The Messiah in the Psalms

Author(s): Michael Baily

Source: The Furrow, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Apr., 1964), pp. 231-236
Published by: The Furrow
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27658728
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THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS'
MICHAEL BAILY

If the jesus of the gospels reaches to unique heights He also

plumbs rare depths : though He belongs in the light inaccessible of
the divinity, He emptied Himself taking the nature of man and
performed an extraordinary service of suffering, suffering "unto
death, even the death of the Cross". Thus the glorious kingly
aspect of the mission of Jesus was complemented by His lowly
human condition and His ministry of vicarious suffering for sin.
Such suffering was indeed the price of his triumph. Salvation by
suffering is a specifically Christian concept that could never be
"sold" in a universal religion, were it not that one of the stature
of Jesus taught it and sealed the teaching by the example of His
life and death. We note how difficult Jesus found it to win over even
picked men like the apostles to the idea.2 Yet something of this
also was foreshadowed in the Old Testament: "O foolish men, and
slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken! Was it not
necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into
His glory?"3
The Old Testament approach to this Christian mystery is an
interesting one. Rarely is the concept of innocent voluntary suffering
to expiate the sins of others explicitly taught.4 More commonly
certain elements only of this concept are presented to us. Let us
consider some of these elements as they appear in the Psalms.
The beginnings of the idea can be seen in the sufferings of the
just man. It was a fact of experience, then as now, that the wicked
often prospered and misfortunes befell the just. This was a severe
test for the faith of a people who were wont to see in temporal
prosperity a sign of divine approval:

... As for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had well
nigh slipped.
For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity
of the wicked. . . .
All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands
in innocence.

1. See previous article in the November furrow, Vol. 14, number 10, pp.
691?701. Editor.
2. Cf. Matt. 16:21-26 and parallels.
3. Luke 24:25-26.
4. Clearly only in Is. 52:13-53:12; cf. also Zach. 12:10 ff.

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232 THE FURROW

For all the day long I have been stricken, and chastened every
morning.5

For this psalmist, as for most Jews, there was no question of being
resigned to his misfortunes. He looked to God to right the wrong
in the future by prospering him and bringing disaster on the wicked
man. If the just man's sufferings were not relieved, men assumed
that he was being punished for his sins. Only men of rare spiritual
perception like the author of Job felt that there was more to suffering
than punishment for sin. Job divined that God could have some
purpose for it beyond the knowledge of men. In his own case it
served both to strengthen his adherence to God and to prove the
Satan in the wrong?in other words, the ways of God are mysterious
and inscrutable where suffering is concerned.
None of the psalmists go quite as far as Job in their theology of
suffering. That there is latent meaning in suffering is, however,
suggested in Ps. 21, the so-called Psalm of the Passion. Its opening
words were on the lips of Jesus ("My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me") on the Cross, and it is likely that He prayed the whole
psalm. It was also otherwise used in the Passion narratives of the
Gospels.6 But appropriate though the psalm was to the occasion,
suffering does not fulfil the exalted function in the life of this saint
psalmist that it does in the life and death of Christ. The difference
is particularly noticeable in the attitude of the sufferer towards his
persecutors, and in his understanding of the role of suffering in
salvation. The Hebrews as a whole reacted to suffering at the hands
of others by cursing them and calling down destruction upon them.
This all too human habit may be found even in pious psalmists:

Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see; and make
their loins tremble continually.
Pour out thy indignation upon them, and let thy burning anger
overtake them.
Add to them punishment upon punishment; may they have no
acquittal from thee.
Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not
be enrolled among the righteous.7

Psalm 21 is remarkably free from such outbursts. Rather than

5. Ps. 72:2-3, 13-14.
6. Cp. verse 8 with Matt. 27:43, and verse 18 with Matt. 27:35; John 19:24.
7. Ps. 69:23-4, 27-8.

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 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 233

turn on his enemies in resentment he turns to God in confidence:

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Why art thou so far from helping me, from the words of my
groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but thou dost not answer; and by
night but find no rest. . . .

Yet thou art holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.

In thee our fathers trusted; they trusted and thou didst deliver
them.
To thee they cried and were saved; in thee they trusted and were
not disappointed.

All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they
wag their heads;
"He committed his cause to the Lord; let him deliver him, let
him rescue him, for he delights in him! . . ."
Yet thou art he who took me from the womb; thou didst keep
me safe upon my mother's breasts. . . .
Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to
help.
Many bulls encompass me, strong bulls of Bashan surround
me. . . .
Yea, dogs are round about me; a company of evildoers encircle
me. . . .8

We witness a magnificent advance when an innocent sufferer looks

to God in expectation rather than glare at men in despair. Yet,
admirable though the restraint of this psalmist is, he has no charity
to spare for his enemies. We notice how far he falls short of the
precept?and practice?of Jesus to love our enemies and pray for
those who persecute and calumniate us. The spirit that speaks of
enemies as "bulls of Bashan", "dogs" and "wild oxen" contrasts
sharply with that of Jesus who addresses the traitorous Judas as
"Friend" and prayed for those who hounded him to death: "Father,
forgive them for they know not what they do".
There is a marked difference also in the meaning of suffering
such as the innocent Israelite of Ps. 21 endured it and such as Jesus
embraced it. The Saviour suffered because it was the decree of
God that His innocent suffering should expiate the sins of men.
8. Ps. 21:1-5, 7-9, 11-12.

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234 THE FURROW

"For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and
to give his fife a ransom for many".9 The psalmist, on the other
hand, would seem not to have known that suffering could be a
means of salvation for himself. His complaints show that he did not
accept his lot of suffering. Nor is there any hint that he was con
cerned for the welfare of his persecutors, much less disposed to
expend his sufferings in atonement for their sins. Nevertheless his
sufferings are placed side by side with his vision of salvation to come :

I will tell of thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the con

gregation I will praise thee;
you who fear the Lord praise him! all you sons of Jacob glorify
him,
and stand in awe of him all you sons of Israel!
For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the
afflicted;
and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard when he
cried to him. . . .

The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall
praise the Lord!
May your hearts live for ever!
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
For domination belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the
nations.
Yea, to him shall the proud of the earth bow down;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and he who
cannot keep himself alive.
Posterity shall serve him; men shall tell of the Lord to the
coming generation,
and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, that he
has wrought it.10

A psalm which began with a cry of anguish thus ends with a vision
of the universal sway of Jahwe. Does the psalmist, or his suffering,
in any way, contribute to the accomplishment of this? Not as an
individual; but the psalm may well go beyond the personal trials
of this individual sufferer. Many think that the psalm gathers up the
experience of the Chosen People, or rather of its faithful "Remnant".
Since the psalmist's personal sufferings were analogous to those of
9. Mark 10:45.
10. Ps. 21:22-24, 26-31.

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 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 235

his people, his own experience gives feeling and urgency to his
statement of Israel's plight. There are good reasons for the view
that this psalm reflects the temper of Jeremiah, the great prophet
of the Fall of Juda and the early Exile. The life of this prophet was
closely identified with the tragic history of his people at the time.
This was a period of profound spiritual change which issued in the
sublime teaching of the suffering Servant of Jahwe in Deutero
Isaiah.11 If that is so, we are, in Ps. 21, at an interesting stage in the
evolution of the doctrine of salvific suffering: the elements of the
teaching are here though they are not linked together. Israel, chosen
by God to be his instrument of salvation, suffers innocently: she
has an unshakable confidence in God whose designs, however, are
unknown to her: she looks forward not only to the day when she
herself will be delivered, but to the extension of God's rule to the
ends of the earth?to universal salvation. The sequence of events
is correct, but the psalmist does not see salvation follow after
suffering as an effect following its cause. Yet he has come a long
way from the position of Ps. 2. He has abandoned the hope that
God's rule on earth will be established by an all-conquering Hebrew
monarchy. Now Israel's horizons are filled with suffering and
humiliation. She is crushed and is captive in Exile. Yet firm as ever
is her faith that God will rule to the ends of the earth. But how
could Israel be of service to this end? It is now unthinkable that
God would make use of her kings, or her military might for His
purpose. Since Israel had well nigh nothing to offer but her misery
and suffering, was it possible that God would require just that of
her as a service? The idea was hard to receive, let alone conceive.
Though it was revealed in a later page of the Old Testament12 it
was not taught in the Psalter. But Ps. 21 comes very close to it.
The Christ who took up Ps. 21 while on the Cross was the true
Israel?though he surpassed anything that Israel promised to
become. He was innocent like the Israel of the Psalmist, only more
so; suffering as she, only more intensely; trusting in God, only
more firmly; expecting the fulfilment of salvation also, only more
imminently. But there the resemblance ends and we are left to
contemplate the awesome uniqueness of Christ on Calvary: the
master of suffering, no longer its victim; suffering not by necessity
but by choice, not by impulse but out of obedience; suffering not for
Himself but for others, suffering not bitterly but moved by love.
His sufferings were not futile but fruitful, fruitful with the purpose
ordained by His Father: "Sacrifice and offerings thou hast not
11. Is. 40-55.
12. Is. 52:13-53, 12.

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236 THE FURROW

desired, but a body thou hast prepared for me; in burnt offerings
and sin offerings thou hast taken no pleasure. Then I said: 'Lo, I
have come to do thy will, O God . . ,'."13
IV

Our reflections on the Christian sense of the Psalms have been

scriptural, i.e. drawn from a literal interpretation of them in their
Old Testament setting. Read in this way the psalms show us Christ
indeed, not in portrait, however, but only in an enigmatic silhouette.
But the Psalms can be interpreted also as part of the Christian
Liturgy. Over and above their scriptural sense the Psalms have been
invested with new meaning as the official prayers of the Church.
They have been given a new liturgical context and reinterpreted
within that context. Such liturgical reinterpretations fall outside the
scope of this study but it is well to draw attention to them. Biblicists
are often accused of neglecting any sense other than the strictly
scriptural. Such neglect would be unpardonable in the case of the
Psalms which are not only Scriptures of the Old Testament, but
prayers of the contemporary Church. The reinterpretation given
to the Psalms by the liturgy is authoritative, for the Church is the
heir of the Old Testament tradition that fostered and adapted the
Psalms. The Church's manner of adapting psalms to serve the needs
of her liturgy is but the continuation of a process that was already
at work in the liturgy of Israel. For in Old Testament times psalms
were taken over by the liturgy and reinterpreted. Critics are now
working at the task of analysing such reinterpretations and they
attempt to peel off the different layers of meaning that have come to
encrust some of the psalms. Such refined criticism serves its own
good purpose, but it need not distract the Christian concerned with
the prayerful and intelligent reading of the Psalms. But it is a help
for him to be aware that the psalms he uses in prayer are made
venerable by having "lived through" the long and hallowed history
of the Temple and the Church. The forms of prayer he borrows are
enriched by reverent use over almost the whole of sacred history.
The Psalms reach from the dim past "when Israel was a child" to
the living present of the Church. Read with the eyes of a Hebrew
they bring home to us the manifold riches of the Saviour promised
to Israel?Christ is all they ever dreamt of and, in His advent, much
more. Prayed with the knowledge and grace of a Christian-they
giye expression to almost anything that needs to be said about
Christ and His Church.
13. Ps. 396-8 and Heb. 10:5-7.

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