Tag Archives: asaph

Asaph the Psalmist, and His Son Joseph

 

The_Beatles_and_Lill-Babs_1963How difficult is it to live in the shadow of a famous parent? How do you make your mark as an individual when your father or mother is a famous musician, artist, or actor? And worse, if you go into the same field as them– can you ever really escape the comparison? Could you ever live up to that? I am not sure I could. But that was the story for the first Joseph in this series, the son of Asaph: a musician and prophet of God, overshadowed by his much more famous father.

But who was Asaph? He was a Levite, a priest of David during the period before the First Temple, when the Tabernacle still sat on the Temple Mount. But he was not just any priest, he was the John Lennon of the priests. He was the very first musician-priest to say a blessing over the Tabernacle in Jerusalem, not to mention the writer of twelve of our psalms in the Book of Psalms– second only to King David in authorship. I am sure that almost no one has heard of him today, but in biblical terms is was a Big Deal.

Asaph the Psalmist and his son, the first among the musician-prophets of Jerusalem. Read on for more.

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Our Amazing Book of Psalms

psalm1-smThe Book of Psalms is one of the most beautiful in our bibles. In its 150 chapters, we find wisdom, comfort, hope, and a poetic appreciation of God that is nearly unique in the Hebrew Bible. It is no wonder that Jews and Christians have read and studied it for hundreds of years. After reading stories of law and prophets and of the Jewish ancestor’s struggles to accept and obey God, turning to psalms is frequently a relief and a comfort.

Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
Psalms 1:1-2

A full study of the psalms would take a lifetime, but there is much that we can say about this amazing book. Who wrote the psalms? What are they for? Scholars still debate these questions, but there is so much that we can learn about the psalms from the psalms themselves. Read on for more.

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