Week 22 Study Page - Psalm 54-72 & Jonah
Week #22 Study Page
Psalm 54-72
Jonah (1-4)
Suggested Daily Reading Breakdown
Sunday – Psalms 54-56
Monday – Psalms 57-60
Tuesday – Psalms 61-63
Wednesday – Psalms 64-66
Thursday - Psalm 67-69
Friday - Psalm 70-72
Saturday – Jonah 1-4
Degree of difficulty: 2 out of 10 (explanation:). Our Psalms reading this week is full of short chapters, Most of them attributed to David. In fact, out of the 19 Psalms that we're reading this week, only 4 of them are not attributed to king David. You'll notice an invective tone in many of these psalms of David as he prays for his enemies (who are also God's enemies) to come to ruin and shame. As remarked before in our study notes, it is helpful, when reading these psalms, to recognize that the Church is the new "people of God." These prayers against the enemies of God can now be read against the enemies of the Church and the Gospel. Next we're on to Jonah, one of the more incredible stories in the Bible. It will be helpful to know why Jonah regarded Nineveh the way that he did and reflect on why God did not share his feelings toward that city.
About the Book(s)
Psalms
About: "Psalm" is a translation of the Hebrew word mizmor, which is is a technical term for a song sung to the accompaniment of musical instruments. The book of psalms or the "Psalter" came into being over a period of centuries. It is a collection of songs / prayers which are sung / spoken to God. The Psalter is divided into five books, each ending in a doxology. This week's reading will finish book II. Psalms is the only book of the Bible that we're not reading straight through.
Jonah
Date of Authorship: The date of authorship for Jonah is uncertain. Dating the career of Jonah the prophet himself is not* uncertain. Jonah the prophet appears in the historical books of the Old Testament with an appearance in 2nd Kings 14. There he gives a prophecy to Jeroboam II of Israel, a prophecy that will come true in the short term, but will ultimately be controverted and reversed by God because of Israel's unfaithfulness. Jeroboam II reigned from 793-753 BC, and his reign represented the absolute pinnacle of the kingdom of Israel (divided) as they possessed their largest territory, were wealthy and had a far-reaching reputation. However, there is little reason to believe that the career of Jonah and the authorship of the book of Jonah were concurrent. C. Hassell Bullock notes a "northern air" to Jonah, and there is no indication that the author is aware of the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel to which Jonah was a prophet. This literary clue would position the authorship of this book in the mid 8th Century BC, during or in within a few decades after the end of the reign of Jeroboam II
Author: Jonah is the exception to a rule; the rule that the prophetic books of the Bible were written by the prophet who's name appears in the title of the book. If you read this book with your eyes open, it should be apparent that these four chapters are written about Jonah, instead of by him. We know little of the author of Jonah. Bullock offers that Jonah may have been written to controvert the positive prophecy given to the kingdom of Israel by Jonah that is mentioned in 2nd Kings 14:25. The author may have been showing everyone how resistant and oppositional to God's will the prophet Jonah was in order warn Israel about their impending judgment and destruction at the hand of the very people that Jonah was told to prophesy to in this book.
Purpose: Jonah is categorized as a book of prophecy, but it is really not prophecy. This book contains only 8 words (in English) of prophecy - Jonah 3:4b. All of chapter 2 is poetry, that would be a more fitting categorization of the book than prophecy. However the proper designation for the book of Jonah is history. Not a history like Joshua, or Chronicles; Jonah is not primarily meant to tell the story of the poeple of Israel, the focus of the historical account in Jonah is to teach a lesson. Therefore Jonah is a historical parable.
The short book of Jonah would have taught the Israelite people two important lessons.
God is not only concerned about them. Even though Israel is his chosen people and heirs of the promise made to Abraham, God is sovereign over all nations. He cares enough for nations besides Israel to notice when they are evil, judge them accordingly, warn them first, and accept their repentance before delivering punishment. This is the lesson that the character Jonah fails to grasp and accept. Jonah resisted God's call to Nineveh (a capitol of the Assyrian kingdom and soon-to-be empire) and even his psalm of deliverance in chapter 2 is highly nationalistic. The story ends with Jonah's rotten refusal to accept God's forgiveness towards Nineveh and God pointing out that that he cares, even for the cattle of that city. Like Jonah, this would would be a hard teaching for the extremely nationalistic Israelites to accept, but the Spirit inspired this book so that they - and we - could hear it. God loves your enemies and wants them to come to repentance and receive blessing.
God will accomplish his will. At its core, the book of Jonah is a fun telling of God getting His way. Despite the poor attitude and defiant resistance of His prophet, God would see that the Ninevites repent and Jonah would learn that resistance is futile. Such a lesson would be an important lesson for the prophets who would follow later in Israel's history like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel who would all have very difficult and unpopular messages to convey. They would not resist God like Jonah does, maybe they read his story and learned that there was no point in trying to escape their task. consider these words from the later prophet Jeremiah:
So the word of the Lord has brought me
insult and reproach all day long.
But if I say, “I will not mention his word
or speak anymore in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire,
a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
indeed, I cannot. (Jeremiah 20:8-9)
As you Read Notes
Psalm 58: Imprecatory Psalms
There are a couple imprecatory Psalms in this week's reading (58 & 69). Imprecatory is a fancy title that we give to a psalm which asks God to do bad things to people. Consider this passage from Psalm 58:
Break the teeth in their mouth's O God...
May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along
like a stillborn child that never sees the sun (58: 6-8)
These are best understood as a call for justice. Many times in scripture, God's justice was seen as requiring punishment proportional to the seriousness of the sin, the psalmist is calling down the curses that would be appropriate if justice were to be maintained. These are the same magnitude of punishment that God pronounces on his enemies (see Isaiah 13:15-16) The forceful language of these passages indicate a reliance on God to carry out vengeance on enemy nations. it may seem disturbing to read these kind of violent wishes in God's word, and it is worth pointing out that these invectives seem* incongruent with Jesus' teaching in the Sermon On the Mount. However, justice has been the promise of God all along. God has consistently promised judgment and punishment for the wicked in scripture. Sometimes that punishment is handed out on this earth (as the Psalmist asks for in these passages), but God makes it clear that without the saving grace of Jesus Christ, everyone will face justice and punishment for the evil we have committed. C.S. Lewis raises an interesting point about these passages; that failure to experience the indignation at evil that the psalmist communicates here would be an alarming symptom of the human heart (Reflection on the Psalms, 30). It is good and healthy to respond in anger and indignation to the presence of evil, and to ask God to deliver the justice that he has always promised.
Psalm 68
Psalm 68 is my (Joel's) favorite. It earned that spot because of Its appearance in Ephesians chapter 4. The Psalm itself seems to be a song of ascent sung in when facing the Temple mount or facing the entire city of Jerusalem. Psalm 68 is the story of God descending from Mt. Sinai in the wilderness, (where he had met Moses and the Israelites and given them the law) to lead the Israelites in the swift and powerful victory of conquest in the promised land. The end of that campaign (which is celebrated in this chapter) was marked by David's establishment of the city of Jerusalem (often referred to in poetic literature at "Zion), and God's ascent to his new dwelling place - the Jerusalem Temple.
Psalm 68 contains some polemic lines against the Canaanite God Baal. Baal was believed to be a good of warfare and storms, and was often depicted and thought of as riding on the clouds. here in Psalm 68:4 the psalmist says "extol him who rides on the clouds; rejoice before him - his name is the LORD (Yahweh)," and a similar description can be found in verse 33. It was important to the Psalmist to clarify that the God who delivered this great military victory for the Israelites and settled on Zion was indeed Yahweh, and not the warfare God of the pagans.
This Psalm is quoted in Ephesians 4:8 but in a strange way. Paul (the author of Ephesians) gets the quote wrong - and that is not typical of Pauline literature. When he (Paul) quotes Psalm 68:18 he says that God gives gifts to people, instead of what the text says - that God receives gifts from people. I don't think Paul made an error, I think that he means to cite the whole message of the Psalm and reverses the final line of the quote to reflect the message of the final verse of Psalm 68: "The God of Israel gives power and strength to his people." Paul equates the mighty and overwhelming story of God's victory in the conquest of the Promised Land to the mighty victory that Christ won in his incarnation, death, and resurrection.
Psalm 69:28: The Book of Life:
This passage is Psalm 69 is the first time that the words "book of life" appear in the Bible. There are a few scriptures that refer to God keeping a record of names (Exodus 32:32, Psalm 139:16. Malachi 3:16, Isaiah 4:3, 65:6, Ezekiel 13:9). It was common for ancient kings to keep records of the important events in their reign and often the names of their court, officials, and governors. It was common for ancient people to depict the deities that they worshiped as keeping these same types of records. Here David asks for the names of his enemies to be removed from the record of the righteous that God is keeping. The "book of life" is referred to once in Philippians 4:3, and then all the remaining six references (out of 8 in the bible) appear in the book of Revelation.
Miracles of Jonah
Jonah is famous, not necessarily because he got the whole city of Nineveh to repent, or not even because his attitude towards God was so poor, but because he was swallowed by a giant fish and spit back up onto land. This miracle is so astounding and amazing that Jonah has become one of the most memorable characters in all of scripture. Skeptics have pointed to this miracle as evidence for the argument that the bible is unreliable or a-historical. Some commentators defend the possibility of this miracle by noting that at least two people have been documented to have been swallowed by sperm wales and have survived the experience (G. Macloskie, How to Test the Story of Jonah. and check out the story of James Bartley here). I don't oppose attempts like this one to use natural phenomena argue for the possibility of the miracles in the Bible, but I do contest the notion that the miracles of the Bible must be the result of natural phenomenon. Ultimately the reader of the Bible is left to choose to believe whether or not God is really sovereign over the world and capable of breaking, suspending, or changing the rules of nature as we know them, or not. To believe the story of Jonah, you don't need to believe that it is possible for yourself to survive three days in the belly of a whale, you simply need to believe that if God wants to make it happen, he can.
Study Questions:
In Psalm 56:10, the psalmist declares that he praises God's word. have you taken time to praise God for the Bible? What kind of gift has God given you in His word?
Psalm 58:10 declares that "The righteous will be glad when they are avenged." have you every wished that God would bring justice to a situation in your life? what is God's plan to ultimately bring justice to the world?
In Psalm 62:1, the psalmist says that his soul finds rest in God. Are you in need of rest right now? How does God give us rest, even in the midst of our busy lives? have you found rest in God?
Psalm 65:5-13 gives praise to God for the beauty with which he has created and sustains the earth. Have you ever been so moved by natural beauty that you give praise to God? Why do you think he made the earth so beautiful?
What rationale does the psalmist give for asking God to bless them in Psalm 67:1-2? is that the reason that you ask for God to bless you?
Psalm 71:3 calls God our "rock" and "fortress" how does God provide for your protection? what is the ultimate safety that God provides us?
In Jonah 4, Jonah throws a fit that God was willing to forgive the Ninevites. Why was Jonah's attitude wrong? have you every been angry at God for being more forgiving than you are? How can we avoid reacting like Jonah?