Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the different kinds of literature that we find in your word. And we thank you especially for the Psalms. And we pray as we continue to try to understand what the Psalms are communicating and the things that you want us to know and learn from them. We pray for your continued strength as we do so. And Lord, we are thankful that you bid us to know you in a very all-encompassing and whole person kind of way. And so we pray these things then in Christ's name. Amen. All right. Well, last week, we began our look at this study. We started by covering some of the different terms that we see in the Psalter. And I continued to do some reading and studying and preparing for preaching through the Psalter. At least, we're going to start with book one anyway. And so I'm learning more of this as we go along. And maybe I should say, I'm learning maybe a better way of presenting this. And in addition to that, since so many of these terms are unfamiliar to us, and so many of them are either just obscure or uncertain, or to put it this way, many of our translations just keep the Hebrew word in the opening of the Psalms. I thought maybe it'd be good for us to go over it again, and maybe I think I found a little better way of presenting it. And of course, since some of you weren't here, it'd be good for you to hear these things again anyway. So, or for the first time, I should say. So we started with the most basic word here, and that is psalm. And it comes from the Greek word, actually, psalmas. And that's why we spell it this way. P-S is this letter here, and then A-L-M, psalm. And of course, we have the silent P. Now, in Greek, it refers to a stringed instrument. And so whenever you see a psalm, you automatically think that this has music. And so if you look at the titles or the superscriptions, depending on which term you hear people use in that way, at the very beginning of the psalm, it'll have this word sometimes, psalm. And in the Hebrew, it's this word right here, mizmor. Mizmor, and it's translated as psalm. It's used 57 times. And so you see it in all kinds of ways. Sometimes it just says a psalm. Many of them are a psalm of David. We have a psalm of the sons of Korah, a psalm of Asaph, and so forth. Now, here's the Latin word, psalmus, and so it just keeps coming into English in this way. Now, our other key word here, then, is right here, shir. And this word is translated as psalm. Now, mismore is specifically referring to musical accompaniment. In fact, the word means to pluck. So you pluck a stringed instrument. And so when you have the word mismore, again back to the word song, we're talking about a stringed instrument, plucking it, using it with the poem. The word for sheer is more general. It has a, if you will, a freer meaning to it. And so sometimes it can have accompaniment with it, but not always. And it's also a more general term. So you see it in the title or the superscription, but you also see it within psalms, where we're told to sing a song to the Lord or something like that. So these are the two key ones. Now what I thought I would do here next is more or less and put them a little bit in some categories, which I think will help us maybe to remember these a little bit better. And there are a few more that I've decided to include, and also another category. So anyway, starting right here, these are the kinds of songs And the first two, the big two, are mizmor and shir, or psalm and song. Now the other one that we see is maskil. You'll see that in your superscription, a maskil of David or something like that. Now the term here has the meaning of insight. with insight is the literal meaning of the word. And so what we believe here then is this was a wisdom song put to music. So it's, you might say Psalm 1, but of course that one doesn't have a title, but that could be considered a mass scale. It's a wisdom song. The next one is the Mic Tom. And these are all by David, actually. And it means an inscription. Now, the question is, what exactly does that mean? Some have suggested that it was an inscription actually written into stone and used as an official psalm for the king. But we're not totally sure on it. But these are by David. Now, another kind of psalm is what's called the tefillah. These two typically are not translated for us, right? The maskil and the miktam. Tefillah usually is translated in our English Bibles and is translated as a prayer. As a prayer. So, Psalm 17, Psalm 86, Psalm 90. These are prayers and It's hard to categorize in a comprehensive way. But often they're associated with a lament or calling on God to forgive. The next one is Tehillah. And this term, again, is often translated. And it's translated, you'll see it as song or praise. I think the best way of saying it is a song of praise, putting the whole meaning there together. A song of praise. So seven, you see it seven times in the Psalter. Now there's a couple other terms here. I'll write it right here. A shigion. You often see this one not translated, because we're not totally sure what it means. And so in Psalm 7, for example, you'll see there the shigion. Again, this one is probably associated with lamenting, or at least having great emotion is probably the meaning of it. And then related to this, and this is one of the new ones from last week, is higion, to basically take Take the S off the front. And again, there's uncertainty here, but we think this one probably refers to a quieter song, or at least the accompaniment is done quietly. It clearly refers to great melody and harmony, so it's definitely intended to be sung, to have music with it. All right, and then two that I had from last time. This one is usually translated, L'chazkir. L'chazkir. And that's usually translated, something to do with remembering. Memorial offering, or a memorial, or something like that, depending on your translation. And then the last one here in this category is the Letho Dah. And this one sometimes is translated into English, sometimes not. But it has to do with teaching. We see it in Psalm 60. So there's 10 of them here. These are the kinds of psalms that we see. Again, these two right here at the top, mizmor and sheer, or a psalm and a song, this is what we see quite a bit. You can see some of the numbers there. I erased this one. This one's 57 times, and the other is 70 times in the Psalter. Used quite a bit. All right, now, let me pause and just say this here. The better we understand these things, the better we're going to understand the psalm itself. They're put there for a reason, to help us to understand what this was used for and what some of the intentions are behind it. Now, some of it we are guessing a little bit, and so we need to look at the content of the psalm most of all, of course. These opening things in the title do give us some direction in our understanding and interpretation. All right, now these are the kinds that we see. Now there's another category here. And maybe I'll do this here. Kinds of instruments that are used in the songs. And there's actually seven different words used here. Now, didn't that tell us something right away about those who say we shouldn't use any instruments in our singing? There are seven different kinds of words used for instruments. The first one here is semith. And if it's translated, it's usually having something to do with the number eight. And many people suggest that this was an eight-stringed instrument. Some others suggested maybe it was an eight-bar melody that would be repeated or something like that. But if it is an eight-stringed instrument, it probably refers to the higher register of the musical scales. and so higher notes. Now the other one is ytith. Now this is actually the Hebrew word for gath. Now the Hebrew word for gath can refer to the place, but it also can refer to wine. So you'll have some different interpretations here, but most likely this is referring to an instrument made in gath. We don't know anything more about this instrument, but we believe it was made in Gath and therefore used here in these songs. The next one here is Nehaloth. Again, sometimes this is translated, sometimes it's just left as that transliteration. And we believe this refers to a flute. Most of your psalms, remember the word psalm, here, mizmor, means a stringed instrument. And so most of them are that. But here, actually, we have a flute being used. Now, probably not the normal flute like we think of today, or the piccolo or something, but more of a pan flute, we might call it. Then, another term which usually is just left in the Hebrew, translated Allomoth. Allomoth. Now, again, there's some guesswork going on here. We're not sure about some of these things, but it probably is referring to the treble clef. So again, a higher range instrument here. A higher pitched instrument. So you might think of the violin in comparison to the cello, or something to that effect. Another one we see is mahalaf. Mahalaf. This also is a flute, possibly a pipe. Where's Noah this morning in his little thing he blows? I forget what he calls that. Something like that, possibly. And now there's a related word here. And then the other term that goes with it is leanof. Now this term we think probably refers to some kind of antiphonal response. Now who knows what an antiphonal response is? Yeah. Yep. Yep. Or instruments playing back and forth. And that's the question. Is it singing back and forth here? Like say, you know, if I were to take this spot right here, you guys sing one part and you guys respond to that. Or something to that effect. That's an intifinal kind of singing. You can do the same thing with instruments. And so that's what, where the question really lies. Is it singing or instruments? And then the last one, Neganah. And again, some of your translations will just keep the transliterated Hebrew. Some of you will translate it possibly as a lyre, L-Y-R-E. It is a stringed instrument, but some will say a lyre. So as I'm trying to group these together, hopefully it helps us to see these terms. So again, these 10 are the kinds of songs that we see in the Psalter, and these two especially. And then the kinds of instruments are these. All right, then the next category And the most significant one here is the one I mentioned last time, and that is, sorry, I'm used to doing all this, so give me a minute to translate it right here for us. All right, well, let's say, in other words, it's translated as the choir director or the chief musician, okay? And so this is found 55 times in the Psalter. So it's obviously very significant. And you think maybe of Asaph or Haman or some of these other men who were put in charge of singing, probably referring to them or someone like them. Some have suggested that the poem written, say, by David was given to this choir master to put to music. Others say, no, David had maybe a melody, he had the basic structure of the song, and the choir director maybe developed it, and so forth. Others say that David had it all figured out, and it's just now the choir director is leading the congregation in song. Whichever it is, and it probably was a variety of these things, we have the chief musician as a significant part of the Psalter. All right, now let's look at some of these. Most of what we did here, we looked at the passages last week. So let's look at some things I did not include last week. And so first, let's turn to Psalm 45. and this other category. Alright, two things here in this case. Two things. Notice here in the superscription to the chief musician, okay? Set to the lilies. Now, most likely, this is some guesswork, but we think that it's the tune that they used. So like if we look at our hymnals, you see in the bottom right of the hymn, the tune that we use for that particular hymn. And so this one was set to the tune called The Lilies. Now we also see it used in Psalm 69, Psalm 80, and Psalm 60. But here is one. Then notice also, It's called a contemplation, or that's the Hebrew word, maskil, right here. So your translation may have maskil. Here, the New King James translates it, a contemplation. Remember, I told you here that the maskil has to do with putting insight, wisdom, put to music. is the idea here. And then at the end it says a song of love. Your translation may actually call this a wedding song. And so here now we're told it's used specifically for weddings. So whatever this tune was, it was used for a wedding. So we have this indication for us. All right, now let's turn to Psalm 62. All right, now notice it says here to the chief musician, again, and then it says to Jedith, and then it says the Psalm of David. So Psalm here would be Mismore, right? So it's intended to be put with instruments. And David, of course, wrote it. And so to Jedithon. Now, Jedithon is one of David's temple singers. So I'm going to spend some time later here in the next couple weeks or something looking at that passage of the temple singers that David appointed. And so he was one of them. Now, how does that work? You have to the chief musician, and you have to Jedithan. Maybe Jedithan was the chief musician at the time. Maybe he worked with his chief musician. We don't know for sure. Maybe this is one of the tunes that Jedithan wrote. So there's guesswork here. But anyway, note his name. You also see it in Psalm 77. All right, now let's go, well, let's just work our way backward here. If you turn to Psalm 59, notice again to the chief musician, set to do not destroy, and that, we believe, is a tune. Do not destroy us, our Lord, show us grace. That's the idea. Notice it's a mictom now. So we have this term, something more official. And then you have a little history given here, when Saul sent men and they watched the house in order to kill him. So do not destroy me, Lord. Help me. You'll see that Do Not Destroy tune four different times. Psalms 57, 8, and 9, and Psalm 75. If you turn to Psalm 56, here's another tune, we believe. Psalm 56 to the chief musician. Set to the silent dove in distant lands. And your translation may have that a little bit differently. But again, we think this is probably a tune that they used. Then we did that one. Let's turn to Psalm 22. Now Psalm 22 is of course an important one because this is The one we see referenced in the New Testament, especially in regard to Christ, was Psalm 69. There's the cross and so on. But here in Psalm 22, notice it says, to the chief musician, set to the deer of the dawn, the psalm of David. So a mizmor, again, obviously that means, psalm means put it to music, put it to stringed instruments in particular. And this probably is a different tune, the deer of the dawn. And then, one more here in this way, Psalm 9. Psalm 9 to the chief musician, to the tune of Death of the Son. Again, your translation may keep that in Hebrew, may say something a little bit different there. Again, a Psalm of David, so put the stringed instruments. This is probably the tune that is used. Some have even suggested it was sung by a boys choir. Do you see how much variety there is here? The Psalms aren't just uniform. It's kind of like our hymnal. There's a variety of things that we see here in this altar. And then one more in this other category. Here I'll just summarize what we just did with this. Tunes. Let's turn to Psalm 120. And this one you've probably noticed before. In Psalm 120 through Psalm 134, we begin with a song of ascents. Song of Ascent. So these 15 songs, Psalm 120 to Psalm 134, were used in this way. Now, most likely what this means is they sung them on their way to Jerusalem as they ascended up the mountain to Mount Zion to worship there, probably in association with one of the feasts, like Passover or something. And some say it was more specific that they sung it on the 15 steps that went from the court of women up to the court of men. That's a lot of speculation there. What we can say is that they used it as they came to Jerusalem, and so on. So we see some of these other things. Now, the last one is, of course, Selah. We often anglicize it to hear people say Sela or something like that, but Sela is how you pronounce it in the Hebrew anyway. And we don't really know what this means, but the greatest indication is that it's probably referring to some kind of interlude, some kind of break. Either a break in the singing of it, or a musical interlude, therefore, or it's a liturgical response during this break. So wherever we see selah, someone would respond with some liturgical response, like hallelujah, or something to that effect. So those are the two primary guesses that people have for the interlude, either a musical interlude or this liturgical response. It's found 71 times in the Salters, so it's used a fair amount. Okay, so I gave you a few additional things from last week, and also put it in these categories, which at least it helped me to keep them straight better. Hopefully it does you, too. And so again, these ten are the kinds of songs, these seven are the kinds of instruments, and then you have these other things. And a lot of them are the chief musician and the tunes, and then the song of ascents and the sailor. Okay, questions, comments to this point? Yeah, Joe. Title, superscription are the two terms we use there, yeah. Yeah, at least for some of them, yes. Now I don't disagree with Paul, I do think that we retain things better when we have a separate tune for each poem. But, that isn't always possible. And so, obviously in our hymnal we have some tunes that are used several different times. Yeah, Heather, did I see your hand? That is a very good question, because meter in Hebrew is very imprecise. Certain things, like for example, the lament psalms, tend to follow more of a standard meter than something else. So this is maybe in part why we don't see every one of these psalms with a tune with it, because they don't follow as strict of a meter. That's what we're used to, obviously. But they didn't see that as important for them. at least not for every one of them. So for the ones where we see a tune, especially for multiple songs, that leads us to think there's going to be more of a consistent meter from one to the next. We'll talk more about what was most common, and that is the rhyming of ideas in Hebrew. And there is meter in places. It's just not throughout the whole song. And for some songs, not really any at all. So I might say free verse or something in English. Other? Yeah, Matthew. They don't have any? Not every psalm has a superscription. So it might depend on which one you're looking at. Did it have it like in verse 1? It didn't have any of it. Well, I'm going to address this a little bit later, but I'll say this now. There is some debate on whether or not these superscriptions are scripture or something that was added years later and should not be considered scripture. I'll give you some of the reasons why, but I think we should consider them as scripture. And so we should, when we're studying that psalm, we should take that very much into account in our interpretation. Alright, other? Yes, Emma. Well, let's look here a moment. Let's turn to Psalm 6. Psalm 6, it says, an eight-stringed harp. That's how the New King James translates that word. That's shemineth. That eight-string, probably what it means. In Psalm 4, it just simply says, with stringed instruments. In Psalm 8, this is the word gteeth, an instrument of gath. So for the seven that I list there for you, they are found. Those terms are found in the Psalms. The question is, what exactly are they? That's where the question arises. We know they were instruments. We just don't know exactly what they were. And so a stringed instrument, what is that? Well, it's probably a lyre, but maybe it's a harp. So that's where the debate comes in. There are things outside of the scriptures that gives us some direction, too. But at least with some of these, there's just not a lot of information. So we're doing our best guessing here on that. Yeah? They can. They can't. So when you see both of them together, for example, then you know that it was intended to be sung with instruments. Now this is going to assume that anyway. But you often will see both terms together that make it clear. And if the term song means a little more free form, then it's maybe not quite so rigid. Maybe the meter is a little bit more random. You know, those kind of things. Again, we're guessing somewhat on what exactly it means. I don't know if I answered your question there, but at least it gives us some direction in this way. All right, now, Michelle asked a question at the end last week, and I want to expand on my brief response. It was right at the end of our hour last week. And so let me start by saying this. Whenever we talk about the psalms, don't use the term psalms with an S on the end to refer to one psalm. You often hear people say, well, in Psalms 23, we learn that the Lord is our shepherd. Well, Psalms with an S means more than one psalm. And so Psalm 23 refers to a particular psalm. So anyway, just a correction in terms of our grammar and such there. So let me put here a singular psalm. Psalms would be plural. Now the other term that we use here is the Psalter. The Psalter is another way of referring to the whole of the Psalms. So all 150, the Psalter is used. All right. Now let me read something here. Let me see if I can find it. Here we go. As would be the case in any hymnal, the text of the Book of Psalms also contains instructions on orchestration, which tune to use to perform a psalm, the appropriate tempo, as well as performance markings or rubrics, such as pauses, breath marks, and the use of crescendo and decrescendo modulations. In modern music, much of this information is written in Italian or Latin. A musician or singer must learn these technical terms in order to perform the music properly. However, 2,000 years from now, the meaning of many of these terms may well be lost to memory. It is not surprising, therefore, to discover that we cannot translate and do not fully understand some of the technical terms that appear in the superscriptions of the songs. That was a nice summary of what I'm trying to say. We think this is what it means, but we're 3,000 years removed from any of these songs, so we're just not sure about some of it. But what we can say is, as much as we are able to understand, we should try to do it. God gave us these terms to try to understand what he has revealed to us. This is his word. And so let's do our best to do that. But, at the very least, what we can learn are some general principles here. There's a lot of variety here, isn't there? God's not boring when it comes to worship. There's variety, and even in our hymnal, there's all kinds of variety. And so you have some that are more spirituals, hymns for children, we sometimes call some of these, and hymns for adults. Some are more, if you will, choir-like. Sing choirs in New Jerusalem would be one like that. It's a little more complicated for us to sing. Some have refrains, some don't. Some are short and sweet, some are very long. Some focus on history of the text. You think of the resurrection here from last week, or Christmas. There's just a variety, even within our hymnal. And that's mimicking what we see here. Variety in the Psalter, yes. What are spirituals? These are songs that really came from the black slaves from the South, primarily. And so they would sing them while they were working and singing of a better life to come. It's often the theme. But musically, they're usually very simple. Not very complex at all. Even the words tend to be very repetitive. And that's part of the variety. We can learn from that. Notice what this tells us about our God. Our God likes music. He likes poetry. He likes singing. He likes instruments. not just propositions in the abstract, which is an important point for those of us in the reform tradition. We tend to think in the abstract with lots of propositions, which we need to do that. But God does much more than that. And what we see here is, if you will, the artsy side of God, so to speak. Not just the logical lawyer side of God or something to that effect. And that's very important for us. Again, in our reformed circles, we tend to shy away from emotions and feelings and so forth. But here they are in the Psalter with lots of variety. And so God is concerned with right beliefs, absolutely. He's also concerned about our emotions and our feelings, and having a deep, personal, can you say, existential relationship with Him. Now we don't need to go to Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard here, but there is an existential relationship that we have with God, as long as it's controlled by right beliefs. God likes wordsmiths. All the poetry seen here. I've been focusing, these terms emphasize the musical end of things, but obviously these are all poems. Those who artfully use words. God likes that. He likes variety and creativity. Different instruments, and as I said a little bit ago, because of those seven over there, and even these terms here especially, Singing a cappella is a good thing. We learn a lot by singing a cappella. We learn to listen to each other, and there's a lot of benefits from that. And it's very beautiful, too. But we can't then say that the next step that we should not use instruments in our singing. local college here that Michelle is familiar with. Sing psalms only, and at least in chapel, at least now, I don't know if it was when you were there, there was no instrumentation. Now I think that maybe helpful to some degree, but I don't think we can require it based on what we see here in this summary. So I'm referring to Geneva College there and the Reformed Presbyterian approach to some of these things. All right. Now, any comments or questions here? Now because we are, generally speaking, 3,000 years after when these things were written, we don't have the music of the Psalms, the actual music. We don't have the melodies, the harmonizations, any of those kind of things. And so, direction on musical style, chord progressions, melodies and harmonizations. We need to go, you might say, somewhere else to give us direction on what the scripture might give us in terms of how to do that. Some of it, I think, is left up to general revelation. But I think there are some things in special revelation that guide us, especially in regard to our corporate worship. So Paul gives us some direction in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5. And Beth, are you getting up to ding me? OK. All right. So that's where we'll go next time. Paul does give us some helpful teaching in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5 about some general things in regard to making melody in our hearts, singing to the Lord. I want to look at that just briefly next, and then we'll move on after that to some of the questions that I often ask when I start a new book, and that is, who wrote it, when was it written, and some of those kind of things. And so, we'll look at that, we'll look more at the superscriptions, and then we'll look at the kinds of Psalms in the way we categorize them, and not using these Hebrew terms. And then we'll look at some of the elements of poetry, just so that we can understand Hebrew parallelism in particular. We'll look at some other things, and we'll also use O. Palmer Robertson's book on what he calls the flow of the songs. And he looks at how the Psalter is arranged, which is very helpful for us. So that's where I'm headed and by that time we should be finished with Acts and starting on Psalm 1. So this is a little heads up to where I'm headed on this. So let's pray together. Our Lord and our God, we thank you for your word and for the Psalter especially. Lord, we thank you for all this variety and what it teaches about you, what it teaches us about worship and the kind of worship that you desire. We thank you for this and may we expand in our our thinking and in our living, especially of those of us who may not be as musically oriented, may we learn from this and to adapt some of these things. Lord, we pray that through this study, we would not just fill our minds, but then improve on our worship, improve on our relationship with you. Lord, we pray now as we come to our corporate worship, that you would strengthen us here in these ways. We would use the means of grace, and especially as we sing your praises and sing to one another, that you would be honored and glorified in it. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.