You may come back and say that the Spirit’s outbreathing applies only to individual psalms, and that as admirable as the canonical ordering may be, it is only the work of the final redactor and is not the work simultaneously of the Spirit. That, of course, is a fair position. What I’m trying to do (in Conversation, of course) in looking at the ordering and arrangement of the Psalms is the same whether one assumes the Spirit or not.

The same kind of question, though, arises with Jeremiah. We have two versions. The Masoretic is highly structured as a chiasm, betraying the same general form as several other books of the Bible (Ezekiel, Revelation). The LXX is shorter, arranged differently, not chiastic.

It seems to me that your question applies to Jeremiah as well. You might say that the individual pericopes of Jeremiah were given by the Spirit, but that the Hebrew text’s dischronologized but chiastic arrangement is not the work of the Spirit but of Baruch or some later redactor.

On the other hand, if you want the Hebrew text’s arrangement of Jeremiah to be taken as the work of the Spirit, then I don’t see how you can take much issue with my belief that the Hebrew text’s order of the Psalms is also the work of the Spirit. You may not be certain, but I don’t see that you can dismiss my view (which I’m pretty sure would be held by most all churchmen in the history of Christendom).

Anyway, I hope that this gets to your question and reservation in some kind of helpful way. Thank you for the interaction.

For the life of me I can’t understand how this answers anything I’ve brought up to this point. I appreciate the window into your thinking here but was really looking forward to more interaction with what I brought forward in the last comment thread.

As for whether or not this interests me I suppose it remains to be seen. I haven’t seen much reason for switching to your perspective even though I share a postmillenial and theonomic outlook in general with you. So, I don’t doubt we have more to learn from the Scriptures–I just haven’t seen an elucidation of the principles guiding your take on these things in any real way where you respond to what I wrote.

To me, whether or not chiastic or numerologic structures exist is quite beside the fundamental point at issue and that is your contention that the Spirit has inspired the order of the Psalms as we have them in our canon today. Without that inspired order, any contention regarding the structure of the Psalter as you call it winds up being an interesting but quite irrelevant opinion on the nature of the Scripture.

I’m not saying we can’t appreciate chiasm (and especially when it occurs within individual Psalms) and other literary forms–just that I see little reason to make it overly important when no one has yet to argue successfully that we must see the hand of God directly having arranged the Psalter as we have it in today’s form.

I understand, being given to irritability myself. (!)

We’re still finding our way on this. We want a serious Blog, a place for serious conversation about good matters. You are right to worry about running up to 100 “replies” to something, but at the same time we need a way to have good discussion. So, we’ll have to work at it.

No harm done.

I’m sorry I screwed up with the comments in the last post. I’m irritable from being sick in bed all weekend. That’s my excuse. I won’t cut off the comments next time without checking with you guys first.