covenantal people throughout the Psalter. This is the hallmark of its many themes and features. It is little wonder then that the rabbis call the Psalter sepher tehillim, formed from the same root as the word הללויה (hallelujah), thus the title The Book of Praises.
The Hebrew title of the book of Psalms is tehillim, ‘Praises.’ Although the hymns or songs of praise are outnumbered in the Psalter by the prayers of lament or complaint, the title ‘Praises’ is appropriate. Even the prayers of lament or complaint move toward praise. So does the Psalter as a whole. Whereas prayers of lament or complaint dominate Books I-III, hymns or songs of praise are dominate in Books IV-V. Thus praise becomes the goal of the Psalter in the same way that praise is the goal of human life. Praise is fundamental.40
Although the songs of praise and thanksgiving are outnumbered, dominantly so, by the prayers and songs of lament-complaint, the title book of Praises is still appropriate. For these and other reasons the Psalter is sometimes referred to as the Hymnbook of the Second Temple.41 This would be appropriate if the book of Psalms was viewed primarily as a post-exilic book, which was commonly held a century ago. But this, too, is inaccurate and misleading as we now understand that not a few psalms likely predate by at least one hundred years the first temple’s Iron Age construction in the mid-tenth-century BCE.
It is important to remember that these early psalms would have begun their life in the worship of יהוה following the event of the exodus; in their journey through the wilderness, shrines and altars were erected in order for the people of יהוה to continue their sacrificial rites and ceremonies. These psalms would travel far and wide before coming to rest in the liturgy of the temple beginning in the tenth century BCE. It is fair to say that ancient Israel’s psalms became, over time, the voice of the people of יהוה communing with their God. This is substantiated by the repeated pleas that the presence of their God would remain and abide with them forever.
18. Kraus, Theology of the Psalms, “The divine name Elyon suggests the idea of ‘ascend’ and connotes ‘the Highest’. The name indicates the exalted status and power of God (e.g. Pss 47:2, 6–7; 82:6; 83:19; 91:1, 9; 97:9). It is an epithet of kingship.” 461.
cf. Mettinger, In Search of God: The Meaning and Message of the Everlasting Names. “The biblical names of God are symbols. On the pump-organ of human language, these symbols perform the music that speaks about God. The symbols are not a direct reproduction of the original tones, but are a downward transposition with a supposedly analogical relationship to them. The symbols are names that speak of the Ineffable through categories deriving from the world of human experience.” 201
19. A. A. Anderson, Psalms, New Century Bible Commentary, vol. II. “Shaddai possesses not only a protective character but also a fearsome aspect. It is very likely an early Canaanite divine epithet usually rendered ‘the one of the mountains;’” 656.
20. Note: The Septuagint, or LXX, (the term Septuagint meaning seventy) is the first Greek translation of the text of the Hebrew Bible. Tradition says it was the product of seventy-two Jewish scholars convened sometime in the third century BCE in Alexandria. According to an ancient document, the Letter of Aristeas, legend states how seventy-two Jewish scholars were commissioned during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt to carry out the task of translating the Hebrew Bible into Greek. Widely used among Hellenistic Jews, this Greek version of the Hebrew Bible was called forth as many Jews who were dispersed throughout the far-flung Roman world were beginning to lose contact with their Hebrew roots and language. One of the fascinating results of translating the Hebrew Bible into Greek is that it gave non-Jews a window into viewing Judaism and its ancient traditions. The LXX had an enormous influence on the early church, most particularly among the first century CE writers of what would become the Christian scriptures. The LXX WAS the “Old Testament” for the early church.
21. Wallace, The Narrative Effect of Book IV of the Hebrew Psalter. “The faithful in Ps 91 will also find protection of Yahweh’s ‘pinions’ (v. 4). This word is also used in Dt. 32:11. When the divine does speak in Ps. 91, in the oracle, Yahweh states in 14b that ‘I will protect those who know my name.’ The phrase is conspicuous when read with Dt. 32:3 ‘I will call on the name of Yhwh’.” 23.
Note: There are various similarities between the Song of Moses (Deut 32) and Psalm 91. cf. Andre Caquot, “Le Psaume XCI” Semitica 8 (21–37).
22. Ps 91:1, 2. יהוה (Yahweh) occurs in the Psalms close to 700 times, of which the abbreviated form yah occurs 43 times; elohim, 365 times; El, 79 times; Adonai, 54 times; Elyon, 22 times; Elohay, 4 times; and Shaddai, twice, in Ps 68 and Ps 91.
23. Note: The fact that there remains a very close linkage between our psalms (Pss 90, 91, 92) and the seventh-sixth century BCE deuteronomistic historians—editors, tells us even more about the very long process of time that passed in bringing the Psalter to its present form, approximately in the second century CE. cf. M. Segal, “El, Elohim, and YHWH in the Bible,” in Jewish Quarterly Review 46 (89–115).
24. Vriezen, The Religion of Ancient Israel. It is an extraordinary thing because it is also a “clear case of a personal relationship with the Most High God, with Israel’s only God in person. [He] is directly accessible. Not only kings (like David, in 1 Sam. 30:6) may call upon [him], but all who are in distress (Pss. 25, 35, 69, 71, 84, 86, 143, passim); . . . In other words, there is in Israel an absolute immediacy about the relationship between God [himself], in the highest sense of that term, and the individual human being.” 27.
25. Freedman, “The Real Formal Full Name of the God of Israel” In Sacred History, Sacred Literature, “If the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, is a verb in the earliest biblical tradition, then it has a pronominal subject that is expressed, and behind it a subject-noun. From the passages of Exod 3:6; 6:2–3, and 34:6 -7, it seems clear that Yahweh was originally a verb for which the subject was El” 119. cf. Albertz, Israelite Religion. “Attempts have been made time and time again to learn something about the nature of Yahweh from the explanation of [his] name. The divine name appears in different forms, in the Old Testament mostly in the long form (tetragrammaton) YHWH; because of the reluctance to utter the divine name which began in the Hellenistic period, its pronunciation is not completely certain. When the Massoretes laid down the pronunciation of the Hebrew consonantal text in the early Middle Ages, they vocalized the tetragrammaton by the words which were read in its place, ‘adonay (‘Lord’) or ‘elohim (God); this gave rise to the false reading ‘Jehovah’ which was popularized by the nineteenth century.” 49, 50.
26. VanGemeren, Psalm 131:2, 153.
27. Meek, Hebrew Origins. 109–110. cf. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion, “So the god Yahweh is older than Israel; [ he] was a southern Palestinian god before [ he] became the god of liberation for the Moses group. It was important here that [ he] was a god who came from outside, an alien god who had not yet been incorporated into the structure of the Egyptian pantheon and was thus in a position to break up this religious system which gave political stability to society.” 52.
28. Wurthwein, The Text of the Old Testament:
