Geller's masterful one-volume treatment of the Psalms has two main aims. One is to provide readers wishing for contact with the Hebrew text of the Psalter a useful guide that pays attention to grammar and the nuances of language and style. The second aim is to offer a framework of interpretation from both a historical-critical and a broadly literary approach. This commentary offers students and those interested in the Hebrew Bible an opportunity to understand the role of genre, as described by Hermann Gunkel and later scholars, in relation to the religious viewpoints expressed in the Psalms.
Specifically, Geller shows that most of the psalms in the Psalter reflect the specific political and religious situation of the late seventh to the early fourth centuries BCE. This was a time of crisis and turmoil for ancient Israel, marked by political dislocation, inner societal struggles, and the development of radical monotheism and new types of religious communities. This unsettled period is reflected in the questioning nature of many psalms and the manner in which older genres and religious ideas were intermixed and reinterpreted. This type of religion marked a transitional era between pre-exilic Israelite and Judean religions and the formation of Second Temple Judaism in the third and second centuries BCE. Modern readers will gain a sense of the dynamism of the religion of the Psalms and of the particular dilemmas of the psalmists, both of which have been largely misunderstood in later Judaism and Christianity.
