Day 252: Psalms 1-2 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Welcome to the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebaldapartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. (upbeat music) Family, welcome to the book of Psalms. We're in a brand new book of the Bible and I just wanna say right out the gate, buckle up because we've got 50 days in the book of Psalms. So I'm actually glad that we get to camp out in the book of Psalms. We're gonna be in the book of Psalms for 50 days. So I hope Psalms is your jam, okay? You just go ahead and get comfortable 'cause we're gonna camp out in the book of Psalms for a long, long, long, long time. Like every day, I'm gonna give you context clues. I'm gonna give you nerdy nuggets and I'm gonna leave the episode off. I'm gonna close the episode with a timeless truth 'cause this is not just a history lesson. We're learning context so that we can greater appreciate the content of scripture and apply it to our lives and that's always what the timeless truth is there for. Today we've got Psalm one and two. If you haven't done the reading, make sure that you set aside some time. You can pause the video, stop the audio, go do the reading. Read the two Psalms that are assigned for today's reading.

It's just Psalm one and Psalm two, amazing Psalms. Obviously we're gonna dive into the Psalms in just a minute. Typically when we get into a brand new book of the Bible, I don't just give context for the material that we're studying, but I give context for the book as a whole. So that's exactly what I'll do today. So if you haven't done the reading, do the reading for everyone who has done the reading, let's dive in, okay? The first thing I wanna say, I'll kinda hit three things when we talk about context for Psalm one and two and Psalms as a whole. The first thing that I wanna remind people of is that Psalms is the front runner. I mean, Psalms is like the front facing book for the Ketuvim as a whole. If you don't remember what Ketuvim means, it's the writings. So not only are we in a brand new book of the Bible, we're in a brand new section of the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible is split into three sections, the Torah, the prophets and the writings. Now, for many of you who maybe have been on the Bible department journey with us for a while, maybe you were wondering like, why aren't we going through books like Ruth? Why aren't we studying certain books? And maybe when we were going through the prophets, you felt like we're doing this out of order. Well, we're not doing it out of order,

we're just not following the Christian ordering of the books. We're following a Hebrew ordering of the books. And so welcome to the Ketuvim. Welcome to the writings. Luke chapter 22 verse 44, Jesus actually refers to the Hebrew Bible as a whole. And he says this. "Jesus said to them, this is what I told you while I was still with you, everything must be fulfilled that has written about me." Say Jesus, okay? What's written about Jesus was written about me, Jesus. In the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms. So when Jesus talks about the Psalms, he actually means the third section of the Hebrew Bible. He doesn't just mean the Psalms. He means that the Psalms are representative of the entire Ketuvim, okay? So I want to place the Psalms in context of the entire Hebrew Bible for us. And this is the first book of the Ketuvim. So not only am I giving you a welcome to the Psalms, but also welcome to the Ketuvim, okay? Second thing, to orient us, okay? Context clues are designed to orient us. So we kind of understand where we are, okay? So we're in the Ketuvim. Second thing that I want us to know is that there are five books of Psalms. So not only are the Psalms,

are not only are we buckling up for 50 days, but I'll actually do an introduction every time we enter into a new book of the Psalms. So Psalms as a whole is a collection of five books, okay? Now you may be thinking to yourself, okay, there's five books of Moses that make up the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Psalms are gonna be collected into five collections. Well, that is because as you begin to interact going to reappear here in poetry form or in prayer form. So the entire Bible, the prophets and the writings are really in overflow from the Torah. So the Psalms and the Torah are very, very connected and we're going to talk about the intersection between themes that we found in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers of Deuteronomy that we're also going to see in the Psalms. Okay, I want to just orient you even more. Okay, so let's actually break down these five books of the Psalms. Book one is going to be Psalm 1 to Psalm 41 is book one. Okay, book one of the Psalms is Psalm 1 to Psalm 41. This is compiled around 10, 10 to 970 BC, probably and possibly by David himself. These are the most personal of David's Psalms. Okay, so book one is going to be Psalm 1 to Psalm 41 compiled in David's lifetime, probably by David himself, 10, 10 to 970 BC. So that's a 40 year window where David would have been alive, where he's probably compiling book one. Okay, book two, this is Psalm 42 to Psalm 72. Okay, so book two is a little shorter than book one. This would have been compiled around 970 BC to 931 BC, possibly and probably by King Solomon, David's son. These contain Psalms from David, Solomon, and a man by the name of Asaph. Okay, book three is Psalm 73 to Psalm 89, even smaller than book two. These Psalms would have been compiled around the 6th century BC, probably by the Levitical tribe or the Levites, Levitical priests. These contain Psalms of David, Solomon, and the Levites. Okay, so the biggest clue that the Levites are compiling these Psalms is that we have Psalms from the Levitical priests. Okay, book four is Psalm 90 to Psalm 106 compiled around 10, 10 to 970, again, probably compiled by David himself. And these are more liturgical Psalms of David. So a lot of David Psalms are in book four, but these aren't like personal in nature. They're more liturgical in nature. But five is obviously the final and last collection of Psalms that fit into the greater book of Psalms. Book five

is Psalm 107 to Psalm 150. Psalm 107 to Psalm 150 compiled around the 5th century BC, most likely by Ezra. Okay, this is the man who's helping to rebuild Jerusalem when Cyrus, King of Persia, releases the exiles to go back and rebuild the walls and the temple. Okay, so this would be the same time as books like Nehemiah, okay, post-exilic era of Israel's history. These contain contained Psalms of David, Solomon, and Ezra. It is likely that Ezra, who compiles book five, also compiled all five books of the Psalms into one. Okay, so Ezra is probably the person who is gonna be the last pen to touch the book of Psalms is gonna be Ezra's pen, who's compiling book one with book two, with book three, with book four, with book five. Okay, this is important in Jewish history because Ezra is responsible for refocusing Israel on the importance of the Torah for the heart of Jewish life instead of the temple. Why? Because the temple has been destroyed. So while the people have been in exile, they aren't allowed to go to a temple. The temple got burnt down, it's been ruined, it's been destroyed, it's been leveled. So Ezra is helping Judaism to not die with the temple and he's refocusing the Jewish people on the Torah as opposed to a temple. Okay, so as long as the people have these Psalms that they've memorized, they can create Remember the lyrics of the songs that we sing in church It then means that you can begin to worship the Lord in your office at your cubicle You can begin to worship and sing to the Lord in your car You can begin to worship and sing to the Lord at the airport You can begin to worship and sing to the Lord at in the hospital that God's presence is not just Relegated to a building. However, God's presence becomes portable when we begin to learn Worship music and worship prayers and and words of liturgy We're able to kind of create temples everywhere we go And that is a massive theme of the book of Psalms. That's what it's designed to do That it's not a temple you enter, but it's a temple you take with you everywhere you go Last nerdy nugget the context of the individual Psalms are always going to be different But there's kind of like a double context There's the context of when the psalm was written and then there's a context of when the psalm was compiled Okay, so the reason that David is writing a certain psalm may be a different reason than the reason that Ezra has chosen to include that psalm in book five of the psalms

And so we are always going to look at what was David's motivation, but what was Ezra's motivation And the fact that the psalms aren't just fixed in history Kind of means that for these psalms Outside of any other book of the bible the context isn't as important Which is going to lead perfectly into our timeless truth at the end of this episode Because there are certain things about the psalms that are just Reflecting the universal nature of all humans. Okay, so with that said, let's get into our nerdy nuggets for the day First dirty nugget is going to help you understand the psalms big time The first thing that you're going to need to understand when it comes to the psalms is how to interpret Hebrew poetry So i'm going to drop a big word on you. I'm going to drop an SAT word on you. It's called Hebrew parallelism Hebrew parallelism So we're going to start off in Psalm 1 and I'm going to grab it in logos. Psalm 1 here we go says this blessed is the one Who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that centers take or sit in the company of markers So right here Psalm 1 verse 1 we are going to see Hebrew parallelism play out Okay Because in Hebrew poetry, it's not the words that rhyme, but the idea is that rhyme Okay, I want you to get this okay In Hebrew poetry unlike English poetry It's not the words that rhyme. So, you know hickory, dickory, doc the mouse ran up the clock Okay, doc and clock rhyme. That's how um english poetry works the words rhyme So when you translate it into another language it under the work well However with Hebrew poetry the really cool thing is it's not the words that rhyme, but the ideas that rhyme So you can translate it into English and it still makes sense even though it's not in Hebrew So who walks not in the council of the wicked nor stands in the way of centers nor sits in the seat of scoffers Let's think walk stands and sits are all in parallel with each other Council way and seat are all in parallel with each other Wicked sinners and scoffers are all in parallel with each other So you can think things are either going to be like synonymously parallel Which means that what is this saying it's saying

Man, it's actually comparing wicked people to sinners and scoffers I wouldn't have necessarily called a scoffer a sinner But the bible is using Hebrew parallelism to tell me That these ideas are rhyming these ideas are interconnected Okay, the other thing is antithetical parallelism So we're actually going to see that now with verse two But whose delight is in the law of the lord and who meditates on his law day and night So we get two more lines of parallelism that are what? Opposite the three lines of parallelism that we got So the three lines of parallelism and the two lines of parallelism and verse one and verse two are actually antithetically parallel to each other which means they are opposite of each other Okay, and they hinge on the word but and going to have to understand how parallelism works. We'll talk about this over and over and over and over again. This is a major literary device that the psalmist are all going to use. Very, very important. Okay. Second nerdy nugget for you is that Psalm 1 and many of the psalms are psalms of wisdom. That's right. Psalms fits in the wisdom literature. It's kind of like a subgenre. Okay. If the ketuvine is the big category that we're in right now, wisdom literature is like a subgenre of that genre. And the five books of wisdom, you see the word five again, the five books of wisdom are going to be psalms, proverbs, song of songs, Job, and Ecclesiastes, wisdom around how to engage with God, wisdom around general life, wisdom around sex and sexuality, that song of songs, wisdom around suffering, that's going to be Job, and then wisdom around success. Those five areas are typically the areas where people need wisdom the most when they're winning, when they're losing, when they're in love, when they're just engaging in life and how to relate to God. Okay. So the five books of wisdom are actually there to give you a roadmap on how to build a wise life. And man, if you've learned anything probably from me on this podcast, I love wisdom. Proverbs is going to say above everything else get wisdom. So the first psalm, Psalm 1 is actually a psalm of wisdom. There are many psalms of wisdom that kind of big clue that we're dealing with a wisdom psalm is these words right here in Psalm 1, 1, blessed is the man or blessed is the one that idea how to live a blessed life. That sounds a lot like proverbs. And

as we know, book two of the entire book of psalms is compiled by Solomon. Okay. So Solomon kind of becomes a figurehead for wisdom in the Bible. So if you think about David and his son Solomon, you get two massive themes in the Bible, which is worship and wisdom, worship and wisdom. Man, I love the fact that David and his son Solomon, their relationship is this marriage of worship and wisdom of worship and wisdom. There are two themes that I would say have probably marked my life a ton. It's learning the true nature of worship and attaining wisdom. Okay. Next third nerdy nugget force is that Psalm 2 is what we would call a royal psalm or AKA a messianic psalm. Okay. Messianic psalms are all about God's anointed one. Okay. The word anointed is the word Meshiac in Hebrew, which is Messiah. Okay. So in the Christian space, I think we focus a lot on the Messiah. We know that Jesus is the Messiah. However, biblically speaking, David would have been a Messiah because he's anointed by God. Any king who's anointed would be a Messiah. So that word Messiah means king. It means someone who has received the anointing of the Lord. Okay. So Psalm 2, the context of Psalm 2 is this Psalm is a prayer from the king before a battle. The nations are raging against Yahweh's anointed. So foreign enemies are attacking Israel's king. The Psalm proclaims Yahweh's sovereignty and power over all over all of creation by choosing his son, the king of Israel. And you can see how this is going to set up four shadows for the person of Jesus. If Israel's king is God's chosen son whom he has promised victory, then the foreign powers should be afraid for by attacking the king they are attacking Yahweh. This Psalm, Psalm 2 is directly quoted by Paul in Acts chapter 13 verse 33. While Paul is preaching to the Jews and Poseidon Antioch, Paul uses this quote in his broader Messianic meeting, meaning that Jesus was the son of David. He was the Messiah, Yahweh's anointed chosen by God. Paul is saying that although this was originally about the king of Israel, the Psalm contained within it a foreshadowing of the true king of Israel. This king was not just a son or like an heir of the chosen king in the sense of an heir, like to be the next king you have writing Psalm 2 know that they're ultimately writing about Jesus? No. But this leads us perfectly into our timeless truth. Family, the weight is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally, today, I walked into a Barnes & Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So, you can grab this book at a physical Barnes & Noble or you can go to a books a million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a

copy if you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective. If you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is gonna be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. A massive important point about the Psalms in general is that somehow God is gonna use human's words to him to then communicate to us. That's the coolest thing ever that unlike the prophetic books, the prophetic books are a recording of God just dictating messages to humans. But the Psalms are the opposite. These are songs and prayers that humans are offering to God. And somehow our words to God have become God's word to us. That is the best thing ever. Actually, this leads me right into my timeless truth because I've kind of got raised to pray in a way that is laced with the word of God. So sometimes we just think about prayer as like, yeah, I can just say anything to God. I just need to be honest. I just need to be vulnerable. I just need to be transparent. And that is true. However, I can tell how biblically literate someone is by how they pray. The way that you pray actually begins to tell me how much of the Bible you know. This is actually a girl on our launch team. Her name is Jenny. And before an event one time, Jenny started praying. And just based on how Jenny prayed, I began to discern there's a preaching gift on her life. Why? Because she's praying scripture for everything that she prayed, there was a Bible verse attached to it. She probably began to pray multiple Bible verses. I'm actually going to tell you there's five levels of spiritual maturity. And I believe that they're cumulative. First, it's Christ, then the word. You're not going to be able to interpret the Bible without making Jesus your Lord and Savior. So Christ word, then prayer. If you don't know the Bible, it's going to be really hard to pray. So sometimes when you look at the Psalms, you're like, man, Dave is just so honest. It's like, yeah, David is honest. But he also never finishes a Psalm without giving thanksgiving to God. Because my prayers are actually a way that I lead people. I'm not just praying to express what I think to God. I'm praying in a way that's leading the people around me. When I learned how to pray, it's because I had a mentor in my life named Jerome Morgan. And I was just his prayer partner. And at the time I was 16, he was probably 23, 24. And I learned how to pray by listening to him pray. So his prayers weren't just let me vent to God. Let me say whatever I want. It was let me pray in a way

that teaches many how to pray. And what did I begin to learn? Every other sentence he quoted a Bible verse. Because your words to God have to become God's Word to you and God's Word to others. If you don't know the Bible, it's going to be really hard to pray. So one of my biggest lessons for teaching people how to pray is memorize the Bible. Memorize Bible verses. When you pray, you should be saying things like, Lord, I know that man doesn't live on bread alone. But by every word that proceeds from your mouth, that's Matthew chapter 4 verse 4. And when you say that to the Lord, you're saying, therefore, God, I need you to speak to me today before I go into church. So my prayer involves a scripture because my words to God should become God's Word to others. I want to make sure that my prayers that I'm praying and I don't want to be legalistic about it. Like there's some wrong way to pray. That's not what I'm saying. Christians. And when you listen to a mature Christian pray, somehow their words to God begin to bless the people that hear it. And that's what I want from my prayer life. I want to be like Jenny who's on our launch team who her prayer to the Lord began to preach to everybody who was present. That's what prayer should do. It shouldn't just be you unloading and getting things off your chest of the Lord. People should be able to write your prayers down and actually pray them again generations later. And that's what the Psalms are. A collection of Solomon and David and Asaph and the Levites, prayers to God that later generations can say, you know what? I'm going to pray this prayer that my great great great great great grandfather prayed to the Lord. I want to write prayers that my son and my grandson and my daughters and my granddaughters can later on memorize and read to God. I want to write the kind of prayers that are biblically accurate and laced with biblical truth. And that's our timeless truth of the day. All right. I kind of got emotional thinking about my kids praying prayers that I've written. I actually think that that's really powerful. All right. I'll see you tomorrow. Okay. If you're on a streak, I'm proud of you. If you're not on a streak, it ain't too late to start one. I'll see you tomorrow as we're going to dive properly into book one of the Psalms. It's going to be great. I can't wait. We got 13 days in book one of the Psalms. Tomorrow we got day 253. We're going to be in Psalm three, four, and five. It's going to be fantastic. I'm so proud of you. I love you guys. See you tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend,

and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to the Bible department.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow. [BLANK_AUDIO]