The Spirit’s work is to transform our fallen human nature into people who think and speak and behave more and more like God’s Son, Jesus, the perfect human being.

Karen H. Jobes, Letters to the Church: A Survey of Hebrews and the General Epistles, 60.

Biblical faith can claim a confidence beyond one’s own experience because it rests in the character of God, of which there is nothing more certain and constant.

Karen H. Jobes, Letters to the Church: A Survey of Hebrews and the General Epistles, 48.

The book of Psalms is actually one of the later products of the Old Testament era. If we were to arrange the books of the Old Testament according to their dates of compilation, we would have to put the Psalter among the post-exilic volumes toward the very end of the collection. Many of the songs contained in it are, to be sure, much older, but the particular selection and arrangement of Hebrew hymns into the volume we call the book of Psalms is a post-exilic work. In fact, rather than looking at the Psalter as an Old Testament worship hymnal, it is probably more appropriate to regard it as a final product of the Old Testament temple, compiled in preparation for New Testament worship.

Sing a New Song: Recovering Psalm Singing for the Twenty-First Century, Loc. 2020.

James 5:13 exhorts those who are merry to sing psalms, and none would suggest that the Psalter was excluded. It is noteworthy that he does this immediately after exhorting those in trouble to pray. This shows that, just as in the temple, singing is a religious duty distinct from prayer, even if in some respects they overlap.

Sing a New Song: Recovering Psalm Singing for the Twenty-First Century, Loc. 1870.

This eclipse of psalmody in the late nineteenth century is quite unprecedented. The Psalms, as we have seen, had been the dominant form of church song beginning with the church fathers, all through the Middle Ages, during the Reformation and Post-Reformation eras, and into the modern era. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the church had lost the voice through which it had expressed its sung praise for more than eighteen hundred years.

Sing a New Song: Recovering Psalm Singing for the Twenty-First Century, Loc. 1219.

The Holy Spirit gave the Psalter as a complete collection whose strength is collective: laments not isolated from praise, imprecations not isolated from confessions of sin, but all together. The whole gospel of the whole Christ is found in the whole Psalter.

Sing a New Song: Recovering Psalm Singing for the Twenty-First Century, Loc. 1107.

The whole book of Psalms is called, in Hebrew, the Book of Praises (Sefer Tehillim). Not all the Psalms are praise songs. Some are cries of distress. But the book is called the Book of Praises because its many psalms meet us in our present experiences, whatever they are, and invariably point our hearts toward God’s victories—realized or promised. Indeed, the whole Psalter reaches its climax with a “new song” (Ps. 149) and a “hallelujah” benediction (Ps. 150). Until that great day comes when all our tears will be wiped away and we will sing only “new song” praises (Rev. 5:9; 14:3), the variety of songs in the Psalter tune our hearts to that joy now. It is for this reason that the Psalter is called the Book of Praises, and this book about singing those ancient songs is called Sing a New Song.

Joel R. Beeke and Anthony Selvaggio, Sing a New Song: Recovering Psalm Singing for the Twenty-First Century, Loc. 91.

Five psalms in the Psalter are called “new songs” (Pss. 33:3; 40:3; 96:1; 98:1; 149:1). Additionally, while Psalm 144 is not itself a “new song,” it includes a promise to sing a “new song” (v. 9) after God grants a longed-for victory. In biblical Hebrew, a new song is not necessarily a song that was recently written. The phrase is an idiom for a certain kind of praise song—the kind of praise one sings loudly for all the nations to hear after God has granted a great victory. Psalm 40 is a good example: “I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD” (vv. 1–3, emphasis added).

Joel R. Beeke, Anthony Selvaggio, Sing a New Song: Recovering Psalm Singing for the Twenty-First Century, Loc. 83

The compiler who put Kings together for posterity above all sought to provide an account of the nation’s history and an explanation of why that history took the course it finally did.

Robert Alter, Ancient Israel – The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings – A Translation with Commentary, 594.

The narrator links the beginning of the temple-building with Israel’s exodus from Egypt (6:1), suggesting that all Israel’s history so far has been leading up to this point (cf. Exod. 15:13-17). From now on Israel is to be known as the nation which worships YHWH in this temple. If David’s bringing up the ark to Zion set the seal on his rise to kindship, then Solomon’s building of the temple confirms YHWH’s choice of David’s line. As Meyers notes (pp. 360-2), the temple is a visual symbol of the legitimacy of David’s dynasty. It represents a stable social order in which the king enjoys divine favour and upholds justice. In Kings, as in ancient Near Eastern thought generally, the political and the religious are indivisible.

Philip E. Satterthwaite & J. Gordon McConville, Exploring the Old Testament: A Guide to the Historical Books, 150.