From kraft Wed Jan 25 22:43:17 1995
Subject: Pesharim and House Queries
To: dss
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 22:43:17 -0500 (EST)
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>                 I have two inquiries. The first is regarding the 
> interpretations, or pesharim, of the Commentary on Psalm 37 (Vanderkam, 
> page 50-51). Why did the commentators assume that the references to the 
> "wicked" and the "righteous" were to the Wicked Priest and the Teacher of 
> Righteousness? I am probably taking it more from the Christian ... 
> perspective, but when I read this section I associate the two sides of 
> wicked and good as the believers and non-believers. In a more general 
> sense, I would assume the commentators would associate the wicked with their 
> enemies, possibly Demetrius III Eucerus (if he attacked Jerusalem 
> during the same time - no dates for the Psalm are given on pages
> 50-51).

Several different matters: (1) academic scholars today would tend to
look for the "original" meaning or intent of the Psalm, where "wicked"
and "righteous" would be determined by the situation from which the
Psalm seems to have come. That would have been in pre-Christian times,
and the categories are not likely to have been "believers  /
non-believers," as Christian interpreters later might be tempted to
impose. The theme of the entire Psalm (which is attributed to David)
seems to be obedience to YHWH through thick and thin, with YHWH
providing protection in response. (2) The author of the DSS commentary
sees his own world reflected in the "timeless" scripture -- as did
later Christians, in another set of circumstances. Thus for him, the
wicked and righteous refer to specific persons and actions. (3) Exactly
whom the commentator had in mind with the specific references, we do not
know. The guesses are varied, as you are discovering. But the main
debate reflected in the commentary seems to be within the "Jewish"
context, broadly speaking -- this is suggested especially by the
"priest" language used here and many other places. The "violent of the
nations" near the end of VanderKam's quote could well be the non-Jewish
adversaries, but the main confrontation seems to be between people who
disagree about some basic matters within Judaism. 

>                I was also questioning whether the reference to the "House" 
> in "The Florilegium"(Vanderkam, pages 51-52) was to the Temple of 
> Solomon (I could be very off!). I looked up 2Sam 7:12 in the King James 
> Version of the Bible and reading further on I found the reference to the 
> "House" David wished he could have built for his Lord in 1Kings 5:3-5. 
> The "House" then became the Temple of Solomon.

You are correct that the allusions are to God's "house" as exhibited in
the Temple of Solomon (and perhaps in the restored, "second" Temple
after the destruction of Solomon's building around 586 bce and the
return from the "Babylonian captivity"), but the application of that
terminology here is clearly to an expected future "house" of God of some
sort (VanderKam thinks it is a human group that is called God's "house,"
much as Paul in the early Christian movement thinks of the followers of
Messiah as constituting a special "body" of elect persons called "the
church"). As you learn more about the DSS writers, you will notice some
animosity to the Jewish leaders in the Temple that existed then, in
Jerusalem. Perhaps the hope for a future, eschatological Temple
(consisting of humans) is one way of addressing the frustration of being
estranged from the available Temple! This theme will come back at us
from various directions.

RAK