Psalms 51–100 (Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 20 | WBC)

In John 14-16, Jesus said that when the Holy Spirit comes, He will not speak of Himself, but of me (Christ). He said the Spirit would take what is Christ's and make it known to His disciples. When Christ met the two on the Emaus road, He expounded to them from all the Scriptures, the things concerning Himself, and how the OT pointed to Him as its fulfillment. A Spirit-filled ministry, then, will point to Jesus Christ. By Jesus’ standard, I find this individual installment of the WBC painfully, clinically detached from any heart-felt, firsthand knowledge of a relationship with Jesus Christ, or any desire to bring Him glory. Although he is anxiously attentive to detail, Tate seems to be on the outside, looking in. His explanation comes across like contrived, clinical labels to explain what to him is an unknown entity. It’s almost as if he’s artificially suppressing the knowledge of Christ that, to me, leaps from the pages. In Psalm 69, for example, it is clearly Messianic, pointing to Christ suffering and being served vinegar to drink. This commentary seems to only reluctantly mention any Messianic references in this Psalm, in passing, at the very end of the Explanation area. In Psalm 61, after expounding on the Psalmist's heart-felt prayer for deliverance from God, he says the "main value of this Psalm", is in the "metaphorical richness", to provide us with "A well-stocked and fertile imagination" when we pray[1] . Really? The "main value" of the Psalm is to give us a better, metaphorical imagination when we pray? It seems to me Tate was using his imagination a lot, when he wrote this commentary, because he doesn’t have a clue what a real relationship with Christ is like. When you read Tate's own introduction, you can see that he is mostly acknowledging other Bible Scholars. There isn't an iota of evidence he has any desire other than to produce a work that measures up to the scholars he relies on, or that he may “help readers of the Psalms to read them with even a modest degree of improved understanding[2] ”. Tate seems to spend more time worrying about what other scholars have said on the subject, arguing for or against them, than he is to find Jesus in the passage. Instead of promoting faith in and understanding of the Scripture, this individual commentary more often fills my mind with doubts and anxiety that I didn't originally have. He frequently says to the effect we "can't be sure" of what the real meaning is, even when dealing with matters I had confidently believed in, and often adopts a critical view of Scripture. For example, on Psalm 69, he attributes the book of Isaiah, not to the prophet Isaiah, but to "the exilic groups responsible for the Book of Isaiah"[3] . Sometimes, Tate introduces concepts which seem completely foreign to the text. In Psalm 65, for example, when it refers to God being the "hope" of "all the ends of the earth", Tate says, " It is possible that the “ends” carries the connotation of ominous, demonic forces which lurk in mysterious faraway places and which may come forth from time to time to threaten the orderly course of life[4] " He goes on to repeatedly read the concept of demonic forces into the text, where it doesn't seem to fit. I don’t want to judge the entire WBC by this one volume of Psalms (50-100), because I did appreciate, for example, Mounce’s handling of the Pastoral Epistles. There were also some good comments on Psalms 1 – 50, from a different author. However, I will surely never consult this volume by Tate again, for any guidance on the Psalms. When I read him, it fills my mind with anxiety, doubt, and seems clinically devoid of any firsthand knowledge of or interest in Jesus Christ. [1] Marvin E. Tate, Psalms 51–100, vol. 20, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1998), 116. [2] ibid, xi. [3] Ibid., 202. [4] ibid., 142.