We saw a link between God’s preference for Israel and the nations’ praise in Psalm 96 and 67 but what about God’s punishment of the nations and their defeat? Psalms 47 and 87 help us to address this.
If we assume that the Psalter has been put together with purpose rather than just randomly, we can expect that its shape will help us to understand its theology, including what God’s attitude to the nations is. One way to do that is by looking at how the Psalter starts […]
I found about about 80 references to ‘the nations’ in the psalms. (I counted two different Hebrew words for ‘nations’ plus references to specific nations like Cush or Egypt.) Then I tried to work out the key themes. Here are the four categories I found:
“God’s attitude” Depending on whether you think the book of Psalms is words to God or words from God will affect how you read it. For example, if you think the sole purpose of the Psalms is to praise God, you probably won’t expect to find much about what God […]
Have you ever thought about how to read the Psalms? Do you read them individually or as a whole book? Do the Psalms as a whole tell us about God’s attitude to the nations or is that overly optimistic?
We’ve been studying the Psalms for our Old Testament exegesis course this semester. (Hence my vested interest in speaking on the Psalms for the Indigo retreat!) For my essay, I looked at the question ‘What is God’s attitude to the nations in the Psalms?’
Meet Jesus at uni 