Although they bear the stamp of gifted poets such as David, the Psalms are conventional worship texts, adapted to the needs of the community as a whole. The prophetic voice that often speaks in the Psalms reflects their development through the work of the Levitical musicians of the sanctuary.
The book of Psalms is customarily associated with the name of David, though less than half of the Psalms (seventy-three) bear his name in their superscription or introductory note; of these, fourteen are related by their superscription to events in the life of David. Other names that appear are those of Asaph (twelve), the sons of Korah (twelve), Solomon (two), Heman (one), Ethan (one), and Moses (one). A third of the Psalms have no such attribution.
The meaning of the expression lDavid in the superscription has occasioned much debate; some exegetes are of the opinion that it does not mean “by David” but “for David,” that is, for the use of the Davidic ruler, whether for David himself or for one of his descendants on the Judean throne. In any case, several things are clear. First, the Davidic psalms have a poetic quality that seems to reflect the personal faith and creativity of a gifted individual such as David; moreover, these songs typically portray a worshiper involved in a struggle with powerful enemies, a situation that fits the circumstances of David’s career. Second, the sanctuary on Zion was established and maintained under the personal sponsorship of the royal house of David; its worship expressed, especially, the situation of the king as leader of the covenant community and the viewpoint of the prophetic architects of Davidic theology. Third, despite what has just been said, the language of the Psalms is generalized to fit the attitude and condition of any worshiper who, in covenant with the Lord, feels the pressures of others against his or her commitment and is moved to express that commitment in prayer and song. Fourth, the Psalms were not offered spontaneously by individual worshipers but were presented by the appointed musicians of the sanctuary in behalf of the king and of the entire community (although it is possible that the congregation joined in responses or other portions of the Psalms).
In sum, even if many of the Psalms did originate in specific events in David’s life, through their subsequent use in the sanctuary they have been adapted to the needs of the general worshiper and of the covenant people as a whole. Thus the psalmist’s description of his distress, for example, often fits many types of situations, as in Psalm 22:
I am poured out like water,
And all my bones are out of joint;
My heart has turned to wax;
It is melted away within me.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
And my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
You lay me in the dust of death.
Dogs have surrounded me;
A band of evil men has encircled me,
They have pierced my hands and my feet.
I can count all my bones. (Ps. 22:14–17)
The church has understood this psalm as prophetic of the suffering of Christ; as used by the Israelite worshiper, however, its language could well describe warfare, persecution, illness, old age, or a feeling of abandonment by God. This universal quality of expression has given the Psalms their continuing appeal in the worship of the church. Like the hymns of a church hymnal, the Psalms are conventional worship texts. In such texts, individual authorship is unimportant, for the aim is to express the corporate faith of the gathered community.
It is often said that the Psalms are the voice of the worshiper calling out to God, rather than the word of God directed to his people. In actuality, the Psalms are a dialogue, for God speaks in them as well. Frequently we hear the prophetic word in the Psalms declaring the word of the Lord to the community or its representative for judgment or for encouragement:
The Lord will keep you from all harm—
He will watch over your life.
The Lord will watch over your coming and going
Both now and forevermore. (Ps. 121:7–8)
Where your fathers tested and tried me,
Though they had seen what I did.
For forty years I was angry with that generation;
I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray,
And they have not known my ways.”
So I declared on oath in my anger,
“They shall never enter my rest.” (Ps. 95:9–11)
Such utterances occur in perhaps a tenth of the Psalms and are a clue to the origin of psalmic worship in the cult of Zion during the Davidic era. Prophecy and music were closely associated in ancient Israel; the prophets were musicians, and the sanctuary musicians, at least, seem to have been prophets. When the ark of the covenant was brought to David’s tent on Zion, he appointed Levitical musicians “to prophesy with lyres, harps, and cymbals” (1 Chron. 25:1 NASB); regular animal sacrifices were not offered here at this time, but these priests “prophesied in giving thanks and praising the Lord” (1 Chron. 25:3 NASB). The origin of most Israelite psalmody with the Levitical prophet-musicians of the sanctuary would explain why the Psalms so seldom refer to the sacrificial cult of the Zadokite priesthood.
This is not to say that all the Psalms stem from the Davidic period; some of them, for example, obviously reflects the circumstances of later centuries, including the destruction of the temple and the exile in Babylon (Pss. 74; 137). However, the tendency of scholarship during the past century to assign a late, postexilic date to a large proportion of the Psalms does not do justice to that remarkable burst of insight and creativity that occurred during the era when the institutions of Israel’s covenant worship were being established in Jerusalem.