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Psalm 127 Essay

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Psalm 127 Psalm 127 is a very interesting Psalm with a message that is extremely apt considering the events of our current day. There is a general consensus that the overall purpose of Psalm 127 is to illustrate the complete futility of relying solely on our human efforts to accomplish anything meaningful and enduring. Whether we are building a skyscraper or a building a family, if God is not the foundation of those efforts, we will fail. Anyone who watched the World Trade Center crumble into an ashen heap within mere hours can surely appreciate the wisdom of this Wisdom Psalm. Still, the interpretation of the Psalm is not without controversy. One …show more content…

For instance, Gaebelein and Polcyn argue that while the psalm is separated into two distinct themes, these themes are inter-related through contrast. “The first strophe teaches the lesson of divine sovereignty over human enterprise by way of warning against self-sufficiency. It pursues a negative course until it reaches a rhetorical climax of direct address in v 2a. It ends on a positive note, which is developed in the second strophe in terms of praise of God and commendation.” Verses 1 and 2 teach the wisdom of a Christ-centered life by showing the futility and anxiety of life without God’s blessing. By contrast, verses 3 to 5 show the blessings of a God-centered life and encourage the godly to trust in the Lord in all matters of life. A. A. Anderson would agree in seeing the Psalm as a unified piece. Anderson, noting the tendency to impose arbitrary divisions, quotes G.W. Anderson, saying, “the desire to separate the two parts is simply a manifestation of the occupational disease of commentators.” Rather than forcing a dissection of the two parts, it seems the better view to read the psalm as a unified whole. As Estes observes, both thematic logic and literary structure

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