Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

College

Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary

Program

Religion, Old Testament Studies PhD

First Advisor

Roy E. Gane

Second Advisor

Richard M. Davidson

Third Advisor

Jerome Skinner

Abstract

Do passages dealing with social justice in the Torah and the Psalms together comprise an intentionally composed grand symphony, or do they merely form an ad hoc patchwork quilt in which their echoes of similarity are mere coincidences?1 Literary interactions between the Torah and the Prophets of the Hebrew Bible have been a focus of biblical scholarship, but the intertextual connections between the legal corpus of the Torah and poetry in Psalms have not received sufficient attention. Scholars have noticed some thematic similarities, but there are no systematic studies that analyze these interactions to determine whether they involve reuse and, if so, the possible direction of dependence between them.

The present dissertation addresses this lacuna by examining relationships between selected Torah and Psalms passages concerning the needs of the poor, immigrants, widows, and orphans. This study develops and applies a methodology for identifying social justice passages, literary parallels indicating reuse, and the direction of dependence between the Torah and the Psalms. Then the study investigates the intended goals and rhetorical effects of such reuse, including the question of whether later authors were engaged in debates with their predecessors or agreeably built upon their work.

The first part of the dissertation establishes a methodological foundation. It surveys the Torah and the Psalms, highlighting the complexity of the interactions between them, and provides a comprehensive set of keywords used to identify the passages that protect the poor, immigrants, widows, and orphans. This part also outlines the contexts of social justice, including shame and honor, national memory, features of Israelite society, and the values underlying the social justice material. The first part also offers a synthesis of indicators used to identify parallels and the direction of dependence.

The second part attempts to identify and systematize into categories all social justice passages in the Torah and Psalms using the set of keywords proposed in the first part. In the Torah, the following categories were identified: (1) Oppression, (2) Legal Justice, (3) Food, (4) Redemption by a Kinsman, (5) God as the Protecting Entity, and (6) Curses for Violation. In the Psalms, the following categories were identified: (1) The Vulnerable Character, (2) Depiction of the Wicked, (3) Depiction of the Righteous, (4) Depiction of the Just Ruler, (5) God’s Protection, (6) Blessings, and (7) Curses. After identification and systematization, this part compares the Torah passages with the passages from the Psalms, identified by the keywords, semantic domain analysis, and the immediate context of the passages.

Using the data from the second part of the study, the third part identifies parallels between social justice passages in the Torah and the Psalms and proposes three case studies based on numerous interactions between Torah pericopes and Psalms 9–10 (Case Study 1), 72 (Case Study 2), and 27 (Case Study 3). The core of the dissertation’s research is found further in the third part, which analyzes the three selected case studies and synthesizes the findings. These findings demonstrate that the authors of the selected Psalms intentionally depended on the Torah, rather than accidentally paralleling it. The data show that the poets assumed the existence of a covenantal framework and actively drew on the Torah’s social justice material in their texts, demonstrating how legislative norms were accepted and ideally were to be practiced among the Israelites.

Both the Torah and the Psalms present social justice as interpersonal care for the vulnerable, not just equal distribution of resources and privileges. The relationship between the Torah and the Psalms demonstrates that legislation is insufficient to address the problems of poverty and injustice. The intertextual connections in this dissertation show that addressing poverty and social injustice requires transformed hearts rather than mere ideal laws.

Subject Area

Intertextuality in the Bible; Justice--Biblical teaching; Social justice--Religious aspects; Bible. Pentateuch--Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Bible. Psalms--Criticism, interpretation, etc.

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