Psalm Studies

Warrior Messiah   Short Notes on Psalm 24

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

18 December  2011

1. Psalm 23 is about God the Shepherd but Psalm 24 is about God the Warrior. The term Warrior is eschatological since the Lord does not intend to fight the final war yet. He reserved it in biblical language for after the End Time. It is the last action before He recreates the earth and immediate heaven surrounding it anew. See Deuteronomy 10:17 where Moses knew about it before 1410 BCE and Jeremiah 20:11 and 14:9. Jeremiah was a keen reader of Moses.

2. The mountain of the Lord (Psalm 24:3) is in heaven not on earth. The requirements of perfection is absolute 100% obedience to the Law of God, without any impediment at all. Christ was the only One (divine-human) who could qualify with this description. The Lord is the One who is worthy to be crucified for our sins and thus worthy to be the Holy Warrior at the end of time, thus administrating executive judgment. The Investigative judgment firstly in the house of God (see New Testament) started in 1844 (Daniel 8:14 with the year-day principle calculated from 457 BCE when the decree went out in Ezra's days).

3. Thus, after the final eradication of evil, after the New Testament hell with fire, Jesus as Yahweh, returns as Warrior Messiah back to the heavenly Jerusalem where the saints are since their resurrection described in Daniel 12:1. It is not on earth as some Christian denominations are trying to interpret Scriptures. They almost feel it their responsibility to recreate heaven and earth by wars of peace or wars of democratization or the similar. Christ says the His Second Advent will occur when they all cry "Peace! Peace!".

4. As the Warrior Messiah approaches the New Jerusalem in heaven back from the Hell fire completed with evil and Satan eradicated, it is then that Psalm 24:7-10 kicks in.

5. Lift up o gates, your heads. This is a term for the gates to be joyful says M. Dahood. He says that in Ugaritic language from the time of the later Judges (early 1402 BCE and later, middle 1350 BCE and later and late judges 1200 BCE and later) indicates that it is joy. In UT 137-27, 29 it reads "stand up proudly".

6. The gates are viewed differently by scholars:

a. Kraus "Door of Heaven" because in the Ancient Near East the earth and heaven are seen together in a hybrid and fused situation. Also F. M. Cross.

b. A. Cooper in JBL 102 (1983): 37-60, 41 says that there is no proof to connect the text with any historical event or cultic event. The Rabbinic concept of Solomon attempting to enter the Most Holy by opening its' door, he considers "fanciful".

c. What are the gates? Jebusite city portals? Tabernacle? Temple-gates?

d. In Egypt the portals of death are the opening to the Underworld. There is a going down to make war in the underworld and a return out into the sanctuary.

e. Portals of death are mentioned in Job 38:17 by Moses, the Egyptian specialist who wrote the epic of Job. It is in a section discussing the genre known in Sumer and Akkad and at Nippur of the Isin Larsa period as well as at Niniveh in the library there in the days of Ashurbanipal as the wordlists. The wordlist genre was a word followed by some description of its meaning, or a synonymous translation of it. Moses make almost encyclopedic explanations of words here and verse 17 is in a section dealing with the geology of the earth: springs of the sea, recesses of the deep, gates of death, gates of the deep darkness, expanse of the earth. The weather and agricultural section was to follow later in the same chapter. See also at Qumran 1QH 3:17-18 and 1QH 6:31.

7. Everlasting gates are brought into reference with an expression by Jonah in his psalm in Jonah 2:4-10 by scholars. Jonah used chiastic structure to present this prayer and event of his in the fish. In verse 5 the first person pronominal suffix compares to verse 10 the first person pronominal suffix. Then in verse 5d the expression "unto your holy temple" compares with the expression in verse 8d exactly. Exactly in the center of this chiastic structure is 6c the earth with its bars surround me "unto eternity". He is merely saying that he found himself in the deep where he thought he is going to die forever or eternally. He is sinning sins he is running away from God so the eternal loss is the same as Jesus on the cross: "My God, My God, why has Thou forsaken me?"

However, there is no connection with the eternal portals in Psalm 24 and the "unto eternity" of the great deep in Jonah 2:7. Scholars are not right here.

8. Scholars are allocating the Psalm to various cultic events, which Cooper cancelled as an option in JBL 102 (1983): 41. Mowinckel sees it as the enthronement festival in 2 Samuel. He views it as Yaweh exit in the Temple.

Cross and Kittel view it as the New Year festival. Weiser views it as the epiphany festival. Gunkel viewed it as consecration festival. Morgenstern viewed it as the equinox celebration and Anderson and Dahood viewed it as the unnamed ritual of the procession of the ark. Kittel felt that the ark-procession hymn becomes a warrior hymn. A. Cooper thought that it is the kingship and majesty of Yahweh in the language of the Canaanite myth, also Psalm 29.

9. In Psalm 24:8 the question is:

Who is this king? - what (image) quality (soldier).

Psalm 24:10:

Who is [He] (this) king? - ID (identity) [Almighty].

10. In a Demotic text that is a Demotic transliteration of Aramaic one can see how the Hebrews in exile drew on Psalm 24 (not Psalm 20 as the publishers thought) for their text. It was first thought to be connected to Psalm 20 by Richard C. Steiner and Charles F. Nims, "Ashurbanipal and Shamash-Shum-ukin: A Tale of two Brothers from the Aramaic Text in Demotic Script" RB 92/1 (1985): 60-81 and also in th article "A Paganized Version of Psalm 20:2-6 from the Aramaic Text in Demotic Script" JAOS 103/1 (January-March 1983): 261-274 and also "You can't offer your sacrifice and eat it too: A Polemical Poem from the Aramaic Text in Demotic Script" JENS 43 (1984): 88-114. Steiner and Nims thought that it is from Psalm 20 but the content rather align with what one understand in Psalm 24.

Demotic Text:

The year in which was born our lord,

King Sar[ba]nabal, to you,

was prosperous -

the thin (and) narrow were thick"

The hero has found its gates.

"You are welcome, my brother

Enter this gate.

From our house take away your enemy

Save, and reveal o mighty one

to your priest your name.

[rest not cited here]

In this excerpt from the Demotic text we see that the kingly hero has found his gates. It was a Utopic period with present poor condition overturned to prosperity. The singers and people of the town welcomed the king in. They called him brother. They asked him to enter and to remove the enemy. They asked him to save. They want a display of his might and glory and for him to mention his name. All this data seems to support a secularized Jew in exile after inculturated and who rework his home-school Hebrew tradition of Psalm 24 into Demotic Aramaic. The revealing of the name is an echo on the question in Psalm 24 "Who is this King of Glory?" Instead of the Hebrew composer of Psalm 24 taking his data from a Demotic Aramaic Text with similar content, it is the other way around. David composed the Psalm or the Psalm was given to David or collected by him in the period before 974 BCE when he died. Hebrew texts influenced Late Egyptian culture by the presence of Hebrews in Egypt. Jeremiah was also for some time in Egypt.

11. In a distant perspective as ours, Duhm suggested that the Psalm is eschatological in the Messianic age. He says that Psalm 24:8 refers to a historical event in the final battle in the Messianic era. Also Kissane, Van Gall and Smart thought it this direction. Seventh-day Adventists might find better link with this position since it seems to fit that final battle of God at the end of all history, before the New Earth is created, best.

12. The view of Cheyne and F. M. Cross is not encouraged. They saw it as a pre-Israelite myth in Canaan of warrior gods. It was then transformed into a warrior hymn by Israelites later. This view is to be shelved.

13. The connection with Jonah 2:7 as a descending into the depths of the underworld and returning triumphant after achieving salvation, is not encouraged. It reminds one of the connection with the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

14. In 1240 BCE there was a king at Ugarit, Niqmepa, and in one of the Ugaritic texts UT 1007 lines 4-8 it reads: "King Niqmepa, son of Niqmad, King of Ugarit, legitimate lord, governor of the palace, [king of the gate], builder king" (M. Dahood Anchor Bible: 153).

15. In ANET 106-107 is the Descent of Ishtar to the Netherworld. In V.14 it reads "O gatekeeper, open the gate; open thy gate that I may enter". Some scholars want to connect Psalm 24 with the Descent of Ishtar into the Underworld hymn dating to 1750 BCE at Nippur, but there is no link to the content. Ishtar asked for the gates to open herself whereas in Psalm 24, the glory of God makes others to say that the gates should be opened. Ishtar is crying to get it open and is angry if there is a delay but no such anguish and brinkmanship is depicted in Psalm 24. Says Ishtar:

“Keeper of the waters, open your gate,

Open your gate that I may enter,

If you open not the gate that I may enter

I will strike the door, the bolts I will shatter,

I will strike the threshold and will pass through the doors;

I will raise up the dead to devour the living,

Above the living the dead shall exceed in numbers.”

16. In the depiction of the course of the dead Sun in the Underworld, Ra in his boat, the Egyptians created 12 gates in their conception through which Ra must go during the night. Each of the 12 nomes [areas] of the Underworld happen every hour from 6 pm to 6am. Ra is seen as majestic king in his boat and at the fifth hour there is an investigative judgment and at the 6th hour the real judgment in front of the god Horus with scales. Through the seventh gate between 12pm and 1am is the fire punishment or executive judgment. Ra is in trouble all the way through and the great enemy, Apep, the huge snake monster has to be killed before sunrise. There is thus no comparison here to Psalm 24.   

Psalm 24 may be based upon a very ancient Hebrew ideological substratum that was part of the eschatological understanding of the Hebrews since the Fall of Adam. The Hebrews were in Egypt since 1880 BCE for 430 years and some form of inculturation must be admitted