‘On His Law He Meditates’: What Is Psalm 1 Introducing?

Introduction

The principle of lex parsimoniae (or Occam's razor) is a useful tool in biblical scholarship. It challenges scholars to be alert for accumulated assumptions, and it places the burden of proof on those theses which require the most assumptions. In this article, it is argued that the current consensus regarding Psalm 1 and its introductory role at the front of the MT Psalter leans on three assumptions which need to be replaced with more modest alternatives. Furthermore, when these simpler alternatives are considered, a view of the first psalm emerges that better fits the character of the book it introduces.

It is now generally accepted that Psalm 1 introduces the MT Psalter. ¹ Although this view has a long heritage, ² one of the first modern scholars to make this case was Brevard Childs. In his groundbreaking Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, Childs presented a persuasive argument for this special role fulfilled by the first psalm. However, one assumption that Childs introduced in that book is among those that need to be challenged.

1. Torah Meditation in Psalm 1

Psalm 1.2 idealizes meditation on God's torah: ‘but his delight is in the torah of Yahweh, and on his torah he meditates day and night’. Childs introduced the idea that, distinct from the term's normal reference to the Torah of Moses, this appearance of the word torah refers to the book of Psalms itself. Based on this assumption, Childs further proposed that all 149 subsequent psalms were thereby transformed from their previous use as hymns into a new law-book for study: ‘The Torah of God … is mediated through its written form as sacred scripture … As a heading to the whole Psalter the blessing [of Psalm 1] now includes the faithful meditation on the sacred writings which follow [i.e. the Psalms themselves].’ ³

A few years later, Gerald Wilson (a student of Childs) published his seminal The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter. One of the strengths of Wilson's work was his careful use of methodological controls to keep assumptions to a minimum. However, he did adopt Childs's far-reaching assumption about Ps. 1.2, thereby promoting this idea into the mainstream of current Psalms scholarship. Quoting Childs, Wilson wrote,

Such a ‘subtle alteration’ would indeed be a ‘strange transformation’ if Childs and Wilson are correct. But it is here argued that this assumption, with its far-reaching impact on how the entire Psalter is characterized, is not correct.

Many scholars have accepted the Childs–Wilson postulate that the word torah in Ps. 1.2 refers to the Psalter itself. It is now commonplace to regard the five-book Psalter as being a ‘new torah’ to be read as a book. ⁵ There has been significant criticism of this view, however. Norman Whybray observed that similar commands to meditate on torah elsewhere in the biblical texts (esp. Deut. 17.18–19; Josh. 1.7–8) refer to the Law of Moses or, more specifically, the Deuteronomic code. Whybray concluded, ‘If in Ps. 1.2 it [torah] denoted the written corpus of the Psalter (or if this meaning extended also to Pss. 19 and 119) this would be a unique usage. But there is nothing in the text of these psalms that indicates that this is the case … Their most natural interpretation is that they refer to the Law of Moses …’ ⁶

More recently, Phil Botha completed a thorough examination of other texts similar to, and perhaps serving as sources for, Ps. 1.2. He has concluded,

There is, actually, a simpler explanation of this ‘meditation on torah’ that is already at hand, and which avoids the radical re-characterization of the rest of the psalms as ‘a new torah’. The alternative has been developed (though it has not yet been applied to Ps. 1) by James Watts in his book, Psalm and Story. ⁸ Examining nine psalms embedded within narrative texts (e.g. 1 Sam. 2.1–10; Exod. 15.1–21; 1 Chron. 16.8–36), Watts observed that such inset songs were generally placed at the end of narrative blocks in a manner that summarizes the preceding story. He further found that these songs serve a common thematic function: ‘the psalms aid in the appropriation of the narratives [they follow] as religious texts, that is, as authoritative guides for the readers' beliefs and lives’. ⁹

The most interesting of Watts's examples for the present argument is his examination of the Song of Moses at the end of Deuteronomy (32.1–43). The canonical form of Deuteronomy ends with Moses writing two companion texts: a book of law which he gave to the priests and elders (31.9), and a song which he wrote in a book and taught orally to the people (31.19). Notably, both the Mosaic law-book and the Mosaic hymn-book were expected to serve the same role as a ‘witness against’ (31.19, 26) the people to bring them back to faithfulness in future apostasy. Watts concludes,

Watts's insight provides an explanation for the call to meditate on torah at the beginning of a five-volume collection of psalms. Rather than introducing the Psalter as itself a new torah (thereby profoundly changing the way the subsequent psalms are received), Psalm 1 introduces a collection of songs deemed useful for an already known and established function in Israel. The Psalter contains meditations on torah. In the phrase ‘on his torah he meditates (hagah)’ in Ps. 1.2, it is not the noun (torah) that introduces the Psalter but the verb (hagah, ‘meditate’). The Psalms are not a new torah, but are sung meditations on the torah (i.e. the Pentateuch). ¹¹ Consequently, Ps. 1.2 introduces no change whatsoever to the way the subsequent psalms were to be received or used.

The MT Psalms did, in fact, continue to be sung in the Second Temple period as well as in post-70 ce synagogues and churches. It does not therefore appear that the early recipients of the Psalter regarded Psalm 1 as changing its songs from hymns sung to God into words to be read from God as Wilson, in particular, proposed. Psalm 1.2 introduces the Psalter as a compilation of songs to sustain torah-faithfulness according to the function of psalmody appointed in Deuteronomy 31–32, and the Law of Moses is the torah on which these songs meditate.

2. Torah Delight in Psalm 1

There is a second assumption about Psalm 1 that needs to be revisited: its supposed message about obedience. It is often assumed that the psalmist's delight in torah is one of obedience based on the legal piety thought to have emerged in the post-exilic period. Walter Brueggemann illustrates the far-reaching impact of this assumption:

It is understandable that mention of God's law triggers, for modern readers, thoughts about obedience. However, obedience is not the only reason for remembering law and should not be the assumed message of Psalm 1. It can be inferred that the ‘happy person’ of Psalm 1 is obeying God's Law since he does not participate in the patterns of sin around him (v. 1). However, there is actually nothing explicit about obedience in this Psalm. The focus of Psalm 1 is not on the individual's obedience to torah; rather, its focus is on delight in torah.

Recent scholarship has called into question the assumption that legal piety emerged as early as Persian-era Yehud, the period in which Psalm 1 may have first been appended to the (proto) MT Psalter. ¹³ After the conquests of Alexander the Great, Greek ideals of civilization—including Greek legalism—brought a profound influence on late Second Temple reception of the Torah. However, if Psalm 1 was affixed to the post-exilic Psalter prior to the Greek period, ¹⁴ it would be important to place its torah delight in that context.

One well-known, pre-Hellenistic purpose for publishing law collections was propagandistic rather than legislative. The parade example is the Law of Hammurabi which was erected as a monument to that Babylonian king. His law collection was inscribed on a stele in the courts of the Esagila Temple as propaganda to remain loyal to Hammurabi's dynasty, which was seen as divinely appointed to secure justice and prosperity for his people. In the stele's epilog, Hammurabi wrote, ‘Let any wronged man … have my inscribed stela read aloud to him, thus may he hear my precious pronouncements and let my stela reveal the lawsuit for him; may he calm his (troubled) heart … and may he pray for me with his whole heart before the gods …’ ¹⁵ Subsequent kings and judges were exhorted to provide Hammurabi's justice for the people; nevertheless, the public display and reading of his laws (notably in the courts of the temple) was to promote loyalty to the king, confidence in his agenda to establish prosperity in the land, and prayer to the gods for his protection and the success of his reign. ¹⁶ It is broadly accepted that the Mosaic law writings served similar propagandistic purposes early in Israel's history, and likely continued in such a role until the Greeks brought their ‘civilized’ institutions, including Greek legal innovations. ¹⁷

Against this pre-Hellenistic backdrop, and lacking any actual exhortation to obedience in Psalm 1, the psalm should not be anachronistically read as a call to legal piety. Rather than envisioning the psalmist as delighting in what torah imposes upon him, it seems more likely the psalmist is rejoicing because of the holy and righteous kingdom torah promises to him in contrast with the wickedness and mocking around him (v. 1).

That this is the correct reading is confirmed by the resolution provided in the psalm itself. In the opening of the psalm (vv. 1–2), the ‘happy person’ is alone in a wicked city, finding delight through meditation on God's Law. In the closing of the psalm (vv. 5–6), the ‘happy person’ is no longer alone and no longer surrounded by the wicked. Instead, the wicked are judged and the psalmist has been brought into ‘the congregation of the righteous’. What meditating on torah helped the psalmist to anticipate while living among the wicked becomes reality in the final verses: participation in God's righteous community. There is very little basis for interpreting this psalm as a message about obedience to God's Law (as legislation to follow); it is, rather, a psalm of hope in God's Law (as royal propaganda).

Not only does this view of torah delight fit Psalm 1 more naturally and avoid the anachronism of later Hellenistic piety, it also allows the reader to move harmoniously from Psalm 1 to Psalm 2 without requiring any ‘reinterpretation’ or ‘editorial re-appropriation’ of the second psalm.

When Psalm 1's delight is interpreted as personal piety (i.e. legalistic obedience), it is typically said that this piety casts a new interpretation on Psalm 2. For instance, J. Clinton McCann writes, ‘The Davidic king had been viewed as nothing less than God's own adopted son (see Ps 2:7) … The psalter's response to the crisis of exile [is] the transfer to the whole people of claims and promises formerly attached to the Davidic monarchy … Thus happiness [Ps. 1.1] essentially belongs to those who “take refuge in” God (Ps. 2:12), not in the Davidic monarch!’ ¹⁸ Remarkably, a psalm which expressly calls its hearers to kiss the Davidic heir is now regarded as promoting the opposite under the re-interpretation of Psalm 1!

Gerald Sheppard was one of the first to argue that Psalm 1 introduces a model of didactic, ‘self-improvement’ piety that then transforms the Psalter's view of David in Psalm 2 and beyond: ‘[The] entire Psalter is made to stand theologically in association with David as a source book of guidance for the way of the righteous. In this fashion, the Psalter has gained, among its other functions, the use as a source for Wisdom reflection and a model of prayers based on such a pious interpretation of the Torah.’ ¹⁹ It is hard to conceive of a single psalm exerting such a shadow over the entire Psalter.

If however, as here argued, Psalm 1 calls the psalm-singer to keep faith in Yahweh's reign as promoted in his torah, then Psalm 2 follows naturally without requiring re-interpretation. Psalm 2 presents the voice of Yahweh affirming his chosen dynasty to reign on Zion. Psalm 2 is then allowed to speak in its own voice about Yahweh's disdain for the kings of the earth and his call to continue to hope in the Davidic dynasty whom he will grant judgment. There is no need to re-read Psalm 2 through a transforming (even ‘democratizing’) ²⁰ lens of Psalm 1. The two fit harmoniously as they stand, once we remove the notion of personal piety from Psalm 1.

It is better to understand Psalm 1's torah delight as sustained hope in Yahweh's reign rather than imposing anachronistic concepts of personal piety into the psalm. ²¹

3. The Nature of the Book

A third assumption to critique is the undue influence ascribed to Psalm 1 over the interpretation of the whole Psalter. James Luther Mays affectionately called Psalms 1, 19, and 119 ‘the problem children of the Psalter’ because they did not fit traditional genre or Sitze categories. However, new directions in Psalter Shape studies have suddenly moved these psalms (especially Ps. 1) into the limelight. ‘The question, then, of the torah psalms’, Mays explained, ‘is not a question of their interpretation in isolated places. It is a question of what their presence in the book of Psalms means for the way the Psalms [as a whole] are to be viewed and read … What effect does their presence have on other psalms and the way they are to be understood?’ ²² Beat Weber further represents this trend to regard Psalm 1 as transforming the Psalter into a new torah such that, ‘Through compilation together, the Psalms—insofar as they each previously had their own (liturgical) life—shed each its own status as autonomous texts and they became subtexts in a new macro-text: the Psalter’. ²³

Above all, it is this third assumption common in current Psalms studies that needs to be reined in: the assumption that an arranged Psalter means that certain psalms (esp. Ps. 1) provide hermeneutical ‘keys’ which change the way other psalms are to be interpreted. It is better to seek an interpretation of Psalm 1 that explains the book of Psalms it introduces, rather than adopting interpretations of certain, strategically located psalms that impose changes on other psalms.

Norman Whybray recognized this problem. One of his repeated critiques in Reading the Psalms as a Book was the overwhelming lack of actual edits by the Psalter's compilers to change the way individual psalms are read. ‘There is no evidence’, he concluded, ‘of the thorough and systematic changes that would have been necessary if the Psalter were to become the expression of a single theology’. ²⁴ If the compilers of the canonical Psalter intended certain, key psalms to change the way other psalms were read, it would seem edits would have been made to complete that work.

Critiques like those of Whybray do not undermine the basic realization that the canonical Psalter has been editorially arranged. Nevertheless, it must be borne in mind that each individual psalm retains its own integrity. No psalm—including Psalm 1—should be used as a hermeneutical lens to change the interpretation of other psalms. Readings should be preferred which allow each psalm to stand on its own. ²⁵ In keeping with this commitment, the present study offers a reading of Psalm 1 which endeavors to explain the collection it introduces rather than changing the voice of subsequent psalms.

Conclusion

It will now be proposed that Psalm 1 was given its present place in order to introduce the canonical Psalter as a collection of torah meditations for sustaining the covenant hope of post-exilic, diaspora Jews.

The opening scene (vv. 1–2) presents the irony of a ‘happy person’ who is somehow joyful despite his residence in exile—in a city filled with wicked ones, sinners, and scoffers. The description in v. 1 sounds like a city forum, with people walking and standing and sitting all around. And in the final line of this image, the seats typically occupied by city elders are occupied by scoffers. The opening scene identifies with dispersed and lonely Jews in their marginalized settings among the Gentiles, post-exile. Nevertheless, the individual in Psalm 1 is happy because he meditates daily in the torah of Yahweh. Understanding the roles of psalmody and of law discussed in this study, the delight of this ‘happy person’ is now recognizable as hope in the sovereign reign of Yahweh and the anticipated victory of his kingdom.

The agricultural images in the middle of the psalm (vv. 3–4) mark the passage of time until harvest. There may be allusions to the Mosaic festival calendar behind the psalm's movement toward the harvest festival (the Feast of Booths) and its promise of ingathering reflected in the closing scene of this psalm. The final verses (vv. 5–6) describe ‘the congregation of the righteous’ assembled in the temple of Yahweh. Now, it is the wicked who are outsiders (‘the wicked will not stand in the judgment’, v. 5), and the righteous are in community with one another before the Lord. Those who delighted in the torah of Yahweh are at the last together in the courts of his temple and no longer scattered among the cities of the wicked. The closing assurance of the psalm is that Yahweh watches over the pilgrimage of the righteous, but the current domination of the wicked will come to an end (v.6).

These themes—delight in Yahweh's torah (as royal propaganda rather than material for personal piety), meditation on torah (often done through singing psalms), and the anticipation of ingathering and the judgment of the nations—provide a suitable description of the collected psalms that follow. In fact, the culmination of Psalm 1 parallels nicely with the ingathering themes in Book V of the Psalter (especially Ps. 107, the festival progression from Pss. 113–136, ²⁶ and the ingathering features of the final doxology in Pss. 146–150). There may be an editorial effort to introduce an exile-to-ingathering theme in Psalm 1 which is matched in broad strokes in the arrangement of the Psalter as a whole. ²⁷ However, if such parallels are warranted, they must be true parallels and not a scheme imposed on other psalms by a certain reading of Psalm 1. It is, in fact, the major contention of this study that scholarly efforts to describe the introductory character of Psalm 1 need to focus on readings which explain the collection as it is, rather than readings which impose changes on how the collection is received.

It has been argued, here, that the main role Psalm 1 fills as an introduction is not in its identification of a certain message, a certain outline, or a certain theological framework for the book. Whatever themes Psalm 1 may hold in harmony with the rest of the Psalter are secondary facets to its role as a preface. It has here been argued that the primary role of Psalm 1 is to introduce, not a message but a use for the collection that follows. The purpose of Psalm 1 is to introduce a collection of meditations on Yahweh's torah to sustain his scattered people in joy as they await his judgment of the wicked and his ingathering of the righteous.