The Impact and Application of the Psalms in the New Testament

This is a passage I read that is really excellent on the implications of the Psalms as they are used in the New Testament. As we strive to understand the relevance and application of the Old Testament books on the writers of the New Testament and accordingly on the practical application of such into our own lives, writers delving fruitfully into the topic such as we see here are entirely worth our time to read.

Their New Testament use
Our Lord, at the beginning of His ministry, made a pointed omission from an Old Testament passage, by closing the book before the phrase 'the day of vengeance of our God' (Isa. 61:1f.; Luke 4:18-20). This, taken with His teaching on repaying evil with good, might suggest His discarding of the whole concept of judgment; but it soon becomes clear that matters are not as simple as this. He has come with salvation, yet its very approach brings judgment all the closer. The 'wicked husbandmen' in the parable are brought to a final, and as it turns out, a fatal decision when the son of the house confronts them; the small towns of Galilee, having had their taste of heaven, now face a deeper hell than Sodom's.

This paradox has its bearing on the psalms of imprecation. The psalmists in their eagerness for judgment call on God to hasten it; the Gospel by contrast shows God's eagerness to save, but reveals new depths and immensities of judgment which are its corollary. 'Now they have no excuse for their sin.'

In its quotations and echoes of the Psalter on this theme the New Testament sometimes speaks with less severity than its source, sometimes with more, but never with mere personal rancour. We... can note, as samples, that God's wrath and the Messiah's 'rod of iron', which are prominent in Ps. 2, are prominent in Revelation; that the 'day of His wrath' (110:5) finds its echo in Rom. 2:5, and the anger called down on those 'who do not know' God (79:6) is confirmed in 2 Thess. 1:8 (where, however, the offense is clarified as refusal to acknowledge Him, not mere ignorance).

Occasionally the New Testament breaks off a quotation at the point where retribution is threatened in the Psalter, but this is usually for reasons of relevance rather than any reservations of doctrine. For example in Jn. 10:34 the point at issue has been fully made with the words 'I said, you are gods'; nothing would be gained by completing the quotation: 'nevertheless you shall die like men' (Ps. 82:7). Much the same is true of 1 Pet. 3:12, quoting only half of Ps. 34:16. Again, in Rom. 3:19 the phrase, 'that every mouth may be stopped', concludes the case against man which has been built up in the previous chapters, so that he falls silent. There is no need here of the sanctions which loom up behind Ps. 63:11. On the other hand the silence is significant in Jn. 13:18, where our Lord quotes Ps. 41:9 on the friend 'who ate my bread' and 'lifted his heal against me', but forbears to pray, as David prayed, for the opportunity to requite him. He has something better to offer him.

At the same time there is 'sorer punishment' revealed in the New Testament than in the psalms, simply because the whole scale of human destiny has come into sight. This is very clear from a comparison of Ps. 6:8 with Matt. 7:23, where the words 'Depart from me, all you workers of evil' are transformed from a cry of relief by David into a sentence of death by Christ. The principle is the same truth and lies cannot live together. 'Outside' will be 'every one who loves and practices falsehood'. But it is one thing to be driven off by David; quite another by Christ, to the final exclusion which is also the climax of almost every parable in the Gospels.

The New Testament, then, so far from minimizing the role of judgment, increases its gravity at the same time as it removes it from the sphere of private reprisal. This is illustrated by its use of two of the most heated outbursts in the Psalter, in Ps. 69 and 109. Each of them is treated as prophecy, and taken to be the sentence of God on invincible impenitence. Peter quotes Ps. 69:25 and 109:8 of Judas, in the spirit of our Lord's sorrowful but unquestioning references to his perdition. Paul has a similar tenderness for Israel (for whom he could wish himself accursed) when he sees them inheriting the doom of Ps. 69:22f.; 'Let their feast become a snare... let their eyes be darkened... and bend their backs forever' (Rom. 11:9f.) - but he clearly regards the clause 'for ever' as revocable if they will repent, as indeed he expects them to do. So we gain the additional insight into these maledictions, that for all their appearance if implacability they are to be taken as conditional, as indeed the prophets' oracles were. Their full force was for the obdurate; upon repentance they would become 'a curse that is causeless', which, as Pro. 26:2 assures us, 'does not slight'.

Their present relevance
As a preliminary to this question there are two further elements in the New Testament to take into account... The first is the plea of God's elect for vindication..., a plea which our Lord accepts in Lu. 18:7f., and which is echoed in the martyrs' cry in Rev. 6:10: 'How long before thou wilt judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth?' What seems to be meant in both cases is the accusing fact of innocent blood, 'crying' like Abel's 'from the ground' to God. It can hardly mean the conscious prayer of the martyrs, for in reality the example of Stephen set the tone for his successors (as his Master's did for him), ending the old tradition of indignant protest (cf. 2 Chr. 24:22; Jer. 18:23). But Stephen's prayer for his enemies could be answered only through their repentance, as indeed it was the case of Saul. Otherwise, in the sight of heaven this blood would still be on their heads. Even the atoning blood of Christ, although 'it speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel', becomes damning evidence against those who abuse it.

The second element is the occasional equivalent of cursing in the New Testament. The Lord Himself led the way with His acted and spoken oracles of judgment on unfruitful Israel (Mk. 11:14; 12:9) and on unfaithful churches (Rev. 2f.). In the age of the apostles, if the fate of Ananias and Sapphira was not actually invoked, the temporary blinding of Elymas was; so too was the handing over of the Corinthian offender to satan (1 Cor. 5:5). The future requital of Alexander the coppersmith is stated in terms of Ps. 62:12 in 2 Tim. 4:14 (but note the prayer of verse 16). What is common to all these cases is concern for the welfare of the kingdom or of the offender himself (including Alexander, it may be, while there was yet hope of repentance: 1 Tim. 1:20). The personal interests of those who call down these judgments have nothing of the prominence which they appear to have in the psalms. The fewness of these prayers or oracles of judgment, and the absence of bitterness, are proof enough of the new thing that has happened; but their presence at all in the New Testament confirms its continuity with the Old.

We conclude, then, that it is not open to us to renounce or ignore the psalmists, part of whose function in God's economy was to make articulate the cry of 'all the righteous blood shed on the earth' (to borrow our Lord's phrase). But equally it is not open to us simply to occupy the ground on which they stood. Between our day and theirs, our calling and theirs, stands the cross. We are ministers of reconciliation, and this is a day of good tidings.

To the question, Can a Christian use these cries for vengeance as his own? the short answer must surely be No; no more than he should echo the curses of Jeremiah or the protests of Job. He may of course translate them into affirmations of God's judgment, and into denunciations of 'the spiritual hosts of wickedness' which are the real enemy. As for the men of flesh and blood who 'live as enemies of the cross of Christ' or who make themselves our enemies, our instructions are to pray not against them but for them; to turn them from the power of satan to God; to repay their evil with good; and to choose none of their ways. 'As men in need, who may yet be rescued, they are to be loved and sought; as men who have injured us, they must be forgiven. But as men to follow or to cultivate' - and here the psalms and the New Testament speak with one voice - 'they are to be rejected utterly, as are the principalities and powers behind them'.

If these passages in the psalms open our eyes to the depths and just deserts of evil, and to the dangers of borrowing its weapons, they have done their work. To say that theirs is not the last word on the subject is no reproach: more work first needed to be done. That work and final word belonged to Christ, and we are its inheritors. (Derek Kidner, IVP Academic, TOTC, vol. 15, pp 43-47)

The Inspiration of the Headings to the Psalms

I was recently asked the question by a member of this same group on Facebook that I quite frankly didn't know the answer to and had to study it for a few days to find out. The question posed was, "When we look into a Bible and see the Psalms, we note there is most of the time "notes" above each Psalm sometimes making reference to the historical timeline of the Psalm, sometimes a tune it is to be sung by, etc. The question is, are these Scriptures or are these traditional notes left in of some sort? I've seen texts where they leave out these notes and just print the Psalms themselves."

I honestly hadn't considered where the headings came from. I think I always looked at them as the rest of the headings in my bible and without precisely contemplating it had considered them human as well. But I looked through my commentaries and found some discussion of this. Also, I asked a friend, Dr. Byron Curtis who teaches a course on The Psalms at Geneva College, and he gave me a good answer as well.

He says, "These headings are mysterious. The ancient textual versions are not at all agreed as to what these headings say, or even for which psalms they appear. The Septuagint (200 BC), which ordinarily reproduces a strict Greek equivalent of the underlying Hebrew text, varies greatly on the headings of the Psalms, and has many more headings than the standard Hebrew text. That fact brings the antiquity of the Hebrew psalm headings into doubt. The Hebrew headings seem to have solidified only after the Septuagint was made.

I'm not at all convinced that the headings were an original part of the inspired text, and am inclined to support the widespread view among scholars that these headings are rather like the editor's headings that introduce the paragraph topics in versions like the NIV. When they were added to the Hebrew text, and by whom, remains unknown.

The other question is whether the headings accurately preserve the circumstances they allegedly report, or whether they represent interpretive "guesses" based on their understanding of the meaning of the text.

In other words, does the heading of Psalm 3, ascribing it to the time of Absalom's revolt, represent a bit of ancient exegesis by some ancient scholar of the psalms, or is in an authentic report of the circumstances in which the psalm was written? No one really knows the answer to that question. Sometimes the headings' contents seem very appropriate; for other psalms less so.

I would be very reluctant to describe the headings as part of the inerrant, inspired text."

I also found in Calvin's commentary a footnote included which said, "These titles are destitute of authority, as the careful reader of The Psalms will soon remark; they are to be regarded merely as marginal glosses of the Jews, but poor guides to the interpretation of Scripture." And credits "Fry's Translation and Exposition of the Psalms" with the quote.

Spurgeon includes this quote in his commentary on The Psalms, "With regard to the authority of the titles, it becomes us to speak with diffidence, considering the very opposite opinions which have been offered upon this subject by scholars of equal excellence. In the present day, it is too much the custom to slight or omit them altogether, as though added, nobody knows when or by whom, and is, in many instances, inconsistent with the subject matter of the Psalm itself: while Augustine, Theodoret, and various other early writers of the Christian church, regard them as a part of the inspired text; and the Jews still continue to make them a part of their chant, and the rabbins to comment upon them.

It is certainly unknown who invented or placed them where they are: but it is unquestionable that they have been so placed from time immemorial; they occur in the Septuagint, which contains also in a few instances titles to Psalms that are without any in Hebrew; and they have been copied after the Septuagint by Jerome. So far as the present writer has been able to penetrate the obscurity that occasionally hangs over them, they are a direct and most valuable key to the general history or subject of the Psalms to which they are prefixed; and, excepting where they have been evidently misunderstood or misinterpreted, he has never met with a single instance in which the drift of the title and its respective Psalm do not exactly coincide. Many of them were, doubtless, composed by Ezra at the time of editing his own collection, at which period some critics suppose the whole to have been written; but the rest appear rather to be coeval, or nearly so, with the respective psalms themselves, and to have been written about the period of their production. - John Mason Good, M.D. 1854

I think that sums it up pretty well and hopefully answered the question satisfactorily. They do not seem to be inspired in any way, although the vast majority of them have been used consistently from antiquity until now.
 
(Note: if you would like to look into this in your own commentaries as well please learn from my experience. I read many of the introductions to the Psalms and found not one mention of this issue. But in general if you will go to Psalm 3 you will find it there discussed. Save yourself some reading!)

Devotional and Historical

"It has happened more than once in the history of the Church, that some great conflict has carried the use of the Psalms out from the prayer-closet into the open spaces of a tumultuous world. The period of the reformation affords a striking example of this. We ourselves, who are just emerging from a time of great world-upheaval (probably in reference to World War I), have perhaps discovered, that the Psalter adapted itself to still other situations than we are accustomed to imagine. To be sure, these last tremendous years have not detracted in the least from its familiar usefulness as an instrument of devotion. But we have also found that voices from the Psalter accompanied us, when forced into the open to face the world-tempest, and that they sprang to our lips on accasions when otherwise we should have had to remain dumb in the presence of God's judgments. The experience sufficiently proves that there is material in the Pslams which it requires the large impact of history to bring to our consciousness in its full significance. It goes without saying that what can be prayed and sung now in theatro mundi was never meant for exclusive use in the oratory of the pious soul. This other aspect of the Psalter has not been produced by liturgical accommodation; it was in its very origin a part of the life and prayer and song of the writers themselves." - Geerhardus Vos, "The Pauline Eschatology", pgs. 323-324.

How true this is! There is far more application to our lives than in mere devotion. How do the Psalms apply to the world around us? Right now America has a President that is intent on changing our form of government and openly defies the fact that we are a Christian nation. The men he idolizes are all Socialists and Communists. Do you not understand that our way of life is in jeopardy? Does Psalm 2 have an application to the government in place right now? Not only in the U.S. but in many intensely evil governments that would pit themselves against God. Perhaps God is fulfilling Ps. 14:2 right now as He looks upon our country: "The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God." Perhaps 78:5-6 should spring to our lips when we consider the legalized murder we call abortion, "For He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children."

The point being that there is undoubtedly application to each of us personally in our walks. To use the Psalms for personal devotion is well worth our time. But there are larger implications there as well when viewed beyond the micro level of our lives and considered in relation to the world. In times of trouble we see this more than ever, just as Vos has previously said was the case after WWI. In the same book Vos discusses the eschatological ramifications of the Psalter. So please, as we progress and learn together in this study, be willing to apply both devotionally and historically what you read and learn. Then the true beauty and application of the Psalms will undoubtedly unfold.