Smith DTh Thesis (final).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

Chapter 2: History of Psalms StudiesCooper (1995:89) indicates that the recent trend is open to finding messianicallusions in the psalms, while not seeing all the psalms messianically.Some of the early church fathers were so enamored with thehope of Messiah in the Psalms that practically all Psalms wereconsidered Messianic. With the advent of higher criticism andrationalistic principles for the study of Scripture, the pendulumswung to the opposite extreme, and no Psalms were consideredto be Messianic. Today it is generally acknowledged that whilenot all Psalms are Messianic, there are clear portraits ofMessiah in many of them.A recent monograph by Jamie Grant (2004, The King as Exemplar: TheFunction of Deuteronomy's Kingship Law in the Shaping of the Book ofPsalms) lent further weight to an eschatological reading of the Psalter. Grantnotes that the editors juxtaposed torah psalms with royal psalms—Psalm 1with Psalm 2; Psalm 19 with Psalms 18 and 20-21; and Psalm 119 with Psalm118. He argues that the kingship law in Deuteronomy 17:14-20 lies behind theeditors’ attempt to link torah and kingship. These paired psalms point to afuture exemplary king, the messiah, who would be a pious “torah-lover”. In thecase of Psalms 1 and 2, the editors intend their readers to associate the44