is" or verb there, but in most translations it is added; though the Hebrew I understand could easily be translated O Yahweh, O my Shepherd! Following the first words A Psalm of David readers would have in their mind the young pretender, the shepherd boy who fought off wild animals to protect his father's flock.

The point I make is that in the original the Psalm starts with quite a different feel and ambience. The English words: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…. Provides a smoothness and rural flavour. The Hebrew is much more staccato and sharp. A kind of joyful pronouncement and even surprise. It may even be a wake up call which asserts that the Eternal, my shepherd is here alongside. I'm OK! I don't need anyone else or anything else. I do not lack!

At many points the covenant people found this out: These forty years Yahweh your God has been with you, you have lacked nothing. (Deut.2.7): As Christians we would find personal examples of times when God gave us the resources to cope. More traditional Christians may use the words: counting our blessings… A more salutary comment is to reflect upon the over provided lives that we live, where we are over supplied with worldly goods, saturated with an abundance of food, stifled with a materialism that gets out of hand. People can be surrounded by all their worldly goods and TV channels but have no friends, no phone-calls, no hugs.

No wonder the faces of people tell a story. Where are the smiles and the greetings? Where are the green pastures in the wildernesses of our cities and our rural deprivation?

The poet puts back the smiles with a kind of idyllic picture in the poetry,

In green fields he lets me lie,
By quiet streams he leads me.

This is a contrast to the normal terrain of the Middle East. . Quiet streams and pleasant meadows are much more the landscape of the British Isles than the Holy Land. We can sample green fields and babbling burns almost every day. Not so in the east. This lesson came home to me in a very dramatic fashion. I remember standing with a group of students with Dr. John Petersen, then Principal of St. George's College. We were high up near the University, looking over the city of Jerusalem. He turned to us and said: "You will now see the Bible with new eyes. To understand the Bible, you must first root it in the geography of the land." From Mount Scopus you look west and see the city, shimmering in the sunlight. Across the road, near a wall you look East. Ahead of you is the barren wilderness of Judaea. In the distance was a group of Bedouin tending their flocks. No grass. It was more than a week later that I had my first face to face meeting with a Bedouin shepherdess walking with a flock of sheep and goats. She was also looking after her family of small children. Where were her goats? - up a rock face, searching for anything to eat.

What a tough task being a shepherd in a land like that! The wilderness either barren and undulating or cut through with valleys or wadis, dark and foreboding, traditionally the haunt of wild animals and robbers. If I might jump ahead in the Psalm to where the poet pictures a valley of deepest darkness. Again the geography of the land provides the backcloth. Dr .Moffatt used a Scottish phrase: A weary glen. The New English Bible called it "a thirsty valley" and the Jerusalem Bible: "Valley of the Weeper". A Palestinian shepherd carried a cudgel to ward off wild animals, a crook to guide the sheep, and a sling to use both in emergencies and to send a stone to help the sheep change direction. Methods of shepherding would not have been any different when Jesus talked about the Good Shepherd The Psalmist uses a brevity of words, like the phrase: he restores my being or my soul. This is the God who renews the wholeness of our lives. True shalom. True orientation. True wholeness. Not a wilderness experience but an oasis experience. The guidance in the Psalm is in what traditionally has been called "paths of righteousness." Some translations use the phrase: guide me along the right paths. That I resist because, right here seems to be the opposite of wrong. It is more than direction. The Hebrew says: Paths of tsedek: All who trained under Dr. Edgar Jones at Northern will know the importance of some of these words. Edgar of blessed memory who only knew two sacred languages, Hebrew and Welsh, made four points about this word:

1. Righteousness means keeping to a pattern - a norm - the Torah
2. Secondly righteousness involves social justice.
3. Thirdly that righteousness speaks of a covenant relationship, between God and humanity, - that links here with word: for my name's sake. The name was synonymous with God himself.
4. And fourthly that righteousness presupposes faith. That is why Paul liked the word so much.

So let's not throw the word away in translation. There is too much in it.

So we can leave this part of the Psalm, feeling our souls revived and our spirits calmed.

But you are with me. This direct speech continues into the second half of the Psalm God is no longer described in the third person, but is addressed directly:

The metaphor changes from pastoral to domestic. What can this Bedouin tell us about hospitality? . The rule of the desert was that you welcomed strangers into your home. It was regarded as rude and inhospitable to ask any questions about their journey or their circumstances, until three days had elapsed. In a Midrash on the Psalm written by Rabbi Judah, it is said that the pattern of hospitality changes each day:

"When a man received a wayfarer, the first day he kills a calf for him, the second day a lamb, the third day a chicken, the fourth day he serves pulse to him, and the fifth day he serves leftovers."

God is a generous host, oil to anoint the head, wine in abundance. It may bring to mind the Celtic words of hospitality: Often, often goes the Christ in the stranger's guise.

Who are the enemies? , they are not identified but that is not uncommon in the Psalms. However, there are no words hinting that this meal is a meal of forgiveness or reconciliation. Rather is it a confident demonstration that the enemies will not have the last word. You spread a table before me in the presence of my enemies. The Psalmist is given the opportunity to show up his enemies. He is being given more than enough resources to hold his head up high. The overflowing nature of the provision is sufficient. So unlike the pattern of the world where your meal gets less the more you stay, God's provision continues to be magnanimous and overflowing.

The Psalm ends with a confident doxology that Goodness and loving kindness will follow the Psalmist throughout his life, and he will find his way to the Temple to offer sacrifices of praise.

That word Surely, in English has a quiet smooth tone and would scarcely wake a sleeping congregation to life. The Hebrew has a tiny word but its sound is anything but somnambulant.

"Ak" It is an adverb meaning…. Only now, but, surely, certainly. It interjects and interrupts the flow. In Psalm 73 it actually opens the Psalm : "Surely God is good to Israel, those who are pure in heart."

Surely goodness and covenant love: favourite Hebrew words: Hesed.It has been described as one of the great sacramental words of the Hebrew scriptures. Psalm 25 puts it into the right context: All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and testimonies (Psalm 25.10)

It is more than kindness, and mercy can have a quaint sound to it. This word is bound up with the very relationship that God has with his people. Hesed. It is love within the covenant. It was Hosea in his marriage difficulties who was able to point to the deepest meaning of the word.

That phrase covenant love brings to mind those who have remained faithful in their relationship with God and his Church. Our church must not take lightly the loyalty and commitment of its servants and friends.

They remain our greatest inspiration. This Assembly rightly acknowledges those who have celebrated 50, 60 or more years of ministry, and each year there are those who have died and have been added to our role of honour. Those of us who are ministers are equally aware of the parallel list of lay people who also should be honoured, maybe starting with our wives and partners. That loyalty and commitment seen in committed Christians affirm that God's goodness and covenant love follow his people all the days of their lives. It is that covenant love which surrounds us in this Assembly.

That covenant love now goes with us into our worship, our debates and our discussions….

He stands by and shepherds,
he defends and shelters,
he uplifts and encourages,
he leads us forward to places of nourishment and replenishment.
He surrounds us with covenant love
So let us be people of anticipation, like opening a scroll and finding hidden secrets.