Nicolaus Episcopus edition of The Book of Psalms (Psalterium Hebraicum) printed by Hieronymus Froben, Basel 1563. Jewish Museum of Switzerland
Psalms for Our Times: Rashi Counters Christological Readings
In medieval Latin Christendom, the Psalms were highly beloved, with commentators interpreting them as prophecies about Christ and the Church. Aware of this prevailing interpretation, Rashi often deviates from the plain meaning of the text to read the Psalms as a reflection of the Jewish people’s experience and suffering in his own time.
Published: August 2, 2024
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
Editors note: For a discussion of how and if this applies to his Torah commentary, see Yedida Eisenstat, “Does Rashi’s Torah Commentary Respond to Christianity?” TheTorah (2018).
See Avraham Grossman, Rashi and the Jewish-Christian Polemic (Hebrew; Ramat-Gan, 2021). See also my, “Polemics or Exegesis? Reconsidering the Aims and Nature of Rashi’s Bible Commentary. Review Essay on Avraham Grossman, Rashi and the Jewish-Christian Polemic (Hebrew; Ramat-Gan, 2021),” to appear in Jewish Studies Internet Journal.
Editor’s note: For more on this Psalm in Jewish and Christian interpretation, see Marc Zvi Brettler and Amy-Jill Levine, “Psalm 2: Is the Messiah the Son of God?” TheTorah (2020).
On the text of Rashi’s commentary on Psalm 2, both original and censored, see Hayyim Gevaryahu, “נוסחאות רש"י לתהלים והצנזורה” [Nusḥa’ot Rashi le-Tehillim we-ha-ṣenzurah] in ספר פרופ' חמ"י גבריהו [Haim M.I. Gevaryahu Memorial Volume] (Jerusalem: World Jewish Bible Center, 1989), 252–253. See also Mayer I. Gruber, Rashi’s Commentary on Psalms (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 180. Unless otherwise indicated, translations of biblical commentaries are my own. Translations of the biblical text are from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation (Philadelphia: JPS, 1985), occasionally modified to reflect the understanding of the commentators being discussed.
See Robert Harris, “Rashi and the ‘Messianic’ Psalms,” in Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible Ancient near Eastern Literature and Postbiblical Judaism Presented to Shalom M. Paul on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Chaim Cohen (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 2: 845–862.
See Harris, “Rashi and the Messianic Psalms,” 858–859.
On Rashi’s assumption of Davidic authorship of the Psalms, including those without attribution in the superscription, see Eran Viezel, “The Formation of Some Biblical Books, According to Rashi.” JTS, 61 (2010): 19-26. See also the discussion below.
Rashi is using biblical language here, see 1 Samuel 28:1 and 29:1, but here it is Rashi narrating what occurs in the story, not quoting a text.
Rashi often uses this term as his preferred synonym for peshat.
Editor’s note: See discussion in Abraham J. Berkowitz, ““My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?” — Jesus or Esther?” TheTorah (2020).
See Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Bible with and Without Jesus : How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (New York: Harper Collins, 2020), 347–353.
On Rashi’s possible familiarity with Christian Bible interpretation, see Cohen, Rashi, Bible Interpretation and Latin Learning in Medieval Europe, 96-101; see also my review essay cited in Note 2 above.
These are Levites mentioned 1 Chronicles 16:41–42 appointed to give praise to God.
On Rashi’s midrashic source, see Gruber, Rashi’s Commentary on Psalms, 165, 168-169.
Editor’s note: For more on this psalm, see J. Richard Middleton, “Traumatized and Sleepless, the Psalmist Seeks Comfort in God’s Immanence,” TheTorah (2024).
See Elisabeth Hollender, Piyyut Commentary in Medieval Ashkenaz (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008).
Editor’s note: For a discussion of how Esau came to represent Rome, see Malka Z. Simkovich, “Esau the Ancestor of Rome,” TheTorah (2018). For how Rashi uses this anti-Christian trope, see Barry Dov Walfish, “The Denigration of Esau,” TheTorah (2020).
See Marcia Colish, “Psalterium Scholastocorum: Peter Lombard and the Emergence of Scholastic Psalms Exegesis.” Speculum 67 (1992): 531.
See Andrew B. Kraebel, “Grammatica and the Authenticity of the Psalms-commentary Attributed to Bruno the Carthusian.” Mediaeval Studies 71 (2009): 63–97; idem, “The place of Allegory in the Psalter-commentary of Bruno the Carthusian.” Mediaeval Studies 73 (2011): 207–216; Constant Mews, “Bruno of Reims and the Evolution of Scholastic Culture in Northern France, 1050–1100,” in: Beyer, Hartmut, Gabriela Signori, and Sita Steckel, eds. Bruno the Carthusian and His Mortuary Roll (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2014), 49–81.
Expositio in Psalmos, in: Patrologia Latina (Patrologia Cursus Completus: Series Latina), ed. Jaques Paul Migne (Paris: Migne, 1844–1864) 152: 637–1420. French translation: Commentaire des Psaumes attribué à saint Bruno, trans. André Aniorté (Le Barroux: Sainte Madeleine, 2017). The commentary survives in a single manuscript, from La Grande Chartreuse, now Grenoble, Bibliothèque municipale, 341 (240), copied in the first third of the twelfth century. It was first published in 1611. Though its attribution to Bruno was questioned in the 1950s, his authorship has been reconfirmed by recent scholarship. See Kraebel, “Grammatica”; Mews, “Scholastic Culture,” 52.
See Andrew B. Kraebel, “Prophecy and Poetry in the Psalms-commentaries of St. Bruno and the pre-scholastics,” Sacris Erudiri 50 (2011): 413–459; idem, “Poetry and Commentary in the Medieval School of Rheims: Reading Virgil, reading David,” in Interpreting Scriptures in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, ed. Mordechai Cohen and Adele Berlin (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 227–248.
Patrologia Latina 152:708B–C, Aniorté trans., 160. English translation from Kraebel, “Poetry and Commentary,” 243.
Kraebel, “Place of Allegory,” 216.
Patrologia Latina 152:638A. Aniorté trans., 59. English translation from Kraebel, “Poetry and Commentary,” 242.
Kraebel, “Place of Allegory,” 216.
I make this argument in detail in Mordechai Z. Cohen, Rashi, Bible Commentary and Latin Learning in Medieval Europe: A New Perspective on an Exegetical Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
