Psalm Ethics

According to the timeline in class, the psalms were used in an attempt to return to a way of worship similar to that of the first temple period. This was one of the reasons the Book of Psalms was compiled. The Book of Psalms gave guidelines for living a good life. It provided ethical and moral guidelines. The strongest guideline for how to live a righteous life, is to worship God. It seems every psalm has to do with some sort of way of worshiping God, but there are additional ethical guidelines, and one that i noticed, was how one should tell the truth.

Psalms 52 is a great example a way the Book of Psalms stresses telling the truth: "You love evil better than good, a lie more than speaking justice. You love all destructive words, the tongue of deceit. God will surely smash you forever, sweep you up and tear you from the tent, root you out from the land of the living," (Alter, 184-185). This section of the psalm is describing how God will treat one who lies. He will ultimately treat them with death is you are one who has a tongue of deceit.

Another example of stressing the truth, is in Psalm 38: "They speak lies, deceit utter all day long. But like the deaf i do not hear," (Alter, 135).  In this Psalm, the speaker is describing what his enemies do, which is tell lies. Yet he stays true to God, and does not hear his enemies and is not swayed by their lies. This Psalm shows that Gods enemies, are the ones who tell lies, someone who is close to God, would not.

There are many times when a psalms starts out, or when one changes focus, where the speaker tells the listener to listen to his words, such as Psalm 78. This is asking the listener to put their faith in the truth of the speakers words. The ethical sense of "truth" is more then just what God says to do, it is something that is subtly forced onto the reader, to believe in the truth of the Psalm.

Telling the truth is an ethical decision that the Book of Psalms promotes. A trustworthy society is easier to live in then one full of doubt. It is a logical that the Book of Psalms would want people to tell the truth. You are always told to tell the truth, and this ethic fits in with society today, as well as back then.