The Design of the Psalter: A Macrostructural Analysis

by Peter C.W. Ho, James Gordon McConville (Contributor)

Good poetry is like a good the more you linger over it, the more it reveals. It is a deep well that never runs dry. And that is why the Psalter, like a good painting, keeps giving. In the last four decades, Psalms scholarship has found remarkable fruitfulness in reading the Psalter as a book—that is, in reading the Psalms as a unified composition with a metanarrative across its 150 poems. Pivotal questions associated with this approach really boil down to two questions— how and why ? How are individual psalms sequenced, if at all, and what is the design logic behind that macrostructure? This volume seeks to answer those questions. In essence, the Psalter unfurls the story of the Davidic covenant. While interest in the editing of the Psalter remains high in recent Psalms scholarship, this interest has not led to clear consensus. The specific and timely contribution of this volume is twofold. First, it consolidates the results of studies on groups of psalms. Second, it integrates poetic and thematic approaches that are typically separated in Psalms scholarship. Readers will find results of this study surprising and their implications sobering.

Genres: Biblical Studies, Theology

412 pages, Paperback

Published October 4, 2019

Reviews

[Jonathan Ginn · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding tour de force of Psalms scholarship that combines a staggering level of literary, structural, poetical, lexical, and numerical analyses to produce a comprehensive, whole-Psalter treatment. I doubt anyone will completely agree with all of Ho's conclusions, but it's difficult to ignore his careful engagement with the most highly regarded names in Psalms research, and the thoroughness of the arguments he presents. Even though I remain unpersuaded by several of Ho's proposals, this is probably the single best monograph on the Psalms I've read as part of my thesis research. For those who have read and enjoyed O. Palmer Robertson's The Flow of the Psalms, and are looking for something more advanced and in-depth, Ho's work would be my go-to text.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic study on the final Masoretic Psalter. Ho does a good job interacting with the extant scholarship on the arrangement of the Psalms and his view is within the realm of the canonical view over against the form-critical view. I find some benefits from the form-critical views of the Psalms, but it leads to isolating individual psalms and the strict liturgical/cultic reading of Psalms in the second temple sitz im leben ends up non-Messianic a lot of the time. On the more popular level, the result is the anemic view of Psalms as a hymnbook or devotional reading. The canonical view generally results in a more Messianic, theological, and eschatological reading of the Psalms.

The macrostructural aspects of Ho's thesis is to view the Masoretic arrangement of the Psalms, with the superscriptions and selah's, as more thematic in terms of theology and eschatology. He supports this thesis with analysis of individual psalms intertextually within different collections, i.e., Davidic, Korahite, and Asaphite collections, and the placement of those subgroups within the five books. Intertextual references and allusions along with structural elements such as alphabet acrostics, alphabet composition, and numeric nexus combine to support the arrangement of the psalms as a book, with flow, and beginning, middle, and end.

You don't have to agree with all his conclusions to be benefited by his work. Ho obviously doesn't think he's written the final word in Psalm interpretation, and generally indicates some of his own guesswork, though informed guesswork, in the process. This is not the place to start on Psalms, though it is a place to see along the way. It may not be necessary to have read a lot of other Psalms scholarship, but I did find it helpful to have read many of the other works and authors he refers to in order to not hear only one side of the conversation. Also, this is a published version of the author's PHD dissertation, so it reads academic, but I found it accessible and enjoyable.

[Steven Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best academic resource on the macrostructure of the psalms. Needs a more accessible companion for a wider audience but this is a monumental achievement.