Stevens Songs of the Son

Reading the Psalms with the Author of Hebrews
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-4335-9215-7
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 176 Seiten

Theological and Devotional Reading of the Psalms through a New Testament Lens The book of Psalms expresses our human experiences through its beautiful prose. But this Old Testament book is more than just relatable poetry-it reveals a rich theology of God, the nature and work of Jesus, and Christ's voice hidden in Scripture. The Psalms are the songs of the Son. But how can these songs point to Jesus if they were transcribed centuries before his life and death on the cross? Songs of the Son explores 9 psalms cited in Hebrews. Each chapter focuses on a single psalm-exploring its role in the argument of the Hebrews, uncovering the psalm's central themes, and then reexamining the psalm through the lens of Hebrews' interpretation. Ultimately, readers will gain a better understanding of the Psalter and discover how all Scripture, including the Old Testament, reveals the preincarnate glory of Christ.  - Biblical Study on Psalms: Examines the themes of the Psalms and how the Bible presents Jesus in the Psalter - Perfect for Small-Group Study: Contains short chapters and reflection questions that make it suitable for weekly Bible study  - Format that Prompts Rereading: Each chapter looks at every psalm twice, allowing readers to fully grasp the meaning of the psalm through Hebrews's interpretive lens - Accessible: Written for everyday Christians who want to explore the book of Psalms on a deeper level 

Daniel Stevens (PhD, University of Cambridge) is assistant professor of New Testament Interpretation at Boyce College, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Daniel lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, Hannah, and two children.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stevens, Daniel

Leseproben

Introduction

Let us keep him before our eyes as we listen to the psalm. Pay close attention, beloved, for it is the discipline and teaching of our school, and it will empower you to understand not this psalm only but many others.

Augustine, Exposition 2 of Psalm 901

I have often had an uneasy relationship with the Old Testament. I have loved it for its wild poetry and intricate narrative. I have striven to see it as it came to Israel and was received in unfolding splendor. And so, throughout much of my Christian life thus far, while I have been able to see the Old Testament as God’s word to Israel and as a densely woven set of storylines and movements that find resolution in the New, I have had difficulty moving back from the New Testament to the Old.

When I saw the New Testament’s use of Old Testament passages, I became confused. I held the apostles’ interpretations at arm’s length because it seemed that they were seeing what was not there. I knew the apostles could not be wrong in their inspired writing, so for years I attributed this seemingly creative strand of interpretation to their role as prophets. God let them see what we otherwise could not. We should not go one letter beyond what they said and saw anew. How could we?

I had thought my problem was strictly with the New Testament and its ways of reading. In truth, I did not yet understand the Old Testament for what it really is. I had not yet learned to read the books of the old covenant as Christian Scripture. This book is about one particular implication of what that means. It is not just that the Old Testament historically led to the New Testament as a kind of prelude but rather that the one God who speaks in both Testaments intends them to belong forever to the church as a single body of Scripture. That is, while it is important—necessary even—to read the Old Testament as that which went before the coming of Christ and his gospel in all its historical rootedness as God interacted with Israel, it is just as necessary to read it alongside the New Testament as God’s present word to the church. God spoke in the Old Testament, yes, and in that historical speech God still speaks. That is fundamentally what the New Testament authors knew; and that is the key to seeing, as they did, the many-splendored revelation of God in Christ that reverberates through every page of Scripture, Old and New.

This book is an attempt to reflect on how one book of the New Testament, Hebrews, guides us to better understand one book of the Old Testament, Psalms. My hope is that through reading these texts together, we may grow in our understanding and love for the God who spoke many times and in many ways through the prophets and who now, through all of his word, speaks to us in his Son.

Why Psalms?

The Psalms have always been at the heart of Christian worship. Believers sing, pray, and meditate on the words of the Psalms week in and week out, and they have done so since the foundation of the church. This frequent devotion, however, is often only partially formed. We go to the Psalms looking to find ourselves, to put words to the emotions we already feel or hope to feel. We go to the Psalms as a voice for our heart, as a counselor, as a comfort. None of this is wrong—it is part of why God gave us the Psalms—but it is incomplete.

If we look to the way the New Testament uses the Psalms, we will discover that in addition to an emotional outpouring to God, the New Testament authors find a rich theology of God in the Psalter. The Psalms, in the New Testament’s reading, are the songs of the Son. The Father speaks to the Son, and the Son speaks in return.2 It is not just that some psalms predict things about Jesus; it is that in many of the psalms, we hear the voice of Jesus speaking and the Father speaking to him. The Son speaks in his preincarnate glory. He speaks in his earthly life and suffering. He even speaks in the role of his people, taking their sin and their suffering onto himself.

Paul, the unknown author of Hebrews, and Jesus himself all go to the Psalms to find Jesus, the Son of God, speaking and being spoken to. In earlier eras, the church has been more conscious of this, singing the Psalms regularly and finding the words of Jesus in their mouths even as they saw Jesus singing their own thoughts, emotions, and confessions through the Psalter. More than any other book of the Old Testament, the Psalms presents us with the unity between Christ and his people as the psalmists quickly shift between speaking of the Son in his glory, in his humility, and in his representation of his people. Theophylact, a medieval Greek bishop whose New Testament commentaries proved influential in both the Western and Eastern churches, would generalize from specific quotations and claim that Paul read entire psalms as being about Jesus. This was likely uncontroversial. This is not to say that an interpretation is right because it is old or was widely accepted; but in this case, those Scripture-saturated Christians were more sensitive to the Bible’s own way of reading itself. The Psalms are, in their fullness, the songs of the Son, the hymnbook of the greater David.

This is plain throughout the New Testament, but it is particularly poignant in the epistle to the Hebrews.

Why Hebrews?

In the book of Hebrews, we are presented with the God who speaks. He speaks to us in his word and in his Son. But this is not all we see. The Father speaks to the Son, and the Son speaks back. The author finds throughout Scripture, but particularly in the Psalms, this call and response within the Trinity. A divine conversation plays out before our eyes as the world is made, as salvation is accomplished, and as all things are made new in the Son of God. Our God is a speaking God, and before he ever spoke to us, God has always been the one who speaks within the Trinity. As this speaking God turns to that which is not himself, all creation bursts into being and is sustained by that same word. Within history, God speaks again and again, until at last that Son comes in whom God communicates perfectly and finally. By grace, Hebrews gives us glimpses of this divine conversation. To do so, the author turns to the language of the Psalms.

While any book of the New Testament could be used to help us understand God’s revelation in the Old, few books offer as extended, deep, and explicit an interaction with the Old Testament as does the epistle to the Hebrews. In particular, in this one letter, we are shown time and again how the Psalms form our understanding of Jesus: his nature, his work, and his relationships. Through paying close attention to how Hebrews reasons with the Psalms, we will see Jesus more clearly and learn to read the Psalms the apostles’ way, as the songs of the Son.

More than any other inspired writer, the author of Hebrews develops his argument by reasoning with the Scriptures of Israel and particularly with the Psalms. Far more than simply quoting the Psalms as illustrations or proof texts, the author of Hebrews composes his entire letter as a series of arguments from the Psalms and other Old Testament texts in light of Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, ascension, ongoing work, and coming return.

Nowhere else do we have such a dense and sustained interaction with one book of Scripture by another. While the author weaves together texts from all of the Old Testament canon, deftly synthesizing the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings as he demonstrates the superiority of Christ, it is to the Psalms that he returns again and again. At crucial points in his argument as he explains or applies or clarifies, the author of Hebrews reaches consistently for the Psalms. Since this is the case, it will be particularly helpful for us to explore how the author reads the Psalms.

Reading Again

There are books that demand a second reading. All the great books do. Masters of the literary craft can structure their stories in such a way that the beginning gains new significance—gains its true significance—only in light of the end. A second reading of an Agatha Christie mystery is an entirely different experience than the first. In the first reading, you are the amateur detective. You are tasked with identifying which clues are, and are not, significant. On a second reading, however, it is as if you are reading with Christie herself. She shows you how to compose a good tale, how to build suspense, how to misdirect an investigation, how to hide a clue in plain sight.

The books of the Bible also demand rereading. That we know Jesus will be crucified and raised does not diminish the power of the Gospel narratives, but rather it fills every event and saying with more meaning. When in Mark’s Gospel the first human to recognize Jesus as the Son of God is the centurion at Jesus’s death, we are led to a greater understanding of Mark 1:1: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” We see only then that Jesus’s nature and role as God’s Son is understood not chiefly in his teaching or his miracles but in his death. The Son of God is the one who died for us. We cannot understand him otherwise.

This pattern is true not only for particular...