The Message of the Psalter: An Eschatological Programme in the Book of Psalms

by David C. Mitchell

This intriguing work argues that the book of Psalms has been redacted to reflect a programme of eschatological events like that of Zechariah 9-14. These events include the ingathering of exiled Israel by a bridegroom-king; his establishment of a kingdom, followed by his violent death; the scattering of Israel in the wilderness, and their subsequent regathering and further imperilment; their rescue by a king from the sky, who establishes his kingdom from Zion, brings peace and prosperity to the earth and receives the homage of the nations. There is an appendix of apocalyptic midrashim, translated into English for the first time.

Genres: Biblical Studies, Theology

430 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took this book slowly so that I could really understand Mitchell’s argument and note things down in my Bible. I am not quite sure if I fully buy his whole argument or not (only time will tell), but I love his hypothesis a great deal. What is his hypothesis you might ask? It is that the redactor of the Psalter will the songs together in such a way as to build a prophetic arc – one much a kin to those of the prophets Ezekiel and Zechariah. What I love about this is that Mitchell doesn’t just lean on his own intuitions, he tries to demonstrate through linguistics, repeated patterns from multiple areas of scripture, deuterocanonical texts, and rabbinic material as well. This book is heavily foot noted and there were times that Mitchell would drop Hebrew or Greek phrases in untranslated (luckily I remember enough to make guess work of these), but it was quite rewarding to my nerdtastic and masochistic sensibilities. It also passed muster with my belief that a good scholarly work shouldn’t be difficult because of bad writing but rather because of complex ideas and lots of data to sift through carefully. This book provides that in spades. If you don’t get anything else out of this review, get this: the Psalter is not some haphazard collection of prayers and songs to God, there is a meaning to the madness. Psalms play off each other and are arranged carefully to tell a story. Exactly what that story is may yet to be seen, but there are enough insights to be gleaned that point us towards some very good guesses.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting study. Mitchell endeavors to trace an eschatological program through the canonical psalms. He considers historical scholarship and more modern scholarship on the predictive nature of the Psalms. I would quibble with some things here and there and felt like at times he was stretching to prove his thesis. Overall, it is a helpful study.

[Ronny Cohen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a modern classic of biblical scholarship. At a time when eschatological interpretation of the Psalms was completely disregarded, David C. Mitchell argued convincingly that (1) the Psalter as we have it was the result of a single editorial process in the Second Temple period; (2) that the prevailing messianic expectation of those times governed its redaction; (3) and that its message is not only eschatological, but contains an eschatological programme like that of Zech 9-14 and of much later literature. A very impressive book which has greatly influenced mainstream scholarship on the Psalms.

[Lindsay John Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this was a fascinating, provocative and compelling study on the Psalter.