Some passages of Scripture get ghosted. Occasionally, you see this happen when you ask someone to read a particular chapter aloud. The words are all right there on the page. But the person reading them literally acts as if some are simply invisible.
I am not talking about the portions that we generally avoid reading aloud. There are plenty of those: long lists of names, numbers, offerings, or building projects where the words are unpronounceable, the story is obscure, and the repetition is intense (looking at you, Numbers 7). I have argued before that there is gold to be found in lists and building projects too. Instead, I am talking about something stranger: the way that many (if not most) Christians treat some of God’s inspired words as if they do not exist.
I am referring, in particular, to the superscriptions in the Psalms. I have noticed it frequently in my church: If, for example, someone is given Psalm 51 to read, the reading typically begins with the first verse—in this case, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love.” Which means it omits what the passage says immediately beforehand: “For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.” Most people hardly realize they have missed anything. If you mention it afterward, they might be puzzled, as though someone had suggested reading the contents page or the index.
No doubt much of the problem stems from the ways Bibles are formatted. Because our Bibles tend to include so many introductions, headings, subtitles, chapters, and verse numbers (let alone cross-references and study notes), additions to the text of Scripture often account for more words than the text itself. It is hardly surprising that people assume original titles like “To the choirmaster” and “Of David” belong in the same category as editorial insertions like “The Call of Abram” or “The Birth of Jesus.” But they don’t. They are part of the Hebrew text, and frequently essential to understanding it.
Psalm 51 is a good example. This beautiful prayer of repentance reads completely differently when we know what David has done to earn Nathan’s rebuke and how his sin has been exposed. Plenty of psalms start similarly, by providing a narrative location for the song that follows. Knowing that a poem is “a Psalm of David. When he fled from his son Absalom” (3:1) adds spiritual and emotional heft to the words “But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high” (3:3)—not least because Absalom has lifted his own head, and indeed will meet his doom as his head is lifted in a tree (2 Sam. 18:9).
In the first verse of Psalm 57, David states, “I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.” His prayer makes new layers of sense when we know it comes from inside a cave while Saul is trying to kill him. Even the simple phrase “in God I trust” (56:4) sounds very different on the lips of a political prisoner—according to the psalm’s superscription, David composed it as a Philistine captive—than it does on a dollar bill.
Some psalms, like these, begin with comparatively long and detailed superscriptions. But the short and subtle ones can be equally revealing. Many believers know the lines “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain” (127:1), and we freely apply them to our commercial or charitable initiatives. The resonances are quite different, however, when we start as the psalm does: “A song of ascents. Of Solomon.” The application quickly changes when the author is Solomon and the “house” is the temple. The “labor” becomes less metaphorical when we realize they took seven years and prepared God’s dwelling for centuries.
A few songs later comes an even more familiar line: “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” (133:1). Again, though, look what happens when you read the superscription first: “A song of ascents. Of David.” Except, perhaps, for Cain and Abel, no brothers in Scripture dwelt in unity less than David’s sons. Amnon raped his sister; Absalom killed his brother and arranged a coup to overthrow his father; Adonijah attempted a coup as well, before being killed on the orders of his brother Solomon (who then killed numerous other people). Suddenly the opening line of the psalm sounds less like a platitude—a comforting reflection at the start of a prayer meeting, say—and more like the desperate longing of a father who has seen endless conflict among his own children. In the Psalms, as in all Scripture, knowing the “who” and “why” can alter the “what.”
So if anyone asks you to read a psalm, start with the superscription. You will be glad you did.
Andrew Wilson is teaching pastor at King’s Church London and author of Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West.
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