Sixty Days in the Psalms

Introduction to Book Three of the Psalms

10/8/2024

We’re now in Book Three of the Psalter in our “Sixty Days in the Psalms” journey.

Books One and Two contained many psalms that were associated with King David (written for, by, or of David). These psalms celebrated God’s faithfulness to the king, and anticipated the ideal King whom God would one day send to his people. This section ended with Psalm 72, a prayer dedicated to David’s son Solomon, ending with the an editorial note: “The prayers of David son of Jesse are concluded.” (Ps 72:20 CSB)

The next collection of songs and prayers is comprised of Psalms 73 through 89. Many of the psalms in this particular collection express the lament of a praying community and was likely edited and brought together during the Jewish exile in Babylon. As the people of Judah (the southern kingdom of Israel and home of Jerusalem) faced the destruction of the temple and the fall of kings who had come from David’s line, they struggled to make sense of their circumstances. It seemed that the God who had promised to dwell with them in the temple and who had made an everlasting covenant with the dynasty of David was now failing to keep his promises of protection and blessing.

In actuality, as the prophets of this era made clear, God had not failed. Judah had presumed upon her special place in God’s plan and gave into the temptation of being just like the pagan nations around her. Because of this rebellion, God handed Judah over to judgment like the other nations. Yet, God’s word remained true. The prophets of this time declared that God would somehow bring forgiveness for his people and restoration in a New Covenant. Exile would one day end, and God’s kingdom would be realized on earth in a greater way than even the glory days of Kings David and Solomon.

In the meantime, as the Jewish exiles waited on these promises, they needed language for expressing both their grief over painful circumstances and their hope for God’s eventual deliverance. The prayers of lament in Book Three of the Psalter offered that for a community in exile.

We have already come across examples of lament in the earlier books of the Psalter. This style of psalm includes both communal laments (e.g. Psalm 12) and individual laments (e.g. Psalm 6). The structure of a prayer of lament typically follows a certain pattern: an invocation of God asking for his help, a laying out of complaints about the lamenter’s circumstances, a petition for what the lamenter needs God to do, and final expressions of trust and adoration of God. Notably, most psalms of lament do not end in lament. Rather, a significant shift of perspective takes place as the individual or community anticipates God acting in faithful love for his people.

As we consider how these laments teach us to pray, we can be encouraged that such psalms give us permission and language for expressing our sorrow and frustration to God. When facing difficult seasons of life or when reflecting on the brokenness we see in the world around us, God’s people are not called to respond with indifference or ignorance. Prayerful lament to God is an appropriate and much needed outlet in such moments.

I would also argue that the regular presence of lament in the Psalter should encourage us to regularly incorporate such prayers into our own life with God. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann categorizes the various psalms in the Psalter into songs of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. Songs of orientation are “…songs of creation, wisdom, retribution, and blessing [that] function in this same context of good order and well-being.” (The Psalms in the Life of Faith, 11) In songs of disorientation the psalmist moves “…from petition and plea to praise…There is a turn from yearning for the old orientation, a recognition that it is gone and not retrievable, and a readiness for a new orientation…but it could not be done without the painful art of remembering.” (Ibid., 12) Finally in songs of reorientation there is “…a genuine newness wrought by gift.” (Ibid., 14) But to be reoriented towards the new thing that God is doing, those who pray must acknowledge the reality of disorientation. Psalms of lament carry God’s people through these confusing seasons so that they might properly grieve what has been lost while setting their hopes on the greater thing that is yet to come. In this, prayerful lament reorients our hearts, teaching us to long for God and set our ultimate affections on him.

For Jews in exile, these psalms of lament helped them to express their sorrow over losing their king, forsaking God’s covenant, and seeing their place of worship destroyed. But they also pointed them to God’s promise of a new king, a new covenant, and a new temple that would outshine the former glories of what had passed away. Exile, and the sadness of it, was a real experience, and it needed to be processed and grieved. Yet, even more real and certain was the homecoming that God had promised.

In a way, we continue to live in a kind of exile, as our world suffers from the effects of human rebellion against God. But acknowledging human suffering through prayers of lament also affirms that this is not as it should be. With such prayers, we join with the very creation itself that, as Paul says in Romans 8, groans in the pains of childbirth, awaiting the final homecoming of God in which he will fully and ultimately make all things right. So, like Israel in exile, we need psalms of lament to express our heartache, our frustration, our sadness, and ultimately to reorient our hearts towards a deeper longing for God.

- Pastor Brandon

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Introduction to Book Three of the Psalms

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