Israel's Praise: Doxology Against Idolatry and Ideology

by Walter Brueggemann

Argues that, rightly practiced, the Psalms of Israel make available an evangelical world of Yahweh's sovereignty a world marked by justice, righteousness, mercy, peace, and compassion.

Genres: Theology, Biblical Studies

196 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Walter Brueggemann was an American Christian scholar and theologian who is widely considered an influential Old Testament scholar. His work often focused on the Hebrew prophetic tradition and the sociopolitical imagination of the Church. He argued that the Church must provide a counter-narrative to the dominant forces of consumerism, militarism, and nationalism.

Reviews

[Ian Caveny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recently I read an incredible work on the interrelation between Liturgy and Justice via Nicholas Wolterstorff. Today, I finished this work on the interrelation between Doxology (a specific piece of Liturgy) and the Song of the Weak (a specific piece of Justice) via Walter Brueggemann. The consonance was wonderful.

To be sure, Brueggemann writes from such a foundationally distinct world from me that at times I found certain of his claims a little surprising (and a little distressing): he views certain parts of the Scriptures with suspicion for their "royal" sponsorship (see, for instance, Psalm 150), whilst upholding other texts as more central to foundational theological revelation (e.g. the "credos" of Deuteronomy and Exodus, the prophets, etc.). As a thoroughly-evangelical thinker, I find such leveraging of Scripture against Scripture (which isn't the same as comparing Scripture with Scripture) distasteful and dangerous.

Yet despite such a wide breadth between our views on Scripture (and there is a large breadth between Brueggemann's liberal Protestant camp and my evangelical Reformed camp), I found the rest of his argument to be succinct, incisive, and enlightening. There is never any doubt that Brueggemann is a master of the Hebrew language, a sufficient wielder of the Old Testament's vast literature, and a wise interlocutor with the useful and unuseful modern theorists. He pulls in Paul Ricoeur and Sigmund Freud as necessary, but his thesis weighs far more heavily on Christian thinkers like Wendell Berry. There's an undergirding set of ideas regarding Time and History that arise from Mircea Eliade's Myth of the Eternal Return, but Brueggemann does enough work to found his claims in Scripture first rather than the history of religions.

To be able to see the trends of worship-culture, even in the Psalms, is a tantalizing idea. I find his re-constructed history speculative at best and unbiblical at worst; but the paradigm that he considers is nonetheless useful. There is most definitely a tendency in liturgic practice to cloak our shames and pains and replace them with banal, unmeaning confessions of God's goodness, disconnected entirely to our concrete reality. And there is most definitely a reality to such liturgies: they manifest in our real theological practices.

So, even though I find Brueggemann's historical-critical project to be "out there" (I find it hard to see, for instance, Psalm 150 as a confession of royal, "top-down" worship practices), his concerns with regards to liturgy, idolatry, and ideology are realistic problems, and I do find his other biblical evidences of such things (e.g. Jeremiah, Amos, etc.) to be strong enough foundations to hold up the entire work.

Brueggemann leaves us with some considerable problems: if liturgy does shape a community in such a manner that we might, through our liturgy, turn God into an empty idol, and that we might worship the stability of our comfort instead of the dynamic glory of Yahweh, then how ought the pastor or liturgist care for his people? This question is no rhetorical / hypothetical problem, but a suitable summation of all the problems in the modern (especially Western) Church. Idolatry, it is true, has taken root in our very worship practices: how shall we uproot it? Brueggemann gives a good place to begin: looking to the song from the "bottom-up," starting with the weak, the poor, and the foreigner.

[J.D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Again, Brueggemann does not disappoint. In this book, we invited into exactly what the title represents: Israel's Praise. By looking through the liturgy that is found in the Scriptures of their history, we are able to grasp the reasons for which God is worthy of worship(and God alone!) by their different experiences and their responses to them.

This was an absolutely fascinating book for me and very pertinent to me as we do not really have a church we truly feel a part of(although we're very excited about finding a place of worship out in the Seattle area). Evie and I have been having a home church from time to time that has been very fruitful and enjoyable and it has been very easy to come to a point of questioning why church is so important after all. While I am very eager to be part of a church, it is still worth asking what the point of church actually is because I believe a good explanation is severely lacking (outside of being a custom/ritual). Through this book, I have been reminded of why it is we meet and exactly what is intended in that time although I do not even know if this was intentional by Brueggemann or not.

Brueggemann reminds us that we gather to celebrate the good things that God is doing and has done for His followers throughout all of time. This is why the Old Testament is so important to be included as part of our meeting as well. We are given an extremely unique time of tangible closeness of God to His people and are able to understand how the relationship pans out and how it would look in an ideal situation. We are given glimpses of right living by our forefathers and the response by God when they are following His will. Additionally, we are shown times where Israel continually falls on its face and yet is still given hope. We also see times of grief as we see the endless wickedness(idolatry) which leads them to exile and we mourn in those times we are not following the proper path. We gather to tell the story of God and His Creation. To push us forward on the story that we continue to write with God. To share our hurts and our joys. Our current situation may be largely different than what Israel experienced, yet we are invited to enter this story and challenged to live a life that avoids idolatry and instead seeks to praise God and God only.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brueggemann makes a series of interrealted arguments about the social functions of Israel's praise of YHWH: 1) Israel's worship of YHWH is creative and constitutive for the world Israel is to inhabit. 2) Israel's praise originates from YHWH 's deliverance from a place of pain, and faithfulness for upholding justice 3) Israel's king is meant to "stay under" the liturgy, rather than co-opting it to legitimate his power and order 4) However, we can discern through the narratives of 1-2 Kings and through particular Psalms that in fact the king at times has operated solely as the patron of the liturgy, thereby using to legitimate his acts and rule. 5)Psalms that evidence this are those that include only summons to praise YHWH without any of the reasons for doing so (e.g., Ps. 150). 6) The resulting social system is marked by idolatry (a god who is static and does not transform), and ideology (a system of rule that cannot be questioned or critiqued). 7) The role of pastors is to remind their churches of why YHWH is to be praised, thereby contextualizing present pain with YHWH'S past acts.

[Van Robarts · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work has lots of things going on. Brueggemann builds on the works of Mowinckel, and later in the work, Westermann. Mowinckel sees the Psalms sociologically as creating a world as well as theological by speaking about God. Brueggemann argues that the voice of pain and oppression is foundational to Israel's experience and is given voice in the Psalms. The Psalms celebrate this who acts to liberate slaves and to create a society that imitates his character of truth and justice. He further argues that this voice is silenced by the king to support institutional interests. What the voice of pain and oppression does is protect the society from losing touch with the lived experience of those outside the institutions of power. Westermann found this shift in a move from finite verbs describing God's actions to participles that are not linked to the foundational story of the Exodus. I find this aspect of the book the problematic. Brueggemann is correct that Psalms speak to God, but also form a world. He is also correct that losing touch with the reality pain and oppression silence important truth about the world. I further would ask one question: Could some Psalms be read the way Brueggemann suggests or used in that way without that being the intent of those who wrote and preserved them? This observation aside, a good book requiring close attention and careful consideration.