Psalms

• Psalms

187:5.2Shortly af­ter one o’clock, amidst the in­creas­ing dark­ness of the fierce sand­storm, Je­sus be­gan to fail in hu­man con­scious­ness. His last words of mercy, for­give­ness, and ad­mo­ni­tion had been spo­ken. His last wish—con­cern­ing the care of his mother—had been ex­pressed. Dur­ing this hour of ap­proach­ing death the hu­man mind of Je­sus re­sorted to the rep­e­ti­tion of many pas­sages in the He­brew scrip­tures, par­tic­u­larly the Psalms. The last con­scious thought of the hu­man Je­sus was con­cerned with the rep­e­ti­tion in his mind of a por­tion of the Book of Psalms now known as the twen­ti­eth, twenty-first, and twenty-sec­ond Psalms. While his lips would of­ten move, he was too weak to ut­ter the words as these pas­sages, which he so well knew by heart, would pass through his mind. Only a few times did those stand­ing by catch some ut­ter­ance, such as, “I know the Lord will save his anointed,” “Your hand shall find out all my en­e­mies,” and “My God, my God, why have you for­saken me?” Je­sus did not for one mo­ment en­ter­tain the slight­est doubt that he had lived in ac­cor­dance with the Fa­ther’s will; and he never doubted that he was now lay­ing down his life in the flesh in ac­cor­dance with his Fa­ther’s will. He did not feel that the Fa­ther had for­saken him; he was merely recit­ing in his van­ish­ing con­scious­ness many Scrip­tures, among them this twenty-sec­ond Psalm, which be­gins with “My God, my God, why have you for­saken me?” And this hap­pened to be one of the three pas­sages which were spo­ken with suf­fi­cient clear­ness to be heard by those stand­ing by.

95:4.5In the Book of He­brew Proverbs, chap­ters fif­teen, sev­en­teen, twenty, and chap­ter twenty-two, verse sev­en­teen, to chap­ter twenty-four, verse twenty-two, are taken al­most ver­ba­tim from Amen­emope’s Book of Wis­dom. The first psalm of the He­brew Book of Psalms was writ­ten by Amen­emope and is the heart of the teach­ings of Ikh­na­ton.

95:5.7Ikh­na­ton was wise enough to main­tain the out­ward wor­ship of Aton, the sun-god, while he led his as­so­ciates in the dis­guised wor­ship of the One God, cre­ator of Aton and su­preme Fa­ther of all. This young teacher-king was a pro­lific writer, be­ing au­thor of the ex­po­si­tion en­ti­tled “The One God,” a book of thirty-one chap­ters, which the priests, when re­turned to power, ut­terly de­stroyed. Ikh­na­ton also wrote one hun­dred and thirty-seven hymns, twelve of which are now pre­served in the Old Tes­ta­ment Book of Psalms, cred­ited to He­brew au­thor­ship.

48:6.20That is the story whis­pered in the night sea­son to the shep­herd boy. He could not re­tain it word for word, but to the best of his mem­ory he gave it much as it is re­corded to­day.

131:2.7“God is our Fa­ther; the Lord is our re­deemer. God has cre­ated the uni­ver­sal hosts, and he pre­serves them all. His righ­teous­ness is like the moun­tains and his judg­ment like the great deep. He causes us to drink of the river of his plea­sures, and in his light we shall see light. It is good to give thanks to the Lord and to sing praises to the Most High; to show forth lov­ing-kind­ness in the morn­ing and the di­vine faith­ful­ness ev­ery night. God’s king­dom is an ev­er­last­ing king­dom, and his do­min­ion en­dures through­out all gen­er­a­tions. The Lord is my shep­herd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pas­tures; he leads me be­side still wa­ters. He re­stores my soul. He leads me in the paths of righ­teous­ness. Yes, even though I walk through the val­ley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for God is with me. Surely good­ness and mercy shall fol­low me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for­ever.

165:2.6“You who would be the un­der­shep­herds of my Fa­ther’s flocks must not only be wor­thy lead­ers, but you must also feed the flock with good food; you are not true shep­herds un­less you lead your flocks into green pas­tures and be­side still wa­ters.

43:6.3Cen­trally lo­cated in this mag­nif­i­cent gar­den is the wor­ship shrine of the Most Highs. The Psalmist must have known some­thing about these things, for he wrote: “Who shall as­cend the hill of the Most Highs? Who shall stand in this holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to van­ity nor sworn de­ceit­fully.” At this shrine the Most Highs, on ev­ery tenth day of re­lax­ation, lead all Eden­tia in the wor­ship­ful con­tem­pla­tion of God the Su­preme.

43:3.3The Psalmist knew that Eden­tia was ruled by three Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers and ac­cord­ingly spoke of their abode in the plu­ral: “There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the most holy place of the taber­na­cles of the Most Highs.”

162:4.4On the last day of the feast al­most four hun­dred and fifty priests with a cor­re­spond­ing num­ber of Levites of­fi­ci­ated. At day­break the pil­grims as­sem­bled from all parts of the city, each car­ry­ing in the right hand a sheaf of myr­tle, wil­low, and palm branches, while in the left hand each one car­ried a branch of the par­a­dise ap­ple—the cit­ron, or the “for­bid­den fruit.” These pil­grims di­vided into three groups for this early morn­ing cer­e­mony. One band re­mained at the tem­ple to at­tend the morn­ing sac­ri­fices; an­other group marched down be­low Je­ru­sa­lem to near Maza to cut the wil­low branches for the adorn­ment of the sac­ri­fi­cial al­tar, while the third group formed a pro­ces­sion to march from the tem­ple be­hind the wa­ter priest, who, to the sound of the sil­very trum­pets, bore the golden pitcher which was to con­tain the sym­bolic wa­ter, out through Ophel to near Siloam, where was lo­cated the foun­tain gate. Af­ter the golden pitcher had been filled at the pool of Siloam, the pro­ces­sion marched back to the tem­ple, en­ter­ing by way of the wa­ter gate and go­ing di­rectly to the court of the priests, where the priest bear­ing the wa­ter pitcher was joined by the priest bear­ing the wine for the drink of­fer­ing. These two priests then re­paired to the sil­ver fun­nels lead­ing to the base of the al­tar and poured the con­tents of the pitch­ers therein. The ex­e­cu­tion of this rite of pour­ing the wine and the wa­ter was the sig­nal for the as­sem­bled pil­grims to be­gin the chant­ing of the Psalms from 113 to 118 in­clu­sive, in al­ter­na­tion with the Levites. And as they re­peated these lines, they would wave their sheaves at the al­tar. Then fol­lowed the sac­ri­fices for the day, as­so­ci­ated with the re­peat­ing of the Psalm for the day, the Psalm for the last day of the feast be­ing the eighty-sec­ond, be­gin­ning with the fifth verse.

43:3.4Down through the ages there has been great con­fu­sion on Uran­tia re­gard­ing the var­i­ous uni­verse rulers. Many later teach­ers con­fused their vague and in­def­i­nite tribal de­i­ties with the Most High Fa­thers. Still later, the He­brews merged all of these ce­les­tial rulers into a com­pos­ite De­ity. One teacher un­der­stood that the Most Highs were not the Su­preme Rulers, for he said, “He who dwells in the se­cret place of the Most High shall abide un­der the shadow of the Al­mighty.” In the Uran­tia rec­ords it is very dif­fi­cult at times to know ex­actly who is re­ferred to by the term “Most High.” But Daniel fully un­der­stood these mat­ters. He said, “The Most High rules in the king­dom of men and gives it to whom­so­ever he will.”

172:3.9Be­fore they started, the Al­pheus twins put their cloaks on the don­key and held him while the Mas­ter got on. As the pro­ces­sion moved to­ward the sum­mit of Oli­vet, the fes­tive crowd threw their gar­ments on the ground and brought branches from the near-by trees in or­der to make a car­pet of honor for the don­key bear­ing the royal Son, the prom­ised Mes­siah. As the merry crowd moved on to­ward Je­ru­sa­lem, they be­gan to sing, or rather to shout in uni­son, the Psalm, “Hosanna to the son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the high­est. Blessed be the king­dom that comes down from heaven.”

179:5.10And they ended this cel­e­bra­tion of the old but blood­less Pass­over in con­nec­tion with the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the new sup­per of the re­mem­brance, by singing, all to­gether, the one hun­dred and eigh­teenth Psalm.

125:0.2Women sel­dom went to the Pass­over feast at Je­ru­sa­lem; they were not re­quired to be pres­ent. Je­sus, how­ever, vir­tu­ally re­fused to go un­less his mother would ac­com­pany them. And when his mother de­cided to go, many other Naz­a­reth women were led to make the jour­ney, so that the Pass­over com­pany con­tained the largest num­ber of women, in pro­por­tion to men, ever to go up to the Pass­over from Naz­a­reth. Ever and anon, on the way to Je­ru­sa­lem, they chanted the one hun­dred and thir­ti­eth Psalm.

181:2.31And then, when they had sung a hymn, they de­parted for the camp on the Mount of Olives.

96:7.3No col­lec­tion of re­li­gious writ­ings gives ex­pres­sion to such a wealth of de­vo­tion and in­spi­ra­tional ideas of God as the Book of Psalms. And it would be very help­ful if, in the pe­rusal of this won­der­ful col­lec­tion of wor­ship­ful lit­er­a­ture, con­sid­er­a­tion could be given to the source and chronol­ogy of each sep­a­rate hymn of praise and ado­ra­tion, bear­ing in mind that no other sin­gle col­lec­tion cov­ers such a great range of time. This Book of Psalms is the rec­ord of the vary­ing con­cepts of God en­ter­tained by the be­liev­ers of the Salem re­li­gion through­out the Lev­ant and em­braces the en­tire pe­riod from Amen­emope to Isa­iah. In the Psalms God is de­picted in all phases of con­cep­tion, from the crude idea of a tribal de­ity to the vastly ex­panded ideal of the later He­brews, wherein Yah­weh is pic­tured as a lov­ing ruler and mer­ci­ful Fa­ther.

96:7.4And when thus re­garded, this group of Psalms con­sti­tutes the most valu­able and help­ful as­sort­ment of de­vo­tional sen­ti­ments ever as­sem­bled by man up to the times of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. The wor­ship­ful spirit of this col­lec­tion of hymns tran­scends that of all other sa­cred books of the world.

162:6.2Je­sus did not in­ter­rupt the ser­vice to speak these words. He ad­dressed the wor­shipers im­me­di­ately af­ter the chant­ing of the Hal­lel, the re­spon­sive read­ing of the Psalms ac­com­pa­nied by wav­ing of the branches be­fore the al­tar. Just here was a pause while the sac­ri­fices were be­ing pre­pared, and it was at this time that the pil­grims heard the fas­ci­nat­ing voice of the Mas­ter de­clare that he was the giver of liv­ing wa­ter to ev­ery spirit-thirst­ing soul.

174:4.6When no more ques­tions were forth­com­ing, and as the noon hour was near, Je­sus did not re­sume his teach­ing but was con­tent merely to ask the Phar­isees and their as­so­ciates a ques­tion. Said Je­sus: “Since you ask no more ques­tions, I would like to ask you one. What do you think of the De­liv­erer? That is, whose son is he?” Af­ter a brief pause one of the scribes an­swered, “The Mes­siah is the son of David.” And since Je­sus knew that there had been much de­bate, even among his own dis­ci­ples, as to whether or not he was the son of David, he asked this fur­ther ques­tion: “If the De­liv­erer is in­deed the son of David, how is it that, in the Psalm which you ac­credit to David, he him­self, speak­ing in the spirit, says, ‘The Lord said to my lord, sit on my right hand un­til I make your en­e­mies the foot­stool of your feet.’ If David calls him Lord, how then can he be his son?” Al­though the rulers, the scribes, and the chief priests made no re­ply to this ques­tion, they like­wise re­frained from ask­ing him any more ques­tions in an ef­fort to en­tan­gle him. They never an­swered this ques­tion which Je­sus put to them, but af­ter the Mas­ter’s death they at­tempted to es­cape the dif­fi­culty by chang­ing the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of this Psalm so as to make it re­fer to Abra­ham in­stead of the Mes­siah. Oth­ers sought to es­cape the dilemma by dis­al­low­ing that David was the au­thor of this so-called Mes­sianic Psalm.

155:1.1Said Je­sus: “You should all re­call how the Psalmist spoke of these times, say­ing, ‘Why do the hea­then rage and the peo­ples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set them­selves, and the rulers of the peo­ple take coun­sel to­gether, against the Lord and against his anointed, say­ing, Let us break the bonds of mercy asun­der and let us cast away the cords of love.’

155:1.2“To­day you see this ful­filled be­fore your eyes. But you shall not see the re­main­der of the Psalmist’s prophecy ful­filled, for he en­ter­tained er­ro­neous ideas about the Son of Man and his mis­sion on earth. My king­dom is founded on love, pro­claimed in mercy, and es­tab­lished by un­selfish ser­vice. My Fa­ther does not sit in heaven laugh­ing in de­ri­sion at the hea­then. He is not wrath­ful in his great dis­plea­sure. True is the prom­ise that the Son shall have these so-called hea­then (in re­al­ity his ig­no­rant and un­taught breth­ren) for an in­her­i­tance. And I will re­ceive these gen­tiles with open arms of mercy and af­fec­tion. All this lov­ing-kind­ness shall be shown the so-called hea­then, not­with­stand­ing the un­for­tu­nate dec­la­ra­tion of the rec­ord which in­ti­mates that the tri­umphant Son ‘shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them to pieces like a pot­ter’s ves­sel.’ The Psalmist ex­horted you to ‘serve the Lord with fear’—I bid you en­ter into the ex­alted priv­i­leges of di­vine son­ship by faith; he com­mands you to re­joice with trem­bling; I bid you re­joice with as­sur­ance. He says, ‘Kiss the Son, lest he be an­gry, and you per­ish when his wrath is kin­dled.’ But you who have lived with me well know that anger and wrath are not a part of the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of heaven in the hearts of men. But the Psalmist did glimpse the true light when, in fin­ish­ing this ex­hor­ta­tion, he said: ‘Blessed are they who put their trust in this Son.’”

165:4.8Then, as the peo­ple went down by the river to wit­ness the bap­tiz­ing, the first man came pri­vately to Je­sus about his in­her­i­tance inas­much as he thought Je­sus had dealt harshly with him; and when the Mas­ter had again heard him, he replied: “My son, why do you miss the op­por­tu­nity to feed upon the bread of life on a day like this in or­der to in­dulge your cov­etous dis­po­si­tion? Do you not know that the Jew­ish laws of in­her­i­tance will be justly ad­min­is­tered if you will go with your com­plaint to the court of the syn­a­gogue? Can you not see that my work has to do with mak­ing sure that you know about your heav­enly in­her­i­tance? Have you not read the Scrip­ture: ‘There is he who waxes rich by his wari­ness and much pinch­ing, and this is the por­tion of his re­ward: Whereas he says, I have found rest and now shall be able to eat con­tin­u­ally of my goods, yet he knows not what time shall bring upon him, and also that he must leave all these things to oth­ers when he dies.’ Have you not read the com­mand­ment: ‘You shall not covet.’ And again, ‘They have eaten and filled them­selves and waxed fat, and then did they turn to other gods.’ Have you read in the Psalms that ‘the Lord ab­hors the cov­etous,’ and that ‘the lit­tle a righ­teous man has is bet­ter than the riches of many wicked.’ ‘If riches in­crease, set not your heart upon them.’ Have you read where Jeremiah said, ‘Let not the rich man glory in his riches’; and Eze­kiel spoke truth when he said, ‘With their mouths they make a show of love, but their hearts are set upon their own self­ish gain.’”

96:7.2The Psalms are the work of a score or more of au­thors; many were writ­ten by Egyp­tian and Mes­o­po­ta­mian teach­ers. Dur­ing these times when the Lev­ant wor­shiped na­ture gods, there were still a goodly num­ber who be­lieved in the su­prem­acy of El Elyon, the Most High.

95:1.10It was the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies of the pe­riod fol­low­ing the re­jec­tion of their teach­ing who wrote many of the Old Tes­ta­ment Psalms, in­scrib­ing them on stone, where later-day He­brew priests found them dur­ing the cap­tiv­ity and sub­se­quently in­cor­po­rated them among the col­lec­tion of hymns as­cribed to Jew­ish au­thor­ship. These beau­ti­ful psalms from Baby­lon were not writ­ten in the tem­ples of Bel-Mar­duk; they were the work of the de­scen­dants of the ear­lier Salem mis­sion­ar­ies, and they are a strik­ing con­trast to the mag­i­cal con­glom­er­a­tions of the Baby­lo­nian priests. The Book of Job is a fairly good re­flec­tion of the teach­ings of the Salem school at Kish and through­out Mes­o­po­ta­mia.