Hermann Spieckermann, «God's Steadfast Love Towards a New Conception of Old Testament Theology», Vol. 81 (2000) 305-327

This article argues in favour of a conception of Old Testament theology that is aware of the different hermeneutical presuppositions due to the different canonical shapes of the Jewish and the Christian Bible, respectively. An Old Testament Theology based on the canon of the Christian Bible has to do equal justice to the Hebrew and to the Greek version of the Old Testament, acknowledging that the Greek version, the Septuagint, is a dominant factor for the emergence of Christian faith. Perceiving the Old Testament from a Christian point of view sheds new light on a central theological issue thus far underestimated in scholarly research: God's steadfast love. The contribution tries to show how this characteristic insight into God's true being is reflected and interpreted in the different parts of the Old Testament.

        The idea of dsx is one of the most characteristic features in the Psalter. Word-statistics easily make this evident. Out of 245 occurrences in the Old Testament dsx is found 127 times in the Psalter. Of these, 124 occurrences refer to God’s dsx. No other Old Testament writing can compare with this frequent use of the term which occurs in 54 Psalms out of 150. Apart from the refrain in Ps 136 ‘for his steadfast love endures forever’ (26 occurrences) the word is not significantly concentrated in any special text. Rather, the term is one of the fundamental theological categories within the Psalms’ theology; as the Psalter as a the whole underwent a process of being added to, and supplemented with theological ideas in the course of the centuries, so did this term. Most of the Psalter’s references already presuppose the crucial importance of God’s dsx in the Sinai event.

        Presumably, the individual lament in Ps 61 still preserves a reminiscence of the pre-exilic idea of dsx just without reference to the Sinai pericope. The psalmist prays to God that he might again shelter his life which is endangered by the underworld and by enemies. The thought of sheltering is condensed by metaphorical speech, namely the metaphor of the everlasting abode in God’s tent which is an image of the temple. Abiding in God’s tent does not imply living within the circle of the Temple’s walls, of course. Anyone whose life is centred on God’s presence emanating from the temple may abide in God’s tent or under the shelter of his wings. This fits in with Ps 61 as a whole; it concludes with a plea for the king.