The evidence throughout the history of revelation is the same: Songs of lament, thanks, or praise are the ongoing response to divine acts and perfections. When God acts in judgment or deliverance, his people reply in lament, thanksgiving, or praise, as befits the situation. The Lord is not only great, but “greatly to be praised” (1 Chron. 16:25; Ps. 48:1; 96:4; 145:3). Each of his great attributes and each of his great acts is to be greatly praised. The notion that his greatest acts—the incarnation, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of his Son—would be greeted mutely is contrary to the entire pattern of act-and-praise disclosed across biblical history, and is indeed contrary to the evidence of the New Testament. 

The Reformed tradition has been somewhat more hesitant to employ Christian hymns in worship than the Lutheran tradition. Ulrich Zwingli removed all music from worship entirely, so Calvin’s effort to restore the singing of praise had to proceed somewhat cautiously. Calvin himself was not an exclusive psalmist: his Strasburg liturgy included musical settings of the Decalogue, the Apostle’s Creed, and the Nunc Dimittis.[1] He was, however, a vigorous proponent of metrical versions of the Psalms, and the Reformed tradition has always been very friendly to such. Exclusive psalmody, however, is now a fairly small minority report of the Reformed tradition; Isaac Watts altered the Reformed tradition substantially on that point. I myself not only do not believe in exclusive psalmody, I believe it was an extremely late development in Christianity, and that not even the Old Testament saints were exclusive psalmists. What follows is an abbreviated discussion of the five grounds on which I conclude that even the Israelites were not exclusive psalmists.

THE LEXICAL ISSUE

“The Psalms” is an unfortunate designation for this body of literature, because there is no secular equivalent in our speech to “psalms.” For us, “psalms” are always “the canonical Psalms.” Other terms could be used, and/or have been used, that might be more helpful. We could refer to them, as our Hebrew text and Jewish friends do, as “Praises.” In the Hebrew Bible, the title to our “Psalms” is תהלים, “praises.” The Psalter also employs the term self-referentially in a number of places:

Ps. 22:3 Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises (‎תְּהִלּוֹת) of Israel.

Ps. 40:3 He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise (‎תְּהִלָּה) to our God.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

Ps. 51:15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise (‎תְּהִלָּתֶךָ). ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

Ps. 65:1 Praise (‎תְהִלָּה) is due to you, O God, in Zion, and to you shall vows be performed.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

Ps. 145:21 My mouth will speak the praise (‎תְּהִלַּת) of the LORD, and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

Insofar as Psalms recount and celebrate the praise-worthy character and deeds of God, they are properly called “praises.” In my handy little volume by Rabbi Avrohom Davis, The Metsudah Tehillim, which provides the Hebrew and English of the Psalter in parallel columns, Rabbi Davis says this: “Sefer Tehillim is often referred to as the Book of Psalms. A more precise translation of the word תהלים is praises, the plural of the word תְהִלָּה. We should therefore refer to this work as the Book of Praises. The book was named because so many of its words express David’s praise of God.”[2] Indeed, the noun is formed from the verb הלל, which means to praise or extol. So the Psalter itself does not refer to itself by a term that suggests a fixed or determined canonical reality, the way our expression “The Psalms” does. It refers to itself by the ordinary term for “praises.”[3] I do not suggest that this evidence is conclusive, because the term could conceivably refer to a fixed group of praises. I do suggest, however, that the natural reading of the Hebrew permits a much more open-ended collection of praises than does our English expression “The Psalms” does.

Even more significant, lexically, is that some of the psalms refer to themselves as “prayers” (LXX, προσευχὴ, ᾠδὴ or ὕμνος):

Ps. 17:1 A Prayer (תפלה) of David (LXX, προσευχὴ τοῦ Δαυιδ)

Ps. 42:8 By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song (>שירה, LXX ᾠδὴ) is with me, a prayer (תפלה, LXX προσευχὴ) to the God of my life.

Ps. 72:20 The prayers (תפלות) of David, the son of Jesse, are ended (ἐξέλιπον οἱ ὕμνοι Δαυιδ τοῦ υἱοῦ Ιεσσαι).

Ps. 85:1 A Prayer of David (προσευχὴ τῷ Δαυιδ)

Ps. 89:1 A Prayer of Moses, the man of God (προσευχὴ τοῦ Μωυσῆ ἀνθρώπου τοῦ θεοῦ)

If we referred to these biblical psalms as “prayers,” since so many are addressed to God, would any of us consider being “exclusive pray-ers”? Would anyone seriously consider praying only the prayers found in the canonical Psalter?

Further, the term “psalm” (ψαλμὸς) is not restricted in the OT to the collection that we would call the canonical Psalms. Other prayers and praises are referred to by this designation.

1 Sam. 16:18 One of the young men answered, “Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing (εἰδότα ψαλμόν, lit., “who knows psalm”), a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence, and the LORD is with him.”

Note that, at this point in David’s career, he is “skillful in playing,” but has not yet written any of what we would later call “the Psalms.” So he did not know (εἰδότα) “the Psalms”; he knew how to play an accompanying instrument. Indeed, this is how the term is employed in Job, to refer to a musical instrument:

Job 21:12 They sing to the tambourine and the lyre and rejoice to the sound of the pipe (φωνῇ ψαλμοῦ).

Job 30:31 My lyre is turned to mourning, and my pipe (ὁ δὲ ψαλμός μου) to the voice of those who weep.[4]

Lexically, then, not any of the language employed in the OT suggests what our English “The Psalms” does, to wit: a fixed collection of prayers or praises. It refers much more openly, to lyrical music that may be accompanied with an instrument.

OT SONGS NOT IN THE PSALTER

As Douglas O’Donnell has documented, there are a number of prominent songs recorded in the Old Testament that are not in the Psalter.[5] Two “songs of Moses” are recorded in the Old Testament (Exod. 15 and Deut. 32), the Song of Deborah (Judges 5), two of Samuel (1 Sam. 2:1–10; 2 Sam. 22), and the song of Habakkuk (Hab. 3). The Old Testament not only contains a record of these non-Psalter songs; it contains approval of those who composed and sang them. Yet the compilers of the five collections that eventually constituted our canonical psalms did not hesitate to omit them. Had those compilers thought that their collections would have been regarded as exclusive, they almost certainly would not have excluded such well-known songs. If a strict view of exclusive psalmody were held, we would be permitted to sing the 150 canonical psalms, but not permitted to sing these six other songs that are recorded elsewhere in the Old Testament canon. The Israelites could have lawfully sung them (and did), but we could not.

Read More