David P. Barshinger, who holds a Ph.D. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS) in Deerfield, Illinois, where he has also taught as an adjunct professor, provides an instructive model focused on the Book of Psalms for those who wish to examine in depth and detail specific sections of the biblical writings of Jonathan Edwards. TEDS is one of the religious institutions in contemporary America where the thought and theology of Edwards, America's most significant theologian in the eighteenth century, continues to resonate powerfully. Barshinger has taken full advantage of the Yale University Press edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards which includes three volumes of exegetical manuscripts compiled by Edwards over his lifetime as well as other notebooks, manuscripts, and publications authored by him that draw upon his interpretation of the Bible. The online versions of many of these same texts by Edwards are also now available. In addition, Barshinger's close examination of Edwards's 104 sermons on the book of Psalms, for example, which are extant in manuscript, transcription, and/or publication, is a highly appropriate research procedure because the contents of the sermons echo directly Edwards's exegetical judgments. For Edwards the biblical text was a central and often the primary basis of his theological views.

Barshinger underscores the central and pivotal role that the Book of Psalms played in the personal and professional life of Edwards. In the Yale edition of Edwards's Works, there are more citations of the Book of Psalms than of any other book of the Bible. The Psalms figured heavily in the religious lives of American Puritans and centrally in Edwards's life and in his interpretation of Scripture. Scholarly interest in Edwards's lifelong investment in biblical study has expanded greatly in recent decades following the publication of the Yale Edition of Edwards's exegetical notebooks. Ready access to his biblical manuscripts in published form has made possible their close examination with much greater ease, resulting in an important ongoing realignment of the theological focus of Edwards. The exegetical base of his religious thought and activity is now attracting more scholarly attention than ever before, bringing the place and function of his lifelong study of the Bible into sharper focus alongside the philosophical and theological elements that have been so central to much of the earlier attention to Edwards' thought. Barshinger's volume contributes to this changing interpretative world surrounding the theology of Jonathan Edwards.

Barshinger situates Edwards's interpretation and use of the Book of Psalms within the larger eighteenth-century theological and exegetical worlds of which Edwards was a part. Like many other interpreters of the Bible, Edwards often consulted the works of exegetes and theologians who had published their interpretations of particular sections of scripture. Among the sources Edwards cited most frequently on the Psalms were Matthew Poole's Synopsis Criticorum Aliorumque Sacrae Scripturae Interpretum (London, 1669–1676) and Matthew Henry's An exposition of the five poetical books of the Old Testament (London, 1710). These and other commentators exercised a direct influence on Edwards's interpretation and use of the Book of Psalms. Edwards was clearly an active participant in the Reformed exegetical tradition that featured pastoral attention to the Psalms. Barshinger underscores that Edwards employed the Psalms to reference both the Old Testament historical situations from which they arose, but also Christ's work of redemption in the New Testament.

The bulk of this volume details the theological themes that Edwards derived and exploited from the Psalms over the course of his life, organized thematically in six chapters that correspond in some broad sense with stages in the history of redemption. In these chapters Barshinger examines Edwards's views on and his defense of divine revelation in scripture, his treatment of the sinful nature of humanity and the need for divine redemption, and his Christological interpretation of the Psalter. In Barshinger's account, Edwards also read the Psalms as portraying the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and justification especially in revivals. In addition, there are also chapters dealing with Edwards's view of the Psalms on the nature of pious living and Christian virtue as well as on the eschatological and teleological dimensions of redemptive history. One sentence in the Conclusion summarizes much of this volume. Barshinger writes, “So he [Edwards] fluidly used grammatical-historical, scriptural-analogical, typological, Christological, ecclesiological, devotional, and theological methods of interpretation, but the organizing framework that governed his interpretation of the Psalms as he employed these diverse methods was the triune God's work of redemption in history” (368).

This volume intersects profitably with a great deal of the literature that has been written regarding Edwards and his theological and historical significance both for his own time in the eighteenth century, and also for the subsequent evangelical tradition that arose in the United States and that was nurtured by his formative judgments concerning evangelical Christianity. Barshinger examines a very significant element in Edwards's pastoral ministry. He underscores appropriately the critical role that the interpretation of scripture played in Edwards's understanding of the divine process of salvation, that is, the work of redemption.