Where Is Jesus in the Psalms? How Hebrews Helps Us See Him – Daniel Stevens

ABSTRACT: When the author of Hebrews saw Jesus in the Psalms, he was reading Scripture not simply as an inspired spokesman but also as a careful exegete. As we follow his arguments closely, we find at least four principles for reading the Psalms with eyes open to the glories of Christ: Pay attention to exact wording, pay attention to the speaker, expect the psalm to speak truly, and read with the story of Jesus in mind. As we read the Psalms with the author of Hebrews, we learn to see them as the songs of Jesus, where he speaks, is spoken of, and is worshiped.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Daniel Stevens (PhD, University of Cambridge), associate professor of New Testament interpretation at Boyce College, to unpack how the author of Hebrews helps us see Christ in the Psalms.

But of the Son he says,

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,
     the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.” (Hebrews 1:8, citing Psalm 45:6)

So, the author of Hebrews asserts in his grand comparison between the angels of God and the Son of God. In every way, the Son is superior to the angels, and we know this because of what God has said in Scripture. While the author does go to other places within the Old Testament to prove his arguments about Jesus, his most frequent resource is the Psalms.1

And as the author looks to the Psalms to proclaim the message of Jesus, we are met with one of the many mysteries of Hebrews: How does the author see these things in the Psalms?2 There is certainly a reason why Hebrews can confidently say that this is what the Father says of the Son, but he does not explain the reason to us. At first encounter, Hebrews’ way of reading the Psalms seems so different from ours.

This is by no means the only time the author follows such an interpretive strategy.3 Not only does the Father speak of the Son in the Psalms, but the author also interprets the Son as speaking back to the Father with the words of Psalm 22:22 in Hebrews 2:12.4 Passages that seem to be about God are referred specifically to the person of the Son, such as in the citation of Psalm 102:25–27 in Hebrews 1:10–12. It is enough to leave the modern reader asking what exactly Hebrews is doing.

How Christians Read the Old Testament

There are several options open to us. One that I held to for years, but no longer do, is to say that the author of Hebrews interprets the Psalms in a way that we cannot. In this view, the author, under the umbrella of apostolic authority, looks prophetically into the Old Testament, sees things that we otherwise would not be able to, and speaks new revelation by the Spirit. We are to accept the New Testament authors’ interpretations, but we should not attempt to imitate them.5

But the author of Hebrews does not present himself as adding new meaning to Old Testament texts, nor as revealing something esoteric that would be impossible to see apart from his inspired guidance. Rather, he presents himself as carefully interpreting the Old Testament, reasoning from his cited texts’ contexts (Hebrews 3:7–4:10)6 and drawing necessary implications (Hebrews 2:5–9).7 He never appeals to his own authority to convince his audience of the superiority of Jesus, but rather appeals directly to the Old Testament. He assumes that his audience can look at these same texts, most frequently the Psalms, and see what he sees. That is to say, the author of Hebrews not only teaches what the Old Testament reveals; he gives us a pattern for how the Old Testament ought to be read.

If this is the case, we can ask, How does Hebrews teach us to read the Psalms?8 In this essay, we will explore several principles derived from and illustrated by Hebrews’ interpretation of the Psalms to help us read the rest of the Psalter in a way that is faithful to the text and recognizes where in the Psalms Christ is present.9

Methodological Approach

Before we get into how Hebrews reads the Psalms and finds Christ there, we should first answer whether this whole enterprise is legitimate in the first place. After all, the Psalms are part of the Old Testament, they were the songbook of Israel, and they must have addressed the times and places in which they were written. How could they also, or even possibly primarily, be songs about Jesus?10

The answer is found most clearly in Peter’s sermon in Acts 2. Immediately after citing Psalm 16, Peter declares,

Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. (Acts 2:29–31)

When Peter reads Psalm 16, he sees that the psalm, though by David, is not about David, and that this is so because David was a prophet. How does Peter know this? Not because he has inspired insight that adds new meaning to the psalm, but because he reasons from the Scriptures.

The speaker of Psalm 16 says, “You will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption” (Acts 2:27). But Peter knows that David was left in the grave and his body did see corruption. So, either the psalm is false (which is impossible), or it is a prophecy that is not about David. And more than a prophecy, it is a prophetic speech-in-character.11 Not-David speaks through David. This is not typology, where David speaks of himself in ways that correspond to Christ. If it were, Peter would not be so emphatic that Psalm 16:8–11 does not refer to David. (Of course, there is room for typology in the Scriptures, an abundance of it, but it is not happening here.)

The Psalms are prophetic texts. At least some of the time, this means that a psalm will speak not of the context of its author or audience but directly of Christ — his life and his work. It is this insight about the nature of the Psalms that enables us to ask about the ways Hebrews reads the Psalms and sees Christ in them. Because the Psalms are themselves prophetic, to find Christ in them, as the New Testament often does, is not to import a foreign meaning but rather to find what is there. This does not mean that every psalm works the same way (far from it). Rather, it opens up a possibility that would otherwise be closed.

With the methodological and contextual stage set, then, what are some principles for interpreting the Psalms after the manner of the author of Hebrews?

1. Pay attention to exact wording.

Let us return to the citation with which we began this article, Hebrews 1:8, continuing now to verse 9. “But of the Son he says, ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.’”

The author uses these two verses from Psalm 45 to declare the divinity of the Son in contrast to the angels. What allows him to see this passage in this way?

First, pay close attention to the exact wording of the portion cited. One person, “you,” is addressed throughout the passage, and of this person we find several things to be true. First, this “you” is God with an eternal throne. Second, this “you” has performed actions within the world and has been rewarded for them. Third, this “you” has a God — “God, your God, has anointed you” (Hebrews 1:9; Psalm 45:7). Fourth, the particular form of reward this “you” has received is an anointing with gladness.12

This should lead us to ask, Of whom could this be true? Who is the God who has a God? Who is the God who stepped into the world, acted, and was exalted as a result of these actions? This is Jesus, the God-man. He is God in his divine nature, and in his humanity he submits to God the Father.13 He has loved righteousness and hated wickedness, and because of his actions within the world, has been exalted and rewarded by God. This passage is talking about Jesus in his divinity and in his humanity.

Returning to Psalm 45, we can see even more. This psalm is written to celebrate an excellent, beautiful, righteous king (verses 1–5) on the day of his wedding (verses 10–17). It is common to see in this psalm, at least in its beginning, a reference to Solomon with only a typological relationship to Jesus.14 But that is not what Hebrews sees.15

The “you” of the psalm is the king that is getting married. But it would be blasphemous for the psalmist to turn to Solomon and call him God with an eternal throne.16 Rather, we should encounter the whole psalm as posing questions to us: Who is this one who is man and also God? Who is this beautiful and righteous king on the day of his wedding?17

The psalm has the resources to ask these questions but not to definitively answer them. Indeed, the whole Old Testament has the resources to ask but not answer these questions. We are given hints and trajectories. We may even know that a son of David has to be the answer to this question. But only as we receive the fullness of Scripture is the mystery present in the psalm revealed. The psalm always pointed to Christ, and specifically Christ as the God-man; we just could not fully apprehend this until Christ himself came.

2. Pay attention to the speaker.

Hebrews’ first citation of the Psalms often gives modern readers less trouble since it uses terms we are familiar with when talking about Jesus and God. Yet, attending carefully to how Hebrews identifies speakers, we learn more about how to read the Psalms.

The author writes,

For to which of the angels did God ever say,

“You are my Son,
     today I have begotten you”? (Hebrews 1:5, citing Psalm 2:7)

Simple enough, right? The Father speaks to the Son and acknowledges him as uniquely related to him as Son. But what does this dialogue tell us about how to read Psalm 2?

When we look back to Psalm 2 from Hebrews, we find that this statement of the Father to the Son is not directly in the narration of the psalm, but rather is itself reported speech. The verse in full reads, “I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you’” (Psalm 2:7).18 The Son, speaking in the first person, reports the words of the Father. Or, to put it another way, in Psalm 2:7–9 (at least), we have the words of the Son speaking through the psalmist. In Psalm 2, Hebrews finds not merely words about Jesus but the words of Jesus.19

When we view the psalm this way, we find both that the psalm makes sense in all its parts (Jesus is the king who sets the fate of nations and to whom all must submit, Psalm 2:10–12) and that it speaks theologically in ways we may not at first expect, but in ways that accord with the rest of Scripture. In Psalm 2, the Father speaks to the Son, and the Son declares the Father’s word and purpose to us. This is precisely what we find in John’s Gospel, where Jesus is the Word of God, who alone has full understanding of God. He declares God to us (John 1:1, 14–18) and declares what the Father has given him to speak (John 12:49). We find that Psalm 2 witnesses to the Trinity in the relationship between the Father and the Son. The same Trinitarian relations and roles ad extra, which are more explicit in the New Testament, are present in the speech of the Son in Psalm 2:7–9.

This observation should inform how we read the Psalms. The triune God is the source of all Scripture, and we should expect to find testimonies to his nature throughout the whole of Scripture. Again, this is not to say that the author of Hebrews puts a new meaning on the Psalms or finds things that were not there. Rather, by paying careful attention to the speakers in the Psalms, we can see when we are merely on the human plane and when we are given glimpses into divine realities.

3. Expect the psalm to speak truly.

When Hebrews interprets Psalm 8, the author encounters a problem:

It has been testified somewhere,

“What is man, that you are mindful of him,
     or the son of man, that you care for him?
You made him for a little while lower than the angels;
     you have crowned him with glory and honor,
putting everything in subjection under his feet.”

Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. (Hebrews 2:6–8, citing Psalm 8:4–6)

Psalm 8 reflects upon God’s creation and exaltation of mankind. Beyond our greatest hope, God cares for us, attends to us, crowns us with glory and honor, and places his creation under our feet. God has made us for great and glorious purposes, and, fittingly, this psalm begins and ends with the glory of God (Psalm 8:1, 9), the glory because of which and for which we were made.

But as the author of Hebrews says, there is a disconnect between Psalm 8’s description of humanity and our actual human experience. Psalm 8 says God put “everything in subjection” under mankind’s feet, but “at present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him” (Hebrews 2:8). We once had an unfrustrated dominion before the fall, but that is no longer the case. The psalm must be true, so there must be a solution to this problem. Hebrews finds the solution not within the psalm but in the story of Jesus: “But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (Hebrews 2:9).20

Now, we must read carefully. Hebrews is not saying that Psalm 8 was never about humanity but about Jesus all along. Rather, the author is saying that Jesus’s life redeems the story of humanity. We are lower than the angels, by creation and by our fall, so Jesus became man and was made lower, for a little while, than the angels. We are alienated from what God made us to be and from our destined good rule over creation because of sin and death, so Jesus submitted himself to a death that he did not deserve for our sake. In the resurrection and ascension, Jesus was crowned with glory and honor, seated at the right hand of the Father, because of his perfect life and faithfulness. He holds this glory in his resurrected human life so that all those who by grace are joined to him may share in his glory. All things are under his feet, so if we are his, all things will be under our feet. He is our forerunner (Hebrews 6:20). Where he is, we will be. What he has, by grace we will have.

Psalm 8 not only sets out what was true in creation or what should be true about humanity but what is true in Christ, the perfect and glorified human, and what will be true about all of us who are joined to him. It is by pressing into the difficulty, by asking how the psalm could be true in light of sin and suffering, that the author of Hebrews is able to show us how this psalm reveals truths of both creation and redemption in Christ.

By this point, we should get the sense that at least some of the time, the Psalms are a forward-looking book. As the nation of Israel sang the Psalms, they were trained to look forward to a coming King, Savior, and perfect man. As we sing them, they train us to look for the ways in which Jesus fulfills the motifs introduced in the Psalms.

4. Read with the story of Jesus in mind.

As we saw in Hebrews’ interpretation of Psalm 8, the author turned to the story of Jesus — preincarnate glory, incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension — to find the theological resources to resolve a tension posed by the psalm. This interpretive move, looking to the whole story of Jesus, is one to which the author turns again and again.

Just a little later in Hebrews 2, the author asserts that Jesus “is not ashamed to call [those being sanctified by him] brothers, saying, ‘I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise’” (2:11–12, citing Psalm 22:22). Notice, he backs up his theological claim by saying that Jesus speaks the words of this psalm.21 How is he able to say this? In part, it may be because he knows that Jesus did speak the opening words of Psalm 22 upon the cross (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34; see Psalm 22:1). But more fully, the author seems to have read the whole psalm in light of the story of Jesus. The speaker is a righteous sufferer who is poured out (verse 14) and mocked (verses 7–8), whose hands and feet are pierced (verse 16), who goes down to the dust of death (verse 15), and yet who is delivered by God (verse 21) in such a significant way that his deliverance will cause the nations to worship God (verse 27) and will be declared from generation to generation (verse 30–31). This simply is the story of Christ, who suffered, died, and rose again, and whose resurrection brings salvation to the nations.

Similarly, who is the king who sits at the right hand of God in Psalm 110:1, who rules and who is a priest (Psalm 110:2–4)? Hebrews again reads this through the lens of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, who “after making purification for sins . . . sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3).

Again, the “I” who comes in Psalm 40:6–8 to do the will of God (because God has not delighted in the very sacrifices he commanded) can be understood only in terms of the Son who came in the flesh to fulfill God’s will, to be the final and perfect sacrifice, and to be the source of sanctification to all who are joined to him in faith.

The story of Jesus is the story to which the whole Bible points. This is true of the Psalms no less than the more obviously prophetic books. To read the Psalms rightly, to see the fullness of what always has been there, we must read them in light of the eternal existence, incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.

How to Read the Psalms

How then does the epistle to the Hebrews teach us to read the Psalms?

First, Hebrews leads us to expect to meet Jesus there. These are his songs because the Psalms are part of his Scriptures. This does not mean that every psalm is directly about him, nor that every psalm that does speak of Jesus does so in the same way. Rather, it is to acknowledge what the Psalms are: inspired, prophetic Scriptures that speak of both the heart of man and the work of God. As the resurrected Lord Jesus told his disciples, the Psalms speak of things that he needed to fulfill, things pertaining to his life, death, and resurrection (Luke 24:44).

Second, Hebrews models for us ways of reading the Psalms that will help us find Jesus where he really is. We are to be careful readers, paying attention to the wording and to the shifts in speaker. We are to ask questions of the Psalms and expect that they speak truly. And we are to have the pattern of the story of Jesus in our minds so that we can be receptive to where and how the Psalms speak of him, or where he speaks in prophetic pronouns in the Psalms.

Third, we are not to expect every psalm to speak of all that Christ is or does. Psalm 8 does lead us to contemplate the redemption that Christ brings in restoring humanity’s place in the cosmos, but Psalm 8 is not Romans, nor is it Matthew. We are not to import the whole New Testament, nor a complete gospel presentation, into each psalm where Jesus is present. Rather, we should attend to the facets of his glory and his work that the psalm wishes us to see. Sometimes we will contemplate his beauty, other times his eternality, other times his reign. In this we will be guarded from incorrectly reading Jesus into the psalm. We want to see him where he is and as he is.

The Psalms deserve a place in your worship, your study, and your church’s preaching. And Hebrews (along with the rest of the New Testament) shows us that when we sing and study and preach the Psalms, we find more than beautiful poetry or an expression of God-honoring emotions. We find also a rich theology and multifaceted presentation of Jesus, the greater David, the priest and king, the redeemer of humanity. Do not shrink back from seeing him there; embrace the Psalms as what they are and what the full arc of Scripture reveals them to be. They are the songs of Jesus, where he speaks, is spoken of, and is worshiped.

The account I will give differs from the above definition of prosopological exegesis mainly by specifying that the author of Hebrews identifies the speakers and audiences of portions of Scripture, rather than saying that he assigns them (as such I am ambivalent as to whether what I have done here or in Songs of the Son ever counts as prosopological exegesis, properly understood). That is, the author to the Hebrews interprets the Psalms in a way that answers a question very much like that of the Ethiopian eunuch: “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” (Acts 8:34). Hebrews adds to this the question, “In whose voice does the prophet say this?” Or to put it another way, the reading I am proposing, and think I see demonstrated in Hebrews, is an attempt to see what is already there in the text, when under the inspiration of the Spirit the prophets spoke in first-person words not of themselves but of Christ. That is not to say that in every psalm Christ speaks in his proper person, but rather that in some of them he does, and we ought to recognize it when it happens.

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