Psalms 144-146

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POST LIX OF LX

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The Book of Common Prayer (1979) includes a plan for reading the Book of Psalms in morning and evening installments for 30 days.  I am therefore blogging through the Psalms in 60 posts.

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Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,

that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life,

which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ;

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

—The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 226

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The theme of praising God unites Psalms 144, 145, and 146.

Psalm 144, with linguistic singularities to the other psalms (mainly 18 and 143), might not be original, but neither are many other psalms.  The fact that some of them quote, plagiarize, or echo other entries in the psalter ought not to surprise one.  Neither should it trouble one.  Psalm 144, a royal psalm attributed to David yet certainly not from his pen, acknowledges human inadequacy before God.  The text states that military victory is impossible without divine aid.  The psalm, in the context of a military threat, envisions an ideal society, one in which prosperity will be widespread and access to good food will be ubiquitous.  These will be signs of grace.

Psalm 145 contains unstinting praise of God.  We read that God is, for example, gracious, compassionate, majestic, kingly, beneficent, and protective of the faithful.  We also read,

but the wicked He will destroy.

–Psalm 145:20b, TANAKH:  The Holy Scriptures (1985)

This may be true, but does God not desire that the wicked confess their sins and repent instead?  What does the psalmist desire?

Psalm 146 begins the doxology of the Hebrew psalter.  Psalms 146-150 begin and end with the same word:

Hallelujah.

Thematically Psalm 146 is similar to Psalm 144; both emphasize the transient nature of people, in contrast to God.  And, like Psalm 145, Psalm 146 stresses that God cares actively and effectively for the vulnerable.  In Psalm 146 God protects the strangers, but the author of Psalm 144 prays for the protection from foreigners.  True, they are lying aliens who swear falsely.  In that regard that petition from Psalm 144 is similar to the descriptions of the fates of the wicked in Psalms 145 and 146.

Our journey through the Hebrew psalter is nearly complete, O reader.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

AUGUST 23, 2017 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINTS MARTIN DE PORRES AND JUAN MACIAS, HUMANITARIANS AND DOMINICAN LAY BROTHERS; SAINT ROSE OF LIMA, HUMANITARIAN AND DOMINICAN SISTER; AND SAINT TURIBIUS OF MOGROVEJO, ROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP OF LIMA

THE FEAST OF WILLIAM JOHN COPELAND, ANGLICAN PRIEST AND HYMN TRANSLATOR

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