Book of Psalms Negated by New Testament

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Has the Book of Psalms been negated by Jesus in the New Testament? I’m reading the psalms now and at least 80% of the psalms have to do with prayers to God to smite enemies/wicked people/sinners and bless the psalmist/good people/non-sinners HERE ON EARTH. The psalmists are praying not to receive their just desserts in heaven or the next life, but here on earth in this life. The psalmists also want to see God’s justice meted out on the wicked here on earth, not maybe in the next life.

I have never read the Psalms before and I was only used to the New Testament where Jesus says love your enemies here on earth and expect nothing until the next life. I expected no justice from God during this life while the psalmists DID expect such justice from God during their lives here on earth. What a complete opposite view between the Psalms and the Gospel.

Did Jesus invalidate the Book of Psalms? No justice here on earth, so quit praying for it? I’d like to pray many of the Psalms in my life, but if God doesn’t care about justice meted out on earth anymore, why bother to pray such Psalms?
 
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How deeply are you reading Psalms? Are you just skimming the words? Furthermore Psalms has alot of passages about God’s Justice. And yes it looks severe. But take your time and ponder the passages. Ask the Holy Spirit to understand the meaning behind them.
 
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Not negated, but fulfilled. The Psalms were Jesus’ prayer book, and an integral part of Catholic liturgical and prayer practice. If you say the Liturgy of the Hours, you are saying and memorizing Psalms throughout the day, every day.
 
I’ve been taught that the Psalms are meant to be real, raw, emotional prayers of real people as opposed to stuffy “politically correct” prayers. These are the prayers of someone suffering and opening their heart to God, mess and all. Do you ever pray to God when you’re angry or upset? Do you only pray what you think God wants to hear, or do you pray what is truly in your heart? Prayer changes us. By expressing these raw emotions, God enables us to begin to heal and to learn how to love those we wish harm to.
 
Yes, and prayers concerning enemies can refer to our spiritual enemies.
 
I think that your estimate is way high… yet, Jesus did not negate the Psalms.

What you need to understand is that there are two different economies; the Old Covenant was based upon an actual blood sacrifice of humans and animals and sacrifice of grain and other food. The economy was a temporal economy using the values and agents of the temporal real as its currency.

The New Covenant, based on Jesus’ Sacrifice, did away with the Old Covenant’s economy: Jesus Reveals that God is Spirit and that true Worshipers must Worship in Spirit and Truth (the Holy Spirit and Christ Himself).

Yet, the same principle applies: Love Yahweh God above all and your neighbor as yourself!:
37 Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. 38 This is the greatest and the first commandment. 39 And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets. (St. Matthew 22)
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The Psalms are part of the Law (Teaching about God’s Salvific Plan) and the Prophets (the Holy Spirit Inspired their Writings).

Maran atha!

Angel
 
jcrichton said:
The Psalms are part of the Law (Teaching about God’s Salvific Plan) and the Prophets (the Holy Spirit Inspired their Writings).
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Please forgive a pedantic quibble, but the Psalms are not in either the Law or the Prophets. They’re in the Writings. The Hebrew Bible, in Jewish use, is divided into three sections. From what I’ve read, I believe the first two sections were already set in canonical form in the Herodian period, but the third not until some years later. That doesn’t mean, of course, that individual books in that section were held to be unsuitable in any way. The first book in the Writings section is Psalms, frequently quoted in the NT, even though, as far as anyone knows, it had not yet been formally incorporated into the Biblical canon in the time of Jesus.

The Law (Torah): Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

The Prophets (Nevi’im): Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve (the minor prophets from Hosea to Malachi)

The Writings (Ketuvim): Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and at the very end, 1 & 2 Chronicles.
 
One question here: Our Bible has 150 Psalms. I understand Psalm 151 was discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Has 151 been recognized by Judaism in any way?
 
Nap66 said:
I’m reading the psalms now and at least 80% of the psalms have to do with prayers to God to smite enemies/wicked people/sinners and bless the psalmist/good people/non-sinners HERE ON EARTH. The psalmists are praying not to receive their just desserts in heaven or the next life, but here on earth in this life. The psalmists also want to see God’s justice meted out on the wicked here on earth, not maybe in the next life.
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While we cannot ignore the literal sense of the Psalms or any sacred scripture, we cannot ignore the spiritual sense. Read them again, concentration on the spiritual sense and see if you find the answer to your question.

Pax et Bonum!
 
Nap66 said:
The psalmists are praying not to receive their just desserts in heaven or the next life, but here on earth in this life.
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That’s because they had no concept of eternal reward and eternal punishment. They thought that good people were rewarded on this earth, and bad people were punished on this earth. That’s why they’re asking for what they’re requesting. 😉
 
That’s how i understand “enemies” to be-people in our lives who are hard to get along with. and it doesn’t mean that you hate them
 
It’s nice to have clear understandings of delineation of things… however, here’s what the Psalms say about themselves:
17 Be good to your servant while I live,
that I may obey your word.
18 Open my eyes that I may see
wonderful things in your law.
19 I am a stranger on earth;
do not hide your commands from me.
20 My soul is consumed with longing
for your laws at all times.
21 You rebuke the arrogant, who are accursed,
those who stray from your commands.
22 Remove from me their scorn and contempt,
for I keep your statutes.
23 Though rulers sit together and slander me,
your servant will meditate on your decrees.
24 Your statutes are my delight;
they are my counselors. (Psalm 119/118)
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There are no other books as the Psalms… they speak both to the frailty of Israel (stubbornness and sinfulness) and to Yahweh God’s Deliberation (both temporal and spiritual) about Who He Is and what His Plans are for all of Creation.

So while people may not place them in some sort of neat niche within Bible vernacular, they are not only a bridge to the other books in Scriptures but both a recount of the Hebrews trek and a prophetic account of God’s Revelation.

Maran atha!

Angel
 
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This! 1000xs!

The Psalms are in fact pretty brutal. They’re crass, barbaric, human poetry that well exemplify the tenuous relationship we have with God: We’re happy with God and so thankful for his mercy when things are going well for us, and then as soon as it sours we demand that God provide us with justice. It’s not even like the Psalms as an entire book culminate this way; no, one psalm might speak of the providence and omniscience of God and how we must trust in Him, then the next pesters God with “Well why do all these great things keep happening to my enemies!? Why why why!?” followed by “Thank you God for making me humble”, and then “Lord I will be so happy the day you smite these evildoers.”

I don’t think it’s any accident that the Psalms became THE
liturgical benchmark for Judaism, and that Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and some forms of Protestantism have carried on this tradition: The Psalms show how disgustingly fickle us humans can be. It’s beneficial for us to pray these psalms throughout the day, every day, seven days a week so that our spiritual elitism is put in check. You must remember that the Psalms were never meant to be prescriptive scripture (unlike, say, the first five books of the Old Testament, or the Gospels). Indeed, the Psalms are descriptive. They describe the depths to which humans have fallen and in so doing prescribe our very need for a Savior.
 
I have noticed what appears to be prophecy in the Psalms:

The nations have fallen into the pit they dug;
they are caught be the feet in the snare they set themselves.
YHWH has made Himself known; has given judgement.
He has trapped the wicked in the work of their own hands.

I think that these lines are about the 21st century and how we are trapped in our invention of weapons that will destroy us and every one else too.
 
Keep on reading - lol

The Psalms - have it all !

God DOES care about justice !

Have you even read Psalm 1 ? (hahahah ohhh man.)

“ The ungodly - shall NOT stand in the judgement-
nor sinners - in the congregation of the righteous ( heaven?)
The ungodly shall perish.
The ungodly are like the chaff - which the wind driveth away “

God - is the judge.
Get that - through your head.
First and foremost - God = Judge.
 
Though I cannot see such prophecy for the 21st century in this passage, I can concur with you that it speaks to all those who reject God, both as individuals and as nations, and how God allows them to embrace perdition (damnation) because of their stubbornness in rejecting God’s Gift (‘Choose Life!’)–compare with Romans 1.

Maran atha!

Angel
 
The NT agrees that God does some smiting when necessary.

You might recall Ananias and Sapphira, or what happened to the fig tree. You might also remember that, toward the end of the Book of Revelation, Jesus conquers the world and lets the birds eat his enemies’ corpses.

Re: the Psalms as an exhibition of human fallen nature, you shouldn’t go too far that way. The earliest Christian way of reading the Psalms was to read them as being sung by Jesus in His role as the Son of David, praying for us.

It’s okay to have questions. But a lot of people seem to set themselves up as holier than the Bible and more righteous than God. Looking down on the author is a dangerous way to read any text, but it’s poison when the author is the Author of life.

Read a psalm. Think about it. Chew it over. But most of all, wait and see what wisdom God sends you. Nobody ever said that understanding should be instant and complete.

With the Bible, there is always more to chew on. I used to think that people were just making that up; but the older I get, the more I find.
 
At the time they were written, the writers may not have believed in an afterlife as the idea later developed or was influenced from Babylon or other countries. Regardless of that, if you replace the word enemies, wicked, etc. with sins, harms, faults, unhapinesses, etc., then you will have the true meaning. The psalmist praying is both representing the Lord Jesus and each individual human. The enemy of the entire human race (not only certain who are “saved”) is the “Devil” and the absence of Good/God, which is called evil.
 
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