Friday, January 10, 2014

Psalms 106-150, Proverbs 1-15

Psalm 106 is a recap of Jews acting badly under Moses.

It's kind of unfortunate, after a while, that Psalms is after the Book of Job.  All the theological revisions in Job are undone in Psalms, which sticks to the more orthodox beliefs.  We'll see the same shortly in Proverbs, naturally.

110 has a reference to the phrase, "You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek," which is something from the Old Testament that left a lasting legacy even though Melchizedek otherwise is meaningless as an entity in it.

118 features the word "hark."

120 is another psalm that mistakes the apparent Jewish mandate for war with a mandate for peace, or perhaps not of the budding transition between the two.

It's also worth noting that the psalms are really all over the place theologically.  They were definitely not written by the same hand at the same time.

Psalms tagged with "of Ascents," heavily stacked in the back of the book, are generally more hopeful and positive, however.

136: "For his steadfast love endures for ever" in a lovely and constant refrain.

137 is very poetic and evocative of life in the exile era.

139 is a fairly comprehensive encapsulation of God.

Proverbs, popularly attributed to Solomon, is not exactly, so far, what I would've expected from it.

1 features the lines:
"How long, O simple one, will you love being simple?  How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?" 

9: "Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you."

Really, though, it's just a lot of fatherly advice and orthodox belief statements concerning God, with lots and lots of repetition, and an apparently classic Solomonian fear of "loose women."  Not very proverbial, so far anyway...

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