Many Latter-day Saints struggle to connect with the Old Testament, often missing its profound beauty because the standard King James Version strips away the formatting that reveals the text for what it truly is: a masterpiece of Hebrew poetry. How can we learn to read these ancient texts not just as distant history, but as the very songs that shaped the spiritual formation of Jesus Christ Himself? A new interview over at the Latter-day Saint history blog, From the Desk, features Rosalynde Welch, who discusses her new book, Seven Songs: Signs of Christ in the Old Testament (co-authored with Adam Miller). Welch explains how reading the Hebrew Bible as poetry rather than a textbook can provide us with a much-needed “theology of divine absence” and reveals why the ancient songs of Israel are perfectly suited to mirror the modern lifecycle of a believer’s faith.
Reading Christ “Out” of the Text
One of the central goals of Seven Songs is to help Latter-day Saints approach the Old Testament with fresh eyes. Because the text was written over a millennium by a culture that “revered text and literacy above all else,” Welch argues it is the undisputed literary treasure of our scriptural canon.
However, as Christian readers, we often fall into the trap of aggressively reading our own theology backward into the ancient text. Welch suggests a more sensitive approach:
While our whole series is focused on finding Christ in scripture, we thought the best reading of the Hebrew Bible wouldn’t force Christian theology onto it but would instead read Jesus of Nazareth out of it.
In other words: How would Jesus have understood these texts? And can we see the values and themes of the poems reflected in Jesus’s own formation and ministry?
By treating the text this way, we honor its Jewish origins as the Hebrew Bible while simultaneously discovering the very scriptures that Jesus used to understand His own mortal mission.
The Lifecycle of Faith
Because the poems of the Old Testament are so scattered, Welch and Miller chose to organize their book topically. They mapped seven specific poems to the trajectory of a believer’s life.
It begins with creation (Psalm 104), moves to the “young and fiery faith” of Miriam (Exodus 15), navigates the catastrophic collapses of midlife (Lamentations 1 and Ecclesiastes 2), wades through the long “afternoon” of faith when God feels distant (Psalm 42), and culminates in joyous reunion (Isaiah 60).
A Theology of Divine Absence
The discussion of Psalm 42 yields one of the most potent theological insights of the interview. Welch points out that “divine absence may be more the rule than the exception in covenant life.” Yet, we often lack a framework to process this silence. When God feels far away, we default to assuming either that we are being punished or that God simply doesn’t exist.
Welch argues that Psalm 42 gives us a better way: a theology of divine absence.
I argue that the hallmark of reality is, in fact, friction, distance, and difference. Ironically, a vending-machine God-on-demand who guarantees frictionless availability looks more like a psychological comfort construct than a real Father.
I suggest that Jesus’s “cry of dereliction” from the cross, “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”, is actually his greatest testimony of the Father’s reality. In that groan of estrangement, he affirms a relationship with someone other, who can be absent, and who is therefore real beyond wishful thinking.
When the psalmist declares, “My tears have been my food day and night,” he isn’t abandoning his covenant; he is living out the friction that proves the covenant is real.
The Sapphire Mine of Human Ingenuity
The interview also highlights the differing perspectives Welch and Miller brought to the text. When analyzing the sapphire mine in Job 28, Miller focused on the greed of human ambition. Welch, however, sees the beauty of human enterprise. She notes that while human ingenuity cannot buy ultimate wisdom (which is simply the “fear of the Lord”), our restless drive to explore is a divine gift that can be refined and enlisted in Christ’s work.
For more on Welch’s insights into Lamentations and the “salty tears” of the Psalms, head on over to the Latter-day Saint history blog, From the Desk, to read the full interview with Rosalynde Welch about Seven Songs.
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