THE MESSAGE OF THE PSALMS
By Michael Wilcock
IVP. Bible Speaks Today series
2 Vols. 255/287 pages. £9.99/£9.99
I remember once an older man saying 'you have to have lived for a while to appreciate the psalms'. So it is appropriate that an elder statesman of evangelicalism was chosen to author the Bible Speaks Today commentary on the Psalter. The book is certainly packed with the fruit of decades of reflection and experience.
In seeking to be faithful to the BST ethos Wilcock has written this two-volume work to be read sequentially, rather than to be dipped into. While there is undoubtedly some value in this, it seems to me, at least, that the Psalter more than perhaps any other book of the Bible, was written to be dipped into in the same way that we may select songs from a hymnbook. Undoubtedly there is some organisation, but it is not a narrative, or a sustained argument. The lack of an introductory section means that useful discussions of repeated themes are hidden within the discussion of individual psalms while the lack of an index renders them almost irrecoverable. For instance, there is a stimulating discussion of the psalms which cry for vengeance, but it took this reviewer about ten minutes to remember that it is located at psalm 35!
The expositions of individual psalms are brief, sometimes frustratingly so, but always useful. Wilcock's sensitivity to their Old Testament context and way in which many of them function prophetically is particularly helpful. For a quick dip into an individual psalm Derek Kidner's Tyndale Commentary is probably still the best, but if you want an enriching read through the whole of a vital part of Scripture this book makes an excellent guide. Wilcock challenges us to do just that. Why not accept the challenge?
