Robert L. Foster – författare

This collection of essays advances psalms studies through a concerted focus on the persuasive aim of psalmic poetry, and it offers unique perspectives on rhetorical devices within the psalms. These essays include discussions not only of structure, literary devices, and rhetorical strategies, but the authors also dialogue with classical rhetoric, modern psalms research, and current trends in rhetoric and cognitive science.Part One discusses various theoretical issues. Several articles discuss lament within the psalms, including the function of appeals to pathos, lament's compensation for monotheistic piety, and the need for more attention to the laments' poetry and rhetoric to understand their meaning. Other essays address the psalmists' self-presentation, the ideological identity of the wicked within the psalms, faunal imagery with regard to tenor and vehicle, the topoi related to God in call to praise psalms, the function of gaps in prayers for help, and the rhetoric of kingship psalms as attempts to persuade readers of the legitimacy and efficacy of kingship.Part Two consists of rhetorical analyses of several psalms or psalm pairs, each with distinctive emphases. These include a discussion of Psalm 8 from a bodily perspective, the nature and implication of nature language within Psalm 23, the structure of Psalm 102 within Book IV of the Psalter along with its theology and lament, the forensic case of Psalms 105 and 106 emphasizing the role of narrative in forensic rhetoric and comparing the results with classical rhetoric, and an analysis of the rhetorical aim of Psalm 147, subjected to developments within cognitive science.

Tucked away at the end of the Minor Prophets, the Books of Haggai and Zechariah offer messages of challenge and hope to residents of the small district of Yehud in the Persian Empire in the generations after the return from Babylonian exile. In this volume, Robert Foster focuses on the distinct theological message of each book. The Book of Haggai uses Israel's foundational event - God's salvation of Israel from Egypt - to exhort the people to finish building the Second Temple. The Book of Zechariah argues that the hopes the people had in the prophet Zechariah's days did not come true because the people failed to keep God's long-standing demand for justice, though hope still lies in the future because of God's character. Each chapter in this book closes with a substantive reflection of the ethics of the major sections of the Books of Haggai and Zechariah and their implications for contemporary readers.

The Book of Psalms includes some of the most impassioned language about God in the Old Testament. At the same time, the psalms as a collection constitute one of the most impassioned debates about the nature and activity of God on behalf of individuals, Israel, and the created order. In this learned yet accessible volume, Robert Foster offers the first major introduction to this debate about the person and work of God as it unfolds in the Book of Psalms. If God is the Just King, why does this King delay vindicating the oppressed and saving them from wicked oppressors? What happens when God turns in divine judgment against the people of Israel? Does God keep the promises made to the descendants of David and the covenant made with the people of Israel? Do the psalmists find God faithful and so worthy of the final commands in the Psalter to “Praise the Lord”? These powerful questions drive the debate within the Book of Psalms. By attending to the psalmists’ rhetoric, Foster shows how the individual psalmists appeal to God in prayer and proclamation and how these contrasting voices give life to the Psalter and to its presentation of the living God.