NEW RELEASE! Longman's Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom & Psalms

[R. Mansfield]

Just released for the Accordance Library: Tremper Longman III's Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom & Psalms.

 

Introductory pricing is available.

 

For more information:

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[Daniel Francis]

Glad to see Accordance get this set, I love it and use it quite a bit. Goldingay's 2 volumes on Psalms is worth the price alone in my mind.

 

Here is a sample looking at the shortest of the Psalm 117.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Psalm 117

 

Much in a Small Compass

 

 

Translation

 

           1 Praise Yhwh, all you nations;

           glorify him all you peoples.

           2 Because his commitment has been strong over us,

           and Yhwh’s truthfulness is forever.

           Praise Yah.1

 

 

Interpretation

 

The psalm encapsulates the essential nature of a praise psalm: one line issues the challenge to praise, a second gives the reasons for or contents of that praise. Presumably the psalm was used in worship, and it is a plausible view that this very brief song had a recurrent liturgical function, like brief songs in Christian liturgies such as the Kyrie Eleison, but we do not know what that function was. Its link(s) with Aramaic usage may suggest an origin in the postexilic period.

 

           1 Praise Yhwh, all you nations;

           glorify him all you peoples.

 

Usually the people of God are urged to *praise Yhwh (e.g., 106:1, 47, 48), and only here are the nations envisaged as “glorifying” Yhwh (šābaḥ).2 While other psalms have commissioned the proclaiming of Yhwh’s glory among the nations and have urged the whole world to sing for, shout for, and serve Yhwh (e.g., Pss. 96; 100), only here are the nations themselves urged to do so. In a sense this is a distinction without a difference, as the nations are only rhetorically present; this line thus expresses a familiar point particularly sharply. Yet its form of expression does express sharply the real fact that the whole world is to come to acknowledge Yhwh. Its further distinctiveness lies in its not issuing its exhortation to an undifferentiated world (contrast 96:1; 100:1) but to the world of nations. It recognizes the nations as separate political and ethnic entities, and calls them as they are to worship Yhwh.

 

           2 Because his commitment has been strong over us,

           and Yhwh’s truthfulness is forever.

           Praise Yah.

 

As elsewhere, the reason the world should worship is Yhwh’s strong *commitment and lasting *truthfulness toward Israel. Gābar is a striking verb. In other contexts it would imply Yhwh has prevailed over us (e.g., 12:4 [5]); here Yhwh’s warrior strength is good news, as in 103:11. The word that often refers to a military commander’s power affirms that “God conquers the world … by the power of faithful love.”3 Yhwh’s commitment stands over Israel protecting not domineering. As the verbal clause speaks about a past extending into the present, the parallel noun clause declaring the lasting nature of Yhwh’s truthfulness speaks about a present extending into the future. Prosaically put, “Yhwh’s truthful commitment has been strong over us and stands forever.”

The regular “*Praise *Yah” rounds off the psalm again.

 

 

Theological Implications

 

“The shortest of all the psalms is theologically one of the grandest.”4 “It transcends all others in the economy of its utterance.”5 “This tiny psalm is great in faith, and its reach is enormous.… In singing this, we too are challenged not to measure God’s Kingship by His ‘little flock’, nor to accept the idea that different peoples have a right to different faiths.… This shortest psalm proves, in fact, to be one of the most potent and most seminal.”6 As usual, while rhetorically its exhortation addresses the nations, the people who hear the psalm are Israelites gathered for worship, and indirectly the psalm gives them reason for praise. But the psalm actually declares that Yhwh’s faithfulness to Israel is indeed reason for the nations’ worship, and explicitly for their enthusiastic *praise, not (for instance) mere grudging or enforced recognition. Thus Paul can quote v. 1 in referring to the manifestation of God’s truth and mercy (LXX translates ḥesed in v. 2 “mercy”) to Israel and to the Gentiles (Rom. 15:8–11). These attitudes and stances of Yhwh to Israel constitute good news for the nations and peoples themselves. The language is different from that of Gen. 12:1–3, but the idea is similar. Yhwh’s committed truthfulness to Israel shows who Yhwh is and draws other people to Yhwh on the assumption that this committed truthfulness is not exclusive but inclusive. It does not reveal something about Yhwh that other people cannot know but something they can know. Therefore when the Jewish or Christian community sings this psalm, it reminds itself that the praise of God will be complete only when the whole world joins in.7 These communities do not have responsibility to ensure that this happens; it is Yhwh’s task to manifest committed truthfulness in such a way that it does happen. They do have the responsibility to start praising and glorifying Yhwh themselves, to be the kind of praising and glorifying communities that Yhwh can draw the nations to join.

 

 

John Goldingay, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Psalms 90–150, ed. Tremper Longman III, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 349–351.

[Douglas Fyfe]

I think you mean 3 volumes

 

(just from looking at my own bookshelf, and the quote you've provided!)

[Daniel Francis]

Yes I did mean 3 it was a typo on my part... 

 

-dan