An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 115: A Ton Of Psalms. AKA Running Out Of Themes (Psalms 96-100)

Psalms 96-100
A Ton Of Psalms. AKA Running Out Of Themes.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Psalms 96
“For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the LORD made the heavens.”

This psalm has a fairly simple theme, calling upon the listener to praise God because he is paramount. Even the seas and the trees will rejoice, the psalm says. I found it interesting for the quoted line above – although the line that precedes it implies, as has been the implication before, that the Israelite God is merely the best and foremost of a range of options, here for the first time is the bible saying that those other “gods” are nothing of the kind, merely empty statues. This may, of course, have always been the intent before but the language is the most explicit that it has been in this regard.

And considering language, the psalm ends with the promise that God will “judge” the world which, I think, has become considered in modern terms to be judging in a legal sense – of separating sinners from the righteous. But it’s more likely in this context to be similar to the “judges” of the book of the same name, more in the sense of a leader. It makes more sense for the phrase from this psalm that says “He will judge with righteousness” to mean He will rule justly than to mean He will sort people out according to their desserts.

Psalms 97
“The hills melted like wax at the presence of the LORD, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.”

This psalm is quite similar to the previous one, exalting God and promising wonderful things to those who worship Him. There’s some fiery imagery used to good effect here, with a bit of good old smiting, and once again mention of “graven images” for other gods. I think the poetry carries this one better than psalm 96 but otherwise there’s a not a lot between them.

Psalms 98
“(A Psalm.) O sing unto the LORD a new song; for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory.”

Again, this is very similar, particularly to psalm 96. The psalmist calls upon worshipper to make a “joyful noise unto the Lord” with songs and trumpets and harps, and even the seas and hills will join in. Once again we get mention that God is coming to “judge” the Earth and once again I take it to mean in the Samson and Deborah sense of judge, rather than the Dredd sense of judge.

Psalms 99
“The LORD reigneth; let the people tremble: he sitteth between the cherubims; let the earth be moved.”

Another psalm of high praise. The main difference with this one to the previous three is that the psalm points out how God helped Moses, Aaron and Samuel (prophets and priests rather than rulers) because they kept His covenant, and even forgave them when they didn’t, after some appropriate punishment. Well – Moses and Aaron died before reaching the promised land but God at least allowed the next generation to succeed, so I suppose it works out. Retribution for golden calf worshipping and all that.

I think there’s also a sense here, with God being “in Zion” and sitting between cherubim, that implies that God is in residence in His temple in Jerusalem (with the golden cherubim flanking the ark, remember) as much as in residence in heaven.

Psalms 100
For the one hundredth psalm I’m going to do something different. As it’s only five verses, it gets quoted in full:

“(A Psalm of praise.) Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.”

And that is pretty typical of a lot of the psalms. They contain some or all of the following messages: “God is great, you should worship Him.” If you are lucky, the psalm may give you some specific examples of God’s greatness (e.g. making everything, keeping covenant with Jacob or some other earlier patriarch). If you are not lucky the psalm will give some poetically written variant of “He just is, because He’s God” or some other circular argument. Then you may get either promises of the rewards for worshipping God, or maybe punishments if you don’t, or both.

I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with this. Two thirds of the way through and the topics are starting to repeat themselves quite a lot, but then also that’s really what the psalms are for so I can’t complain about them for being what they are meant to be. And to be honest, they’re better to read than genealogies or kings killing each other endlessly.

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