Psalm 50:1-15

“The Mighty One, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.” (Psalm 50:1)

Psalm 50 is a perfect example of the kind of liturgical piece that might be recited in the seventh year when the Torah was read at the Feast of Tabernacles (Deut. 31:9–13).1Yet when the Book of the Covenant was discovered in the temple during Josiah’s reign (622–609 BC), it seems that this practice had not been observed for some time (2 Kings 23:1–3). In form-critical mode, Wilson considers the psalm a covenant lawsuit, in which Yahweh presents a legal indictment against Israel, the kind that one would expect in a court of law (e.g., Hosea 4:1).2As a rule this form is identified by the term “dispute” (rib), which does not appear in this psalm. Further, the psalm is more a corrective to Israel’s understanding of sacrifice than an indictment. The psalm is the first of the Asaph psalms and the only one in Book 2, separated from the other eleven that are located in Book 3 (Pss. 73–83).

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