The article is excerpted from Reading the Psalms as Scripture by James M. Hamilton Jr. and Matthew Damico (Lexham Press, 2024).

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If you listen attentively to a grand work of art like Les Misérables—especially if you listen repeatedly—you will begin to discern the relationship of the parts to the whole. Lyrical and melodic themes appear and reappear, and each subsequent listen reveals yet more coherence. There are no insignificant lines, but all contribute to the tale being told. The Psalter, the one hundred fifty psalms in the Christian canon, should be read as a book. That is, we should not read these one hundred fifty psalms merely as one hundred fifty separate compositions having nothing to do with one another. We wouldn’t read the verses of a song that way, we wouldn’t read the chapters of a book that way, and we wouldn’t listen to the songs of a musical that way. The book of Psalms is a literary musical, and a number of the book’s features demonstrate that the individual psalms have been strategically arranged to create an impressionistic movement of thought. One of the joys of Bible study is finding the clues left by the authors, clues that give us leads to solving the mystery. Are there breadcrumbs on the path if we know what to look for?

We want to suggest that certain features of the Psalter were deliberately dropped to help us find our way, and these features include the doxologies at the end of each of the Psalter’s Five Books, the way each book opens with a different author in the superscription, the arrangement and distribution of the superscriptions across the Psalter, and the link words between individual Psalms creating a coherent and cohesive feel as we move from one psalm to the next. In addition, Psalms 1 and 2 function like an inspired overture, introducing the whole book and its big ideas. Understanding the way these features work together is like noticing the ways that repeated melodies and rhythms link the numbers in a musical. The artist obviously intended to create the repetitions, and once we see or hear them, we begin to think about what they are meant to communicate to us.

What mystery is being solved? To what solution do the clues point? The psalms were intended to be read against the backdrop of earlier Scripture, which tells the true story of how God’s image and likeness, the first man and woman, rebelled against him and transgressed his commandment, bringing sin and death into God’s pure world of life. God, however, spoke words of judgment over the serpent in Genesis 3:15 that promised a seed of the woman, and in that promise is the suggestion that sin and death will be overcome, that

the defiled will be made pure, that God will accomplish his purposes. Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise of the seed of the woman, and the Psalter pervasively anticipates his coming in the same ways that the other Old Testament books do. The Old Testament, we might say, is a messianic document, written from a messianic perspective, to sustain and provoke a messianic hope. Read as a book, this is the story sung in the Psalms.1

We turn to the aforementioned indicators that give the Psalter a “bookish” feel. We can categorize them as “seams” and “themes”:

THE SEAMS

Often the psalms at the end and beginning of the Psalter’s Five Books are referred to as the Psalter’s “seams.” What we find as we read closely is that these seams are not arbitrary but indicate shifts in the Psalter’s narrative. The better we know the contents of the book, the more we sense these shifts as they occur. What clues do these seams contain? First are the doxologies at the end of each of the Psalter’s five books.

The Doxologies

Perhaps you’ve noticed that the Psalter is divided into five books as follows:

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

All but the last ends with a doxology, and each doxology is composed of at least four elements (in some ways the fifth book is concluded by a doxology that begins in Psalm 146 and continues through Psalm 150). The four consistent elements at the end of Psalms 41, 72, 89, and 106 are statements that (1) bless (2) the Lord (3) forever (4) amen. Here are the statements, with the common elements in bold font:

Psalm 41:13, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! Amen and Amen.”

Psalm 72:18–19, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things. Blessed be his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory!

Amen and Amen!”
Psalm 89:52, “Blessed be the Lord forever! Amen and

Amen.”

Psalm 106:48, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,

from everlasting to everlasting! And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’ Praise the Lord!”

That these doxologies, containing these common elements, con- clude each book of the Psalter can be no mere accident. For this to have been a haphazard quirk—apart from someone consciously choosing to design it this way—would be a happenstance too perfectly coincidental to be plausible. It seems far more likely that these doxologies stand like punctuation marks at the end of major sections of the Psalter, a conclusion that becomes more likely when we see the other features that indicate that someone put the Psalter together in a certain way on purpose.

Natural questions arise, such as: who arranged the Psalms this way, and when did they do it? It is often suggested, sometimes assumed, that a later editor added these features to the individual

psalms. This may have been the case, but the following points should be considered. First, these doxologies are not random postscripts tacked on but rather essential components of the literary structure of the particular psalms in which they occur. Second, the book of 1 Chronicles provides evidence that the doxologies have been part of the psalms from the start. When the author of Chronicles quotes the end of Psalm 106 in 1 Chronicles 16:35–36, he includes the doxology. This indicates that the form of Psalm 106 known to the Chronicler included the doxology. Third, the psalms are attributed to the authors named in their superscriptions (some of which, you’ll see below, form the second significant feature of these “seams”) in both the Old and New Testaments and by the Lord Jesus himself (see, e.g., 2 Chr 29:30; Acts 2:25; Mark 12:36–37).

Our working hypothesis is that David started this process of organizing the Psalter into an intentionally arranged collection, and because there are psalms that seem to come after David’s life, it seems that people who came after David completed it. In order for the Psalter to be received into the canon of Scripture by the believ- ing community, however, whoever put it into its canonical form was most likely recognized by that community as having prophetic authority. In other words, for the believing community to receive a book as Scripture, the person(s) responsible for that book would need to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. Apart from such divine authority, it is unlikely that the Psalter would have been recognized as Scripture by those who understood Scripture as the word of God. Perhaps someone like Ezra was responsible for the final canonical form of the Psalter.

How might this process have developed? If David began the impressionistic story seen in the book of Psalms, it is conceivable that he himself had written Psalms that intentionally contained these common doxologies. The psalms at the end of Books 1 and 2, Psalms 41 and 72, are both Davidic: Psalm 41 names David in the

superscription, and Psalm 72 concludes with a reference to the end of the prayers of David. As noted above, the last psalm in Book 4, Psalm 106, is quoted with its doxology in 1 Chronicles 16:35–36, and 1 Chronicles 16:7 associates the material there with David: “on that day David first appointed that thanksgiving be sung to the Lord by Asaph and his brothers.” The explanation preferred here holds that David drafted the superstructure of the Psalter, and that the author of the last psalm in Book 3, Psalm 89, understood what David was doing, composed Psalm 89 to function as it does in the Psalter, noticed the doxologies at the end of Books 1, 2, and 4, and understood that he needed to include such a doxology at the end of the psalm he was composing for the end of Book 3. Whether the process worked in precisely this way or some other, the his- tory of interpretation has overwhelmingly attributed the Psalter to David. We would also maintain that those who joined in the work on the Psalter with David would have understood what he was doing, agreed with it, and been inspired by the same Spirit of God as they carried the work to completion.

A New Author at the Beginning of Each Book

In addition to the doxologies at the end of each book, we find changes in ascription of authorship at the start of the next book. Such changes ought to grab our attention.

At the beginning of Book 1, we find two unattributed Psalms. Neither Psalm 1 nor Psalm 2 has a superscription attributing it to a particular author. Then from Psalm 3 forward, every psalm in Book 1 except Psalms 10 and 33 have superscriptions that name David. This means that thirty-seven of the forty-one psalms of Book 1 have superscriptions that attribute them to David, and David is the only person to whom the psalms of Book 1 are attributed.

The heavily Davidic character of Book 1 makes the attribution of Psalm 42—the first psalm in Book 2—to “the Sons of Korah” all the more striking. Psalm 43 lacks a superscription, but after that Psalms

44–49 are all attributed to “the Sons of Korah.” Psalm 50 is then attributed to Asaph, before a return to David in Psalms 51–65. The superscriptions of Psalms 66 and 67 name no author, then 68–70 have David again. Psalm 71 has no superscription. The final psalm in Book 2, Psalm 72, bears the superscription “Of Solomon,” which could indicate that Solomon wrote the psalm. Because Psalm 72 prays for “the royal son” (Ps 72:1), however, and because the last words of the psalm read, “The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended” (72:20), it could also be the case that David wrote Psalm 72. If David wrote Psalm 72, the superscription could indicate that the psalm is a prayer for Solomon. In Book 2, seven of the thirty-one psalms are attributed to “the Sons of Korah,” and eighteen of the thirty-one name David in their superscription.

At the beginning of Book 3, in Psalm 73, once again we begin with a different author, this time Asaph, to whom Psalms 73–83 are attributed. The Sons of Korah reappear in the superscriptions of Psalms 84–85 and 87–88, then Psalm 89 is attributed to Ethan the Ezrahite. After fifty-five of the first seventy-two psalms (Books 1 and 2) had David’s name in their superscriptions, the only psalm attributed to David in Book 3 is Psalm 86. More on this below, as here we continue our focus on the seams.

Another new author appears at the beginning of Book 4, where we find the only psalm in the Psalter attributed to Moses, Psalm 90, which bears the superscription, “A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.” Of the seventeen psalms in Book 4, after the one attributed to Moses (Ps 90), two are attributed to David (Pss 101, 103), and the other fourteen name no author.

To summarize: Book 1 opened anonymously; Book 2 began with psalms of the Sons of Korah; Book 3 began with Psalms of Asaph;

Book 4 with a Psalm of Moses; and when we arrive at the first Psalm of Book 5, Psalm 107, we again meet an unattributed psalm. Of the forty-four psalms in Book 5, fifteen are attributed to David and one to Solomon (127). The other twenty-eight psalms in Book 5 name no author. For the whole of the Psalter, seventy-three of the one hundred fifty psalms name David in their superscription.

Each new book of the Psalter, then, begins with a different author. To put it another way, no successive Book of the Psalter begins with the same author. This does not look like a coincidence but seems to be a consistent pattern that results from the conscious choice of a designer. And once again it is conceivable that David initiated this pattern in Books 1 and 2, with others who understood the architecture he had framed in completing the project.

The five Books of the Psalms conclude with similar doxologies, and the doxologies at the end of each book are complemented by a change in authorial attribution when the next Book begins.

THE THEMES

The clues that indicate the book-like nature of the Psalter are not confined to its chapter breaks but are hidden in the content of the psalms themselves. We look to the superscriptions, common vocab- ulary, and the first two psalms for further evidence.

The Arrangement and Distribution of the Superscriptions

We saw above that Books 1 and 2 are heavily Davidic, with David named in the superscriptions of fifty-five of the first seventy-two psalms. Some of the psalms have superscriptions that include his- torical information that can be tied to biblical narratives, such as the statement in the superscription of Psalm 3, “A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom, his son.” A casual reader of the book of Psalms might have the sense that these historical superscriptions occur regularly throughout the Psalter, but when we take stock of where they actually appear, we find that there are only thirteen superscriptions that carry such information, with twelve of these appearing in Books 1 and 2. The last is in Book 5 (Ps 144).

Consider the following three pieces of information:

First, the vast majority of the psalms attributed to David, fifty-five of the seventy-three to be precise, are in Books 1 and 2. This means that only eighteen psalms are attributed to David in all of Books 3, 4, and 5 (one in Book 3, two in Book 4, and the final fifteen in Book 5). Most of the psalms attributed to David, therefore, are in Books 1 and 2.

Second, all but one (12 of the 13) of the historical superscrip- tions enable us to tie a psalm to what we know of David’s life from biblical narratives are likewise found in Books 1 and 2. Most of the Psalms of David and all but one of the historical superscriptions are in Books 1 and 2 of the Psalter.

When these two pieces of information are joined to the third, which is that the final words of Book 2 indicate that “the prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended” (Ps 72:20), we have the strong impression that in Books 1 and 2 we are dealing with the life of the historical David, and that with the prayer for (or of ) Solomon in Psalm 72, we move beyond David into the line of kings that descended from him.

At this point our main concern is the claim that these features of the Psalter point to intentional arrangement. We will consider what the arrangement was intended to communicate as we continue. To this point we have seen signposts between the Books of the Psalter (doxologies and changes in authorship) along with intentional dis- tribution of the superscriptions. What about the material in the body of the book of Psalms? Is there evidence within the book of Psalms that they are meant to be read together?

Link Words Connecting Individual Psalms

From 2003–2006 my wife and I (Hamilton) lived in Nassau Bay, Texas, which I mention because I remember the experience of first working carefully through the book of Psalms in Hebrew when we lived in that house. I would work through the Hebrew of a psalm, looking up the words I didn’t know, grammatically piecing the phrases together, slowly making my way until I could smoothly read the Hebrew with understanding. One can now find Hebrew Bible audio online, but I had gotten a set of CDs that provided me with the Hebrew Bible on audio. Once I had worked through Psalm 1 in Hebrew, I listened to it at speed several times —following along with my Hebrew Bible open—before proceeding to Psalm 2. After working through the next psalm, I listened to Psalms 1 and 2 together, continuing in this way until I had worked through Book 1 of the Psalter, often listening beginning from Psalm 1 and continuing through as many psalms as I had time to listen through at one sitting.

This experience created in me the strong impression that though I was reading distinct psalms in sequence, these psalms were connected in deep and profound ways. As the years went by, I learned that scholars were quantifying and demonstrating the impression I had received by pointing to the link words and various kinds of connections between psalms throughout the Psalter. Though I am here going to point out link words, the connections are not limited to repeated terms but extend to phrases, to parts of speech, to grammatical constructions, to words built of similar consonants, wider literary structures, and often the interconnectedness is also the- matic.2 For an attempt to trace the points of connection between psalms throughout the Psalter, we refer readers to the commentaries by Hossfeld and Zenger and Hamilton.3 For this discussion we will simply point to some of the connections between Psalms 2–6, turning to connections between Psalms 1–2 in the following section.

The one who sits in the heavens declares in Psalm 2:6, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.” Those aware of the Bible’s story naturally think of God’s choice of Jerusalem as the place where the temple would be built, where Solomon would also build his palace. The temple mount was something of a connection point between heaven and earth, as attested when God’s glory filled the temple at its dedication (1 Kings 8:10–11). In the rest of Psalm 2 the Lord’s Anointed (Ps 2:2) proclaims the Lord’s 2 Samuel 7 decree (2:7–9)—“You are my Son; today I have begotten you,” continuing with the nations being promised to this Son, who will break them with a rod of iron— then warns the rebels to repent and submit to God’s king (2:10–12, see 2:1–3).

Read in sequence with Psalm 2, the difficulties David faces from Absalom in Psalm 3 are understood as resulting from the vain plot- ting of the raging nations described in 2:1–3. And when the same

phrase seen in 2:6, “holy hill,” appears in David’s assertion in 3:4, “he answered me from his holy hill,” the message of the two psalms merges further: Absalom is an example of the kind of rebel warned by Psalm 2, and God’s promise to David in 2:5–9 forms the basis of David’s appeal in Psalm 3. When God answers David in Psalm 3, he answers him from the same place where he himself had been established as king. David had not built the temple in Jerusalem, but his bringing of the ark into the city (2 Sam 6) immediately followed his establishment as king over both Israel and Judah (2 Sam 5).

The message of Psalm 2 shapes our understanding of Psalm 3 both in our interpretation of Absalom and his rebellion and David and his prayer for deliverance. We see from this that David’s appeal is based firmly on God’s promise, and David’s status as king, as the Lord’s anointed, is in the spotlight of this kind of reading of Psalm 3.

Another point of cohesion between Psalms 2 and 3 comes through the use of synonyms for the word “son” in 2:12 and the superscription of Psalm 3. Psalm 2:12 exhorts the rebels to submit to God’s king (Ps 2:6), his anointed (2:2), whom he has identified as his Son (2:7): “Kiss the Son …” (2:12). This statement uses the term bar, an Aramaic term for “son.” In the very next verse of the book, in the superscription of Psalm 3, we find that this psalm is set when David “fled from Absalom his son.” The superscription of Psalm 3, however, uses the more typical Hebrew term ben for “son.”

The synonymous but distinct terms join with the wider message of Psalms 2–3 to communicate that though Absalom was David’s physical descendant, he is not the seed of promise. He is David’s biological son, but his rebellion shows him to be seed of the serpent and, in that sense, no son of his father David.

The next superscription with historical information comes in Psalm 7, but the similarity of vocabulary and theme in Psalms 3–6 indicates that the superscription of Psalm 3 continues to inform those that follow. For instance, though two different English terms are used in 3:4, “I cried,” and 4:1, “when I call,” the same Hebrew verb appears in those two places. This means that “call” and “answer” appear in both 3:4 and 4:1 (see 4:3 for another instance of “call”), and in both psalms David speaks of “lying down” and “sleeping” (3:5; 4:8). In view of the superscription of Psalm 3, the night of danger looks like the one on which Ahithophel wanted to seek and slaughter David (2 Sam 17:1–4), but because of David’s prayers (2 Sam 15:31; Pss 3–4) and God’s purposes (2 Sam 17:14; Ps 2:6), David survived that night to praise God “in the morning” (Ps 5:3). Those who “plot in vain” (Ps 2:1) “love vain words and seek after lies” (4:2). Rebellion against Yahweh is vanity. To assert that he, or his king, can be overthrown is to lie. Indeed, as David confesses to the Lord, “You destroy those who speak lies” (5:6). The liars in view are clearly those who are opposed to David, and thereby to Yahweh. These liars are those who are “evildoers” (5:5), and the ESV renders the same Hebrew phrase as “workers of evil” in the next Psalm (6:8). David is likewise confident in both Psalms 5 and 6 that God’s “steadfast love” will result in his salvation (Ps 5:7; 6:4).

We could go on this way, but what we have seen suffices to make the following assertions: the interconnectedness of Psalms 3–6 suggests that the adversity that prompts these prayers is that caused by Absalom’s revolt, articulated in the superscription of Psalm 3. David’s appeals in these psalms are based on the promises restated in Psalm 2. Those opposed to David are likewise defined and characterized by Psalm 2, and Yahweh’s commitment to keeping his promises to David is seen as an outworking of his character, his steadfast love.

These conclusions arise not from one psalm individually but from the way these psalms build upon and develop one another, and the Davidic king is clearly the central character in the drama the psalms impressionistically depict. All of this is, of course, introduced in Psalms 1 and 2.

Psalms 1 and 2 Introduce the Psalter

We would not expect a random collection of disconnected poems to communicate unified themes, tell an impressionistic story, or seek to communicate a coherent ideology. An intentionally arranged, strategically selected set of poems, on the other hand, one that has clear signposts as to where large units end and begin and is profoundly inter-connected with itself might be expected to have prominent themes, overarching concerns, and recurring big ideas. The Psalter is not a random collection of disconnected poems but a strategically arranged set of carefully curated pieces that use and reuse common terminology, have clear signposts at the collection’s turning points, and evidence discernible flows of thought. The Psalter has a message that is greater than the sum of its individual parts, and that message is introduced in the first two psalms. To return to our musical metaphor, these two psalms function like an overture of a musical. If you pay attention to the details of the overture, you will be introduced to the melodic themes that will undoubtedly come up repeatedly throughout.

Psalm 2 may lack a superscription, but Acts 4:25 attributes Psalm 2 to David, and on the basis of the pervasive interconnectedness of Psalms 1–2, we suspect he likely wrote both (if he didn’t, someone who clearly agreed with his agenda wrote Psalm 1 as the perfect complement to Psalm 2).

Consider the interconnectedness of the two psalms: the first word of the first line of Psalm 1, “Blessed,” is the first word of the last line of Psalm 2, “Blessed” (Ps 1:1; 2:12b). Whereas the blessed man of Psalm 1 does not walk in the “counsel” of the wicked (1:1), the wicked of Psalm 2:1–3 epitomize the kind of talk the blessed man refuses to entertain. In fact, the same term used to describe the blessed man meditating on Torah day and night in 1:2, is used to describe the peoples plotting in vain in 2:1. To plot the overthrow of

Yahweh and his anointed (2:2) is diametrically opposed to delighting in his Torah (1:2). In Psalm 1 the blessed man refuses to sit “in the seat of scoffers” (1:1), and in Psalm 2 “He who sits in the heavens laughs” at the rebels, holding “them in derision” (2:4). Those who mock Yahweh face almighty scorn.

In Psalm 1 meditation on Torah makes the blessed man like a rooted and watered tree, bearing fruit, not withering, prospering in everything (Ps 1:1–3). When Psalm 1 declares that the wicked are not so but are like chaff driven away by the wind (1:4), Psalm 2 specifies that refusing to embrace Yahweh’s word, his Lordship, and his King (2:1–3) leads to ruin. Psalm 1:5’s “congregation of the righteous” is the same group described in the last line of 2:12, who are “blessed” like “the man” of Psalm 1:1–3, “Blessed are all who take refuge in him” (2:12b).

In Psalm 1 the blessed man does not stand “in the way of sinners” (Ps 1:1), and “the way of the wicked will perish” (1:6). So also, in Psalm 2 the rebels are warned that they should submit themselves to God’s king by kissing the son, lest his anger flare and they “perish in the way” (2:12a).

What can we say about the message of Psalms 1 and 2 when they are read together? First a word about the broader biblical background of these Psalms. The Torah teaches that the king of Israel was to be a man committed to God’s word:

When he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law… and he shall read in it all the days of his life. (Deut 17:18–20)

Further, as the “son of God” (2 Sam 7:14; Ps 2:7), the king was a new- Adam representative Israelite. This means the king, as a student of Torah, was to be an exemplary Israelite, one whom other Israelites would follow as he followed Yahweh.4 Thus the individual blessed man of Psalm 1:1–3, whose lifestyle has been imitated by the “congregation of the righteous” of 1:6, is identified as Yahweh’s “anointed” in Psalm 2:2, against whom the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain in 2:1, but whom Yahweh himself defends in 2:4–12.

In our judgment the two big ideas are: (1) Yahweh’s word and (2) Yahweh’s king, and how people respond to these two things determineseverything.ThosewhodelightinTorahliketheblessed man (Ps 1:1–3), who take refuge in God’s anointed son (2:12), will be blessed like the blessed man (1:1; 2:2, 12). Those who walk in wicked counsel, stand in the sinners’ way, sit in the scoffers’ seat (1:1), vainly meditating on an overthrow of not only Yahweh’s anointed but Yahweh himself (2:1–3), these wicked ones will be broken with a rod of iron, and dashed in pieces like a potter’s vessel (2:9). However strong, handsome, and clever they may seem, however glorious the hair of their heads or impressive their chariots and companions (see 2 Sam 14:25–26; 15:1–6), and however much they may insist that there is no salvation for the Davidic king in God (Ps 3:2, see superscription of Ps 3), Yahweh pledged himself to David. The same word that made the world (33:6) will make the seed of David rule forever, putting all his enemies under his feet (110:1).

What we see is that the themes introduced in Psalms 1 and 2 form the thematic backbone of the entire Psalter. Those who pay attention to the overture are ready for when the themes play again.

Conclusion

What are we to do with this evidence that the Psalter is a book, and with these clues of coherence within the Psalter? We can con- clude that when we pick up the Psalter, we are picking up a mas- terpiece, and that the Lord inspired such craftsmanship. We can be confident that when we find the breadcrumbs, they lead to a feast; careful reading will be rewarded. And as we let the structure and content of the psalms sink into our souls, the reward will be a deeper knowledge of God himself and of how to live in his world.

As we seek to carry this book with us, we’ll find that God will use this book to carry us.

How does he do this? By deepening our understanding of the way the promise about the seed of the woman in Genesis 3:15 was developed by the blessing of Abraham in Genesis 12:1–3, augmented by the words about a future king from Judah’s line in Genesis 49:8–12, reinforced and woven together in the Balaam Oracles in Numbers 22–24, and finally, all these notes were sounded in the promises to David in 2 Samuel 7. In the Psalter, David presents his own experience, and yet he does so in ways that point beyond David’s life to the one to come. David understands himself as a prefiguring, foreshadowing type of the future king from his line. The seed of the woman, the Lord Jesus, who will overcome sin and death and reopen the way to God’s presence.

We join in the prayer for him found in Psalm 72:17, “May his name endure forever, his fame continue as long as the sun! May people be blessed in him, all nations call him blessed!”