The Christian Use of the Psalter

by A. R. Whitham

In such prophetic visions as these, as well as in the Psalms that speak of the glories of the Messianic King, the Christian conscience has rightly recognised definite predictions of the coming of Christ, of Him Who was both "the effulgence of God's glory" (Heb. i. 3) and also, by His human birth, the Son of David and King of Israel, and Who manifested the holiness of God in human flesh and blood. He Himself, when He came, selected from the Psalms one striking phrase, in which both ideas, the Divine glory and the human calling, are combined. For He quotes, as a witness to Himself and as a corrective of imperfect views, the 110th Psalm (again a proper Psalm for Christmas Day), where the Messianic King is spoken of both as Ruler and Victor and Priest of humanity, and as standing also in a unique relationship to God, which exalts Him far above any mere earthly connection with David:

The Lord said unto my Lord:
Sit thou on My right hand—
If David then calleth him Lord, how is he his son?
(Matt. xxii. 45.)

But besides all these prophecies, which look onward to the great outcome of Israel's history, there is another and wider sense, as the Christian Fathers apprehended, in which the whole Psalter is the book of the Incarnation and speaks of Christ. "David," says S. Jerome, "on his harp and ten-stringed lute, sings throughout of Christ, and brings Him up from the dead." However fanciful and over-subtle the early Christian commentators may seem to us in their working out of this idea, they had grasped a profound truth. When we once recognise that Christ, knowing Who He was and why He came into the world (cf. John xiii. 1), must in the Jewish services or in private prayers have recited the Psalms with a perfect intention, and found in them the true expression of Himself, with regard both to the eternal Father and to His brethren, we are compelled to admit the possibility of each verse of the Psalms having some bearing on the Incarnation. It is a conclusion which might at first sight seem extravagant; but it forces itself upon us as we realise the true humanity of the Saviour. He is "the Son of Man"; He took of the substance of His Virgin-mother the fulness of human nature; He has a human body, a human soul, a human spirit; He is "the second Adam," the great Head of our race, Who, in the striking phrase of S. Irenaeus, has "summed up" (recapitulavit) all humanity and all the long history of man. "For verily, not of angels doth He take hold, but He taketh hold of the seed of Abraham" (Heb. ii. 16). He has gathered into Himself all truly human experience, the hopes of humanity, and its sufferings; its infinite pathos, its capacity of sorrow and of joy, its progress towards God, and its final apprehension and vision of God.

This is the key to the most constant feature of the Psalter, the portrait of the Righteous Sufferer. Whether we regard it as the personification of the holy nation or the self-expression of human conscience in its moral witness and its conflicts, it is an ideal that is only fulfilled in the Just One, Jesus Christ. He appeared in the world as the pattern Man, in Whom the Divine image is perfected and Whose moral nature corresponds with that holiness which is God's essential character. He appeared, too, as the perfect realisation of the filial spirit, that spirit of sonship which is the true attitude of the creature towards the Creator. Therefore it is in Christ Himself that the witness of the Psalms to righteousness, their expression of man's effort towards his ideal, is taken up, illuminated, made perfect. Therefore it is that a New Testament writer is found applying directly and without question to Christ not only the descriptions of the self-revealing God of the Old Testament, "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of Thy hands" (Heb. i. 10, from Ps. cii.), and the portrait of the Messianic King, "The sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of Thy kingdom" (ib., from Ps. xlv.), but also the description of man in his ideal excellence and supremacy:

Thou madest him a little lower than the angels;
Thou crownedst him with glory and honour,
And didst set him over the works of Thy hands
(Heb. ii., from Ps. viii.),

and that word in which some unknown psalmist and prophet had consecrated the free obedience of his will to God, as a higher offering than the sacrifices of the Law:

Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith,
Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not,
But a body didst Thou prepare for Me;
In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin
Thou hadst no pleasure:
Then said I, Lo, I am come
(In the roll of the book it is written of Me)
To do Thy will, O God."
(Heb. x., from Ps. xl.)

This line of interpretation may be followed out with great spiritual profit in the varied aspects of the Psalms. The thanksgivings of the Psalter are in the same spirit as those recorded by the Evangelists from our Lord's own lips, as when He thanked the Father for the revelation made to babes rather than to the wise and understanding (Matt. xi. 25), or at the grave of Lazarus gave thanks that His prayer was heard (John xi. 41). The prayers of the Psalter might well be those in which the Incarnate Son communed with the Father. For He fought our human battle with the human weapons of faith and prayer. The great description given by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews of Christ as "the Author and Finisher of our faith" (Heb. xii. 2), implies One Who inaugurated our effort of faith by Himself first taking part in it, and Himself perfectly accomplished it by bearing to the very final and utmost strain our human temptations. Hence we may hear the voice of Christ Himself in those pathetic outcries of the Psalter; in its appeal of faith as the Righteous One wrestles with doubt and depression or faces the contradiction of sinners; in its stedfast hold on God even when sin is triumphing, and a world created good seems given over into the hand of the wicked. All these utterances have a new meaning, a fuller efficacy, when we recognise in them the words of the "Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief." There is nothing either fantastic or presumptuous in this reading of the Gospel in the Psalter. Did not He Himself vouchsafe to shew us something of this human struggle of faith in the words spoken on the eve of His Passion, when He confessed that His soul was troubled, and He would fain have said, "Father, save Me from this hour" (John xii. 27)? Did He not lift the veil even further in admitting us to the dark sanctuary of Gethsemane, in suffering us to hear even His utterances from the Cross?

The fourth Word from the Cross, so often misunderstood, is the opening of the 22nd Psalm. This cry at the climax of the Passion is really the voice of faith, faith triumphing over desolation of spirit, faith holding on by the unseen, amidst the falling away and the vanishing for the time of every consolation. It is not merely "Why didst Thou forsake Me?" but it is "My God, My God," the fundamental confession of a personal faith in a personal God, seeing Him Who is invisible, waiting for Him Who hides His face, believing, even though His truth and justice seem blotted out of the world, that God is, and that He is still "enthroned upon the praises of Israel" (v. 3). And this faith finds its last utterance of peace and thanksgiving and renewed consciousness of union with the Father in the seventh Word, again from the Psalter, "Into Thy hands I commend My spirit" (Ps. xxxi. 6).

One of the most fruitful lines of Christian meditation will be found in this Christological aspect of the Psalms. It throws a wonderful light on the inner life of our Lord, and gives the Psalter a value which no merely literary study could give.