An example of reading Jesus back into the OT The First Reading The Safest Rule to read it back The Allowed Rule following the NT
An example using Psalm 51 This is a Psalm. The Genre is poetry: a word by word analysis may not help! A poem written by David after Nathan confronted him over Baathsheba It is a song of lament The structure follows the rules of Hebrew Poetry: parallelism, concomitant contrasting, chiastic, circular, rhyme of thoughts, “stichs” (blocks), etc.
STRUCTURE: CONFESSION & VINDICATION THE CYCLE REPEATS IN EXPANDING CIRCLES
I – 1ST CYCLE: 1-6 – Confession and a request for God to vindicate His Name II – 2nd CYCLE: 7-12 – Confession and a request for vindication to teach others IV – 3rd CYCLE: 13-18 – Confession and a request for vindication upon Zion
Now how do we read Jesus back into this Psalm?
1. The safest: see if there has been a use made of it by the NT a. Paul uses 51:4 in Romans 3 to declare the innate unrighteousness of every person and then point his readers to the wonder of justification by faith in Jesus.
2. The second safest: read the passage again but now in light of Jesus' person, work and story (by that I mean the redemption story). a) For example, it is safe to affirm that Jesus, the King Promised to David, bore David's blood guiltiness and iniquity and just as David found forgiveness so do we, by coming to Jesus. b) You can go back and draw pictures from individual verses which illustrate or resemble the person or the work of Jesus
Exegeting toward Jesus is very different from exegeting toward principles of morality
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