Two themes drive this proposal. First, scholars have recently examined the significance of the Psalter’s broad theological movement from lament to praise. For instance, Waltke and Zaspel (How to Understand the Psalms, Crossway, 2023, 494) note that “given the exilic or early postexilic timeframe” of the Psalms’ final arrangement, it appears probable that “it reflects the expectant faith of the editors,” as it “moves from lament to praise.” Or, in a 2023 essay looking at the major “seam” psalms (“Narrative Structure at the ‘Seams’ of the Psalter’s Five Books,” in Reading the Psalms Theologically, Lexham, 95), Gunderson has suggested that the Psalter intentionally “seems to tell a story—moving from lament to praise, from affliction to celebration, from David son of Jesse to the branch rising from his roots.”
Second, in two recent essays (“Perceptions of Divine Presence,” in Reading the Psalms Theologically, Lexham, 2023; “The Levitical Psalms of Book III,” Perichoresis, forthcoming) I have explored the manner in which the Levitical psalms of books 2 & 3 capture the paradoxical nature of the worshiper’s perception of God. A thread of disoriented lament, where God is perceived as distant, is intertwined with a motif of oriented praise, where God is more readily perceived as present.
For this paper, I am interested in exploring how these two major themes in the Psalms might contribute to our understanding of pastoral work. In fact, the theme of this paper represents the broad topic of a book project that I have just begun to develop with an acquisitions editor at Baker Academic.
Specifically, the claim for this paper is that a study of paired themes found within major “seam” psalms helps create a metaphorical ministry path along which believers may be shepherded: from perceiving God as remote, inaccessible, or distant in lament, to experiencing the transformative reality of God’s proximal presence in praise.
To structure the paper, then, I propose to examine the interplay of twin themes in key sets of “seam” psalms and to explore some ways in which these themes might be relevant to the ministry of shepherding: (1) Psalms 1 & 2: Rootedness in God’s Word and Dependence on Yahweh’s King; (2) Psalms 41 & 42-43: Integrity within Weakness and Hope amidst Despair; (3) Psalms 72 & 73: Concern for the Other & Wisdom in an Evil World; (4) Psalms 89 & 90: Divine Distance as Divine Refinement & Expanding the Experience of God’s Presence; (5) Psalms 106 & 107: The Power of God’s Redemption & Being Back Home with God.
The conclusion of the paper will be rooted in the final praise “destination” of Psalms 146-150 and will briefly reflect on the implications of realizing that this metaphorical shepherding journey will necessarily be cyclical, and not consistently linear, given the realities of walking the way of Torah in a broken world on this side of the believer’s glorification.