The Message of the Psalms : Augsburg Old Testament Studies : A Theological Commentary

by Walter Brueggemann

This scholarly study of the Psalms retains its rigor while focusing particularly on the pastoral use of the Psalms, looking at how they may function as voices of faith in the actual life of the believing community. - PUBLISHER STATEMENT

Genres: Theology, Biblical Studies, Old Testament, Nonfiction, Spirituality, Religion, Philosophy

Unknown Binding

First published December 1, 1984

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

[Eric Chappell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superb introduction to the Psalms. Desiring to merge the streams of devotional literature and critical scholarship on the Psalter, Brueggemann attempts a post-critical study of the Psalms. He develops a threefold (flexible) scheme for interpreting the variety of psalms: Orientation, Disorientation, and New Orientation. The Psalms and the life of faith reflect two movements: 1) movement from orientation to disorientation; 2) movement from disorientation to new orientation. The bulk of Brueggemann's book looks at psalms of disorientation (e.g. Pss 88, 109, etc.), but he also helpfully and insightfully deals with the first and third category. This was a terrific read and a helpful paradigm for reflecting on the Psalter. I'd keep this book close at hand when studying the Psalms as Brueggemann offers a number of studies on several dozen psalms. I highly commend to any informed layperson, seminarian, or pastor. Deserves careful attention.

[Hoyt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent intro and structured overview of the psalms. The tripartite main structure with various sub groupings provides an easy to grasp comparison among various categories of psalms. The psalms come alive rather than simply being a linear survey of the psalter. The categories are not hard and fast, and the author admits that it is sometimes a matter of opinion and use of a psalm that determines it's category today. As an example, the difference between psalms of orientation and re-orientation is sometimes difficult to discern. On the other hand, the observation that with the passing of time, the community is tempted to move from re-orientation back to orientation as the community's troubles slide further into history, serves as a good warning for the. church today. Great book.

[Andy Hickman · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Message of the Psalms” by Walter Brueggemann
Insightful perspective of these ancient poems and useful for empowering groups and teams to be reflective and embrace transformation.
****

PSALMS: THE RHYTHM OF LIFE AS ORIENTATION, DISORIENTATION, REORIENTATION

The basic movement in everyone’s life is:
• Firstly the move “into the pit”, when our world collapses around us
• Secondly the move “out of the pit” into a welcome place

Walter Brueggemann suggests that our life consists of moving with God in terms of:
• being securely oriented - in which everything makes sense in our lives;
• being painfully disoriented - in which we feel we have sunk into the pit; and
• being surprisingly reoriented - in which we realize that God has lifted us out of the pit, and we are in a new place full of gratitude and awareness about our lives and our God

Brueggemann says that the Psalms offer a framework for engaging God

First Movement- Orientation
• Songs of Creation – God’s gifts (Ps 8, 33, 104, 145)
• Songs of Torah - God’s purposes (Ps 1, 15, 19, 24, 119)
• Songs of Wisdom – God’s certainty (Ps 14, 37)
• Songs of Well-Being - God’s goodness (Ps 131, 133)

Second Movement- Disorientation
• Songs of Personal Complaint (Ps 13, 35, 86)
• Songs of Communal Complaint (Ps 74, 79, 137)

Third Movement: Re-Orientation
• Personal Thanksgivings- God’s rescue (Ps 30, 34, 40, 138)
• Communal Thanksgivings- God’s salvation (Ps 65, 66, 124, 129)
• Kingly psalms – God’s leadership (Ps 29, 47, 93, 97, 98, 99, 114)
• Hymns of praise – God’s newness (Ps 100, 103, 113, 117, 135, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150)

Psalms are for people who are living at the edge of their lives, sensitive to the raw hurts, the primitive passions, and the naive elations that are at the bottom of our life. For most of us, liturgical or devotional entry into the Psalms requires a real change of pace, to listen as well as speak. It asks us to depart from the closely managed world of public survival, to move into the open, frightening, healing world of speech with the Holy One.

The speech of the Psalms is abrasive, revolutionary, and dangerous. It announces that our common experience is not one of well-being and equilibrium, but a churning, disruptive experience of dislocation and relocation. These Psalms are a sufficient resource to enable robust faith and provides a model in which we may challenge established consensus, raise true and hard questions about theology and society, and emerge with a truer picture of the nature of God and society.
PSALMS AS SPIRITUALITY

This movement is most clearly played out in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. For example Philippians 2:5-11
Orientation: “Though He was in the form of God…”
Disorientation: “He emptied himself.”
Re-Orientation: “Therefore, God has highly exalted him…”

We see this in Christian baptism
“We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Romans 6:4 (NIV)

“Sharing in his death by our baptism means that we were co-buried and entombed with him, so that when the Father’s glory raised Christ from the dead, we were also raised with him. We have been co-resurrected with him so that we could be empowered to walk in the freshness of new life.” Romans 6:4 (TPT)

The psalms of negativity, the complaints of various kinds, the cries for vengeance and profound penitence are foundational to a life of faith in this particular God.” (W.B. SofP, page xii).
Hope is rooted in the midst of loss and darkness.
The Psalms are profoundly subversive of the dominant culture, which wants to deny and cover over the darkness we are called to enter.

PSALMS AS SEASONS OF LIFE

Human life consists of:
Satisfied seasons of well-being that evoke gratitude for the constancy of blessing (orientation)
Anguished seasons of hurt, alienation, suffering and death. These evoke rage, resentment, self-pity, and hatred (disorientation)
Surprise when we are overwhelmed with the new gifts of God, when joy breaks through despair. Where there has been only darkness, there is light.

From nomos (order) to anomie (chaos). From plea to praise, and the kingly psalms are further emphasised in Mark 1:14-15; Luke 4:18-19; 7:22; Matthew 6:10.

To preach that ‘everything is awesome’ is not true because life is marked by incoherence and loss of balance. Christian praise songs about God’s order and reliability are at best only partly true. It is not faith or defiance of the devil or resistance to secular worldliness, but a frightened numb denial and deception that doesn’t want to acknowledge, admit or experience the savage disorientation of life.

It is an odd inclination for passionate Bible users because the large portion of Hebrew Scriptures are liturgies of lament, poems of protest and cries of complaint about the angst in the world. I think religious people dismiss lament as negativity as if that is ‘unfaith’ and implies God’s loss of control.

To cling to an insistence that everything is in order and rightly orientated is to completely miss the point of Jesus’ life, betrayal, murder and resurrection. “I must be betrayed and handed over to death.” But his disciples implored him to not go that way, unable to cope with such a threat to our sense of sage, assured orientation. Jesus gave his sharpest rebuke to his friends who tried to stop the process (Matthew 16:21-26). It is re-orientation that Jesus is leading them to. It is being lead from the green pastures to descent into the valley of the shadow of death in order to ascend and enter the house of the Lord (Psalm 23).

Similarly, on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24: “(v17) They stood still, with sadness on their faces… (v21) ‘But we were hoping He was the One..’ (v25) Then Jesus said to them, “O foolish ones, how slow are your hearts to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then to enter His glory?”

The point I am making is that psalms of darkness are not failures but acts of bold faith. Bold because it exposes pretend superficiality to acknowledge reality, and bold because it insists that disorder is something that we can actually talk to God about. Nothing is out-of-bounds or inappropriate to say to God. Here’s the deal: everything we experience can and must be turned into speech and addressed to God.

This is why psalms of darkness are crucial because God is present in, participating in, and attentive to darkness, weakness and displacement. After all, the Saviour is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3).

A religion of secure orientation is terrified by the honest, even visceral, speech that it has always censored, denied and forcibly quenched, because it offends proper and dignified religious sensitivities.

But when a desperate plea is addressed to God (in the form of complaint, petition and unguarded language) the divine breakthrough comes and the plea is then transformed into praises of assurance of being heard, new vows and promises made, and expressions of adoration.

[Jack Mullins]

Here, Brueggemann treats the psalter in three broad categories: psalms of orientation, psalms of disorientation, and psalms of new orientation.

He specifically places 59 of the 150 psalms into these categories and provides historical and rhetorical analysis for each. These individual analyses, while at times tedious, helped me uncover the uniqueness of the psalms that lies underneath the surface of their shared language.

While binging the last third of the book, the categories of orientation, disorientation, and new orientation started to make a lot of sense to me as a way to understand spiritual life:

1) Songs of praise and thanksgiving are sung for God’s established order.

“For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked is doomed.”
Psalm 1:6

2) The established order is interrupted by a period of disorientation, marked by songs of lament and disarray, during which God does not behave as expected.

“LORD, why have you rejected me? Why have you hidden your face from me?”
Psalm 88:15

3) These laments then give way to new songs of praise and thanksgiving, celebrating deliverance from disorientation.

“Sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things.”
Psalm 98:1

4) These new songs, with time, lose their newness and become generalized into songs of established order. The cycle repeats.

"The LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his faithfulness endures from age to age."
Psalm 100:4

The exodus and the resurrection, the central stories of two ancient faiths, are both stories of new orientation. God has rescued his people from the rule of Pharaoh. God has vindicated the crucified messiah. How quickly, though, these stories become old news. As Brueggemann puts it, borrowing phrases from a classic gospel hymn, eventually the “new, new song” becomes the “old, old story.”

The psalter insists that this is not the last word. Spiritual life evolves into new, new orientation. Eventually, we’ll remember again the radical nature of those old stories. We'll sing the hymn in its intended order. That “old, old story” will become again the “new, new song.”

[Travis Wise · Rating 5 out of 5]

People die writing full length commentaries on the Psalms. Foregoing this for a more selective approach, the only-now-late Brueggemann (RIP :( 6/5/25) bought himself 40 more years. Brueggemann is at his best in the Psalms, and what’s great is his own unique approach. The typical commentary is still needed and useful, dividing between praise, lament, messianic, penitential, yada blah gob—that’s still needed, but it comes off sterile compared to Bruggemann’s simpler approach. Not intended to overturn our other categories, but intended to give us another lens, he breaks Psalms into three categories: 1. Orientation; 2. Disorientation; 3. New Orientation. Orientation—the world is good, it functions well, creation is good with few whiffs of evil (Ps 8); Disorientation—the world DOESN’T work as intended, evil exists, death is present, only God can rescue in this chaotic world (Ps 22, 69); New Orientation—despite evil, death, and chaos, God has rescued, giving us a new take on life and goodness and faith (Ps 23). Expect many, but not all, of your favorite Psalms to be covered or touched on, but it’s value comes in teaching you to fish in a new way, instead of catching your fish for you.

[Ben Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like Walter Brueggemann.

[Genevieve Waller · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to read this book for class, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would! Brueggemann does a great job of breaking the psalms down in a new and compelling way for me- and he does a such great job of not taking away the spiritual reality that exists with our personal use of the psalms to converse with God in all the stages of life.

Maybe don’t read this book unless you really want to but definitely ask me about it!!

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: Provides a framework of orientation, disorientation, and new orientation as a rubric for reading the Psalms.

A number of studies of the Psalms focus on particular genres to classify the Psalms. For example, they identify psalms of praise, of lament, or kingship psalms and others. They identify the format of each of these psalms. Walter Brueggemann does something very different in this work. He identifies three broad categories with five or six subtypes each. The categories are psalms of orientation, disorientation, and new orientation. They trace a movement from a sense of well-being rooted in creation and reflected in a stable sense of God’s provision, to seasons of anguish, suffering, loss and God’s “distance,” and finally in the emergence from despair into a transformed experience of God’s light on the other side of darkness.

For each of these categories, Brueggemann begins with a brief section explicating the category. Then, under each of the subcategories, Brueggemann walks us through representative Psalms. This is best read with the Psalms at hand, allowing you to follow Brueggemann’s explanations. This also helps you see the distinctive forms of each kind of psalm.

Psalms of Orientation include songs of creation, songs of Torah, wisdom psalms, songs or retribution, and occasions of well being. Then Psalms of Disorientation include personal laments, communal laments, two problem psalms (88, 109), two psalms where God is the speaker (50, 81), and a group of “seven psalms” (he focuses on 32, 51, 143, 130). He concludes Psalms of Disorientation with a “After the Deluge–Thou” on Psalms 49, 90, and 73. Finally, Psalms of New Orientation include personal and community thanksgiving, the once and future king, thanksgiving generalized to confidence, and hymns of praise.

Several emphases stood out to me. Firstly, he highlights lament at a time when this is absent in much of worship. Secondly, in the psalms where God speaks, he drives home the idea that when we fail to honor God (the first tablet of the commandments) we will also neglect the second tablet of our neighbor relations. Brueggemann roots his vision of justice in the proper fear of the Lord. Finally, he concludes his book by arguing that theodicy underlies this schema that shapes both our worship of God and our ordering of society (i.e. we cannot worship a God we claim is good and just and tolerate unjust evil in our society).

But the greatest strength of this work is that it traces an arc, or perhaps a spiral of spiritual life captured in the Psalms. Spiritual life is not static. We move from confident faith to anguished questions and doubts and hopefully emerge to a greater depth of love and trust. And we do this over and over again through our lives. Orientation, disorientation, and new orientation gives us a not only a rubric for the Psalms. It connects to and gives meaning to our experience of life.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this relatively short but rich text, Brueggemann gives a theological commentary on the Psalms. His main thesis is that Psalms can be viewed through the lens of the journey of "orientation" through "disorientation" to "new orientation." Into those movements he then places the psalms of lament, praise, thanksgiving, etc. This work builds on the critical work of Gunkel & Mowenkil (sp?) but also retains a desire to engage the spiritual/devotional use of the reader. I found this helpful for what I am currently doing with the Psalms currently.

This framework, broader and less precise than others, has been helpful for me in my own study of Psalms.

But perhaps the chapter I found most helpful was the final retrospect on Spirituality and Theodicy. He contends that to read the Psalms primarily in terms of spirituality (which I also read as in terms of personal relationship with God) was inadequate and results in our (my) modern western uncomfortability with psalms of lament or imprecatory psalms. But if read as a both spirituality and theodicy-- to put it in my own words, that Psalms are relating to God by speaking to him about the justice or lack of justice in the world and how one is experiencing that-- then the Psalms can be understood. I was drawn to the Psalms in February of 2020, right before COVID hit, before George Floyd was murdered, before the election and in them I found a lifeline to my spiritual journey for this past year. This made more sense after reading this book. It was because I could see in the Psalms a genuine wrestling with a God who either was far off or even seemed implicated in the injustice in the world. Brueggemann gave me the words that verified my experience of worship through the Psalms.

I'd give this 5 stars, and I might come back and do so, but I am early in readings on the Psalms and so will temper my enthusiasm until I read more. :)

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

An alternative to kicking the cat. Philip Yancey once said that, when it comes to faith, we need to be ambidextrous and be able to handle both the good and bad aspects of life. In Psalms, Brueggemann believes God gives us a script we an use to articulate our pleasure, our pain and our perspective when we have gone through difficult experiences and come out the other end. He suggests that there are psalms of orientation which reflect a sense of happiness when things are going well; psalms of disorientation when life is difficult and we are feeling fragile and vulnerable, and there are psalms of new orientation when new possibilities and opportunities are emerging. Since a model is not the real thing but an artificial construct, we are always going to find psalms which do not neatly fit. Nevertheless, Brueggemann does a great job in revealing a God who is there for us through every season of life. A life-transforming book which provides a constructive way of navigating the mountain top and valley bottom experiences.

[Rachel Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book took me a while to wade throughout, but it was such a rich accompaniment to my reading through the Psalms last year into this year. The book isn’t particularly long, but it is rich. As someone who has not studied biblical languages, I found parts of it challenging to follow, but I was able to keep up with most of it.

Brueggemann offers helpful commentary on the social aspects of the book of Psalms and really broadened my perspective on how to read and pray through the book of Psalms.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this as a daily devotional. He presents three views of the psalms: orientation, when all is right in the world; disorientation, when God does not act the way we expect; and the reorientation, when we discover God is acting and with us after all.

[Charlene · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because my SIL is writing her master's dissertation on arguing with Brueggeman's comments on "happy psalms" being kind of a power move against poor and disenfranchised people. I think he talks about it more in one of his longer books, but this was about the length I could handle.

[Mary Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Categorizes the Psalms in a different way than other scholars, but a very useful way. Insights here, after all, it's Brueggemann!

[Ellie White · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good nuggets, but largely far too theological for me!

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book looks over the Psalms from the perspective of Orientation, Disorientation, New Orientation. It is very heavy reading but does an excellent job.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an excellent foray into the Psalms. Brueggemann offers his framework for classification: orientation, disorientation, and new orientation, as well as a theological commentary on selected psalms of each type. His scheme does not conflict with form-critical analyses, but unites form and the social function the various kinds of psalms played in the life of Israel. One of Brueggemann's main concerns is to rehabilitate the importance and use of the lament psalms, so the the chapter on Psalms of disorientation is longer than the others. There are many good insights on many of the Psalms, yet every now and then his provocation takes the reigns and pushes his interpretation a little too far. Not a criticism, but Brueggemann does not incorporate the scholarship on the intentional shaping of the psalms into this work, so do not expect any insight from that avenue. Brueggemann incorporates Hebrew words (and the alphabet) into this work, but not so much as to make it overly technical and unapproachable for those who are not familiar with the language.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book along with the Book of Psalms and found it to really open up my mind on what the Psalms is all about. In the Retrospect section of the book, Brueggemann says "There can be no doubt that the Psalms are an important resource for spirituality and have been so for countless generations. That is indeed why we continue to study them. These words have mediated to persons and communities the presence of God." The Message of the Psalms by Walter Brueggemann is not an easy read - it is what it is - A Theological Commentary; however it is well worth the read and is far more meaningful if read along with the Psalms that he covers in his Orientation, Disorientation and New Orientation. As I was reading this book and studying the Psalms, I wondered why, as children, certain Psalms were picked for memorization. As a child, I learned Psalms 23, 100 and 121 and later on Psalms 1. During this study, I decided to add Psalms 117 (only 2 verses). I wish that I had memorized more as a child because it is so difficult to memorize as we get older.

[Sagely · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brueggemann has been keeping my head above water in these turbulent times. I'm thankful for this volume, The Message of the Psalms, and for the great essay collection on Jeremiah Like Fire in the Bones: Listening for the Prophetic Word in Jeremiah. Very timely.

I pulled TMoP from the shelf for a Lenten series following the lectionary psalms. These are songs of joy, passion, confession, struggle, and hope. Even here you can see a premonition of Brueggemann's arc from psalms of Orientation to those of Disorientation to those of New Orientation.

I found Brueggemann's writing clear, winsome, and immensely helpful. I'm especially thankful for a "List of Psalms Treated" at the back of the book. I'll be returning here again next time Sunday morning leads me to the Psalms.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were parts that were GREAT and parts that were terrible - unfortunately the last section (an appendix on theodicy) isn't as strong as the book as a whole. It is as if Bruggemann spends the whole book talking about the Psalms and what they show us about faith, then goes into an explanation of theodicy that is detached from what he's already said. It's not that it's BAD or untrue, just disjointed. Either you said what you said in the book (because it is part of the Psalms) and all you need is a solid page of summary, or what you're trying to argue here isn't at all in the book itself and is a new argument.

Despite this poor ending, there are some gems here, particularly when talking about lament and other psalms of disorientation. While I might not read it again, it'll stay on my shelf as a good reference book.

[J.D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walter Brueggemann is quickly becoming one of my favorites in theology and this book is no exception. The only fault in this I would note is my own in not reading the actual Psalms along with this book. This will certainly, however, be a book I return to in the future with the intent of doing a greater study of this collection of praises, laments, and everything else in between. Every time I read his work, I feel like I'm able to open the Bible with so much more clarity. He is truly a gift to myself that keeps on giving!

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the volume where Brueggemann presents his classic triad of "orientation - disorientation - reorientation." It is a valuable way of looking at the Psalms. However Brueggemann does not give enough weight to the Psalms as God's Word. He is too comfortable relegating them to simply the voice of Israel or David. Let us not forget the Psalms are God's Word and His way of providing His word to be spoken/sung right back to Himself.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a helpful theological lens on the Psalms. The categories of Orientation, Disorientation and New Orientation are helpful windows into the meaning of the Psalms and also the life of faith. I refer to this book whenever I am preaching or teaching from the Psalms.

[Emily]

Really enjoyed the angle Brueggemann takes on in this close reading of the Psalms: categories of disorientation, orientation, and new orientation. Though cognizant throughout of the Hebrew experience, he takes modern issues into account in his analysis.

[Bethany Bear · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the texts in my Literary Responses to Evil class with Dr. Greg Garrett.

[Stephen Kliewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book on Psalms that I, as a pastor, have every read.
It picks up critical theme and is written in such as way that it keeps you moving on, wanting to dig deeper.

Another with for Brueggemann