Seeing and Savoring Jesus in the Psalms of Hebrews

Onward and Upward: A Study in the Epistle to the Hebrews

The Epistle to the Hebrews was written to first-century Christians in crisis. The author of this letter, likely a companion of Paul, is concerned about this community’s perseverance in faith as they faced imprisonment and persecution. Written in the style of a sermon, this New Testament letter richly weaves together Psalms and Old Testament storylines to focus on Jesus as the true and better fulfillment of God’s promises.

The message of Hebrews is that our perseverance in faith is anchored in the ascension and heavenly ministry of Jesus. Perfect through suffering, he has pioneered the way for us to the throne room of God. We can press onward because Jesus leads us upward.

During the final two months of Ordinary Time this year in the ACNA Book of Common Prayer, our lectionary’s epistle readings will take us through Hebrews. For Sunday, October 6, the reading is Hebrews 2:9-15. I had a sermon prepared for this passage, but then I fell ill with a high fever that turned out to be pneumonia. So for this first lesson I want to walk us backward from Hebrews 2:9 to the beginning of the letter and show how we can see and savor Jesus in the Psalms of Hebrews.

In Hebrews 2:9 (ESV), the author says: “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.”

Verse 9 is the first time Jesus’s name appears in Hebrews. But look how the letter starts in Hebrews 1:1-4:

“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”

The letter to the Hebrews opens with a majestic declaration about the supremacy of God’s Son, and sets out the theme for Hebrews that he is the High Priest and sacrifice for humanity now exalted at the right hand of the Father. His ascension and heavenly ministry is the anchor for our hope.

But what happens between these opening verses in chapter 1 and the first mention of Jesus’s name in Hebrews 2:9?

Beginning with Hebrews 1:5 through 2:8, the author of Hebrews cites six different psalms to support the supremacy and exaltation of Jesus and to foreshadow how the incarnation and suffering prepared Jesus for being crowned with glory and honor.

Thrown in for good measure are some citations from Samuel and Deuteronomy, but the six psalms in order of citation are: 2, 104, 45, 102, 110, and 8. Now Psalm 110 receives quite a bit of attention throughout Hebrews with its reference to an eternal priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. But we’re not there yet.

The bigger question for now is what’s the deal with all of these psalms? What do they mean in the context of Hebrews?

This is actually a question that’s perplexed a number of commentators. What is the method of biblical interpretation the author of Hebrews is using to cite these various psalms? Some say it is a revelatory mode of interpretation, made possible by the Spirit, one that we cannot replicate today. Other say the author is simply reading Old Testament texts without concern for their original context and finding a contemporary solution.¹ If that is the case, they’d say, it’s bad technique allowable for Scripture but not for us.

Here’s what I see missing in this discussion: It’s that first-century Christians continued a Jewish practice of singing and praying the Psalms in their daily worship.² And the letter to the Hebrews reflects the fruit of that spiritual discipline in presenting Jesus through the psalms. Think about in our Anglican liturgy, where in our Daily Office and in our Holy Communion services we always include the Psalms. In the context of daily worship, the Psalms sum up Scripture and God’s promises in the language of prayer and song. And when we begin to feed on the Psalms, we begin to see and savor Jesus. [Here’s a link to a resource, the Seedbed Psalter, I’m using for Bible studies and classes to sing the Psalms.]

St. Augustine says this in his commentary on the psalms:

“The one sole savior of his body is our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who prays for us, prays in us, and is prayed to by us. He prays for us as our priest, he prays in us as our head, and he is prayed to by us as our God. Accordingly we must recognize our voices in him, and his accents in ourselves.”³

After all, Jesus tells his disciples that all of Scripture, including the Psalms, is about him (Luke 24:44-46). And throughout the Gospels we see Jesus reciting and alluding to the Psalms. The Psalter teaches us how to pray, and Jesus himself prayed these words and dwells in them.⁴ For us to strengthen our ability to see Jesus in every story of Scripture, we need to savor his presence in the Psalms.

Let’s look briefly at some of the psalms mentioned in this opening chapter of Hebrews. Psalm 2, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” The today that Hebrews speaks of is the ascension of Jesus, his passing through the heavens to present his once-for-all sacrifice, and to be crowned with glory and honor. So Psalm 2 immediately speaks to us of what Hebrews says in 1:4. That God’s Son, though he has existed from eternity as equal to the Father, accomplished something in his sacrifice for sins and ascension to the heavenly throne room that earned him the messianic title of Son from Psalm 2.⁵

But look at how Hebrews uses Psalms 45 and 102. That God says of the Son, “Your throne, O God” and then “You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning.” In both of these psalms, if God the Father is speaking to the Son, he asserts the Son is fully God. This is a similar mode of appeal compared with how Jesus cited Psalm 110 in his encounter with the Pharisees (Matthew 22:41-46).

These psalms assert the supremacy of the Son from eternity, his role as creator, his title as king.

But let’s focus for a minute on Psalm 110 and 8, the last two psalms mentioned included in this section of Hebrews.

Psalm 110 is the most quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament, one Jesus uses for himself in the Gospels (see again Matthew 22). And its citation in Hebrews 1:13 is the first of five appearances in Hebrews alone. This psalm speaks of the victory of the Messiah over his enemies, his ascent as king, but also his ministry as priest. In Hebrews this psalm is mentioned to support Jesus’s supremacy over the angels because of his exaltation at the right hand of the Father.

Finally Psalm 8: In what’s cited in Hebrews 2:6-8, a psalm that is true of humanity always is here true of Jesus during his incarnation and earthly ministry. Note that Hebrews relies on a translation of Psalm 8 that goes for a temporal meaning rather than a comparison. In this case, Psalm 8:4 reads “You made him for a little while lower than the angels” rather than “you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings.” The original phrase there has a temporal meaning, and the author of Hebrews sees in there a messianic reference to the incarnation. So… “for a little while” God’s Son Jesus was made a little lower than the angels, but now he is crowned with glory and honor (Hebrews 2:9).⁶

In quoting Psalm 8 here, the author of Hebrews gives us a snapshot of what the gospel message is: God’s Son, the radiance of the glory of God, the one who created and upholds the universe, for a little while he became lower than the angels. He became like us. Why? So that by his suffering and death he might be exalted in his glorified and perfected human body and make it possible for us humans to follow him into the presence of God.

The opening chapter of Hebrews doesn’t even mention Jesus’s name, but it weaves together these six Psalms… because before the author tells us to “see Jesus” (Heb 2:9), he’s shown us how clearly we can see and savor him in the Psalter. When by faith we see Jesus exalted in the heavens, we can anchor our hope in him as we press onward.

Christ the Eternal High Priest, in the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

1. Stephen Motyer, “The Psalm Quotations of Hebrews 1: A Hermeneutic-Free Zone?” Tyndale Bulletin 50.1 (1999), 3-22. Granted, Motyer shows a pathway to interpreting passages with the method he outlines, but he surveys various approaches to the quotations of Psalms in Hebrews 1.

2. I would strongly encourage you to sing the Psalms. Because the only way to understand how the author of Hebrews sees and savors Jesus in all of these psalms is to recover what early Christians did: to sing them. I will introduce methods for singing and praying the Psalms during this study of Hebrews, but one I have enjoyed using with small groups and classes is the Seedbed Psalter. Developed by Asbury Theological Seminary President Timothy Tennet, and his wife Julie, the Seedbed Psalter arranges the words of the psalms to a common meter, making it easier to sing. Each psalm on the index contains the words of the psalm and a suggested tune for accompanying the words.

3. St. Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 85,” in Expositions of the Psalms 73-98.

4. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prayerbook of the Bible.

5. Amy Peeler, Hebrews, 55-56.

6. Amy Peeler, Hebrews, 80-81.