Bully's Blog

Timothy Edwards has some really interesting things to say about interpreting Psalm 1 over at Credenda/Agenda. Of course, I thought the matrix might help things as well. Here’s my go at it.

From what I can see, we have the heptamerous pattern, but step 5, Maturity, is the main point of the Psalm because this in itself is expanded into the same structure (I have noticed this elsewhere in Scripture).

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(Creation – Ark – Sabbath) Blessed the man

…..(Division – Veils – Passover)
…..that has not walked in the counsel of the wicked,

……….(Ascension – Altar & Table – Firstfruits)
……….nor stood in the way of sinners,
……….nor sat in the seat of the scornful.

……………(Testing – Lampstand – Pentecost)
……………But in the Torah of the Lord is his delight
……………and in his Torah he meditates day and night (Day 4).

……….(Maturity – Incense – Trumpets)
……….He shall be like a tree (Day 1 – Source/Head)
……………transplanted by streams of water, (Day 2 – Gen. 1:7)
………………..which gives its fruit (Day 3 – Gen. 1:11)
…………………….in season (Day 4 – Gen. 1:14)
………………..and whose leaves never wither; (Day 5 – multitudes [2])
……………so everything he does (Day 6 – Mediator)
……….prospers. (Day 7 – Glory)

……….Not so (Transcendence)
……………the wicked, (Hierarchy)
………………..but like chaff (Ethics)
……………the wind (Sanctions)
……….dispels them. (Succession)

…..(Conquest – High Priest – Atonement [Day of Covering])
…..Thus the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
…..nor sinners in the company of the righteous.

(Glorification – Shekinah – Booths)
For the Lord embraces the way of the righteous
but the way of the wicked will perish.

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The Word fills the Mediator at Testing (Day 4) which is echoed at the Testing in the centre of Day 5. If Adam is faithful in being governed by God’s Law-Light, God makes Adam a governor.

Adam’s actual Day 7 is included as a kind of postscript within Maturity. In this postscript, the Pentecost/Law/Harvest is at the centre. He is sifted like wheat, but unlike Peter, and like Belshazzar, he is found wanting. This is only 5 point. It is Law that is not expanded to 7 points as a New Creation [1]. The “rushing wind” of the Lord’s glory-cloud visits and judges Adam in the Garden and “scatters” him. Within Maturity, he is still a multitude, but one of death, not life. Bad Adam has been visited by the Black Horse of famine, while good Adam gets the New Covenant oil and wine and survives the plagues.

Finally, notice that the last three steps all contrast the righteous with the wicked. At Trumpets, the Pentecost Spirit makes the faithful fruitful but the wicked waste away under its plagues. At Atonement, the goats are separated and the sinners are expelled to Azal. At Booths we find a combination of “Ingathering” and Covenant succession (“the way”) for the righteous.

On Days 1-3, God formed the house, and on Days 4-6 He filled it. So the first half of the Psalm is about the Adam who divides things like God does. He calls the Light day and the Dark night, not the other way around (as the wicked do). The second half is about the “filling” of this “forming” Word, its consequences in history.

Of course, following the matrix, this entire scenario prefigures the histories of both the first century church, and the entire Bible as a whole.

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[1] See Lambs in Limbo.
[2] Adam’s test follows the same pattern as the Creation week, only the “multitudes” of step 5 are not clouds of birds/fish but his figleaf covering. His leaves are not joined to the vine. The faithful Adam becomes fruitful, an Eve army, but the troops of the unfaithful are scattered.