Keeping score

[aron]

Originally Posted by OBW

Given the format of the Psalms, it is likely that everything there was drafted and edited to meet the requirements of their poetry. And since the content is so meaningful and not just random stuff thrown together, it is likely that each writer spent a good bit of time before any one Psalm was finished.

Some of the Psalms seem hasty, spontaneous, or shall we say, "inspired". Look at the heading of Psalm 57: "A psalm of David, when he hid in a cave, while Saul's men looked for him". If anything sounds spontaneous it is that.

But even that undoubtedly went through a redacting process, even started by David himself. Anyone who's tried to write a song or a poem knows this. The amount of work to make it flow, and make it move naturally through your lips and tongue, can be substantial.

And the order: why did Absalom's rebellion get into Psalm 3? Chronologically it didn't fit. But if you look at Psalm 1 as a principle of right living (fulfilled by Jesus), Psalm 2 presents the righteous king (again, Jesus the Nazarene), and lo and behold Psalm 3 comes along with rebellion and usurpation! Surprise, surprise!

I don't think the composition was as spontaneous as we might imagine, nor was the arrangement doe randomly. To go back to my mantra on WL and the Psalms, these texts were ignored because we didn't understand them, not because they lacked value. It's Aesop's story of the fox and the grapes, all over again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes

And to turn our "careful composition" theme to the NT, I recently realized just how powerful those boilerplate Christian verses actually were, and perhaps how they came to be written. Think about the apostle John, and all the nonsense he had heard over the years. So when he composed the fourth gospel, he was shooting bullets right into the heart of darkness itself. "God loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son, that all of us who believe might not perish, but have eternal life". Think how much ignorant speculation which that statement would have removed!

Likewise, I always thought of John's "Revelation" as if he awoke one day, from "being in spirit", and there was a document on the table in front of him! Today I see it as a very careful composition, resulting from years and years of scripture study, prayer, contemplation, and hard experiences. John had likely been the un-named second disciple in chapter one of his own gospel, walking with the Baptiser. John knew the high priest (Jo 18:15,16); he went through everything with Jesus, and then what followed. He saw Paul come, and then go. He saw the Spirit's power, and the degradation that crept in behind. So when one day on Patmos the Spirit said to him, "What you see, write, and send to the seven churches in Asia", there was a LOT there to write! These were very tightly woven compositions. We can spend our lifetimes teasing them apart. And we should. I argue that the High Peak lies in the distance. To say we have arrived is to sit down in the wilderness and to refuse to go on.

These texts are a true garden of delights. They are living words. They come from God. They will take you beyond your dreams. You cannot exhaust them. They are truly "without measure". And yes, they testify concerning Jesus (Jo 5:39); in fact that is the whole point.