Derek Kidner on Psalm 81

Every Wednesday evening we have a prayer meeting at the church. It's small, usually just two (or sometimes three) families, counting my own. I would be encouraged if more attended. But, we pray believing Christ is also present, and that God will in some way use our prayers to advance his kingdom.

Each week we briefly read and discuss a Psalm. We started with Psalm 1, and tonight we looked at Psalm 81. Since there are 150 total Psalms, we are more than half-way through the Psalter. So, as I've discovered with the Calvin's Institutes study group, with regular and consistent meetings, it's amazing how much progress can be made over time through an intimidatingly long book. In the same way, I just finished yesterday the first volume of Herman Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics. It's over 600 pages long and not exactly breezy reading. I started a few years ago, read it in fits and starts, and probably never read more than 10 pages in one sitting. Now I'm ready to tackle volume 2. I may not finish until 2013, but that's alright.

Back to the Psalm 81, one of my favorite commentators on the Psalms is Derek Kidner. He's scholarly and a solid exegete, but what sets him apart from most other commentators is how well he writes. He can pack more thought into a few short words better than any other biblical commentator I've come across. And he always seems to capture the heart of what a verse or passage is saying.

For example, Psalm 81:11 says,

But my people did not listen to my voice; 
Israel would not submit to me.

Kidner writes: "The distaste of my people for my voice and for me is almost too common to seem inconsistent. Yet it is as if the lock rejected its key, or the fledgling its parent; such was the demented human material God handled, and handles."

That is just one example that I happened to come across tonight. But as I read him earlier today, I thought how nice it is to read a commentary that is so well-written. I read several commentaries in the course of my weekly sermon preparation, and some of them (mostly the newer, academic sort) read like an instruction manual for a household appliance: technically precise, but inelegant and dry as dirt. That's why when I study a Psalm, I always look forward to reading what Kidner has to say.