Understanding the psalms: Scriptural Psalm titles

Dead sea scrolls Psalms: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/scrolls/scr1.html

Continuing my Lent series on the psalms, I want to focus today on the 'psalm titles' included in Scripture.

Note that I am not talking here about the psalm titles developed in late antiquity and the early medieval periods - these are certainly of interest and can be quite helpful, but they are not Scriptural.

Should we take the psalm titles seriously?

Most modern commentators reject the idea that the titles of the psalms have any particular significance, seeing them instead as rather prosaic performance notes, or alternatively (a)historical claims for their context.

In my overviews of each psalm, though, I typically set out and comment on the titles ascribed to psalms in Scripture.

That's because the Fathers took them very seriously indeed, considering them to be part of inspired, canonical Scripture and often providing extended commentary on both their literal and spiritual meanings.

St Augustine, for example, in his commentary on Psalm 105, urged his audience to be conscious of the psalm titles, and the canonical order of the psalms, in trying to understand them:

confessing that we both believe the mysteries of all the titles in the Psalms, and of the order of the same Psalms, to be important, and that we have not yet been able, as we wish, to penetrate them.

By contrast, many, if not most, modern commentaries either ignore the titles altogether; take issue with their content (on ascriptions of authorship for example), or at best consider them only at the literal level.

So are the psalm titles part of Scripture or not?

Titles as canonical Scripture 

In fact the evidence strongly suggests that the psalm titles were part of the original text of the Psalter: they are found in both the Septuagint, the earliest Hebrew Masoretic Text manuscripts (dating from the tenth century), and in the Dead Sea Scroll versions of the psalms. 

The Scriptural titles were not typically written in smaller print, as most modern Bibles make them, but were either treated as the same level of text as the liturgical first line of the psalm, or sometimes centred above it.

We need to distinguish here, though, between the psalm titles included in the oldest surviving Hebrew and Greek versions of the psalms, and the various sets of medieval, non-canonical psalm titles that served as aids to interpretation.

The titles preserved in Scripture should be treated as part of canonical Scripture; the various medieval psalm titles series are of interest in the same way that Patristic and later commentaries are, but are not binding on us in any way.

Psalm titles on authorship, the ordering of the psalter and historical context

The Scriptural psalm titles, though, in my opinion at least, are well worth paying attention to.

At the literal level, many of the psalm titles ascribe the authorship of psalms to certain authors, such as David (79), or Moses. The Old Pontifical Bible Commission ruled that these ascriptions of authorship were not in fact open to debate.  Some doubt whether those rulings are still binding, but they have certainly never been explicitly overruled, and in the absence of hard factual evidence to contradict them, should surely be regarded at least as highly persuasive.  

Others specify the day of the week on which the psalm is to be said, presumably in the context of ancient temple liturgies.  The reasons for the particular ascriptions are often fairly obscure, perhaps connected to the days of creation, but whether by chance or otherwise, some of these specifications are also followed in the Benedictine psalter: Psalm 23, assigned to the first day of the week is said at Sunday Matins; Psalm 80 on Thursdays (in the Masoretic Text version) at Matins; and Psalm 92 on Friday at Matins.  A great many more have titles that the Fathers interpreted as referring to Sunday, as the day of the Resurrection: Psalm 6's title, for example, 'Unto the end...for the octave' is a good example.

Perhaps the most helpful titles are those that link the psalm to historical events, usually in the life of David.  Psalm 141, for example, is titled, ' Of understanding for David. A prayer for when he was in the cave', thus linking it to the story told in 1 Kings 24.

Psalm titles as a cue to canonical interpretation

But the most interesting takes on the psalm titles are, in my view, the spiritual interpretations provided by the Fathers: indeed St Gregory of Nyssa composed an entire treatise devoted to the titles of the psalms, and how they point us to the overall storyline of the psalter.

References to 'a psalm of David', for example, can be interpreted both a claim as to authorship, but also as pointing to its Christological content, since David is a 'type' of Christ.

In some cases the reasons for this interpretation are particularly obvious: the last psalm of Friday Vespers, for example, Psalm 144, has the title Laudatio ipsi David, or Praise, for David himself, and then opens with the verse:

Exaltábo te, Deus meus, rex: * et benedícam nómini tuo in sæculum, et in sæculum sæculi.

I will extol you, O God my king: and I will bless your name for ever; yea, forever and ever.

These spiritual meanings are, I think, often quite important for us to consider if we wish to understand the way the psalms are used liturgically, since they can sometimes help explain why a particular psalm was allocated to a particular day of the week or hour.