Life in the OT is especially characteristic of Yahweh. He “lives” (Ps 18:46) and never dies (Ps 121:4). He is the God of life (Pss 36:9; 42:8), the “Living God” (Josh 3:10; Pss 42:3; 84:3; Hos 2:1 [1:10]; 2 Kgs 19:4, 16 = Isa 37:4, 17; Deut 5:23 [26]; 1 Sam 17:26, 36; Jer 10:10; 23:36), and the power of life flows from him (Ps 145:16; 36:8–10; 80:18; 1 Sam 2:6; Deut 32:39; cf. Jer 2:13; 17:13). Those who are far from him will perish (Ps 73:27). He provides the “Way (or Path) of Life”: Ps 16:11; Prov 5:6; 6:23; 15:24; Jer 21:8; cf. Prov 2:19; 10:17. Thus all of life is a gift and a trust from Yahweh . . .

MARVIN TATE, PSALMS 51-100, VOLUME 20 (WORD BIBLICAL COMMENTARY), 373.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

John 1:1-4

Let the people of God whenever they are ringed about with threatening foes lift up their hearts. The king of all nations and the judge of all the earth hears prayer and will in his own time and ways sweep his foes away as a fire roars through a forest and sweeps over the mountains in blazing fury. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the LORD.”

MARVIN TATE, PSALMS 51-100, VOLUME 20 (WORD BIBLICAL COMMENTARY), 349.

Ps 83 merits our consideration from at least two perspectives. First, it is a good example of relatively late Hebrew poetry. Its style is not marked by great subtlety; it is rather straightforward and simple. The fine distinctions and intricate patterns of some psalms are missing. However, it is effective and expresses prayer with both economy of words and well-crafted figures of speech.

Second, the psalm serves as a paradigmatic prayer of lament and complaint for a people surrounded by hostile nations and threatened with overwhelming force. The psalm reminds us that the greatest resource of the people of Yahweh is prayer, which appeals both directly to him and is based on his powerful acts of intervention and deliverance in the past.

MARVIN TATE, PSALMS 51-100, VOLUME 20 (WORD BIBLICAL COMMENTARY), 349.

In 1797, the Senate of the United States ratified “without protest” a treaty with Tripoli stipulating that “the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” The treaty was approved “without a single dissenting vote” and signed by President John Adams.

Gregg L. Frazer, The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders: Reason, Revelation, and Revolution, 234.

Note: I first learned about the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli in Founding Sins: How a Group of Antislavery Radicals Fought to Put Christ into the Constitution by Joseph S. Moore. William J. Edgar also mentions Treaty of Tripoli in History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America 1871-1920. Mark David Hall in Did America Have A Christian Founding? discusses the treaty in its international context (to his credit), but his comment — “even though the treaty was published in several newspapers, I am unaware of anyone objecting to it at the time” (116) — is misleading. Hall clarifies in an endnote that within four years a US Secretary of War opposed that section of the treaty, and that subsequent treaties dropped that section. Also, in the book mentioned above by Joseph S. Moore, he highlights a Covenanter minister who opposed the Treaty in a book published in 1803.

[T]he variety of quotations from Jewish scripture in early Christian writings, the frequency with which some texts are cited (for example, Ps. 2:7, 8:6, 110:1, Is. 8:14, and Jer. 31:31-34) and the remarkable similarities in the way they are juxtaposed, interpreted, and applied by different writers . . . Considering the evidence of the quotations themselves and the circumstances of the primitive church, the project of mining the scriptures for specific texts to underpin the Christian proclamation was probably a specialized endeavor. Such texts were neither numerous nor self-evident: many that were traditionally regarded as messianic in Judaism were not useful for Christianity, and many that were messianically construed by the primitive church had carried no such sense in Judaism. Thus the early Christian appeal to Jewish scripture was not a simple matter of discovering texts, but a textual enterprise requiring close reading and constructive interpretation and thus literary sophistication.

Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, 26.

Note: The textual enterprise and literary sophistication of early Christianity was not an exercise that merely copy-and-pasted Judaism’s textual enterprise.

The discovery at Qumran brought to light a Jewish sectarian community contemporary with Christian origins that held eschatological expectations no less fervent than those of the early church yet invested heavily in the production and use of literature. Thus the claim of form critcs like [Martin] Dibelius that apocalyptic eschatology and literary activity are fundamentally incompatible was finally rendered untenable, for in Judaism the two were hand in glove, and imminent eschatology could not itself have inhibited literary activity in early Christianity.

Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, 20.

The force of Christian dependence on Jewish scripture for the question of the literary culture of early Christianity is not much appreciated, and its implications have been negelected under the influence of form criticism’s preoccupation with oral tradition.

Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts, 23.

It is the wonderful work of the Holy Spirit to bring together an empty sinner and a full Christ. You cannot find salvation in what you do for the Lord, but salvation is secure in what He has done for you. You will never find rest in your prayers to Him. His prayers for you are the only ones that can save your soul and keep you in the circle of His grace for this life and for a better life to come in glory.

Beeke & Beeke, Developing a Healthy Prayer Life, 94.

The central focus of pilgrimage and Ps 84 is Yahweh-God, who bestows grace and glory and good things on those who live lives of integrity (v 12). “Walking” is another positive double entendre: those who walk in pilgrimage and those who “walk” with obedience and faith in the way of Yahweh.

MARVIN TATE, PSALMS 51-100, VOLUME 20 (WORD BIBLICAL COMMENTARY), 360.

The reference [birds who nest in the temple area near the altars of Yahweh Sabaoth (v 4)] must be to the nests of birds located in crevices in the walls of the buildings or in trees in the temple courts . . . The birds are symbols of the life, freedom, and joy of those who dwell close to God. . . . The speaker yearns for a privilege like that of the birds. Driven by inner motivations to build safe nests in which to hatch their young, they seem to be at home in the confines of the temple: “The holy place is the epitome of the undisturbed, fulfilled life” (Kraus, Psalms 60–150, 168). The birds are truly blessed, for they have found a safe residence in the house of the living God. The privileged status of birds recurs in Scripture and perhaps there is a similar longing in Jesus’ lament: “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Luke 9:58, NIV). Likewise, in his admonition not to worry about tomorrow, Jesus points to the birds: “They do not sow, or reap, or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matt 6:26, NIV). From their privileged position in the nooks and crannies of the temple precincts, the birds fill the air with joyous song. The birds are like the temple singers, whose hallels to Yahweh Sabaoth—King and God—are never ending.

MARVIN TATE, PSALMS 51-100, VOLUME 20 (WORD BIBLICAL COMMENTARY), 356-358.