David the Psalmist-Prophet

David is honored by the Church not only as king and ancestor of Christ but as a prophet — for the Psalms are read as prophecy, and the Church’s whole life of prayer is built on the Psalter that bears his name. This file treats David’s prophetic office, the Church’s christological reading of the Psalms, and the way David bridges this collection and the wave-sibling on the Psalter and the daily office.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

King, Ancestor, and Prophet

David the son of Jesse — shepherd, giant-slayer, king of all Israel around 1000 BC, and the ancestor in whose line and city the Messiah would be born — is one of the most constantly named figures of the Old Testament in the Church’s worship. The Church commemorates him among the Holy Forefathers on the Sunday before the Nativity and, most explicitly, on the Sunday after the Nativity, when the “Holy Righteous David the King” is kept together with Joseph the Betrothed and James the Brother of the Lord (Commemoration of the Righteous David the King, Joseph the Betrothed, and James, Orthodox Church in America, oca.org). But beyond king and ancestor, the Church honors David under a further title that the West less often presses: prophet. The New Testament itself calls him so. On the day of Pentecost St. Peter, expounding Psalm 15 (LXX; 16 MT), says of David, “being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him… he seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ” (Acts 2:29–31); Christ Himself calls David’s words in Psalm 109 (LXX; 110 MT) speech “in the Spirit” (Matthew 22:43). David is thus, on apostolic and dominical authority, a prophet — and his prophecy is the Psalter.

The Psalms as Prophecy

The Orthodox reading of the Psalms is thoroughly christological and prophetic: the Church hears in David’s psalms the voice of Christ, the prophecy of His birth, passion, resurrection, ascension, and kingdom, and the prayer of the Church united to Him. A few of the great Messianic psalms show the pattern.

  • Psalm 109 (LXX; 110 MT): “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” Christ presses this on the Pharisees as proof that the Messiah is more than David’s son — for how does David, “in the Spirit,” call his own descendant “Lord”? (Matthew 22:41–46) — and the Church reads it of the Ascension and the eternal priesthood “after the order of Melchisedec” (Psalm 109:4; Hebrews 5–7). It is the most-quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament.
  • Psalm 21 (LXX; 22 MT): “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” — the psalm whose opening Christ cries from the Cross (Matthew 27:46), and which foretells the piercing, the dividing of the garments, and the casting of lots (Psalm 21:16–18; John 19:23–24), read by the Church as a prophecy of the Passion.
  • Psalm 15 (LXX; 16 MT): “thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” — cited by Peter at Pentecost as David’s prophecy of the Resurrection of Christ (Acts 2:25–31).
  • Psalm 2: “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee” — read of the eternal begetting and of the Baptism and Resurrection (Acts 13:33; Hebrews 1:5).

This christological reading of the Psalter is not an occasional device but the Church’s habitual way of praying the Psalms: in the services, David’s words are constantly on the lips of Christ and of the Church-in-Christ, so that the Psalter becomes the prayerbook of the whole Body, its every psalm capable of being heard as prophecy of and prayer to the Lord (John Breck, Scripture in Tradition, SVS Press, 2001, on the christological reading of the Psalms; Pentiuc, The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Oxford, 2014). The question of which psalms are David’s by authorship, and how the Psalter was compiled, is a source-critical matter treated in the Scripture collection; the Church’s liturgical usage names the Psalter “of David” as a whole and reads it as the prophecy of the psalmist-king (see The Formation of the Canon).

The Repentant Prophet

David is honored not only for his prophecy but for his repentance, and here too his psalms are the Church’s own voice. After his great sin — the adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah (2 Samuel 11–12) — David, rebuked by the prophet Nathan, composed Psalm 50 (LXX; 51 MT), the Miserere: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness… Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Psalm 50:1, 10). This psalm is the most frequently used of all in Orthodox worship — recited at every Matins, in the preparation for Communion, in the Hours, and in the daily prayers of the faithful — so that David the penitent king has taught the whole Church her language of contrition (the constant liturgical use of Psalm 50 is treated in the wave-sibling collection; see The Psalter and the Daily Office). That the greatest sinner among the kings is also the great teacher of repentance is, for the Orthodox tradition, part of David’s holiness: he shows that the prophet-king is a saint not despite his fall but in the depth of his return.

David the Bridge

David stands at the meeting-point of this collection and the collection on the Psalter and the daily office, and the two must be read together. As prophet, David belongs here, among the Old Testament saints who foretold Christ: his psalms are prophecy, sung by the Church as the voice of the Lord and of His Body. As psalmist, David belongs to the Psalter and the Church’s daily prayer: the office of Vespers, Matins, and the Hours is built from his psalms, prayed round the clock and round the year (see The Psalter and the Daily Office). The one office cannot be separated from the other: it is because the Psalms are prophecy — the Spirit of Christ speaking through David — that the Church prays them as her own, hearing in the old king’s words the voice of the incarnate Lord. David is therefore honored on both sides of the Nativity feast (see The Prophets as Saints of the Church): the ancestor who awaited the Christ and the prophet who foresaw and foresang Him, the penitent whose psalms are the Church’s daily breath. Of the whole prophetic company, none is nearer to the Church’s own lips than David.

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible, KJV, with LXX numbering (Psalm 2; 15/16; 21/22; 50/51; 109/110; 2 Samuel 11–12; Matthew 22:41–46; 27:46; John 19:23–24; Acts 2:25–31; 13:33; Hebrews 1:5; 5–7).
  • Commemoration of the Holy Righteous David the King, Joseph the Betrothed, and James the Brother of the Lord (Sunday after Nativity / 26 December), Orthodox Church in America, oca.org.
  • Breck, John. Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and Its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001. (The christological reading of the Psalms.)
  • Pentiuc, Eugen J. The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. (David as prophet; the Psalter in Orthodox use.)
  • “David,” OrthodoxWiki (the king and prophet; the veneration).