The Symbolism of the Psalms:
A Spiritual Commentary
Reviewed by the Rev. Dr. James F. Lawrence
A
Swedenborgian verse-by-verse spiritual meaning of all the Psalms!
In a landmark work in Swedenborgian biblical spirituality, Theodore
D. “Doug” Webber has just released volume one of a projected three-volume
study of the Swedenborgian meaning of the Psalms.
The Symbolism of the Psalms: A Spiritual Commentary proceeds with
the same method of Swedenborg’s continuous interpretation of Genesis,
Exodus and Revelation. Each chapter contains the biblical text first (the full
psalm), followed by a brief summary of the main spiritual theme(s) of each
psalm, which is then followed by a thorough verse-by-verse discussion of the
correspondences. At 550 pages for 40 psalms, the treatment of the symbolisms
of the text presents abundant material from Swedenborg’s Writings and steady
cross-references to other biblical instances of the same terms.
This new work is similar to the long out-of-print 1837 work on the Psalms
by the Anglican priest Rev. John Clowes (1743-1831) that carried the title,
The Psalms: A New Translation from the Hebrew with the Internal Sense and
Exposition. Webber’s method, from his skill being
trained in Hebrew, improves translation of the Psalms
so that it accords closest to what Swedenborg would
have been working with via his primary biblical text,
the Schmidius Bible.
For every verse, wherever Swedenborg has
commentary either in his own posthumously published
workbook, Prophets and Psalms, or in another work,
Webber relies on that. For verses or whole psalms on
which Swedenborg never directly commented, he relies
on Swedenborg’s spiritual meaning of the same Hebrew
word that shows up in other parts of Swedenborg’s
biblical commentary.
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