The Psalms: Strophic Structure and Theological Commentary (review)

Over fifty years ago, Samuel Terrien published his first book on the psalms, The Psalms and Their Meaning for Today (Indianapolis, Ind., 1952). Those familiar with that early work will recall its sensitive exposition of both the literary richness and the theological relevance of these important texts. The present work, published after the author's recent death, brings to these same literary and theological concerns a lifetime of distinguished work on the psalms. The result is both a fitting memorial to a major scholar and a valuable resource for psalms scholarship at the beginning of the present century.

As a volume in the Eerdmans Critical Commentary series, this work has a target audience of both scholars and serious general readers. Each of these groups will profit from many aspects of Terrien's work. Especially valuable is an informative introduction that covers such standard topics as the psalms' ancient Near Eastern background and historical origins but also develops several distinctive emphases of its own. Thus, for example, in comparison with other commentaries, Terrien devotes somewhat less space to an analysis of form-critical issues, since he sees only a few of the canonical psalms as having a pure (or "nonhybrid") form. On the other hand, he provides a much more extended treatment of strophic structure and its relationship to the different types of psalms. In keeping with this approach, the section on "Form" in the commentary on the individual psalms is often devoted to a structural, rather than a strictly form-critical, analysis.

The introduction also contains a particularly full treatment of the musical and theological aspects of the psalms. This is very much in keeping with Terrien's view of both the psalmists and the Psalter. For Terrien, the psalmists are "inspired" in both an aesthetic and a prophetic sense. They are, first of all, professional musicians and creative artists in productive dialogue with their community and its history. They are also "disciples of the great prophets" who, like the latter, are "possessed by the knowledge of God." Both prophets and psalmists invite their audiences to sing an eschatological "new song" that is focused on divine rather than human glory.

Terrien's emphasis on the psalmists' creative artistry and theological depth leads him to view with some reserve the tendency of a number of recent scholars to see the Psalter as a unified theological document. For Terrien, this "collection of sacred songs could not simply become a didactic tool or a manual of instruction." Indeed, he sees the possibility of a later "sapientialization" of what was originally a hymnal as running the risk of rendering the psalms "abstract and even anemic." Terrien himself clearly prefers to focus on the individual psalms, in which the "candor and passion of the psalmists defied the latent 'biblicism' of the final editors."

This understanding of the psalms as the artistic creations of individual authors also makes Terrien reluctant to pursue another recent trend in modern psalms scholarship, the attempt to reconstruct the redaction of these texts in the interests of larger historical and theological concerns. Here he sees the need to exercise "prudence and even restraint . . . before one conjectures that additions and revisions were made in the course of the biblical ages." In keeping with such restraint, he bases his own structural analysis of the psalms on their present text, rather than on any hypothetical reconstruction. For similar reasons, he also argues in favor of a healthy respect for the Hebrew text, especially in its consonantal version.

Terrien's interest in the psalmists as authors leads him to take more account of the psalms' possible historical settings than is common in most recent commentaries. Along such lines, the final section in his commentary on the individual psalms is entitled "Date and Theology." In that section, Terrien often offers fairly specific suggestions as to the possible historical situations...