Digital Logos Edition
Psalms, Volume 2, which is part of the NIV Application Commentary Series, helps readers learn how the message of the Psalms can have the same powerful impact today that it did when they were first written.
The majority of Bible commentaries take readers on a one-way trip to the world of the Bible. But they leave them there, assuming that they can somehow make the return journey on their own. They focus on the original meaning of the passage but don’t discuss its contemporary application—the job is only half done!
The NIV Application Commentary Series helps bring both halves of the interpretive task together. This unique, award-winning series shows readers how to bring an ancient message into our postmodern context. It explains not only what the Bible meant but also how it speaks powerfully today.
“The aim of Psalm 91 is to encourage all God’s people to employ a quiet and simple trust in him, regardless of how threatening our circumstances may feel. Psalm 91 is not the poetic meditation of a spiritual kamikaze; it is the call to trust in God’s presence and help even when everything around us screams that he is not real and not involved. Psalm 91 helps the believer to remember that God is both near to us and intimately engaged with our reality.” (Page 355)
“By making this claim immediately after using the womb imagery, the psalmist declares that no part of his life, from his formation in the ‘secret places’ even until now, has escaped the watchful gaze of Yahweh.” (Page 923)
“Know. This command is the focal statement of the psalm around which the whole sense of the song coalesces. Three imperatives (shout, worship, come) precede this one and three more (enter, give thanks, praise) follow it, thus making the slightly unusual command, ‘know,’ the pivot around which the others revolve.5 The statement ‘Know that the Lord is God’ is the structural and theological heart of Psalm 100.” (Pages 451–452)
“The psalm is not a philosophical or theological treatise on the nature of God.’28 Instead, this psalm confesses both God’s constant presence with the psalmist as well as his comprehensive knowledge of the psalmist. The psalm is intimately personal, as is the God to whom the psalm testifies.” (Page 925)
“The Creator God is presented as having been a place of rest and comfort for his people regardless of their circumstances throughout all generations.” (Page 334)
W. Dennis Tucker, Jr. (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is Professor of Christian Scriptures at George W. Truett Theological Seminary. He is the author of Jonah: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text, the coauthor of The Psalter as Witness: Theology, Poetry, and Genre and The Story of Israel: A Biblical Theology, and the coeditor of Diachronic and Synchronic: Reading the Psalms in Real Time.
Jamie A. Grant (PhD, University of Gloucestershire) is Vice-Principal (Academic) and Tutor in Biblical Studies at the Highland Theological College, which is part of the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland. He is author of The King As Exemplar: The Function of Deuteronomy’s Kingship Law in the Shaping of the Book of Psalms and coeditor of numerous edited volumes, including A God of Faithfulness: Essays in Honour of J. Gordon McConville on his 60th Birthday.