Michael Wilcock - The Message of Psalms 73-150: Songs for the People of God

Three famous David psalms (15, 24, and 68) have already drawn our attention to the great day when Gods ark was brought to its final home in Gods city. Together with an account of the event, 1 Chronicles 15 and 16 give details of how David planned the worship of the sanctuary for that day and for later times. He appointed three men, one from each of the three clans of the tribe of Levi, to supervise its music: Heman and Ethan at Gibeon, where the altar of sacrifice was, and Asaph at Jerusalem.

Of these three men, Asaph is the one of chief interest in Book III of the Psalter. While each of the others is connected with one psalm at the end of the book (88 is of Heman, 89 of Ethan), no fewer than eleven are psalms of Asaph. Another that we have considered already (50) is placed between the first Korah Collection and the second David Collection, in the middle of Book II. They are a magnificent group, covering a wide range of themes.

We cannot help noticing that at least two relate to the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC. How is it that we find psalms of Asaph, who lived in the time of David at the beginning of the monarchy, lamenting something that took place 400 years later, at the end of it?

It so happened that on the day I was writing this the oratorio Belshazzars Feast, by William Walton, was broadcast from Leeds Town Hall, one of the great centres of the musical life of the north of England; and the performers included the Leeds Festival Chorus. The work, which incidentally quotes an Asaph psalm (81), had been premiered nearly seventy years earlier, from the same concert hall, by the same choir. What unbelievably long-lived singers, you say!

There are even more frequent mentions of Asaph alone, stretching over an even longer period.

It is not surprising then to find in the psalms that bear his name a broad overview spanning the whole period of the monarchy. Indeed it ranges not only further on, beyond the exile to the restoration, but further back, beyond the judges to the exodus, and sees the Lords activity throughout. Like the Korah and David Collections of Book II, these psalms use the word God far more often than the word LORD. But the God of the Asaph Collection is repeatedly a God who judges, as he did in Egypt; who speaks, as he did at Sinai; and who over the years constantly shepherds his people. In other words, he is the Elohim who by his acts shows himself very clearly to be Yahweh the Lord, the God of Israel.

As to why these psalms should have been placed where they are in the Psalter, the remarkable Psalm 73, standing at the head of the main collection, may at once begin to yield clues.