and H. A. Frankfort describe myth in the ancient near east as the result of humankind’s

search for “intellectually satisfying” answers to basic questions of existence:

“How did my world come into being?” “How do the gods affect what

happens to me?” “Has life always been the way it is?” “Will it always remain the

same?” The Frankforts call the process of arriving at answers to these questions

“speculative thought.”

We may say that speculative thought attempts to underpin the chaos of experi-

ence so that it may reveal the features of a structure.order, coherence, and

meaning.

In ancient Mesopotamia, the rainstorm that ended a drought was not explained

as the result of a change in certain atmospheric conditions. Rather, the giant

bird-god Anzu devoured the Bull of Heaven, whose hot breath had scorched

the land, and then spread its wings over the sky to form the black rain clouds.

Mesopotamian society fulfilled its need to structure the phenomenal world by personifying

natural forces as gods. The intervention of Anzu was an “intellectually

satisfying,” if numinous, explanation for the coming of rain to end a drought.

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Word & World

Volume XV, Number 3

Summer 1995

1

Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man

NANCY L. DECLAISSÉ WALFORD

and is completing her dissertation at Baylor University.

We twentieth-century scholars have much in common with the ancient

Mesopotamians, for we too seek to underpin the chaos in our world and provide a

structure, an explanation, that is “intellectually satisfying.” We smile knowingly at

the story of Anzu, content that we now possess the correct “scientific” understanding

of rain. We can explain the phenomenon and thus render the seeming

chaos of atmospheric changes coherent. In the same way, biblical scholars are

compelled to give structure and order to biblical texts in order to obtain “intellectually

satisfying” meanings.

One biblical text that confronts the reader with seeming chaos is the Book of

Psalms. It appears to be a miscellaneous compilation of poetry divided rather arbitrarily

into five “books.” Twentieth-century scholars have spilled much ink in

their efforts to “underpin the chaos” of this, the most popular book of the Hebrew

scriptures. I believe that the Psalter in its canonical form has a structure, order, and

meaning that was in every sense “intellectually satisfying” to the ancient Israelites

for whom it was compiled.

Postexilic Israel lived in circumstances very different from that of its ancestors.

Except for a brief time of independence during the second and first centuries

B.C.E.

Greeks, and then the Romans—throughout the period of the second temple. Gone

forever were the magnificent days of King David and the nation of

stretched “from Dan to Beersheba.” We may say that the postexilic Israelites were

a people in crisis. They needed a new structure of existence that would give order,

coherence, and meaning to the chaos of their lives.

I suggest that the editors of the Book of Psalms gave the postexilic community

a means for popular expression of a new structure for existence, using the poetry

and songs of ancient Israel. What was the new structure? With

king, the ancient Israelites could survive as a cohesive entity within the vast empires

of which they found themselves a part. Indeed, the Psalter “underpinned the

chaos” in which the Israelites lived during the period of the second temple.

II. T

In 538

return to Jerusalem. They were allowed to rebuild their temple and restore their

religious practice, but they remained vassals of the Persian state. Temple and cult

were restored, but the nation-state which had been ruled by the Davidic dynasty

was not. The postexilic community found itself in a situation that required it to

find a new structure for existence that transcended national identity. Temple and

cult, rather than king and court, had to be the center of life. Donn Morgan asserts

that this new mindset is a fundamental key to understanding postexilic Israel; he

views the history of the period as a “series of attempts to deal with the loss of these

physical symbols of identity.”

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The Scribal Shaping of the Hebrew Psalter

2

polis: Fortress, 1990) 32.

Temple and cult had, of course, been major loci for life in preexilic Israel. In

all of the ancient near east, politics and religion were closely connected and difficult

to define as separate institutions.

were the only institutions and were therefore the sole source of identity. The postexilic

community needed an “intellectually satisfying” expression of confidence

in this new structure.

When the ancient Israelites returned from exile, they brought with them their

law, their national history, and other texts which were part of their cultural and religious

tradition. Psalms (

cult and continued to be important in the second temple cult. 2 Chr 29:20-36

gives the reader a postexilic look back at temple worship in the days of Hezekiah.

Verses 26-30 suggest that singers, musical instruments, and songs—“with the

words of David and Asaph the seer” (v. 30)—were an important part of the cult ritual.

The exact process by which individual

is lost to the pages of history. I suggest that the canonical text grew from individual

psalms to small groupings of psalms to larger collections,

or editors joined to form the five books of the Hebrew Psalter.

strategy of the final editors? Can we discover an internal shape, an “intellectually

satisfying” structure within the Book of Psalms? If so, then we can conclude:

(1) that the editor(s) structured the book to a purposeful end, and (2) that we may

define that end.

I will begin by examining the canonical text of the Psalter. I note here my indebtedness

to Gerald Wilson,

from Wilson’s analysis at the point of the rationale for the shaping of the

Psalter, for I maintain that the editor(s) sought to persuade a disenfranchised, postexilic

ancient Israelite community that it could remain a unified, cohesive entity

within the empires to which it was vassal. Ancient Israel could transcend its

“non-nation” status and survive.

III. T

Books One through Three (Psalms 1-89) are different from Books Four and

Five (Psalms 90-150) in three points of style. First, in Books One through Three 83

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deClaissé-Walford

3

cago: University of Chicago, 1948, 1978).

4

drickson, 1990) 10, outlines the following collections:

Davidic collections Pss 3-41; 51-72; 138-145 Kingship of God Pss 93-100

Korahite collections Pss 42-49; 84-85; 87-88 Psalms of praise Pss 103-107

Elohistic collection Pss 42-83 Songs of ascents Pss 120-134

Asaphite collection Pss 73-83 Hallelujah psalms Pss 111-118; 146-150

5

in

Qumran are divided into five books, and their content and order is very similar to the Masoretic text.

6

of the 89 psalms refer to an “author” in their superscriptions. Fifty-six of them

name David as that author, and an additional 24 are attributed to members of

David’s court. In contrast, of the 61 psalms in Books Four and Five, only 19 specify

an “author.”

Second, in Books One through Three “royal” psalms are located at the

“seams” or divisions between the books.

lengthy collection of psalms ascribed to David. Psalm 72 divides Books Two and

Three, and Psalm 89 separates Book Three from Book Four. Only at Psalm 41,

which stands between Books One and Two, do we not find a royal psalm.

Wilson posits a plausible explanation for the disruption of style. He suggests that

from an early time the ancient Israelite cultic community viewed and used Books

One and Two, which are composed almost exclusively of psalms connected with

David, as a single Davidic collection. The editor(s) who inserted the royal psalms

elsewhere in the text did not feel free to split the already-traditional unit by inserting

a royal psalm after Psalm 41.

Third, in Books One through Three the reader can follow a progression of

thought in the structure of the books and in the psalms which are located at their

“seams.”

themes in the Psalter. Psalm 1 praises the goodness of the instruction, the torah,

of

I have set My king on Zion, My holy mountain....

Ask of Me, and I will make the nations your heritage

And the ends of the earth your possession. (2:6,8)

The remainder of Book One consists exclusively of psalms attributed to King David.

Psalm 41, located at the “seam” between Books One and Two, though not a royal

psalm, is a Psalm of David that celebrates David’s assurance of protection in the face

of rebellion and enemies:

By this I know that You are pleased with me,

Because my enemy has not triumphed over me.

But You have upheld me because of my integrity

And set me in Your presence forever. (41:11-12)

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The Scribal Shaping of the Hebrew Psalter

7

8

Westermann,

psalms .seem to suggest. a separate collection, which an editor placed throughout the Psalter .only as

addenda..

9

of the Hebrew Psalter

ter,.

one of the .royal. psalms....It evidences no distinctly .kingly. theme which would set it apart from other

prayers for healing..

10

.Shaping the Psalter,. in

JSOT, 1993) 72f. The postscript to Psalm 72, .The prayers of David son of Jesse are ended. (v. 20), sup-

ports Wilson.s argument.

11

And Book Two is also very “Davidic.” Twenty-six of the 31 psalms in the book are

ascribed to David or members of David’s court.

Psalm 72, which closes Book Two, is the only canonical psalm attributed to

Solomon. In the psalm, the king petitions

king’s son:

Give the king Your justice, O God,

And Your righteousness to a king.s son.

May he judge Your people with righteousness...

May all kings fall down before him,

All nations give him service. (72:1f., 11)

Psalm 72 ends with a postscript: “The prayers of David son of Jesse are ended”

(72:20). We may, then, summarize the movement of thought in Books One through

Three:

The covenant which

rested secure (Ps 41) is now passed on to his descendants in this series of peti-

tions in behalf of .the king.s son. (Ps 72).

Book Three is still connected with David, but only one psalm (Psalm 86), is

ascribed directly to him. The remaining psalms are attributed to members of his

and Solomon’s royal courts. Book Three closes with Psalm 89, a plea to

the covenant with David:

Then you spoke in a vision to your faithful one, and said:

.I have set the crown on one who is mighty,

I have exalted one chosen from the people.

I have found David My servant;

With My holy oil I have anointed him.. (89:19f.)

But the covenant is broken:

But now You have spurned and rejected him;

You are full of wrath against Your anointed.

You have renounced the covenant with your servant;

You have defiled his crown in the dust....

How long, O Lord? Will You hide Yourself forever?

How long will Your wrath burn like fire?...

Lord, where is Your steadfast love of old,

Which by Your faithfulness you swore to David? (89:38f., 46, 49)

Psalm 89 is a turning point in the Psalter. It leads the reader back to Psalm 2, back to

the covenant which

The Davidic covenant introduced in Ps 2 has come to nothing and the combina-

tion of three books concludes [in Ps 89] with the anguished cry of the Davidic de-

scendants.

Books Four and Five are very different from Books One, Two, and Three, and

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13

focus the reader’s attention in a new direction. The covenant—

David of a perpetual throne—is broken; the Israelite community no longer has a

king, the symbol of “statehood” in the ancient near east. How can ancient Israel,

the vassal of a foreign empire, survive? The editor(s) of the Psalter give the postexilic

Israelites an “intellectually satisfying” expression of their confidence in a new

state structure. In Book Four, the reader learns that

the ancient Israelites—their guarantor of order, coherence, and meaning—and

YHWH

Psalm 90, with which Book Four opens, is the only psalm in the Psalter ascribed

to Moses,

away from the Davidic covenant and monarchy back to the pre-monarchical

days of ancient Israel:

Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations

Before the mountains were brought forth,

Or ever You had formed the earth and the world,

From everlasting to everlasting, You are God. (90:1f.)

Book Four contains a cluster of “enthronement psalms” (Psalms 93 and 95-99)

which celebrate the kingship of

YHWH

Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving.

Let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise!

For

And a great king above all gods.

In His hand are the depths of the earth;

The heights of the mountains are His also. (95:2-4)

Book Four answers the lament voiced and implied by the people in Psalm 89 at the

end of Book Three: “’

faithfulness You swore to David?’ How are we to continue to exist without David,

without a king?” Gerald Wilson maintains that the answer Book Four gives is:

1.

2.

3.

But the Psalter says so much more!

means by which the people can achieve structure, can “underpin the chaos” of their

existence. The postexilic Israelites were vassals of one immense empire after another.

They could in no way exist as a state in the only form of statehood they

knew—with an independent king and court. Therefore, the key to survival as a people

was to acknowledge

that acknowledgement:

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The Scribal Shaping of the Hebrew Psalter

14

Psalter

untitled psalms they encountered while collecting works for Books One, Two, and Three. These .or-

phan. psalms, then, would have constituted a ready and pliable source for later editorial use.

15

1.

2.

the monarchy existed

3.

the monarchy is gone.

The Psalter becomes, then, the “intellectually satisfying” popular expression of confidence

in a new structure.

Book Four closes with Psalm 106, which recounts the long history of

relationship with Israel from the exodus to the exile. It ends with a plea:

Save us, O

And gather us from among the nations. (106:47)

Then Book Five abruptly opens with praise to

O give thanks to

For His steadfast love endures forever.

Let the redeemed of

Those He redeemed from trouble,

And gathered in from the lands,

From the east and from the west,

From the north and from the south. (107:1-3)

Book Five is a crescendo of praise to

climax of “hallelujahs” in Psalm 150.

I suggest, then, that the editors of the Psalter shaped various individual

psalms and collections of psalms into a unified whole that takes the reader on a

journey through the history of the nation Israel. The Psalter celebrates the majestic

reign of David, laments the dark days of oppression and exile, and rejoices in the

restoration of the glorious reign of

continue to exist as a viable entity in the ancient near east. We can thus move beyond

Gerald Wilson’s analysis of the editing of the Psalter. The message of the

Psalter was clear to the inhabitants of postexilic Israel. It provided a disenfranchised,

vassal community with an “intellectually satisfying” rationale for survival.

YHWH

that that office entails. The chaos of life in postexilic, second temple Israel was now

firmly underpinned with, in the words of Henri Frankfort, “the features of a structure—

order, coherence, and meaning.”

IV. T

Brevard Childs asks, “In what way does the final editing of the Psalter testify

as to how the collectors understood the canonical material to function for the community

of faith?”

cult material of ancient Israel to construct a popular expression of confidence

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17

in a new order. But are we justified in arguing that the Psalter, the “hymnbook of

the second temple,” could be shaped into a seemingly “political” document?

Remember that the canonical Psalter apparently represents only a small selection

of the total number of psalms which were in circulation in postexilic Israel.

18

collections of psalms gained popularity and became part of the corporate tradition

of the people—that is, they became normative and authoritative. The Psalter was

not a new piece of literature. The editors of the final form finished a process that

had been going on for centuries. They gathered psalms and psalm collections that

were already traditional and normative and shaped them into a constitutive document

for the second temple community, a community in crisis. I agree with James

Sanders, who observes that in a crisis situation, people tend to rely on the “old,

tried, and true” to undergird the chaos of the situation and to maintain what he

calls the “irreducible core of identity, that which can survive the crisis.”

The content of the Psalter was familiar to the cultic community. Only its external

form was new, determined by the exigencies of postexilic life. The editors

shaped the traditional songs and poems of ancient Israel in order to give the second

temple community a means for popular expression of a new rationale for existence—

that with

Who were these editors who felt at liberty to gather and manipulate the traditional

literature of ancient Israel? Robert Alter

pivotal position of scribes in the ancient world in general and in ancient Israel in

particular. Fishbane writes:

Scribes received the texts of tradition, studied and copied them, puzzled about

their contents, and preserved their meaning for new generations....they were, in

fact, both students of and believers in the materials which they transmitted, and

so were far from simple bystanders in matters relating to their clarity, implica-

tion, or application.

Scribes were not simply passive tradentswhopreserved and passed along the traditions

of ancient Israel. Their offices within the national administration put them in

positions that allowed and even demanded that they interpret and shape those traditions.

For the informed reader, the Hebrew Scriptures are an ongoing record of

the reinterpretation and reshaping of tradition to successive generations of ancient

Israelites. Scribes with a vested interest in the future of Israel were most likely the

shapers of the psalmic tradition.

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The Scribal Shaping of the Hebrew Psalter

18

insert in column 27 states that David composed 4,050 psalms and songs: .And he [David] wrote 3,600

psalms; and songs to sing before the altar over the whole-burnt perpetual offering every day, for all the

days of the year, 364; and for the offering of the Sabbaths, 52 songs;and for the offering of theNewMoons

and for all the Solemn Assemblies and for the Day of Atonement, 30 songs. And all the songs that he

spoke were 446, and songs for making music over the stricken, 4. And the total was 4,050.. In addition,

the Deuteronomistic historian writes in 1 Kgs 4:32 that the songs of Solomon were 1,005.

19

20

21

V. C

What perception did the Israelite community have of the shape of the Psalter?

The Psalter’s external shape was that of a constitutive charter of the postexilic

community, but its internal form was that of traditional cultic material. Brevard

Childs maintains that, with the formation of the Psalter, “the original cultic role of

the psalms has been subsumed under a larger category of canon.”

the canonical Psalter, in fact, exercised a dual role in the life of the community. Individual

psalms and collections of psalms were still used at ceremonies and festivals

at the temple and, later, in synagogues. But the Psalter as a whole was read

publicly

David, the dark days of oppression and exile, the restoration of the glorious reign

of

in a world it no longer controlled.

Both uses of the psalms were important to the ongoing life of the postexilic

community and worked together in a reciprocal relationship. Their liturgical (or

cultic) use influenced the meaning and significance of the psalms in their canonical

(or constitutive) context, and their canonical use influenced the meaning and

significance of the psalms in their cultic context. We may conclude, then, that in a

very real sense, the community shaped the text and the text shaped the community.

And the Psalter was “intellectually satisfying” for readers and hearers in each

context in which they encountered it.

James Sanders asks a question that is of crucial importance to my interpretation

of the function of the Psalter in postexilic Israel:

Why did Israel survive? That is the immense historical question that begs expla-

nation. That which happened to some other victim nations [of Babylonian and

Persian expansion] did not happen to Israel. Israel changed rather radically, to

be sure, from being a nation with its own government and a highly nationalistic

cult, to a dispersed religious community called Judaism. But the point is that Is-

rael survived whereas others did not.

Israel survived because the postexilic community found an “intellectually satisfying”

rationale for survival. As Anzu was an intellectually satisfying rationale for the

rains that ended the drought in ancient Mesopotamia, so

satisfying rationale for the continued existence of the nation of ancient Israel.

The postexilic community had indeed found a way to “underpin the chaos of

experience [and] reveal the features of a structure—order, coherence, and meaning.”

25

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23

longer simply a collection of cultic hymns, but that it was now a book .to be read rather than performed,

meditated over rather than recited from.. But in the ancient near east, literary texts were not read indi-

vidually, but out loud before groups of listeners.

24

25