Overview
The Psalms are the most-read part of the Old Testament, but their importance for ethics has often been overlooked. However, the Psalms offer some of the most potent ethical instruction in the Bible. In this book internationally renowned Old Testament scholar Gordon Wenham examines the source of the Psalms' power, reflects on their main ethical themes, and shows how they function as prayers that change us. Wenham makes an important contribution to biblical scholarship and breaks new ground in discussions of Old Testament ethics, yet he writes accessibly, making this book invaluable for students, scholars, and pastors.
Endorsements
"While the Psalms are a regular source of our thinking about theology, prayer, and worship, less attention has been given to what they have to say to guide our ethics. That gap has now been filled by Gordon Wenham's careful reading of the Psalter to uncover its various moral voices. With particular attention to the way the law is taken up in the Psalms and to the ethics of prayer, Wenham identifies features of the Psalter that have to do with justice, compassion, the poor, violence and retribution, and the capacity for these prayers to commit the one praying to various perspectives and modes of behavior. And major attention is given to how the Psalter's theology and ethic reverberate throughout the New Testament. An important contribution to both ethics and our insightful reading of the Psalms."
Patrick D. Miller, professor of Old Testament theology, emeritus, Princeton Theological Seminary
"In Story as Torah Gordon Wenham showed how biblical narrative texts, little used by ethicists, can inform Christian moral teaching. Here he applies the same idea to the Psalms, equally seldom used in building a biblical ethics. He shows the huge potential of the Psalter to shape our moral insight."
John Barton, Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of the Holy Scripture, Faculty of Theology, University of Oxford
"As increasing scholarly attention is given to Old Testament ethics, Gordon Wenham has become one of our most reliable guides. Having already directed attention to the neglected area of narrative texts and their moral significance, he now gives us a detailed treatment of the Psalms and their importance for Old Testament ethics. He makes such a clear case for the ethical centrality of Israel's Psalter that we wonder how so many before him failed to see the ways in which ethics are shaped by the prayers and liturgies of a worshiping community. We are deeply in his debt."
Bruce C. Birch, professor emeritus of biblical theology, Wesley Theological Seminary
"Wenham charts a fresh new course in studying the Psalms, asking readers to go beyond simply using them haphazardly in worship contexts as songs. Rather, Wenham urges us to appropriate the Psalms at a deeper level as a means of instruction (Torah), full of doctrine and ethical guidelines for life. This book is a rich delight, and I heartily recommend it to the scholar, pastor, and layperson alike."
David M. Howard Jr., professor of Old Testament, Bethel Seminary
"After publications on how to appropriate Old Testament law and narrative for ethics, Wenham turns his attention to the Psalter. He embeds its ethical impact in the liturgy, explores its particular contribution to ethical formation, and connects its views with the rest of the biblical canon. This is a welcome and wonderfully profound and expansive study of a neglected area in the field of Old Testament ethics."
M. Daniel Carroll R., distinguished professor of Old Testament, Denver Seminary
"This richly satisfying book fills a great need and points to an even greater loss. The need was for a book that would explore the depth and breadth of the book of Psalms in its ethical and formative power for the lives of God's people, individually and as a community in the midst of a fallen world. Gordon Wenham has filled that gap with a model exercise in biblical theology at its very best--illuminating, nourishing, and challenging. To read this book, however, is to lament the loss of the Psalms in so much anemic contemporary Christian worship. What a deficit we inflict upon ourselves, in our worship, in our discipleship, in our ethical sensitivity to the sharp issues of right and wrong in the world around us, and in our personal and collective commitments, by our ecclesial neglect of this priceless anthology of biblical faith and life. May this book inspire creative and effective use of the Psalms once more in the transformative worship of God's people."
Christopher J. H. Wright, international director, Langham Partnership International; author, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God