judaism

Another reviewer has already described the book's format and brilliance, so I won't do that. But what struck me as unique about this book is how Sarna compares Psalms and pagan equivalents -- that is, how Jews took the old bottles of pagan concepts and figures of speech, but filled them with the new wine of monotheistic theology. For example, Sarna points out that Mesopotamian prayers speak of pagan sun gods as resting at the end of the day, and as a runner traversing heaven and earth. Psalms 19:5-7 similarly describes the sun, but makes it clear that the sun's "running" and "resting" is one of the miracles of God's creation rather than the behavior of an independent sun-god. Reading Sarna, I could almost imagine the lights going on in Hebrew heads as they thought: "Well, it's all very well and good for my sun-worshipping neighbors to say that the sun runs around the sky -- but who created the sun?"

Believe it or not, it's hard to find a good commentary on the Book of Psalms. I screen for two things--books that are too "spiritual" and books that are too "Christian" ("Christological," to be more precise). As far as spirituality goes, I feel fully cabable of having my own spiritual or devotional response to the Psalms. I don't need books to tell me how to feel. (One of the truly amazing things about the Psalms is that they evoke different responses every time one reads them.) Nor do I need books that explain away the uglier aspects of the psalms, such as the powerful vengeance motif found in Psalm 137:8,9 ("Happy are those who pay you [Babylon] back for what you have done to us--who take your babies and smash them against a rock.") Similarly, while I enjoy hearing psalms read in church and understand that part of what Christians know and believe about Jesus Christ is based on the way the first Christians read and understood the Psalms, I do not have a compelling need to see every verse of every psalm as a one-way vector pointing to Christ.

Sarna's book consists of a short introduction (20 pages) and commentary on a mere ten psalms (1, 8, 19, 15, 24, 30, 48, 82, 93, and 94). But as limited as this selection is, Sarna is able to introduce us to a good range of biblical themes and to equip us to continue our exploration of the Psalms on our own. Sarna is an excellent biblical scholar and the author of the Genesis and Exodus volumes in the Jewish Publication Society's Torah Commentary Series. He appreciates the psalms as ancient texts that share traits with other writings from the ancient Near East. Any intelligent, open-minded Jew or Christian looking for a way to deepen his or her own experience of reading the psalms need not fear that Sarna has an agenda to dismantle their faith and debunk everything they treasure. The grounding and context that Sarna provides will only enrich your psalm-reading experience.

If you have never read the Psalms all the way through, start with this book. It's only 200 pages long (excluding endnotes), but it tells you everything you need to know to get started. Hopefully, one day Sarna will publish commentary on the other one hundred forty Psalms.