The Land In The Psalms

Abstract

God's provision of place for individual and community is one of the dominant themes of the Psalter. The provision of land is a matter that comes to the fore in various ways in the Psalms but especially in two contexts. As is to be expected, one of those is where the story of Israel is to the fore. The other is where the teaching or instructional dimension of the Psalms is emphasized. The so-called "historical psalms", not surprisingly, provide the primary contexts in which Israel's story is recapitulated in the Psalms. The immediately preceding psalms raise the question of how it is one comes into possession of the land and who it is who possesses or inherits it. The fear of the Lord is one of the characteristic modes of expressing the first commandment in positive form. Keywords: fear of the Lord; historical psalms; Israel