Bill Wilder gave this talk as the third in a series of five talks to an Adult Sunday school class on how and why to interpret the Psalms. This talk was recorded live.
Why interpret the Psalms?
Bill: Some people wonder why we should interpret the Psalms at all. Why not just pick up the book and pray them? Interpretation can feel analytical and sterile, like pinning a butterfly. Why spend an hour on interpretation?
Because understanding increases enjoyment. We rarely enjoy what we do not understand, and we often love something more the second or third time through because layers emerge. The Psalms give us the language of prayer, but they also rest on theological underpinnings about God, his people, and how we relate to him. Interpretation helps us recognize and appropriate that structure.
Poetry, form, and genre
Participant: Sometimes there is a deeper meaning beyond a surface reading. It is poetry.
Bill: Exactly. With poetry, form matters. In English, if you want to grasp a sonnet, you learn iambic pentameter, a rhyme scheme, and the conventions of 14 lines, perhaps divided eight and six. We absorb some of this in school, but it still takes work. The same is true with Hebrew poetry. Interpretation is often automatic, yet poetry rewards the effort.
Understanding anything also involves context. Think of Sesame Street’s “one of these things is not like the others.” We learn to group things and understand an item by its relation to others like it. We must place a psalm within the broader world of psalms and within Scripture.
Cultural background matters too. What an ancient Near Eastern peasant took for granted we have to learn. It is not a matter of intelligence. If they came to a modern wedding, they would need to learn what we expect. Our enjoyment comes, in part, from knowing the expected pattern and then noticing the variations.
Types of psalms
Let’s sketch the major genres. This is not butterfly collecting for its own sake. It helps us read with informed expectations.
- Laments. Individual and communal, voicing suffering or sin, and infused with hope that God can deliver.
- Praise. Declaring who God is, his goodness, sovereignty, and attributes.
- Thanksgiving. Giving thanks for what God has done for us in history, for Israel, the patriarchs, the church, and supremely in Jesus Christ.
- Wisdom and Torah psalms. Meditating on God’s law and the wise life.
- Royal and enthronement psalms. Celebrating God as king and, crucially, God’s human king as his vice-regent.
- Zion and temple liturgies. Entering God’s presence with worship.
Paul’s critique in Romans 1 notes that humans failed to honor God or give thanks. Praise and thanksgiving are our priestly vocation. The psalms are the vehicle.
Forms and patterns within genres
Genres have patterns with room for freedom. Weddings are a genre. There is a typical order, yet couples make many choices within it. Lament psalms, thanksgiving psalms, and hymns often display recognizable movements. Use form outlines as tools, not straightjackets. See which elements appear and how the psalmist varies them.
Understanding Thanksgiving Psalms
Read Scripture through Scripture
To understand something, you look at where it comes from and where it goes. An acorn is best understood in light of the oak. The Psalms sit in the middle of the Bible’s story, not the end. We must read them through the lens of the New Testament.
The New Testament most often cites Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and the Psalms. The psalms are a window into what God planned and accomplished in Christ and the church. When teaching a psalm, begin with its Old Testament context and genre, then ask how the New Testament appropriates it. Do not stop in the middle of the story.
A practical tool: the Scripture index
A Greek-English New Testament typically includes a Scripture index listing every Old Testament verse cited, alluded to, or echoed in the New Testament. The Psalms section runs for pages, which shows how central they are.
See a comprehensive list of where: Scripture Quotes Scripture
I copied the Psalms portion of that index. A few conventions help:
- Abbreviations: MT is Matthew, MC is Mark, L is Luke, J is John, R is Romans, AP is Revelation, 1K is 1 Corinthians, 2K is 2 Corinthians, JC is James.
- The index uses Latin book abbreviations and writes chapter, then verse (the comma functions like our period).
- Some psalm numbers differ between the Hebrew text and the Septuagint. If a reference seems off by a verse, check alternate numbering.
Use this index whenever you prepare a psalm. Look up where the New Testament uses it and let Scripture interpret Scripture.
Participant: What language is this?
Bill: Latin, for the abbreviations.
Participant: AP?
Bill: Revelation, from Apocalypsis.
Participant: And those two number columns?
Bill: Hebrew and Septuagint numbering.
Example 1: A lament, Psalm 43, and Gethsemane
Speaker: Psalm 43 is a lament. Watch how it tracks the form.
Psa 43:1 Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people, from the deceitful and unjust man deliver me!
Psa 43:2 For you are the God in whom I take refuge; why have you rejected me? Why do I go about mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
Psa 43:3 Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling!
Psa 43:4 Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.
Psa 43:5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.
We see the plea, the complaint, the petition, and the vow of praise. The psalm is brutally honest about suffering and feels, in the moment, like rejection by God, yet it is suffused with hope. If you are hopeless, you do not ask God to deliver you.
The index sends us to Mark 14:34.
Participant: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” Jesus says in Gethsemane.
Bill: Jesus’s words echo Psalm 43:5. In Greek, the verbal overlap is strong. He likely had the whole lament in view. He also quotes Psalm 22 on the cross. Jesus prayed the psalms. He embodied the lament pattern, moving from humiliation to exaltation.
The laments are fulfilled in Christ in this sense. They are not always predictive prophecies. They are the lived experience of God’s people, culminating in Jesus who, taking on the world’s sin, was unjustly oppressed, then vindicated in resurrection. His pattern becomes ours. The New Testament hope wrapped up in the word hope is, again and again, the hope of resurrection.
Participant: When the New Testament says a psalm is fulfilled in Jesus, it might not mean predictive prophecy. It can mean he fulfills the principles embodied in the psalm.
Bill: Exactly. Jesus is the lament psalm incarnate. He lived the trajectory the laments describe, and because he did, we persevere in faith, trusting God to bring us through sin and suffering to vindication.
Example 2: Royal psalms and Psalm 2
Psa 2:1 Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?
Psa 2:2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
Psa 2:3 “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.”
Psa 2:4 He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.
Psa 2:5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying,
Psa 2:6 “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.”
Psa 2:7 I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.
Psa 2:8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.
Psa 2:9 You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
Psa 2:10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth.
Psa 2:11 Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
Psa 2:12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
Bill: The setting envisions vassal nations plotting rebellion, perhaps at a transition of power. God laughs and reaffirms his choice. The Davidic king speaks of his adoption as God’s son. In context, sonship means heir. It is inheritance language, not a claim of divinity in the psalm’s original setting.
The New Testament uses Psalm 2 extensively, especially verse 7. At Jesus’s baptism and transfiguration, the Father declares, “You are my Son.” That signals Jesus as the true human king, the heir promised in the royal psalms. He is fully God, as John 1 teaches, but in these moments the emphasis is his messianic kingship.
Acts 13:33 and Hebrews 1:5 and 5:5 connect Psalm 2:7 to Jesus’s resurrection and exaltation. He rose, ascended, and sat at the right hand of God as the human king. He reigns now in heaven.
Participant: I can grasp the heavenly kingship. I struggle with the earthly king part.
Bill: Pray as Jesus taught: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Christ’s kingdom is presently in heaven, and our hope is its coming to earth, new heavens and new earth, resurrected bodies. The royal psalms begin the trajectory that finds its fulfillment in Christ’s reign now and his return. Romans 8 extends this further. In Christ we are adopted as sons, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. Sonship here is inheritance, not divinity.
Example 3: Mission to the nations, Psalm 117 and Romans 15
Speaker: Consider the shortest psalm.
Psa 117:1 Praise the LORD, all nations! Extol him, all peoples!
Psa 117:2 For great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. Praise the LORD!
Paul quotes this in Romans 15:11 to show that from the beginning God’s plan included the nations. Israel was chosen as the means by which blessing reaches the world, as promised to Abraham. Even the psalms summon the Gentiles to praise.
Closing prayer
Lord, we thank you for the Psalms and their richness. Make us people of prayer who speak their language and live in their hope. Meet us in our sin and suffering, and bring us through to the inheritance our Lord Jesus already enjoys as the human and reigning King. Shape us by that hope and perseverance, and make us a blessing to the nations so all peoples may praise you. We pray in Jesus’s name. Amen.
Thank you.
Please listen to the podcast for more detail and explanation.
Next: 04 Meeting God in the Psalms
Previous: 02 Living the Psalms
Series: How to Study Psalms
Resources: Psalms
For more: Bible Study 101
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