The Message of the Psalms

The Message of the Psalms, Walter Brueggemann. Augsburg Fortress. (ISBN: 9780806621203) 1985.

Summary: Provides a framework of orientation, disorientation, and new orientation as a rubric for reading the Psalms.

A number of studies of the Psalms focus on particular genres to classify the Psalms. For example, they identify psalms of praise, of lament, or kingship psalms and others. They identify the format of each of these psalms. Walter Brueggemann does something very different in this work. He identifies three broad categories with five or six subtypes each. The categories are psalms of orientation, disorientation, and new orientation. They trace a movement from a sense of well-being rooted in creation and reflected in a stable sense of God’s provision, to seasons of anguish, suffering, loss and God’s “distance,” and finally in the emergence from despair into a transformed experience of God’s light on the other side of darkness.

For each of these categories, Brueggemann begins with a brief section explicating the category. Then, under each of the subcategories, Brueggemann walks us through representative Psalms. This is best read with the Psalms at hand, allowing you to follow Brueggemann’s explanations. This also helps you see the distinctive forms of each kind of psalm.

Psalms of Orientation include songs of creation, songs of Torah, wisdom psalms, songs or retribution, and occasions of well being. Then Psalms of Disorientation include personal laments, communal laments, two problem psalms (88, 109), two psalms where God is the speaker (50, 81), and a group of “seven psalms” (he focuses on 32, 51, 143, 130). He concludes Psalms of Disorientation with a “After the Deluge–Thou” on Psalms 49, 90, and 73. Finally, Psalms of New Orientation include personal and community thanksgiving, the once and future king, thanksgiving generalized to confidence, and hymns of praise.

Several emphases stood out to me. Firstly, he highlights lament at a time when this is absent in much of worship. Secondly, in the psalms where God speaks, he drives home the idea that when we fail to honor God (the first tablet of the commandments) we will also neglect the second tablet of our neighbor relations. Brueggemann roots his vision of justice in the proper fear of the Lord. Finally, he concludes his book by arguing that theodicy underlies this schema that shapes both our worship of God and our ordering of society (i.e. we cannot worship a God we claim is good and just and tolerate unjust evil in our society).

But the greatest strength of this work is that it traces an arc, or perhaps a spiral of spiritual life captured in the Psalms. Spiritual life is not static. We move from confident faith to anguished questions and doubts and hopefully emerge to a greater depth of love and trust. And we do this over and over again through our lives. Orientation, disorientation, and new orientation gives us a not only a rubric for the Psalms. It connects to and gives meaning to our experience of life.