Peter Craigie demonstrates in this commentary that the biblical psalms express “the most profound of human feelings and insights—prayer, praise, liturgy, wisdom and lament.” Through careful analysis of language and form, he communicates both the emotional and theological impact of the psalms as originally experienced by the people of Israel at public worship and in private devotions.
Professor Craigie’s translations and interpretations of each of the first fifty psalms apply insights into the Hebrew language and Israel’s literature drawn from Ugaritic texts. He provides a careful and critical analysis of various controversial proposals based on these sources for understanding the early substance and later form of the Psalter.
This revision of WBC 19 by Marvin Tate preserves all of Professor Craigie’s original exposition and augments it with an extensive supplement that updates the bibliographies and documents the explosive growth in Psalm studies in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Professor Tate’s comprehensive additions survey and evaluate new trends in the scholarship on:
• Hebrew Poetry
• Psalms Exegesis
• The Nature of the Psalter
The psalms are central parts of the worshiping life of Jewish and Christian communities, and are the roots of the musical heritage of both traditions. Dr. Craigie’s and Dr. Tate’s careful analyses will give the reader a new appreciation of the reality that life and faith, history and liturgy, and struggle and prayer are inseparable in the life of the people of God.
PETER C. CRAIGIE was Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Calgary at the time of his death in 1985. His publications in Old Testament studies included The Book of Deuteronomy (Eerdmans and Hodder & Stoughton, 1976) and The Problem of War in the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1978), as well as numerous articles on Ugaritic studies.
MARVIN E. TATE is Senior Professor of Old Testament Interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY. His publications include Psalms 51–100, vol. 20 in the Word Biblical Commentary series.