JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on Biblical Theology. Today, we consider the connection between Chronicles and Psalms. More specifically, Jason and Tom interview Lance Kramer regarding his research demonstrating a connection that ties these two books together. Jason and Tom recorded this interview with Lance in San Diego, where all three were attending the Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting. The interview was recorded outside, so be prepared for some background noise.

TK: Welcome to GearTalk, Tom and Jason here. Jason, who do we have sitting with us?

JD: We’ve got my good friend Lance Kramer. He has been on the podcast in the past, and we are delighted to have him with us now.

TK: Yeah, Lance actually came to do a half-hour podcast with us, and it was like 47 hours or something like that.

LK: I learned from the best.

TK: That would be you and I, Jason.

JD: Yeah, that’s right. Well, friends, you may hear some waterfalls in the back. We are actually—Tom and I are in San Diego at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, and just outside of our hotel is this little park area. And so there’s some extra noise, but we’re hoping that we can stay focused and that you’ll be able to pick up what we have for you. And we’re looking forward to it.

TK: So maybe starting—we have Lance with us for several reasons. One is it’s just really great being with a brother who loves the Lord and expecting we’re going to hear more from him with Hands to Plow things in the future. But Lance, maybe you could give us a couple thoughts about what you’re doing here at these meetings and what you’re hoping to get for yourself.

LK: Yeah. Yeah. The first meeting that I ever went to is as a seminary student. And when I first came, I was not sure what to expect, you know? I knew that there was academics. I knew they were presenting papers, but I wasn’t quite sure how it all worked. And I was also at the time kind of wrestling with, do I want to go towards academic ministry? Do I want to be in the pastorate? Kind of had open hands with the Lord, and this was sort of a vision casting moment.

TK: What is academic ministry compared to pastorate? How would you say they’re different?

LK: So, on one level, some would say that they’re distinct from each other, but I see them as overlapping. So, it’s more of a matter of emphasis than a matter of distinction. And so, the academic ministry tends to emphasize more of the dealing more deeply in terms of the academy and engaging with what scholarship is saying in a more intentional way, and pastoral ministry less oriented towards that and bringing the Word to God’s people on a regular basis and discipling them more hands-on. But I really see them as interconnected with each other. I can’t imagine doing academic ministry apart from and thinking of it as anything other than discipleship.

TK: You’d get in trouble if you do disconnect them.

LK: Yeah, I think it’s really bad. I’m trying to think of a better word than bad.

JD: But share with us a little bit about your present role and what brings you to ETS now.

LK: Yeah, so I now—in coming to an event like this, when my heart was awakened to being a part of this through classes at Bethlehem College and Seminary as a seminary student, my role now, I’m the director of our evening programs at Bethlehem College and Seminary. I teach primarily in those programs, though I do classes in other programs as well. And I see this as a time of having that kind of academic aspect being stoked and hearing from others and seeking who are the people that are writing on the things that I’m thinking about. Are there any insights I might gain from them? But really, ultimately, when I come to this sort of event, I’m especially here for the people, and to meet with people and encourage each other and be encouraged by them, as I have already been with you, brothers, and spur each other on in the depth of thinking in the Scriptures and the kind of ways that that will help push me academically in ways that it’s easy to let slide. And so, this is sort of that refreshing moment that the Lord often stirs in my heart. I often come home and I tell my wife, my heart is so full from having conversations with Tom Kelby and Jason DeRouchie and these brothers. And not all the papers are that way. I won’t say that, but sometimes it’s difficult to hear some of the papers that are presented. But these moments of fellowship are especially what I’m here for.

JD: So for those that don’t have a sense for what the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society actually is—even as a helicopter goes right over our heads—just give a little bit of a sense for those that are interested. What are we going to taste over the next three days of meetings? What is the dynamic? How many people? How is the structure? Main speaker events and then the smaller breakout sessions. What are we talking about compared to, say, a conference—a pastoral focused conference like the Gospel Coalition or the Bethlehem Conference for Pastors and Church Leaders? Many of our listeners may be more familiar with those types of gatherings. How is this different?

LK: Yeah, this is, I would say, on one level, it’s much broader in terms of the people who are participating and the—it’s not as broad as the secular world might be in terms of dealing with the Scriptures. So we’re all evangelicals. We would all sign a dotted line that says that we believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, we believe in the triune God. But apart from that, you can be a part of this group. And you have, I don’t know—actually know the exact numbers. I don’t know if you have—it’s 300, 3,000, I mean, sorry. That’s what I meant to say. 3,000 scholars who gather and they have been working on ideas and they’re presenting those ideas in the form of papers to other scholars for feedback and for getting some of their ideas out there, not only for potential pushback, but also, I think, to see if there’s any ways that they can influence people’s thinking over certain concepts or passages of Scripture or theological ideas or sometimes in the church history sections and so forth. So it’s all of the dynamics that you might think about that happen in a seminary, the kinds of classes that you would take.

JD: Different disciplines.

LK: The different disciplines all represented in various ways with current research that people are doing in that area. And so you have three days in which you have multiple papers being read at the same time. You kind of choose which one you want to go and listen to that you think is most beneficial, you’re most interested in, that might be most influential for your own research. And then along with that, there’s a general theme or topic that each conference has. And this one is engaging with global Evangelicalism. And so there’s plenary sessions as well—I think there’s three, right? That people will speak on typically that engage with that topic on a broader scale. And many of the smaller papers, not all of them, but many of them will be oriented around that topic as well as we seek to engage with each other in pressing on each other in scholarship.

JD: So, Tom, you’re presenting a paper this week, but it’s not related to global Evangelicalism. And many of the papers are that way. They just go their own trajectory and that’s fine. This is your first paper at ETS where you’re not an official student anymore. But you are drawing on some work you did in your dissertation. Just share with us what you’re going to be presenting on.

TK: So, typically, you’ll have a title of your paper. It’ll show up in the little printout thing people pick based on a title. So, my paper is titled, “Seeing the Psalmists as Seers: Evidence Connecting the Psalms to Prophets and to Prophecy.” And what I’m really highlighting is that in the biblical text, there is a push to see the authors of the Psalms as prophets. Not just poets, not just songwriters, but the emphasis is that they’re prophets and that their words are presented as words of prophecy more in keeping with what you’d find in, for instance, the Latter Prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, things like that. Rather than these are just songs from people directed toward God, these are words from God, obviously coming from people. But how should that impact then how we interact with the Psalms? And think about how people used the Psalms in either the Old Testament—people who had the Psalms—or in the New Testament.

JD: It’s interesting as we think about comparing the Psalms to a book like Isaiah. We’ve talked about this in the past, but if we enter the four Servant Songs, the outer two are biographical—where the prophet is simply speaking in the voice of Yahweh about the servant himself, but the middle two servant songs are autobiographical, where the servant is himself giving voice. So here we have Isaiah as the author, but he’s writing a song that’s in the voice of the Messiah, the eschatological Messiah himself. And the entire book has a heading. “These are the visions of Isaiah the son of Amoz that he saw during the reigns of four major kings in Judah.” And you’re comparing the Psalters’ use of superscriptions, headings, over the Psalms in a very similar way, where the psalmists—and there’s multiple named psalmists in the Psalter—that these psalmists are known from elsewhere, all to be counted as prophets.

TK: And they’re not primarily described as poets, for instance, again, or songwriters. So that thought of then what they wrote. So Isaiah—you talked about him—his book, when I encounter it, I’m looking at the entire work as a word from God for his people, not selecting a little portion of it. Like, oh, these two verses are the prophecy. But we often do that with the Psalms. So something’s quoted in the New Testament. Peter quotes Psalm 16 in Acts chapter 2, something like that, and we might say these two verses are prophetic portion of Psalm 16, and I don’t think that fits with the biblical evidence. To treat that psalm like that, I think we need to treat it like we would treat any other book of prophecy.

JD: Sure. In the same way—

TK: So front to back.

JD: Right. Front to back. In the same way that when the New Testament authors quote other books, and we don’t say they’re just cherry-picking the right words, but they’re actually looking at it in a complete context. In the same way that it’s not just a couple of verses out of Psalm 16 that happen to be pointing to Jesus, but it’s the entire Psalm where Jesus is the subject of that event that’s being described, and that Peter notes David was operating as a prophet, and foretelling, knowing that God had promised that he would have a son on the throne, foretold the resurrection. That’s the idea that you’re pointing to.

TK: One that most Christians would be familiar with, the start of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That thought, I can take that just by itself and say, “Jesus is feeling forsaken when he’s on the cross,” and certainly there’s a true thought there, baked into that, but saying, wait a minute, he wants me to think of an entire prophetic word, and he would have the entire context of that Psalm in mind, not just that one verse.

JD: And not only the immediate context to the psalm itself, but even the broader context, as the Psalter is working its way through, you have the suffering and the triumph declared in Psalm 22, and then he says, “I’m going to declare your greatness among my brothers,” and we see that praise elevated in Psalm 23.

TK: So even when somebody is just saying his words, “Why have you forsaken me,” to be able to say in his mind, I know very clearly based on the prophecy, he sees the victory in his mind.

JD: Already.

TK: Already. And he’s giving voice to it even only when he seems to be talking about defeat.

JD: Right. So even in mentioning just one part of the entire psalm, he’s calling the reader to look ahead and see the triumph that’s coming.

TK: Yeah.

JD: Now, Lance, you’re not presenting this week, but there’s a reason you’re not. Right. Because your life has been full in your final capstone PhD course called the Dissertation Seminar where you have been envisioning what the next year, year and a half of your life is going to be devoted to writing this major book. So I want to dive in a little bit. You’re fresh off this extended course where you have sought to set a vision for where this book is going to go. And I would love for you to be able to share with us a little bit about where you’re at on the front end of writing a book. It’s not the first book that you’ve written. This is the second book that you have worked on. And so the process isn’t completely new, but it’s still always daunting at the front end of a book. And so share with our readers a little bit about what you’re particularly going to be working on as you’re on the front end of dissertation writing.

LK: Yeah. Yeah, I’m especially feeling it having turned in that last prospectus assignment, feeling how big this is, and wondering if maybe it’s too big.

JD: You can talk to your doctoral father about that later.

LK: We’ll chat.

TK: We have two people in the same—Lance and I are in the exact same spot. We’re sitting with our doctoral father, actually by a fire in San Diego. Both of us super thankful, Jason, for—the Lord brought you into our lives. But I was laughing yesterday—I’ll just say this before—I had so many—not so many, but several times where I submitted a chapter, and Jason would be the first person who’d see it. And I’d get an email back later and it’d be, “Thomas, I got to page 12 and I can go no further.”

JD: Not “Tom,” not, “Hey bud,” “Hey bro.” It was, “Thomas.”

TK: It’s what I got from my parents, so “doctoral father” is the right thought.

JD: So Lance, I was trying to think what I might be calling him.

LK: I don’t have a longer name.

JD: We’re going to be reaching out, I think, to his grandfather’s name that he now has as his middle name. It will be, “Marvin. I got to page 12. What are you thinking?” Anyway, so Lance, share with us a little bit about where God is leading you in this book, what you’ve even discovered in the last many weeks as you’ve been trying to put this thing together. What are you going to be working on?

LK: Yeah. In general, my goal is to try to understand how the author of 1 and 2 Chronicles, which I’ll call “the Chronicler,” is quoting the Psalms in his book. He quotes three Psalms, compiles them together in 1st Chronicles 16, Psalm 96, Psalm 105, and portions of Psalm 105 and Psalm 106. Then he quotes Psalm 132 at the end of Solomon’s Prayer in 2 Chronicles 6. And then I think it’s a quotation in 2 Chronicles 20 when Jehoshaphat is leading Israel into war and the Levites are singing, “He is good for his steadfast love and endures forever.” And I think those—it interconnects those texts. And I think I’m hoping to wrestle with how to think about that Levitical worship that David instituted and handed off to Asaph and his brothers to teach Israel on how they’re to understand their history and how they’re to live on this side of the coming of the Messiah and yet after the return to the land in this post-exilic world that they’re in under Persian rule.

TK: Can you—so we say that a lot, like post-exilic or things like that. So what—help us—what’s the exile you’re talking about?

LK: So in the Scriptures—in Israel’s history—we see foretold by Moses and Deuteronomy in the curses and then lived out in their lives as we read Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings of Israel’s continual rejection of Yahweh, of their unwillingness to follow the Mosaic law, their hard-heartedness that eventually showed itself in their worship of the idols of the nations around them, that developed into their own even greater and greater sinfulness, and as that kind of exponentially grew in even in the kings that followed David—both the northern tribe and the southern tribe—that northern Israel was exiled by Assyria. And then after that, the tribe of Judah—the kingdom of Judah at that time—the second—the southern kingdom was exiled by Babylon.

TK: So post-exilic is after that.

LK: That’s right. So the pre—if you mark the exile as a moment of history, you kind of gauge by pre-exile would be prior to the end of Kings. The exile would be that period Esther and Daniel lived in, and then after the exile would be in the times of Ezra and Nehemiah when Cyrus declared for them to return to the land, rebuild the temple, in which the Chronicler is writing in.

TK: Okay. So the Chronicler, he somehow has Psalms that he’s able to access. And your question is related to what’s he doing with these Psalms.

LK: That’s right. That’s right. And as I’ve read scholarship, as I’ve engaged with the commentaries and thought about the flow of thought in thinking through how he’s using these Psalms, I think I have something to add in terms of the outlook of those Psalms that he quotes in relationship to the narrative and that he’s showing us. So at the height of David’s reign, he’s subjugating his enemies, the enemies of Israel all around him. There is—

TK: So now we’re pre-exile. The height of David’s reign. Yep.

LK: And he—there’s a level of peace that he’s bringing to Israel. And in that moment, he brings the ark—he moves the ark. And that ark narrative is one of the first narratives in Chronicles that he begins with. And it culminates in him establishing—eventually establishing worship in Israel that he gives to Asaph and his brothers and setting up the Levites as singers in Israel.

JD: So this is one of the significant differences of Chronicles from Kings, is whereas 1 Samuel is filled with the entire reign of Saul and David’s interactions with Saul—so David’s anointing, David and Goliath, David’s fleeing from all of Saul’s terror—all of that is skipped over in a matter of eight verses, if I remember right, in 1 Chronicles …

LK: Ten.

JD: I was thinking Saul was maybe right at the end of 9, but maybe you’re right.

LK: It is right at the end of 9 with his genealogy.

JD: So Saul’s genealogy is at the end of chapter 9, and then we just jump into David’s reign immediately, and then there’s this significant focus right from the start of his role as overseer of Israel’s worship with a vision of building the temple. And it’s not just about structures, the structure, physical structure of the temple that he’s concerned about. He’s concerned about the entire worship practice. And so, 1 and 2 Chronicles has significant—a significant amount of material focused on worship proper. And it includes this use of Psalms. And in fact, the vast majority of 1 Chronicles of David’s—that’s describing David—is centered around his preparation for the building of this temple as he’s sort of setting up Solomon to accomplish it. And the description that’s used—in fact, actually I was going to point out when you’re talking about the Psalmists as prophets—as seers—I think that’s the perspective of the Chronicler. I mean, he describes in 1 Chronicles 25:1, he says—he calls—says what they’re doing with their liars and musical instruments and so forth, is that they’re prophesying, right? And he, I don’t, that’s not just taken out of nowhere, right? And we actually, I think, see an example of that, that in 1 Chronicles 16 when he quotes these Psalms—from David to Asaph and his brothers—that I think we are seeing in these Psalms an eschatological, a prophetic outlook from these Psalms that anticipate an eschatological era.

TK: Can you—so eschatological, can you just give that a word we would use normally?

LK: Yeah, a future outlook that is—has a sort of culminating aspect to it.

JD: And specifically related to the age of the Messiah.

LK: That’s right, yes.

JD: Like it’s associated with the age of the Messiah.

LK: Yeah, that’s right.

JD: So it’s a future orientation. And I just want to pause and help our readers begin to—our listeners, think about the significance of this. I think it was back in the 1980s. Bruce Waltke had an article—was it in the 80s, Tom?

TK: It was in the 80s.

JD: So he had this article where he was talking about the interpretation of the Psalter. And he broke it down into four different stages. And he said that when David originally wrote his Psalms, he was only thinking about himself. And then as kings—as David died and other kings began to sing David’s music, they began to apply the royal figure in the Psalter to themselves. But Waltke said that it was then when you get to the post-exilic period—which is where we’re at right now with the writing of Chronicles—that it’s only at that stage that readers of the Psalter—singers of these Psalms—began to—when there is no king on the throne now, because the Northern Kingdom has fallen, the Southern Kingdom has fallen, and they’re back in the land, but Persia is in charge—that it’s in this period that now people are beginning to sing the Psalms with an eye toward this eschatological King and Kessiah. But what is so fascinating in Chronicles is that it’s attributing the Psalms that they’re singing to David and saying David himself was already writing with this vision of eschatology, this vision of a future day. Could we just start maybe in Psalm 16 and tell us some of the things that you’re seeing where you’re talking about the Chronicler is reading the Psalter to be pointing in a certain way, but it’s attributing these Psalms to David. And so what are you seeing?

LK: Yeah, so in 1 Chronicles 16, I think you said Psalm 16.

JD: I meant, yeah, 1 Chronicles 16.

LK: I think that the clearest place where you can see it is at the end of the Psalm. But I think even from the beginning in Psalm 105 and 106—so he begins this compilation of Psalms together by quoting the first, I think it’s 15 verses, of Psalm 105, which is a—Psalm 105 and 106 together are what you call historical Psalms, and they portray Israel’s history, both of which would focus on the Exodus and wandering period of Israel leading up to the Promised Land, but do it from very different angles. Psalm 105 is a praise psalm of Yahweh that is highlighting—in this historical psalm—of Yahweh’s faithfulness, I think, to the Abrahamic covenant, in fulfilling it for Israel and bringing them into the land. And point after point in the story of Israel, it’s highlighting Yahweh’s steadfast love and his faithfulness in bringing to that point. But if you think, in terms of Psalm 105, as in conjunction with Psalm 106, you see a very different picture. And in Psalm 106, the whole psalm is a lament psalm. Or not a lament, that’s the wrong word. It’s a psalm about repentance, and the sin that they’ve committed all throughout that exact same history, and the inability, I think, as the psalm progresses, of Moses and Phineas and Aaron and even the Psalmist himself at the beginning of the psalm to be able to intercede and mediate on behalf of the people in such a way that it actually leads to their faithfulness. So Psalm 105 highlights Yahweh’s faithfulness, and Psalm 106 highlights the people’s inability to be faithful. And at the very end—which is the very first verse of Psalm 106 and the very last verses of Psalm 106—is quoted here by the Chronicler, saying, this is what came from David.

TK: So Lance, can I just jump in right here? Going back to that conversation we had about Psalm 22, would you make the argument that if they’re quoting the first or the last verse, the Chronicler is sending a signal, “I’m thinking of a lot more than just this.”

LK: Yes, I think so. I think absolutely so. And actually, that’s one of the main areas I think I’ll be able to contribute to the scholarship because I rarely see anybody engage with it. There—nobody engages with recognition of the Psalms next to each other and in light—reading in light of each other in terms of the scholarship—105 and 106 going together. They often will be dismissive. They’ll say something like, “Well, it wasn’t articulating the kinds of things that he needed. It didn’t fit his context that he was writing in, and so he didn’t use it.” But I think especially when you, if you jump ahead to 1 Chronicles 17, when David is describing the covenant, he’s praying back to Yahweh after Yahweh establishes this covenant with him—the Davidic covenant with him—he references the Exodus explicitly. And I think it’s one of those places where we see the Chronicler—we’re meant to read this composite psalm in connection to the Psalms as a whole, in first—the whole of Psalm 105, the whole of Psalm 106, and I think given the fact that it also quotes Psalm 96, I wonder if we’re meant to read it in light of Book 4 altogether. And that Book 4 is possibly completed, and that’s what David is handing to Asaph and his brothers, is Book 4 of the Psalter. So I’m still thinking about that a little bit, but it will—that’s the direction I’d like to go, if I’m right. And it really helps shape the message that he sees when you combine this kind of eschatological outlook from this quotation with the Davidic covenant in 1 Chronicles 17, with what he anticipates where this eschatological salvation is going to come through. And so in Psalm 106 here, the first verse of the psalm is this psalmic refrain, “Oh, give thanks to the Lord for he is—give thanks to Yahweh for his good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” And then, at least in the ESV, it jumps back almost like it’s back in the narrative, David giving a command, “Say also,” and then this part. Or maybe it’s Asaph and his brothers speaking it. But I think the flow actually ties it very closely with verse 34. I don’t think we’re meant to see it as a distinct part of this Psalm. I think it’s all meant to be read together. Such that at the end of this song, as they recollect the faithfulness of Yahweh to them, as they recollect this call of praise from Psalm 96, and the greatness and goodness of Yahweh, and he as king, we see at the end in this prayer that the Chronicler is showing us originated from David, that Israel was meant to pray. “Save us, O God of our salvation, and gather and deliver us from among the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy name and glory in your praise. Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. And then all the people said Amen and praised Yahweh.” And you can hear there the assumption of an exile. And most of scholarship recognizes that assumption.

TK: Are you saying that because of the statement among the nations?

LK: Yes, that’s right. “Gather and deliver us from among the nations,” as though the exile has already happened. And most of scholarship reads that, which is, I think, why even the ESV maybe sets it apart and says clearly this is the Chronicler trying to meet the needs of his audience in bringing them into the story, helping them to identify with their ancestors in Israel, but giving them their prayer, that they’re to pray, since the fullness of the restoration hasn’t happened yet because they’re still under Persian rule.

TK: Right.

LK: And I think that what the Chronicler—I don’t totally disagree with that, but I think what the Chronicler is doing is saying that David himself instructed Asaph and his brothers to teach us from the very beginning that this was meant to happen, that we were meant to anticipate our own exile and to pray, before it even happened, that Yahweh would save us from it.

JD: So, in declaring that, you are saying nothing new in the sense that Moses had already told Israel, the exile is coming, “You’re going to go off to the land,” excuse me, “You’re going to go off to the land, and sin and be more stubborn then than you even have during Moses’s day.”

LK: Right.

TK: Jason, you can take a drink from your $47 water. Yes, some water.

LK: Liquid gold right there.

TK: It’s liquid gold. Was it amazing?

JD: Absolutely amazing. Springs of gold. So, Moses had already foretold to Israel that the exile was coming, that Israel would sin more after his death than they had even during his death. And his favorite words while they were around was that they were rebellious, stubborn, and unbelieving. But what you’re noting here is that David is the Psalmist, and he’s writing a psalm as if the exile has already occurred. He is writing as a prophet, and it reminds me a little bit, Tom, of the way Psalm 20, as an interlude in Book 1, has David himself praying for the king—for a different king other than himself—and joining the people and praying that God would deliver that future king when that day would come, because David recognized already that his hope—his own hope in his own day—was fully dependent on that future victory of the coming king. And in a psalm like Psalm 106, which 1 Chronicles 16 tells us is coming from David, we have a foreshadowing of the coming exile, and David once again pleading as if even a part of that group. Like identifying himself with those who need to be saved from the world. That God would show up and deliver out of exile. And that’s the very context of the Chronicler now, who’s in the midst of exile, or in—there’s a little bit of an overlap. There’s been a physical return to the land, and so we could call it the post-exilic period, but there hasn’t been a spiritual change in the people.

TK: Part-wise, they’re still in exile.

JD: They’re still a spiritual exile, separated from God, and they’re in need of the reconciling one. So Isaiah had already foreseen this distinction when he talked about Cyrus would allow you to return to the land, but we need the servant to bring that reconciliation with God and restore right relationship with the king. And so David is here—and it’s as if the Chronicler is—he’s not just reading David, as if this is an eschatological reading strategy. The words themselves require a post-exilic context, but the context attaches it to—or I should say the words require a future deliverance from exile, but the context attaches those words to David himself.

LK: I think so. And the Davidic Covenant. The promise that Yahweh makes to David of this future faithful son who will sit on the throne forever. The global impact that David recognizes with respect to that covenant in his prayer back to Yahweh, I think, is intentional on the Chronicler’s part to tie this Psalm—which has a global view to it—in the worship of the nations that will come, that happens in Psalm 96 of Yahweh is King. And those kinds of thematic overlap that you see between this Psalm and the Davidic Covenant, and David’s response to it is striking. I mean, in fact, there has been more recently a couple of people who have recognized, I think rightly, that this Psalm actually contains within it major themes of the whole book such that I wonder—I have to decide whether or not to argue for this in the dissertation or not—but I wonder if the Chronicler in quoting Psalm 105 and 106 as historical Psalms, of setting Yahweh as King in the center and tying it to the Davidic Covenant, the very beginning of the book, containing the vast majority of the major themes of the book, already within this Psalm, that he’s actually helping us to read Israel’s history through these Psalms. And to understand the reason why he’s writing what he writes is bound up in the meaning of this Psalm that he puts forward to us. And I think we potentially see that, for instance, in this psalmic refrain that we see in—that’s the quotation of Psalm 106:1, that gets repeated in the book. It’s embedded. As the narrator himself says it, right immediately after this, as David kind of finalizes this process before the Davidic Covenant, we see it surrounding Solomon’s prayer in 2 Chronicles 5–7. We have a psalmic refrain before that and afterwards, embedded into the narrative. And we see it later on when dealing with the later Solomon in the divided kingdom, that the kings of Judah are connected to David explicitly. They’re displayed as doing the kinds of things that David did. And that psalmic refrain shows up with Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20. And so my thinking—one of the other aspects I’m hoping to contribute—is in analyzing this psalmic refrain, which is, I think, the beginning of the conclusion of this first psalm.

JD: And specifically, the refrain is, “Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.”

LK: And especially that last line, “for his steadfast love endures forever,” is what’s repeated.

TK: And you’re making a claim here. You would be saying, if I’m hearing you correctly, it’s not he has a statement that he finds pleasing to himself, and he’s just applying it. He’s applying it as the Psalmist applied it.

LK: I think so.

TK: So it’s not like, “Wow, I like that statement too, I’m going to use it.”

LK: That’s right.

TK: It’s, “No, I’m using it as the Psalmist used it.”

LK: That’s right. So for instance, you’re talking about David recognizing the exile. David’s prayer right before he dies, as he’s anointing Solomon as king, and he prays for the people and for Solomon—he portrays them as still being in, as sojourners. He portrays them in his own day as sojourners in the land. So he says in verse 14 and 15 of 1st Chronicles 29, “Who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able thus to offer willingly? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given to you. For we are strangers before you and sojourners, as all our fathers were,” which I think is a reference to the Patriarchs. “Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding.”

TK: So he’s acting like they’re not in the land.

LK: Well, he’s functioning as though the fullness of what was expected has not come to pass. And so Israel is still waiting, it’s still anticipating a greater appreciation of the land and the blessing that’s in it, a greater life with Yahweh in the temple. That even now in the building of—right before, he’s commissioning Solomon, Solomon is going to build this temple, “We’re sojourners.” I mean, it’s striking that—and it’s not the Chronicler—I don’t think it does justice to the text to say the Chronicler simply is kind of overlaying his own perspective over David in order to encourage the people, but I think that undermines the very encouragement that he would be bringing to them, and that is that David himself anticipated the life that you live right now, David anticipated, and we must sing with him of where our hope is found.”

JD: It makes me think of Psalm 95 cited in Hebrews 3, where you have, “Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!” The Psalmist is calling a people to gather. But then you move through the Psalm, and you get down, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, and as on the day of Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work for 40 years, I loathed that generation and said, ‘They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.’ Therefore, I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’” And then the writer of Hebrews, reflecting on that, says, “Okay, it’s clear that Joshua had not ultimately given them all that they were expecting, that the psalmists recognized a greater rest to come.”

LK: Right.

JD: And what you’re saying is that David is writing from that perspective, seeing—at that time in ancient world history, there was a power vacuum. Egypt had waned. Assyria had not yet risen. And so Israel became the power, the superpower of the ancient world. And I think of 1 Kings 4:21–22, where it explicitly says that the promised land that had been declared to Abraham from the river of Egypt all the way to the Euphrates had been claimed by Solomon. And before Solomon, he simply inherits what David had already secured. And yet, already, it’s as if David is thinking about the promises given to Abraham and just recognizing that Romans 4:13, “God had promised that he would inherit the world.” And David is saying, “We’re just not there. This is not all that we expected.” I think of hyper-preterists—full preterists—who want to say that even now, all the promises, all the prophecies of Scripture have been completely realized. And I just have to say, even as we’re sitting here in very much of a paradise, this is not it. There is a shadow that covers all of this world. And David recognized it in 1000 BC, and we should still recognize it today. As Peter says, he is writing to “the exiles of the dispersion.” Our citizenship is not here. It’s in the heavenly Jerusalem that is our mother. And David already saw that trajectory and noted, even in his day, we need the Messiah and we need his complete kingdom.

LK: That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. And it’s amazing, as you think about this language of sojourning and exile that’s applied to the church in the New Testament, that, in a sense, these songs are our songs as well. This side of the cross, we have seen the great exodus begun, right? That we have been taken out of the kingdom of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of his beloved Son. The movement has started, and yet we are on a journey, as the author of Hebrews portrays us. We are yet exiles on our way back to that Promised Land, such that the new heavens and the new earth, when Christ returns again, he has begun this exile and now is leading us through His Spirit, in this second exodus, through the wilderness to this Promised Land to come. And David, I think, recognized that as well.

JD: And yet, unlike for Israel, for those who truly share in Christ, we will hold firmly to the end the confidence that we had at the beginning. We will not fall in this journey. And so, we rest in our Savior by faith in a definitive, fully accomplished redemption that is not finally realized but is fully secure and, in that sense, fulfilled, accomplished. And we can hope, in a world that still has shadows, in a world that is still broken, that, “Please save us, O God, out of the nations,” is indeed being realized. That’s right. Yep. When you had first proposed this idea of engaging with Chronicles, I thought, first of all, I thought, “Oh man, I don’t want to become a Chronicles scholar.” But basically because I’ve always thought, “Oh man, this book, it’s so hard to get through. You get through Samuel and Kings, and you just repeat it all over again.” And I knew that that wasn’t actually true, but not to be living in this text for the last few years. And to see the voice of the Chronicler in the message that he has for us, I’m more excited than ever to be a Chronicles scholar. And to see the highlighting of David in anticipation—in his own anticipation of this David to come—his son who would fulfill the covenant Yahweh made with him, who would bring about this eschatological salvation, who himself would live the life that Israel was meant to live, that the new Adam that would obey in the wilderness, who would be a man of the Book, who would stand firm against the serpent, and who would accomplish this for us. And for us now to have experienced that reality in the cross of Christ, and in his resurrection, and now in union with him as the one who has gone before us, to run this race with him, to walk through the wilderness led by the Spirit, being equipped—having been given the Holy Spirit in our hearts like Ezekiel said he would, such that we can walk in his statutes, that we can obey, that we can live a life of faith that results in love and obedience to him. And not perfectly now, but in the wilderness—in our testings, as we go through this wilderness—we are able to overcome and stand firm and hold fast in faith to Christ as we look towards the end in the age to come, that it is ours already, even as now we live through this wilderness experience that he himself lived through on our behalf.

JD: You really get a sense of the continuity of Scripture. David had this hope as a remnant believer. The Chronicler had this hope as a remnant believer. And now we are—you get that heightened sense of, wow, this is truly Christian Scripture. And Chronicles fits so well at the end of Jesus’s Bible, heightening this hope that is to come. And you get to the end of Chronicles and you turn the page and you hear “Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham,” and the story is being all tied together.

LK: That’s right.

JD: And that’s the foundation of our hope still today.

LK: Amen. Amen.

TK: Well, Lance, thanks for taking this time. Jason and I sprung this on Lance last night. And it would be—it would be great to talk more, because I know you have a lot more thoughts on Chronicles, but blessings to you as you do this work. Pray that it will serve the church well. \

LK: Amen. Amen. That’s my hope and prayer as well.

TK: Yeah. And it will be encouraging to your soul.

JD: And may that continue to refrain, that the steadfast love endures forever, just carry you to the end of seeing this book realized for the sake of the church. And for the sake of Christ’s name.

LK: Amen.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. For resources related to Biblical Theology, visit handstotheplow.org or jasonderouchie.com.