David, Asaph and the Mighty Works of God: Theme and Genre in the Psalm Collections

Abstract

The groups of Psalms formed by common ascriptive superscriptions each have their distinct characteristics and may be understood as pre-existing collections or read as groups with a common theme. A statistical table shows, among other things, that there is a strong connection between the Davidic superscription and the individual style; that the themes of the narratives of Israel's origins are virtually absent from the Davidic psalms but present in more than half of the Asaphic ones; that psalms of praise dominate the group of unascribed psalms. The Davidic psalms are dominated by a sense of personal relationship between the speaker and his God which points to the understanding of these psalms as a collection of personal prayers of the king. The psalms of Asaph have a national perspective and largely reflect situations of national crisis. The psalms of the sons of Korah are defined by the holy place. The psalms without ascriptions do not form a single group, but the prominence of the themes of creation and the kingship of Yahweh are notable, as is the relative infrequency of reference to the themes of the biblical narrative.