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The Bible Year

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 13, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 19.

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The Bible Year

Assignment for April 16 to 22

Supplementary Study

Review First Chronicles. Note that the book is divided into two parts,—the first ten chapters being introductory, and the remaining nineteen relating to the history of David.

The Book of Psalms

The present Hebrew title of this book is Tehillim, which means “praises,” or “songs of praise.” The familiar English word “psalm” means “songs set to music,” and the titles to many of the psalms contain references to musical terms and instruments. The book was really the hymn book of the Jews, and its various parts were arranged at different times, so it is supposed, for use in the temple service.
The book contains one hundred and fifty psalms, whose composition extended over a thousand years, from Moses to the close of the captivity. “One psalm is attributed to Moses, seventy-three to David, two to Solomon, twelve to Asaph (one of David’s musicians), eleven to the sons of Korah, and one each to Heman and Ethan. Thirteen titles tell on what occasion the psalm was written. A number of most precious psalms are prophetic of Christ.”
In the Revised Version, in harmony with Hebrew usage, the book of Psalms is divided into five parts, or books: Book I includes the first forty-one psalms; Book II includes psalms 42 to 72; Book III ends with Psalm 89; Book IV ends with psalm 106; and Book V includes the remaining psalms. The collection is often called “The Psalms of David” because he was the greatest of the sweet singers of Israel, and also because the first division, or book, of the Psalms was written by him.
“There is no other book of praise,” says one writer, “so pregnant with expressions of the heart’s emotion under all the vicissitudes of life, or so adapted to all climes and ages, as to be the universal medium of praise for all nations of the world. No country but Palestine, varying as it does from the arid desert to the mountains capped with snow, could have furnished such a combination of subjects for poetical imagery: its vines and fruits; its valleys, thick with corn and shining with lilies; its mountains, torrents, rivers, lakes; its wild and domestic animals, and its beasts of prey,—all are pictured in the Psalms with a noble simplicity to which we find no parallel elsewhere.”
The book of Psalms is the second of the five poetical books of the Bible. “Hebrew poetry is not constituted by rhyme, nor by appreciable rhythm; but it is for the most part elegant and elevated in style, often indeed sublime, the manner of expression, the choice of words, and the structure of the sentences being peculiar and characteristic. . . . These inspired compositions may be characterized as the very heart of the Old Testament, an outpouring of lamentation, prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, often uttered in prophetic language. They are, in fact, a mirror of the faith, love, and hope of the true Israelite, an ‘epitome of the Bible adapted to the purpose of devotion, wherein man may speak to God in the very words which God himself has inspired.’”

Use Your Bible

Jesus used it. Again and again, in argument, in illustration, before the priests and before the common people, he referred to the writings of Moses, David, Isaiah, and other seers of old. After his forty days’ fast, alone in the wilderness, with no human eye to see and no human hand to help, the Son of God met and overcame his mortal foe and enemy. This he did, not by any manifestation of his divine power, but by using the written Word of Jehovah as his weapon of defense. Every time the enemy set a temptation before him, Jesus triumphed over it by quoting from the Word of God. “It is written,” was his answer to every assault of Satan.