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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 0:53:10 GMT -5
Kit Culver sermon notes;
Israel's psalms served as their songs of worship, directed toward their covenant God and His purposes, and grounded in their identity as His covenant children. Thus the psalms address all of the dimensions and struggles of Israel's sonship, including the people's yearning for the day when they would finally fulfill their sonship and its vocation. Israel's great longing was to become Israel indeed: son, servant, disciple and witness for the sake of the whole world. And the Psalter reflects God's promise that this outcome would be realized in and through one particular Israelite - a regal son of David appointed to reconcile and reunite covenant Father and son and gather in all the earth's peoples; a Priest-King and true Image-Son.
The Songs of Sonship Reclaiming the Psalms in Worship and Prayer
I. Introduction
The Psalter – the Book of Psalms – is unique in the Old Testament scriptures, not least because of the central role that it played in Israel’s worship. Composed and compiled over a thousand years or so from the time of Moses (Psalm 90) through the end of the Babylonian captivity (Psalm 126), the psalms served as Israel’s songbook during the Second Temple period that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 A.D. Thus Jesus would have grown up reading and singing the psalms, and they doubtless played a significant part in nurturing His knowledge of His Father, His own self-understanding, and His messianic role in the Father’s purposes (ref. Luke 24:27, 44-45; cf. also Matthew 4:1-7, 21:12-16, 33-46, 22:41-46, 27:45-46; Mark 14:18-21; etc.). The Psalms are written in the genre of Hebrew poetry, but they’re hardly alone in this. Much of the Old Testament scriptures are poetic, including the prophetic books (Major and Minor Prophets) as well as the Bible’s wisdom literature, which includes Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. In fact, more than one-third of the Old Testament is poetic in its literary form. (Much of the non-narrative portions of the Hebrew scriptures are composed as poetry.) The clear implication is that a good grasp of Hebrew poetry is critical to Old Testament interpretation
– whether reading the prophets, the psalms, or the wisdom literature. And this involves an understanding of the poetic literary genre as well as the unique features of Hebrew poetry.
A. The Poetical Genre
One of the most fundamental characteristics feature of poetry is its use of figurative language. This is as true of scriptural poetry as it is of poetry in general. In itself, figurative language poses unique interpretive challenges, and biblical poetry adds the further challenge of remoteness. That is to say, it draws on figures and imagery that pertain to cultures, conditions, and circumstances far removed from the contemporary reader. The interpreter must not only recognize the presence of figurative language, he must rightly understand the figures themselves. Failure to recognize biblical figures of speech and/or discern their meaning insures misinterpretation of a biblical text.
1. Literary Devices and Figures of Speech Quite apart from the Scriptures and Hebrew poetry in particular, there are numerous linguistic devices and expressions that are common to all language and literary forms, prose as well as poetic. These include the following:
a. Metaphor
A metaphor is a direct comparison in which a word or phrase denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to indicate a particular likeness or analogy between them. An example is the statement, “Feed my sheep.”
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b. Simile
Simile is another form of comparison that typically employs comparative terms such as like, as, as such, etc. So the statement, “You will be like God.”
c. Personification
Personification is a form of description in which human attributes or functions are assigned to inanimate things. Personification is common in scriptural poetry and the Bible’s wisdom literature, most notably the personifying of wisdom itself in the book of Proverbs (cf. 4:1-9, 8:1-9:4, 31:10-31).
d. Metonymy
Metonymy is the substitution of the name of one thing for the name of another thing when the first thing is related to or associated with the name it replaces. An example is “whose god is their belly,” where “belly” represents natural, fleshly
desires and appetites. Metonymy (and synecdoche) must not be confused with symbolism, for symbols are assigned and aren’t inherently related to or associated with the thing they represent. Examples of biblical symbols are the animals that
represent the various kingdoms in Daniel’s visions.
e. Synecdoche
Synecdoche is similar to metonymy as another figure of speech that uses substitution. But rather than substituting a related concept, synecdoche substitutes a part for the whole, the whole for a part, or the material for the thing made. A
scriptural example is the statement, “The end of all flesh has come before Me.”
f. Paronomasia
Paronomasia is a simple play on words. This device is common in the Hebrew scriptures, though it is often not readily obvious in English translations. Jeremiah1:11-12 provides an excellent example. There God showed Jeremiah a vision of
an almond tree (the Hebrew noun shaqeid), and then noted that He was watching (Hebrew participle shoqeid) over His word to perform it. Biblical names and Designations are themselves commonly paronomastic. A case in point is the name Adam (the person and man in general),which reflects the fact that man was formed from the ground (adamah).Note also Isaac,Israel,etc.
g. Hyperbole
Hyperbole is conscious, intentional exaggeration for the sake of rhetorical effect. So the psalmist’s affirmation of the impossibility of escaping from God (Psalm 139:7-9), and Paul’s treatment of the supremacy of love: “If I speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love….” Note also Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:7-9.
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h. Irony
Irony is often misunderstood and ascribed to anything that appears unusual, out of character, or is unexpected. But irony refers to the use of words or expressions to express something other than, and often opposite to, what that language naturally denotes. Thus irony can be a effective instrument of sarcasm or rebuke, as in Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “You are already filled, you have already become rich, you have become kings without us…”
i. Euphemism
Euphemism is a figure of speech in which unpleasant or potentially offensive words or ideas are replaced with innocuous or inoffensive counterparts. A scriptural example is Peter expressing Judas’ death in terms of “going to his own place” (Acts 1:24-25). So the similar contemporary euphemisms “going to abetter place,” or “passing away.”
j. Paradox
Paradox is another concept that is frequently misunderstood and misapplied. Most people recognize that paradox has to do with contradiction, but many don’t understand that this contradiction is only apparent, not actual. That is, paradox refers to contradiction that exists in the language or manner of expression, not in reality. So Paul’s self-representation as “sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing all things.”
k. Climax
As a literary device, climax involves a progression of words or ideas that ascends to a focal point, apex or crescendo. This progress can involve a related sequence of concepts (Romans 8:29-30), a single concept (Psalm 150), or a line of thought or argumentation, as with the Songs of Ascent (Psalms 120-134).
l. Pleonasm
Pleonasm is the redundant or excessive repetition of words, statements, or ideas for the purpose of emphasis. Pleonasm is seen throughout the book of Ezekiel in the repeated assertion, “They will know that I am the Lord.” This expression
occurs 26 times in Ezekiel’s prophecy, and nowhere else in the Bible.
m. Apostrophe
Apostrophe is a literary device in which words are addressed to an inanimate object, usually in an exclamatory tone. It is employed extensively in the Psalms with regard to the worship of God, an example being “Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem! Praise your God, O Zion!” (Psalm 147:12; cf. also Isaiah 40:9, 52:1-2; Zephaniah 3:16-17).
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n. Rhetorical Question
Just as the phrase suggests, this figure of speech poses a question that doesn’t anticipate an actual response because the answer is regarded as obvious. Paul commonly employed this device, and he often underscored the obvious nature of the answer by explicitly asserting it himself (cf. Romans 3:9, 29, 31, 4:9-10)
2. Hebrew Poetry
Being a collection of literary works, the Scriptures employ all of these literary devices (and many others) in their prose as well as their poetry. Biblical poetry also contains various structural features (length and number of lines, meter, rhyme, etc.) characteristic of poetry in general. But perhaps the most distinct feature of Hebrew poetry is its pronounced use of parallelism. This is a structural device in which one or more thoughts or phrases are balanced by corresponding thoughts or phrases containing approximately the same number of words or a correspondence in ideas.
There are six commonly used forms of parallelism in Hebrew (scriptural) poetry:
a. Synonymous Parallelism, in which the correspondence involves closely related ideas or entities. This type of parallelism is broken down into two sub-categories: identical (Psalm 18:4-5) and similar (Psalm 19:1-2, Proverbs 9:9).
b. Antithetic Parallelism, which correlates opposite, contrasting, or negated ideas. This type of parallelism is especially common in the Proverbs, which characteristically contrast wisdom with folly and righteousness with wickedness
(ref. Proverbs 2:21-22, 3:1, 8:35-36, 10:1-15:33, etc.)
c. Synthetic (Constructive) Parallelism, in which ideas or phrases are built together (synthesized) into a larger, more complete whole. There are three sub-categories of this type of parallelism: completion (Psalm 24:1-4), comparison (Psalm 118:8-9), and reason (Psalm 63:3).
d. Climactic Parallelism has related terms, ideas, or themes building upon one another to the point of an intended and important climax (Psalm 29:1, 96:7-8, 150:1-6; cf. also Isaiah 1:8)
e. Emblematic Parallelism is a kind of metaphor in which one thought or phrase provides a figurative illustration of a corresponding one (Proverbs 11:22, 25:25).
f. Chiastic Parallelism has the correspondence of parallel ideas occurring in reverse order. The chiasm is normally constructed so that the central or crucial idea or assertion stands at the center of the structure (Psalm 139:5-7; cf. Luke 1:68-78). Rhythm, meter, and acrostic (Psalm 119; Proverbs 31:10-31; Lamentations) are other important features of Hebrew poetry,but they are less recognizable to English readers because,like paronomasia,they are typically lost in translation.
2. Subject Matter of the Psalter
The psalms encompass a broad range of subjects, circumstances, and emotion. But every one of them reflects Israel’s all-encompassing relationship with God as covenant children and their obligation and privilege of devotion and faithfulness. Above all else, Israel was to be a worshipping people, fully devoted to Yahweh, their God, and the psalms express all of the dimensions, dynamics, impediments, and glory of that worship.So they address every emotion,condition, and circumstance associated with human life in relation to God, and thus bring to the forefront such issues as praise, worship, thanksgiving,supplication, imprecation, lament, and judgment.
a. All of the psalms reflect Yahweh’s lordship and covenant relationship with Israel as His election in Abraham, but some especially highlight His kingship and sovereign reign as such (Psalms 47, 93, 96-99, etc.).
b. Others focus and celebrate Jerusalem and the sanctuary on Mount Zion as the place of Yahweh’s enthronement from which He exercises His rule over Israel and the wider world. Psalms 46, 48, 76, and 84 are among these, and aresometimes referred to as Songs of Zion.
c. Still other royal psalms focus on David and the preeminence and significance of His kingship and dynasty (Psalms 2, 18, 20-21, 45, 72, 89, 101, 110, 144, etc.).
d. Many others have a more individual and personal emphasis (psalms of lament, petition, thanksgiving, imprecation, etc.) but they, too, are situated within and find their meaning in relation to the larger matter of Yahweh’s lordship and His
covenant faithfulness and promises to Israel in view of His purpose for His creation in and through them.
These considerations help to show why and how the Psalter is thoroughly and profoundly messianic. At least fourteen psalms are overtly messianic, being referenced in the New Testament with respect to Christ and His work (Psalm 2, 8, 16, 22, 34, 35, 40, 41, 45, 68,69, 109, 110, and 118). But even more, the entirety of the Psalter is messianic in that their
concern with the divine-human relationship epitomized in Israel’s life as covenant son attained its destiny, ultimate realization, and true meaning in person of Jesus of Nazareth, the True Image-Son and seed of Abraham and David.
Given their subject matter and messianic orientation, it’s not surprising that the book of
Psalms is quoted or alluded to in the New Testament more than any other Old Testament book with the exception of Isaiah. Jesus Himself referred to the Psalms extensively, underscoring their crucial role in the formation of His understanding of His Father – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and His intent for His creation. The Psalter also nurtured Jesus’ understanding of His nation and people and Israel’s significance and obligation as God’s election. Beyond that, the Psalms would have played a crucial part in forming Jesus’ sense of His own messianic identity and vocation. And so they also
became a key component of the apostolic witness to Him and the gospel of His kingdom (cf. Acts 2:22-36, 4:5-12, 23-31, 13:32-39).
3. The Psalms in Israel’s Worship
Israel’s worship – and so its use of the Psalter – was centered around the temple/tabernacle and its ordinances. There were two related reasons for this: The first was that God had mandated that He be worshipped in the place He Himself established as His dwelling. Initially, this place was the portable tabernacle that moved with the people, but the Lord later revealed to Moses that He was going to appoint a fixed habitation and place of worship once Israel took possession of Canaan. This requirement is sometimes referred to as the law of the central sanctuary (ref. Deuteronomy 12:1-14, 16:16), and during David’s life God made known that Jerusalem was to be that site.
But there was a crucial principle underlying the obligation of localized worship in a single sanctuary: The living God must be worshipped in truth, and that means according to His own self-disclosure and the realm of encounter He has established (not so much where God is, but how He is in relation to His human creatures). Israel needed to understand that they were not free to speculate concerning Him or innovate their own perspectives or approaches for encountering and relating to Him. God reveals Himself to humans, and they must acknowledge and respond to Him accordingly.Any other perspective,understanding or approach to God (however well-intentioned) is idolatrous and will not be tolerated by Him who is true. Thus the foundational sin of the northern sub-kingdom of Israel – the sin initiated by king Jeroboam I – was establishing sacred
altars and a system of worship contrary to Yahweh’s prescription. This violation established the precedent for all of Israel’s subsequent idolatry and rebellion, and so came to symbolize the nation’s unfaithfulness and worthiness of judgment, exile and captivity (ref. 1 Kings 12:1-14:16; 2 Kings 17:21-23).
Israel’s worship centered around God’s sanctuary and its ministration, and this is reflected in their use of the psalms. Mishnah Tamid (the Mishnah is a written compilation of Jewish oral traditions) indicates that the temple worship included a daily psalm reading, with the sequence of psalms as follows: Psalms 24 (day one), 48 (day two), 82 (day three), 94 (day four), 81 (day five), 93 (day six), and 92 on the sabbath. In terms of Israel’s annual feasts, reading of the Songs of Ascent (Psalms 120-134) was part of the observance of the Feast of Booths, during which Jewish pilgrim worshippers made their way up to Jerusalem and Mount Zion. The Hallel (psalms 113-118) was also read during the Feast of Booths, as at Passover and Pentecost (Feast of Weeks), which together comprised the three pilgrimage festivals (ref. again Deuteronomy 16:16). The practice of reading the Hallel continues to this day when Jews observe the Passover seder.
4. Categories of Psalms
a. Lament
This is the largest group of psalms in the Psalter. There are more than sixty lament psalms, individual and corporate. The former tend to be intensely personal (David penned many of these psalms), while the latter express Israel’s collective lament. But in both cases, the lament reflects the covenant relationship and its privileges and responsibilities (cf. Psalms 3, 6, 13, 25, 31, 86 with 12, 44, 60, 74, 79).
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b. Thanksgiving
Grounded in the same covenantal realities, these psalms express joy and gratitude to Yahweh for His various benefits of
faithfulness, mercy, forgiveness, etc.This group, too, consists of individual (psalm 30) and corporate psalms (psalm 105).
c. Praise
These psalms center on the praise of God – for who He is in Himself, and for His greatness, power, and faithfulness toward His creation in general, and toward Israel in particular as His covenant people chosen on behalf of the entire world.
The psalms of praise focus on Yahweh and His attributes, often with a call to the people of Israel to affirm and celebrate Him and His works of faithfulness.
d. Covenant History
This group of psalms rehearse Israel’s history with God. On the one side, they trace out the nation’s triumphs and failures in view of their election and vocation on behalf of the world. On the other side, they underscore God’s demonstrated
abiding faithfulness to His purposes, and therefore to the people He has chosen.
Not surprisingly, then, these psalms tend to be climactic, ending on a note of confident hope of restoration and covenant renewal (Psalms 78, 106, 136).
e. Royal Psalms
This is a broad segment of psalms that place their emphasis on the kingship as it derives from God, who is the Great King (Psalms 24, 29, 47). The royal psalms include Davidic ones that highlight God’s choice of David and the importance of
his lineage in relation to the covenant God made with him (Psalms 18, 78, 89, 132). Not surprisingly, this category of psalms is richly messianic (Psalm 2, 45).
f. Songs of Zion
These psalms extol Jerusalem as Yahweh’s dwelling place and the seat of His throne and reign over all the earth (Psalms 48, 84, 87, 122, 132, 137). Some of these psalms are laments as well, mourning the desolation that fell on Zion
because of its unfaithfulness to its covenant Husband (Psalms 79, 137).
g. Imprecatory
This group of psalms are distinguished by their petition that Yahweh arise and act against the psalmist’s adversaries. They are pleas for judgment, but always from the perspective that the psalmist’s enemies are enemies of God and His purposes and kingdom. This is particularly evident in the imprecatory psalms composed by David, who viewed his adversaries and suffering through the lens of Yahweh’s commission and covenant with him (cf. Psalms 5, 12, 35, 37, 52, 58, 69, 79, 109).
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 1:00:54 GMT -5
It's uncertain why the Psalter's Jewish collators situated Psalm 2 immediately after Psalm 1. But it is an appropriate sequel to the opening psalm. Whereas Psalm 1 extols the blessedness that attends those who are devoted to Yahweh and His Torah, the second psalm attaches that blessedness to devotion to Yahweh's king - the regal son who embodies His Torah by fulfilling His will and lordship in the world.
II. Celebration of Sonship
A. Opening Psalm
As noted previously, virtually all of the psalms contained in Book One are ascribed to David. Of the forty-one psalms, only four – Psalms 1, 2, 10, and 33 – don’t carry his name. All four are anonymous, though Jesus’ early disciples spoke of David penning Psalm 2 (Acts 4:23-26), which
suggests that this was the traditional Jewish view at that time.Indeed, it’s not at all surprising that the Jews would connect David with Psalm 2, given its emphasis on the kingship and its strong messianic overtones that echo the Davidic Covenant.
Book One is the most Davidic of the Psalter’s five books, and so it’s interesting that the Jewish collators chose to introduce the first book – and indeed the entire Psalter – with a psalm that is anonymous. It’s impossible to know why they made this decision, but this psalm is an
appropriate choice for a couple of reasons.
1) First, it is general and principled rather than personal and narrowly focused. That is, it extols and explains in broad terms the virtue and blessedness of devotion to Yahweh, and the good fruit it bears, both for this life and the life to come.
2) And being anonymous, this psalm encourages the reader to view this devotion to God and its blessedness in universal terms, as the state of human existence that God intends for all people, rather than a unique privilege pertaining to a few.
3) Thus this psalm provides a fitting summary introduction to the entire Psalter: If the psalms are songs of sonship, the first one explains what true sonship entails and extols the all-embracing blessedness that it enjoys. So it also indicates that such sonship is God’s design for every human being, and not merely certain nations or individuals. The Jews who collated the psalms and arranged the four books believed that this particular psalm should stand at the beginning, and so it is only right that the present consideration of the Psalter should begin in the same way.
1. The first thing to note about Psalm 1 is its structure. It begins with a celebratory declaration of the blessedness of those who rightly order their lives: “How blessed is the man…” The psalmist explained this blessedness in negative terms, and then positively in antithesis. Then, after describing the sort of person who claims this blessedness, he explained its benefit – that is, what this blessedness entails and imparts. He described the blessed person in both negative and positive terms (vv. 1-2), and did the same with his depiction of this blessedness. But he did so chiastically, reversing the order of negative and positive (vv. 3-4): The man who finds blessing doesn’t do this, but does this; so his
blessedness entails this, but doesn’t entail this. The psalmist then turned to the outcome that awaits those who fall short of this blessedness (v. 5) – whom he characterized as “the wicked,” describing this outcome as the privation of that which awaits the “righteous”
(defined in terms of the psalm itself and its depiction of the blessed man). Finally, the psalmist concluded his song with an explanation of these two antithetical outcomes: They derive from the same insight and just judgment of the one and same God (v. 6).
2.The second thing to consider is the psalmist’s use of poetic features to convey his message. Parallelism is primary, but he also drew on various images. This psalm is a good introduction to parallelism in Hebrew poetry, because the writer employed it in various ways and at various levels.
a. The opening verse uses parallelism in a climactic manner, but in two distinct lines of ascent. The first line advances from walking to standing to sitting, while the second progresses from wickedness to sin to scorn. The imagery of the first line of ascent, then, depicts the progress from receptiveness, to agreement, to settled conviction, while the second depicts the moral/ethical gradation from generic corruption, to active deviation from the truth, to willful denunciation. Hence psalmist’s two-fold climactic parallelism traces the upward movement from the natural inclination toward uncleanness and error, to embracing a course of active waywardness, to settling into a posture of open scorn toward God.
b. But the writer constructed this parallelism as a negation – as depicting what is not true of the blessed man: He doesn’t listen to voices that are governed by error, much less embrace the waywardness they promote. And even less is he a person characterized by scornfulness toward God. This depiction, then, serves as the first argument in another parallel construct that is antithetical rather than climactic: Rather than being that sort of person – a person who is easily deceived and corrupted, wayward, and scornful, the man who is truly blessed is characterized by unwavering devotion to Yahweh’s law (v. 2). Here it’s crucial to recognize that “law” refers to Torah – not a body of laws, rules and regulations, but Yahweh’s revealed truth. Specifically, Torah was Israel’s covenant charter with God, the definition and prescription that informed and governed the nation’s relationship with Him. Israel was Yahweh’s elect son, and the covenant – the Law of Moses – defined and ordered that relationship.
Thus the person who is blessed is the person who is fully devoted to Yahweh’s revealed truth and its implications and obligations. He doesn’t simply acknowledge and agree with this Torah, nor mull over it and marvel at it. No, he meditates on it continually with the goal of conforming to it by being transformed by it; the blessed man seeks to become the son that Yahweh’s Torah holds forth.
c. This, then, illumines the blessedness that such a one enjoys. The term denotes contented happiness that sets a person apart within common human experience, and so makes him remarkable and enviable. Here, that happiness derives from the person’s relationship with Israel’s God, specifically as He has disclosed Himself and made His will known in His Torah. What distinguishes this person and makes him enviable is his settled contentment that derives from knowing and conforming to the God of truth. The psalmist expressed this by drawing on the image of a tree planted (by Yahweh) alongside a constantly flowing stream (v. 3). Such a tree enjoys a perpetual supply of water that sustains its life and promotes its well-being and growth. It never languishes in drought, but continually thrives and bears abundant fruit in its season. This is powerful imagery for a people
whose dry riverbeds and parched crops longed expectantly for the seasonal rains. The blessed man is like such a tree: He, too, is sustained and nurtured in all circumstances and bears his fruit according to God’s ordained timing; he prospers in whatever life brings to him. Once again it’s important to not misconstrue the psalmist’s meaning. In our contemporary western culture, it’s easy to conclude that he was speaking of “blessedness” that consists in material prosperity. This statement is then interpreted to mean that those who obey God can expect Him to
bless them with material success in all of their undertakings. But if this was the psalmist’s meaning, his psalm certainly held no promise or encouragement for either Jesus or His early followers; their faithful devotion brought only deprivation and suffering. No, the writer was referring to prosperity that corresponds with the flourishing enjoyed by a well-watered tree – the prosperity that is essential and abiding rather than outward and circumstantial; the prosperity of a life sustained and nurtured by God’s ever-flowing resource of truth; the prosperity that transcends circumstance and bears the good fruit of sonship.
d. Such is the blessedness of the devoted man, a blessedness that the psalmist underscored by declaring its absence for those who don’t share this devotion. Here again he employed antithetic parallelism, contrasting the image of a succulent, fruitful tree with dead, dry and hollow chaff. Whereas the man devoted to Yahweh and His Torah is like a deeply rooted tree, the wicked (i.e., those who lack such devotion) have no true substance or grounding and, like chaff, are easily blown away. The psalmist used this contrasting imagery to show the antithetical outcomes that await these two types of people. The one will stand established and sure in the day of judgment and receive an everlasting place in the congregation of the righteous; the other will be excluded and swept away (v. 5).
e. This introductory psalm indicates that there are only two types of people – the righteous and the wicked, and the fate of each is determined by his relation to God’s Torah (His revealed truth). The God of truth has disclosed His truth to human beings and holds them accountable to it. The truth will judge each person, not as an impersonal standard of ethics and morality, but as the verity of human existence as God’s knows it and intends it. The standard of judgment, then, is authenticity: living a life conformed to the reality of man as image-son.
This is the sense in which the psalmist insisted that Yahweh “knows the way of the righteous” (v. 6). He knows what it is for man to be truly man – to fulfill his created nature and function, and He is committed to this outcome. Hence He has appointed “the way of the wicked to perish.” The creator God will have His human creature to be the image-son He created him to be, and He has both demonstrated this commitment and fulfilled it in the incarnate Messiah. And this is why Jesus is the measuring rod of God’s judgment: He is the true human being by which men are measured and in whom they conform to the truth. He is the embodiment of Yahweh’s Torah as the Word become flesh, so that devotion to Torah has now, in the fullness of the times, become devotion to the Messiah through faith and participation in His life. The “way of the righteous” is the way
of human existence that has now become “yes and amen” in the Last Adam; every other “way” is false and so doomed to destruction.
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 1:03:29 GMT -5
Kit Culver sermon notes
B. The Second Psalm – Tribute to Yahweh’s Son-King As noted, there are only four psalms in Book One that aren’t ascribed to David. The second
psalm is one of those, though the New Testament indicates that Jewish tradition held that David penned it also. Psalm 2 is an enthronement psalm that extols and exalts Yahweh’s son-king in whom He exercises His own reign in the world. In this way, the psalm hearkens back to the creation account and its depiction of man as God’s image-bearer, created to be His royal image son, manifesting His presence and administering His lordship over His creation. It also echoes the Davidic Covenant, by which Yahweh pledged to David to establish his royal dynasty, throne and kingdom everlastingly in a future son (2 Samuel 7). David, Yahweh’s chosen and devoted son-king, was to find his own regal sonship fully realized in a singular descendent. Thus Psalm 2 is the appropriate sequel to Psalm 1: The first psalm opens the Psalter by extolling the blessedness that attends those who are devoted to Yahweh and His Torah; the second psalm then connects that blessedness with allegiance to Yahweh’s king – His regal son who embodies His Torah (His disclosed truth) by administering His will and lordship in the world.
1. Psalm 2 is constructed like a scene in a play in which various actors take the stage and interact with one another and the audience. Those actors include a narrator (the psalmist), human insurgents, Yahweh and His son-king.
a. The narrator opens the psalm with an astonished question expressing the absurdity of human beings seeking to liberate themselves from God’s lordship (vv. 1-2),after which the rebels themselves speak and express their intent (v. 3).
b. After His adversaries assert their confidence of self-rule, Yahweh responds, showing that the narrator’s incredulity was well-founded. Humans may boldly and aggressively assert their autonomy, but He will be Lord over His creation, which He has demonstrated by anointing and installing His chosen man as king.
c. Then the king himself speaks, affirming that Yahweh has indeed decreed his kingship and established his reign – not merely as a ruler, but as His son, installed as to administer the Creator-Father’s rule over all the nations in His name according to His purpose and will (vv. 7-9).
d. The narrator then closes out the scene, drawing out the implications of this coronation. Yahweh has installed his son-king on His throne, and all are obliged to embrace and honor him. Echoing the previous psalm, he asserted that those who do will find blessing, while those who refuse will perish (ref. 1:4-6).
2. Again, Psalm 2 opens with the psalmist (apparently David) decrying the absurdity and vanity of human opposition to Yahweh and His reign. In that way he underscored what the first psalm made clear, which is that many of God’s human image-bearers are not devoted to Him. The world is filled with “wicked” people who “walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the path with sinners, and sit in the seat of scoffers.” Some are
conscious of their waywardness and rebellion, while others are not. But all such persons live their lives in effective opposition to the Creator-God and His truth and will.
In this psalm, the psalmist identified these persons by means of a double parallelism in which he juxtaposed two parallel constructions. The first correlates nations and peoples, and the second kings and rulers, emphasizing that this resistance to God’s rule marks all nations and people groups. It may find an obvious example in the hubris of kings and rulers, but the desire for autonomy beats in every human heart.
a. So the psalmist implicitly included the nation of Israel and its rulers in His indictment. This is suggested by his distinction between the nations (denoting the Gentiles – Acts 4:25) and the peoples (characteristically, the people of Israel), and perhaps also by the corresponding distinction between the kings of the earth and the rulers. The language hints at Jew-Gentile parallelism, and the early disciples certainly interpreted it this way (ref. Acts 4:23-28).
b. The psalmist described this opposition in terms of a unified uprising that finds the world’s rulers and people taking a stand against Yahweh and His “anointed one” (Hebrew meshiach, a general designation that later was uniquely assigned to Jesus as Messiah). The writer then has them speak, and they state that their intent is to throw off Yahweh’s authority and demands on them. They expressed this in the parallel images of breaking fetters and casting away cords that bind and constrain (v. 3). Their goal was liberation from God and His constraints.
3. After the rebels express their design for self-rule, the writer turned his attention to Yahweh’s response. He followed the same pattern he used with the human actors in verses 2-3, namely speaking for them (v. 2), and then allowing them to speak for themselves (v. 3). Here, he noted that Yahweh’s response was to laugh at this foolish and impotent hubris, and then address the people directly with His own outrage. This uprising
reflected the universal human desire for autonomy; God’s indignation expressed His unyielding commitment to remain Lord of the earth. But He would rule the world through another human being – a man who would reign in His name and authority as a regal son. Yahweh symbolically reigned from Mount Zion, the site of His sanctuary and seat of His throne, and the place where heaven and earth converged. He would not abdicate that throne to human challengers, yet He was determined to have a man on His throne – a chosen and anointed man who, unlike every other human king, would faithfully administer His rule: “As for Me, I have installed My King upon Zion…” If David did indeed pen this psalm, God’s theocratic designs were already clear at the time of its writing. Indeed, David himself would soon recognize – if he hadn’t already – that he was the anointed son-king Yahweh had chosen to sit on His throne in Jerusalem. God had long before revealed that the royal rule in Israel belonged to Judah (Genesis
49:10), and now that scepter was about to pass into David’s hand (if it hadn’t already). Yahweh would subdue all Israel and the surrounding nations through His anointed king, but only as setting the stage for another to come. God’s covenant with David made it clear that the ultimate manifestation of His rule – i.e., His everlasting reign over all the nations of the earth – awaited the birth of a future descendent of David. So the psalmist’s depiction of this unique, anointed son-king pointed beyond David to that individual; though David was the greatest and most accomplished of Israel’s kings, the glory, extent and power of his rule never came close to what Yahweh pledged to this regal son.
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 1:07:48 GMT -5
Israel's covenant sonship is the core premise of the Psalter, and thus the various psalms give voice to all of the aspects of that relationship, including commemoration, celebration, praise, thanksgiving, supplication, penitence, imprecation, etc. The Psalter opens by proclaiming the blessedness of those who are devoted to God and His revealed truth, and Psalm 8 shows that the essence of this blessedness is human sonship - man's status and vocation as God's image-son.
C. The Eighth Psalm – The Consummate Triumph of Yahweh’s Son-King
The eighth psalm makes a critical contribution to the regal theme that itself is central to the Psalter as the marrow of Israel’s liturgy of worship. As seen, the concept of sonship was fundamental to Israel’s sense of self-identity and relationship with God. And this sonship was a
regal sonship; Israel was a royal nation chosen and consecrated by Yahweh to live out the regal and priestly human vocation for a faithful, compelling testimony to the world. By its faithfulness to its calling as regal image-son, Israel would fulfill its Abrahamic vocation of bringing
Yahweh’s blessing to all mankind by disclosing Him to them. Hence the nature and orientation of God’s covenant with Israel: His covenant – His Torah – defined and prescribed the nation’s sonship, with a view to the truth that a son is of his father, so that one sees the father when he
sees a son who is faithful to his sonship. Thus the Gentile world would observe and rightly perceive the Creator-Father when Israel was faithful to the covenant – faithful as covenant son It is not surprising, then, that the themes of kingship and sonship are tightly interwoven in the
Psalter as it informed and directed Israel’s worship, and especially so in the psalms penned by David. Psalm 8 is one such psalm, and it is at the same time deeply personal and meditative, and profoundly grand and visionary. It is a psalm that finds David in a moment of quiet contemplation, as he reflected on the puzzling paradox that is man. Viewed in himself as a creature, and considered alongside the unfathomable scale and majesty of God’s creation, man appears small, weak and utterly insignificant. And yet the One who created him has insisted that His human creature is the most consequential of all His creation. This is the paradox David pondered in this song of praise, which provides a high point in the Psalter’s treatment of human sonship and its destiny in the unique Image-Son, the son Yahweh pledged to David.
1. The psalm is ascribed to David and is dedicated to “the overseer,” which likely refers to the person leading the musicians or the singers (or both). The ascription also includes the phrase “upon the gittith,” which many believe identifies the primary instrument David intended to accompany the psalm. Two other psalms (81, 84) are introduced with the same phrase, and because all three are laudatory songs, some have suggested that this instrument must have produced an especially joyous, loud or lively sound.
2. The psalm itself is notably bounded by an exclamation of praise specifically lauding the majesty of Israel’s God in relation to His creation. David declared this to be a glorious majesty that fills all the earth and extends beyond the lofty realm of the heavenly bodies (ref. vv. 1, 9). Yahweh’s splendid majesty fills His creation and is attested by it, and David noted that it finds expression in His manifest power – power that, even in its weakest conceivable form, still vanquishes all adversaries, however formidable (v. 2).
3. But David particularly had in mind God’s majesty displayed and operative in man. If the inscrutable splendor of the inanimate heavens proclaims the glory of God (Psalm 19:1-6), this is all the more the case with the human creature. And yet, this truth isn’t self-evident in the way that it is with the heavens. Yes, human beings have unique significance that sets them above other creatures, and they cannot escape the fact that they are lords of the earth. Only human beings are able to determine – for good or for ill – the condition of the earth and its inhabitants. Environmentalists don’t look to animals to address the planet’s challenges. And yet, humans are puny and powerless relative to the cosmos4. The words of the song suggest that David penned it at night, perhaps while he was lying on the ground quietly gazing up at the heavens. For he mentioned only celestial bodies associated with the night sky, conspicuously omitting the sun from his musings (v. 3). But whatever the specific circumstance, David found himself overwhelmed by the vastness and incomprehensibility of the heavenly realm, and that made him sharply aware
of the smallness and apparent irrelevance of man in the scheme of God’s majestic creation. Hence his dilemma and question: “What is man that you take thought of him, and the son of man, that you care for him?”
a. Many have noted the expression, “son of man,” and immediately connected this statement with Jesus. Thus they find David making a prophetic reference to Him, and so interpret this passage as directly messianic. The entire psalm is indeed messianic, but not in that way. David wasn’t making an allusion to Jesus when he spoke of the “son of man,” but was using the phrase in its Israelite sense. The expression, son of, indicates essential likeness; a son shares the essence of the one who begat him. Thus “son of worthlessness” indicates a person who is manifestly
a worthless person (cf. Deuteronomy 13:13; Judges 19:22; 1 Samuel 2:12). So “son of man” emphasizes one’s humanness, and the Old Testament uses the expression when something about the reality of being human is in the forefront.
- God characteristically referred to Ezekiel that way, and Daniel also used the expression to identify Yahweh’s coming triumphal king. He did so,
however, not as a messianic title (no such title existed), but as explaining how that individual appeared in his vision (Daniel 7:9-13).
- It’s true that Jesus commonly referred to Himself as the Son of Man, and He clearly did so with a view to His messianic vocation. That is why
people automatically associate the expression with Him as God’s Messiah. But He referred to Himself this way to underscore to those around Him
that His messianic mission was centered in His existence as truly human – a son of Adam living an authentically human life in loving devotion to His Creator-Father. Jesus was son of man in that He was the truly human One.
b. Here, David used the phrase “son of man” in parallel with the word “man” for the sake of poetic emphasis (cf. 80:17, 144:3; Job 25:6; Isaiah 51:12, 56:2). Verse 4 is constructed as synthetic parallelism in which two statements build on each other for the sake of a pronounced or climactic effect: “What is frail and mortal man that You would even notice him, or a son of man (offspring of Adam, fashioned
from the dust of the ground) that You would actively engage Yourself with him?”
- David employed the Hebrew noun enosh in referring to man, rather than the more generic adam. This term emphasizes the frailty and transience of
man as a mortal creature, a creature whose existence is like a vapor, present for a moment and then gone in an instant. Here, David’s intent was
to punctuate the vast distinction between the unchanging, seemingly eternal cosmos and God’s human creation. Considered alongside the
heavenly bodies, man appears utterly temporal and insignificant. Flowing out of the designation of man as enosh, the parallel expression
son of man carries two important and related connotations. First, it points to human beings as sharing the essence and existence of the first man.
Adam was so named because he was formed from adamah – the material substance of the earth; Adam and all of his offspring are earthy, natural,
soulish (1 Corinthians 15:45-49). But this points to the second connotation of “son of man,” which is that David recognized human beings as
derivative creatures. Adam himself was derived from the earth, and every person since shares that same material source, but as coming to them
through human parents. All people since Adam, then, are doubly derived.
c. This connotation of man as derived is especially poignant in David’s contemplation, for he was considering man alongside the cosmos. The cosmos
(including the earth) is presented in Genesis as the substance of God’s original ex nihilo creation; man and the earth’s other living creatures were formed after it and from its material. Not only is man derivative (and therefore arguably less essential and important), he is frail and mortal and lacks the enduring fixity that marks the cosmos. How is it, then, that God would take active notice of man, when he is but a fleeting speck in His grand creation? Certainly the vast universe does its unending cosmic dance, interacting with itself and its forces, but with no
awareness of the human creature or impact from him; how can man possibly have any role in this scheme and God’s purposes for His creation?
5. This, then, was David’s contemplation, and he answered his own quandary as God answered it – by pointing to the structure and order He built into the creation, and the unique and critical role He ordained His human creature to play in it (vv. 5-8). For all his frailty, transience and seeming insignificance, man is the crowning pinnacle of God’s creation, because he alone bears the divine image and likeness with the intent that he should be image-son. Even angels cannot claim this superlative distinction.
a. This helps illumine the meaning of verse 2, which has puzzled many readers, especially as it appears unrelated to the rest of the psalm. But David was using this poetic imagery to punctuate the profound truth that human weakness is precisely the instrument God has ordained to establish His power in His creation and vanquish His adversaries. If the human creature is weak and frail, those qualities are most pronounced in newborn and suckling children. And yet out of their sucking and crying mouths – mouths that cannot articulate even the most basic words, God has “established strength.” He has chosen to disclose and establish His triumphal power over all opposition through utter human weakness and dependence. This dynamic wasn’t at all part of Israel’s expectation of Yahweh’s messianic deliverer, but the day would come when His prophetic word uttered here by David would prove astonishingly true. In that day, Yahweh would establish Himself as King over all, not by conquering His adversaries with the sword, but by stripping them of their usurped power by His humiliation in selfgiving love (cf. Isaiah 53 with Matthew 27:33-44; Luke 23:33-41 and John 12:23- 32 with Luke 24:25-26). Yahweh’s messianic servant, the son of Abraham and David, would secure His all-encompassing kingdom as enosh and a son of man. b. David didn’t explain all of this, but he clearly recognized the Lord’s eternal determination to establish and execute His rule over His creation through man, His image-bearer created to be regal image-son. Thus David addressed his own
question of human significance by drawing from the Genesis creation account. In that account, the created order is depicted as a kingdom comprised of realms of lordship (heavens, air, sea, land, day, night) ruled by specific creaturely lords (celestial bodies, birds, fish, land animals). And over all the creaturely lords, God appointed a lord of lords, the creature man created in His own image and likeness to “rule over the works of His hands” (cf. Genesis 1 with Psalm 8:6).
- This is the reason that man is uniquely and profoundly significant, indeed preeminent within God’s vast and inscrutable cosmos.
- Yet this preeminence is veiled within, and even eclipsed by, frailty, impotence and mortality. Man as David knew him bears little resemblance
to the creature God described in the sacred text. And yet, David believed Yahweh, and sang His praise for having ordained His great and everlasting triumph to be realized through enosh, the son of adam.
6. This underscores the second point of tension raised by the psalm: The human creature that exists in the world is but a faint shadow of the glorious being God said He was creating. But this implies one of two things: either God’s design for man has utterly failed, or man is yet destined to become the image-son and ruler God created him to be.
David didn’t speak to that dilemma, but he clearly believed that his God – the God whose majesty is over all His works – would prevail to see His purposes realized. Indeed, his closing doxology leaves no doubt concerning this.
a. David’s consideration of man (vv. 5-8) shows that he understood that the divine majesty displayed in the creation (v. 1) attains its fullness in man as image-lord. Thus he was convinced that the creature who is enosh is destined for, and will finally attain, the glorious status for which God created him. The vision that David articulated from the creation account would surely come to pass.
b. Thus David assigned two distinct focal points to the doxology that begins and ends his psalm. The focus of the opening one is the created order, while the focus of the second one is creation’s consummation. When David concluded his song with the exclamation, “O Yahweh, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!,” he was affirming that the portrait of man he had just sketched was not an empty dream or cruel joke. He knew man to be a tragic caricature of that depiction, a mere vapor marred by corruption and weakness. Yet he also understood that this was the very circumstance through which Yahweh would achieve His triumph and see man become the image-son He created him to be.
This, then, is the very essence of the psalm’s messianic fragrance; it lauds the God who, in a mysterious way not yet disclosed to human minds, would “establish strength through the mouths of suckling babes”; He would use human frailty and mortality to triumph on
man’s behalf, then setting him over the works of His hands (cf. Hebrews 2:5-10).
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 1:10:42 GMT -5
D. The Ninety-First Psalm – The Triumph of Sonship
The Psalter was central to Israel’s worship of Yahweh, which worship reflected and expressed the nation’s status as covenant son. Hence the psalms give voice to all of the aspects and dynamics of that sonship relationship, including commemoration, celebration, praise, thanksgiving, supplication, penitence, imprecation, etc. To this point, this study has considered foundational issues, namely the nature, purpose, and blessedness of being children of God.
Psalm 91 builds on this foundation by bringing together the aspects of sonship considered thus far. It celebrates man’s unique status as God’s image-son and the blessedness that attends it. But rather than simply declaring this blessedness, as in the first two psalms, Psalm 91 uncovers and extols it. It shows that the blessedness the Psalter celebrates consists in the loving care, provision, deliverance and protection that Yahweh gives to His children. Moreover, it underscores that this divine, fatherly care has its counterpart in human faithfulness – the sincere love, devotion and steadfast trust that accords with sonship. In a word, Psalm 91 is a tribute to faithful sonship and the rich blessings that follow from it.
1. First and foundationally, faithfulness involves finding one’s refuge in Yahweh Himself.
The psalmist expressed this in terms of the parallel ideas of dwelling in His shelter and abiding in His shadow (v. 1). This imagery is spatial, but its meaning is relational; to reside in the place of God’s shelter is to live a life characterized by trust in Him (v. 2). This trust isn’t arbitrary or generic, but grounded in true knowledge of God’s character and purpose and sure confidence that He watches over and protects His people. He keeps them from harm (vv. 3-11) and also gives them victory over their enemies and assailants, whether actual persons or the adverse circumstances of life (v. 12).
2. Finding refuge in God entails entrusting oneself and life’s circumstances to Him with all confidence that He is trustworthy. It is human faithfulness in response to God’s own faithfulness (v. 4); more precisely, it is the relationship of children to a father (v. 9), grounded in and ordered by mutual love (v. 14). The person who knows God loves Him,
even as true knowledge of God is the basis for loving Him in truth. And because love is grounded in true knowledge, the one who loves God has first experienced His love, since God’s love is the motive for His self-disclosure – the disclosure and love that have attained their ultimate, full expression in the person of Jesus the Messiah (1 John 4:7-16).
Human faithfulness, then, involves submissive trust, and such trust is grounded in relational knowledge that is itself the outworking of love: God’s manifest love for people, and their loving response in kind. And those who take refuge in Him find that He is a fortress and high tower. He delivers and preserves them, and secures their blessedness and well-being in the present as well as the future (vv. 14-16).
3. At the same time, the psalmist’s assurances must not be misconstrued as promising a life free of trouble and suffering for those who place their trust in God. The absoluteness of the psalm’s language certainly gives that impression (ref. esp. vv. 5-13), but the writer spoke in superlatives to underscore the effectual, all-encompassing, purposeful provision
God supplies to His children – the provision by which He secures their true well-being in this life with a view to their full attainment of all that He has ordained for them.
4. Psalm 91 extols the marvelous, unending blessings God bestows on His faithful children, and thus the satanic adversary recognized its usefulness in his efforts to deceive and compromise the uniquely faithful Son (ref. Matthew 4:5-6; Luke 4:9-11). If Psalm 91 describes and celebrates Yahweh’s faithful sons, Jesus lived out that sort of sonship in a way no other human being ever has; He embodied Israel in truth as Yahweh’s bona fide son, servant, disciple and witness. Hence Psalm 91 was uniquely relevant to Him, poignantly depicting His unique relationship with His Father, the God of Israel.
a. The satanic deceiver understood this, and so drew upon this psalm in his testing of the Son. Many Christians view Jesus’ wilderness trial as strictly pertaining to Him, but in fact, He underwent it precisely as the true Israelite – the son of
Abraham in whom Israel was to become Israel indeed, and so fulfill its covenant identity and vocation (Isaiah 49:1-6). The Spirit drove Jesus into the desert (Matthew 4:1; Luke 4:1-2), and He did so according to Yahweh’s plan that this
son of Israel should repeat Israel’s wilderness ordeal.
But whereas the national “son” had failed his testing, this Son, as man of the Spirit, was going to triumph on behalf of Israel and its mission. Thus Satan tested Jesus at points that were central to Israel’s failure as covenant son, and He
answered those tests in the way Israel should have answered, even as Moses reminded the people as they prepared to enter the land of Canaan (cf. Matthew 4:4, 7, 10, with Deuteronomy 8:1-20, 6:1-19, 5:1-10).
b. Satan had a deceitful and malicious goal in citing the psalm, but he neither misquoted it nor took it out of context. He stated exactly what it says, and then challenged Jesus to take ownership of His Father’s promises, just as the psalm
challenges every one of its readers.
- Psalm 91 does assure that those who place their trust in God will find that
He delivers them from harm and grants them victory over every enemy.
- For His part, Jesus didn’t deny that the psalm’s truths applied to Him, and neither did He accuse Satan of misquoting it. This psalm was penned for the children of Israel, and it spoke to every Israelite in every generation, including Himself. Its assurances are not empty hyperbole, but are true and trustworthy, and the deceiver quoted it accurately.
Jesus questioned neither the citation nor its pertinence to Himself, but rather rebuked Satan’s clever misuse of it: Psalm 91 extols and celebrates the blessings of security and victory that Yahweh grants to His faithful children; the deceiver
sought to employ it as an inducement to unfaithfulness. Satan’s ploy was to redefine faith and faithfulness in terms of presumption (putting God to the test), and thereby lead Jesus to effectively doubt His Father and replicate Israel’s sin. In exhorting Jesus to openly demonstrate His faith, the master deceiver was actually tempting Him to be unfaithful. If he could manage to bring Him under his deception, Satan would have secured Jesus’ failure in His messianic mission as
the embodiment of Israel and God’s true Image-Son.
c. Drawing on Psalm 91 was an especially clever ploy, because its absoluteness lends itself to the common human error of misjudging faith and faithfulness, which results from viewing it with the natural (fallen) human mind. Thus the
deceiver sought to test Jesus at the most fundamental point of authentic human existence, namely living a life with God characterized by faith. Again, such faith is impossible for human beings in their fallen condition, for faith is dependent,
submissive trust grounded in a true knowledge of God, and all people are born alienated from God, severed from His life and mind (Ephesians 4:17-19; cf. also 2:1-3). Thus the “faith” of the natural man is actually presumption: It is expectation regarding future outcomes that derives, not from a living, informed relationship with God, but from one’s self-interest, perceptions, and desires. In the case of Jesus, the tempter was enticing Him to wrongfully claim God’s promise. In effect, Satan was telling Him that, if He truly believed and trusted His Father, He would demonstrate that faith in His practice. God had pledged in His sacred word to keep His children from harm, and Jesus either believed that or He didn’t. If the Father is true and trustworthy, then He has indeed dispatched His angels to protect His children, and they ought to have no concern about their wellbeing, whatever their circumstance. So Jesus, if He truly was a faithful son, should take His Father at His word. And if He did, then He should be willing to demonstrate His faith by throwing Himself off the temple’s pinnacle, knowing that His Father’s angels would come to His aid and rescue Him from harm. At bottom, Satan tempted Jesus at the very center of His Adamic nature. Jesus was a son of Adam, just like every other human being (Luke 3:23-38), and so had to deal with the core human temptations of independence and self-seeking (ref. Hebrews 2:14-18, 4:15). Though He was the incarnate son, He needed to learn the obedience of human sonship (Hebrews 5:8) – what it means to walk with God in
dependent, steadfast trust, regardless of the circumstance, and without yielding to the temptation to impose on Him one’s own perceptions, expectations and agenda.
- Thus Satan’s wilderness temptations were first a new testing of Israel, as
Jesus Himself now embodied Israel as Yahweh’s covenant “son.” The significance of this ordeal, then, was whether Jesus would triumph as faithful Israel, and that for the sake of Israel and its covenant vocation. (Note again that Satan’s tempting of Jesus echoed the primary arenas of testing Israel faced in the wilderness – ref. Exodus 17:1-7; Numbers 11:1-
6; Exodus 32:1-10 with Deuteronomy 8:1-20.)
- But even more foundationally, these temptations tested Jesus as a son of
Adam – as the Son of Man. He’d come into the world to fulfill Israel’s identity and calling, so that God’s oath to Abraham would stand that all the earth’s families should be blessed through him and his descendents.
Israel’s sonship, then, was to be a representative expression of the sonship God intended for all of Adam’s race. Jesus’ testing as God’s True Israel (seed of Abraham) was equally His testing as True Man (seed of Eve).
5. All of this might seem extraneous to Psalm 91 itself and its relevance to Christians, but it is actually crucial to rightly understanding and applying it. It is precisely Jesus’ interaction with the psalm’s claims that enables other readers to perceive them properly and not fall into the same trap Satan set for Him. Jesus understood that God wasn’t
promising His covenant children to reward their faithfulness with earthly safety and security and absolute triumph over everyone and everything that might rise up against them. If that were the case, it would be necessary to ascribe unfaithfulness to either the Father or the Son. For Jesus suffered greatly and His experience didn’t at all correspond
to the psalm’s depiction. Does this mean that Jesus fell short in His faithfulness, thus excluding Himself from the psalm’s promises, or that His Father failed to honor His word? But if both Son and Father were indeed completely faithful, then the provision and blessings held out in Psalm 91 have to be understood in terms of Jesus’ life experience as Yahweh’s beloved Son. They cannot be interpreted as the language seems to suggest.
a. What this means is that the way the psalmist’s words were true for the faithful Son is the way they are true for all of God’s faithful sons and daughters. Jesus enjoyed all that the psalm pledged, but not because His Father granted Him an
untroubled life free of pain, suffering and injustice. Quite the opposite, and contrary to the reasonings of the natural human mind, Jesus experienced God’s promised triumph (the deliverance and victory celebrated in the psalm) in and
through the most profound and agonized suffering. He knew that His God would indeed deliver, preserve and honor Him and “set Him securely on high” (v. 14) as His faithful son, not by delivering Him from all threats and suffering, but by carrying Him through them so that His submissive faith – His authentic sonship – should be nurtured and perfected by them
(Hebrews 5:8; cf. also Matthew 3:16-4:2). The Son’s unqualified glory, as the consummation of the Father’s faithful love to Him, was to come through a life of suffering culminating with death on the cross (Luke 24:25-26; John 12:23-33).
b. So Christians must not misconstrue the psalmist’s assurances as somehow promising a trouble-free “victorious” life to those who walk with God in faith.When the psalm is interpreted in that way, it shows that the reader has succumbed
to the deception Satan set before Jesus. He spotted the deception because He understood that the security, deliverance and triumph God promises are realized through the path of suffering (cf. Matthew 16:21-23). But all who lack that understanding are easy prey for the deceiver. For all people instinctively believe that a good God seeks only happy circumstances and outcomes for them, and so it’s not surprising when so many find confirmation of that notion in the psalmist’s assurances. “Faith,” then, becomes trusting God for those circumstances and outcomes that one deems “good,” even to the point of actively putting Him to the test: God has pledged to secure my good, and thus I’m going to pursue what I believe to be in my best interests and trust Him for it. But genuine faith recognizes that the glory God intends for His image-children is obtained through death –
through dying to life and its ideals as we know them, in order to live the authentic human life that consists in sharing in Jesus’ own life (ref. Matthew 16:21-25; cf. also Romans 6:1-11; Ephesians 2:1-6, 4:17-24; Colossians 3:1-4).
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 1:14:34 GMT -5
E. Psalm 145 – The Response of Sonship: Praise and Thanksgiving
As the songs of Israel’s sonship, the psalms proclaim and describe the blessedness and rich provision that God showers upon His children. God is a loving and faithful Father, but His lovingkindness (i.e., His faithfulness to His purposes and promises) is intentional and purposeful;
it has its goal in perfecting faithful children. God created His human creature in His own image and likeness, and an image corresponds to and reflects that which it represents; when a human being conforms to his created nature and function, he reveals the One who created him; to see the
image-child is to see the father (John 14:9-10). And because God is love, love is the most basic characteristic of His true children. They love as God loves, and He is the first and essential object of their love. So Israel’s fundamental obligation of sonship was to love their covenant God
and Father completely and sincerely with all devotion (Deuteronomy 6:4-5, 10:12-11:1). And because authentic love is grounded in true knowledge, love for God always expresses itself in theactive adoration of praise and thanksgiving. The children of God are a grateful and praising
people, and thus the psalms – the songs of sonship – have this as a central and pervasive theme.
1. Any number of psalms could be referenced to demonstrate this, but Psalm 145 is an excellent example of praise as the very marrow of Israel’s worship and devotion. It brings David’s psalms to their climax, as they move from humble and desperate pleas for God’s intervention to praise for deliverance and provision.The Jews who collated the psalms intentionally arranged this final set of Davidic psalms this way.They situated Psalm 145
– uniquely ascribed as “A Praise of David” – as the climax of David’s songs, and also the introduction to the final five psalms that are themselves the Psalter’s crescendo of praise. Psalm 145 doesn’t begin with the exclamation, “Praise Yahweh,” as do the five psalmsthat follow it, but this theme dominates the psalm, even as David opened and closed his song by declaring his commitment to continual praise (vv. 1-2, 21). But whereas he began the psalm with his own personal intent, he closed it by calling on all living things
(“all flesh”) to join him in his devotion and praise to the King of Israel and all creation.
2. David praised Yahweh for His greatness (v. 3), which he clarified by his parallel statement in verse 4. Though God is supremely great in Himself by virtue of His deity and sovereignty, David had particularly in mind His manifest greatness – the greatness that He demonstrates in the might and marvel of His works in the world.
a. David didn’t explicitly define those works, but the psalm itself shows that he had in mind Yahweh’s deeds performed on behalf of His creation that He loves. These “wonderful works” and “awesome acts” are the purposeful exercise of His will unto His ultimate goal of creational renewal – the summing up of everything in the created order in His glorified Son (Ephesians 1:9-10; cf. also Isaiah 49-55).
b. This purpose had Israel, the Abrahamic people, at its center. The triumphant offspring God pledged to Eve – the “seed” ordained to crush the serpent and banish the creational curse, He later revealed to be a descendent of Abraham: “In you and in your descendents shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (ref.Genesis 12:1-3, 22:15-18, 26:1-4, 28:10-14). The nation of Israel comprised these descendents, whose role as “son of God” was to make Him known to the world.
Here, too, David didn’t explicitly identify Israel and its role in God’s mighty works, but the Israelites for whom he penned this song would have made this connection. For he drew on the language of Israel’s covenant relationship with Yahweh in praising His universal goodness and mercy (vv. 8-9). David lauded the Lord’s great lovingkindness (hesed), which speaks to His covenant faithfulness –i.e., His loving, unrelenting commitment to His covenant people and His purposes in and through them (cf. Exodus 20:1-6; Ezra 3:11; Nehemiah 1:1-6; Isaiah 54:1-8, 55:1-4; Jeremiah 31:1-6). This covenant signification is especially evident in the formula affirmation David cited in verse 8. Yahweh had declared this of Himself when Moses pled with Him to see His glory (Exodus 33:11-34:7), and through the centuries the children of Israel pointed to this declaration when they
petitioned the Lord for His mercy and continued faithfulness toward them (cf. Numbers 14:1-24; Nehemiah 9; Psalm 86, 103; Joel 2; note also Jonah 4:1-2).
c. David recognized that Yahweh’s wondrous works of power and provision are grounded in and serve the goal of His grace, mercy and covenant faithfulness.
Thus all His works give thanks to Him, and all His godly ones praise Him and bless His name, openly proclaiming the glory of His kingdom and the manifest power of His mighty deeds, so that the sons of men should come to know Him in truth as the mighty God and everlasting King (another allusion to Israel’s role of mediating the knowledge of Yahweh to the nations) (vv. 9-13).
3. But beyond the human race, God’s mighty acts are directed toward the good of the entire creation. His activities in the world focus on mankind (because man is the image-son ordained to exercise His rule), but with a view ultimately toward the full realization of His wise and loving intent for all creation.
a. God is jealous for His “very good” creation, and He sustains the earth and its inhabitants with open-handed provision, “supporting those who fall” and “lifting the heads of those who are bowed down,” even reaching beyond His imagechildren to “satisfy the desire of every living thing” (vv. 14-16; cf. 147:7-9).
b. Yahweh’s goodness and mercy are over all His works (cf. Psalm 104), but His favor is especially toward His children who love and fear (revere) Him and call upon Him in truth (with integrity and sincerity). Thus He is righteous and faithful, always doing what is right and true out of a heart of kindness and compassion, and unwavering commitment to His own loving purposes (vv. 17-19).
c. Thus righteousness and faithfulness have two dimensions. Because they speak to His intent for His creation (having man at the center), they manifest themselves in fatherly care and compassion, but also in a destroying hand directed against everything and everyone that stands as an enemy of His good purposes (v. 20).
4. David closed out this, his final song, by declaring again his commitment to the praise of Yahweh, his King, which he believed would at last be joined by “all flesh” in an everlasting chorus. One day, the praise in the mouths of Yahweh’s godly ones would
become the praise of all creation (cf. Psalm 96, 97 with Isaiah 11:1-9, 55:6-13, 65:17-25).
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 1:19:27 GMT -5
F. Psalm 84 – The Intimacy of Sonship
Sonship in relation to God brings a myriad of benefits and blessings, and thus the children of God are a grateful and ever-praising people. This is expressed in the Psalter as one of its preeminent themes. But another aspect of sonship, which is also front and center in the Psalms, is
the matter of intimacy between the Father and His sons and daughters. The Psalms were composed as songs of worship and devotion – songs that expressed and celebrated Israel’s sonship, and as such many of them focused on the singular blessing of Israel’s unique intimacy with the Creator-God. No other people or nation shared this blessing, but Yahweh established this intimacy with Israel with a view to His ultimate goal of having one universal human family taken up in His own life and love. One day, all humanity would share Israel’s intimacy with God.
1. Psalm 84 transitions from the psalms of Asaph (73-83) into the second group of psalms attributed to the “sons of Korah.” The first group is in Book Two (42, 44-49), and the second group consists of psalms 84, 85, 87, 88. Korah was the Levite who led the rebellion against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness (Numbers 16), based on the claim that all of the Israelites were equally holy (consecrated to Yahweh), so that Moses and
Aaron had wrongly distinguished themselves in the Lord’s service. Yahweh took Korah’s life, but his descendents, as part of the Kohathites appointed to carry the holy things of the sanctuary (Numbers 3:29-31), continued to serve in the ministration of the tabernacle.
Later, David appointed some of the Korahites (“sons of Korah”) as singers in the sanctuary service of worship (1 Chronicles 6:31-38). These Korahites (like Asaph, another appointed singer) apparently composed some of the songs they sang, and among these songs are the psalms ascribed to them in the Psalter.
2. The psalm parallels another Korahite psalm (Psalm 42; cf. also 43) in focusing on Yahweh’s sanctuary as the fitting object of delight and longing. But not because of the beauty or excellence of the structure itself, but because it is Yahweh’s dwelling place. By extolling the Lord’s sanctuary, the sons of Korah were extolling Yahweh Himself and the incomparable privilege and delight of being with Him in the place of His habitation. The psalm doesn’t celebrate a place, but a person, and specifically the indescribable joy of being in the Lord’s very presence (cf. David’s longing in Psalm 27:4). In the ancient world, people believed that gods made themselves accessible to humans in temples constructed for their worship. In particular, it was thought that they connected themselves with a physical image representing their likeness. Though the true God fills all creation and doesn’t dwell in a shrine (cf. Isaiah 66:1-2; Acts 17:24), He drew on this notion because of the principle of sacred space as the place of divine/human encounter. People construct sacred sites because they recognize the inherent distinction between the human and the divine and the need to span that distance. Sanctuaries and temples serve that function, acting as a physical intersection of the natural and spiritual realms; a place where heaven and earth come together and human beings can encounter and interact with the divine. So it is with the true God; He is Spirit and Holy Other, and so can only be encountered through some conjunction of His “space” and the human realm, whether by means of a physical location or structure, or through some other form of accommodation to the natural realm, such as a human voice,angelic appearance, etc.
3. The psalmist sets the tone for his song by a joyous eruption of delight as his mind turned to Yahweh’s sanctuary (dwelling places; v. 1).
His use of the plural doesn’t contradict the fact of one tabernacle/temple, but recognizes the multiple areas associated with that dwelling place. So the parallelism of verse 2: “My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the Lord.” This parallelism also shows that the psalmist’s delight and longing regarding Yahweh’s sanctuary was actually directed toward Yahweh Himself (v. 2b).
He longed to reside in the place where Yahweh established Himself, enthroned between the wings of the cherubim, and thus noted, perhaps with a hint of envy, the little birds that made their nests in the sanctuary structures (v. 3). Though insignificant compared with human beings, and unaware of the glory of their chosen abode, these creatures experience the blessedness of closeness to their Creator as they live out in His presence the existence He appointed for them. How much more does that blessedness belong to Yahweh’s image-children: “How blessed are those who dwell in Your house! They are ever praising You” (v. 4). And like the birds who build their nests in the refuge of Yahweh’s altars, the
humans who dwell in His house – those who have their hearts and lives fully devoted to Him – find Him to be their all-sufficient strength and provision (vv. 5-7). Here the psalmist drew on the imagery of Israel’s festal occasions in which pilgrims made their way up to Jerusalem to worship Yahweh, their King and God. There were three such occasions in Israel’s annual calendar: the feasts of Unleavened Bread
(Passover), Weeks (Pentecost), and Booths (Deuteronomy 16:16).
a. In the centuries preceding the exiles of Israel and Judah, the Hebrew pilgrims made their way to Jerusalem from within Canaan, but during the diaspora they traveled from vast distances, eventually from the far reaches of the Roman Empire (ref. Acts 2:5-11). But whether coming from near or far, the journey up to Jerusalem was arduous and the pilgrims faced dangers on the road. Nevertheless, the journey was joyous, for it was a pilgrimage of worshippers, children of the Living God traveling to be with Him in the place of His habitation.
b. The psalmist’s language alludes to this actual physical circumstance of difficulty and danger, but with a view to its spiritual counterpart: Though they pass through the “valley of Baca” [i.e., a low place of gloom and tears], the worshippers’ ascent to Zion to appear before Yahweh transforms their tears into a spring of blessing in which they go from strength to strength (vv. 6-7).
So Franz Delitzsch observed: “The most gloomy present becomes bright to them: passing through even a terrible wilderness, they turn it into a place of springs, their joyous hope and the infinite beauty of the goal, which is worth any amount of toil and trouble, afford them enlivening comfort, refreshing strengthening in the midst of the arid steppe.”
4. This fervent longing and hope led the psalmist to plead with Yahweh, the God of the heavenly hosts and His people Israel, to hear his prayer and answer his longing – and that in connection with His favor toward His anointed (vv. 8-10). This plea has led to variousconclusions regarding the historical circumstance surrounding the psalm.
a. First, the psalm gives some impression that Yahweh’s sanctuary in Jerusalem stood at that time. If so, and if it’s correct that the psalm was composed during the exile, then it must have been penned after the construction of the second temple was completed in 516 B.C. Alternatively, the psalm may have been composed during David’s reign after he installed the tabernacle in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6), or during the subsequent centuries while the first temple still stood. Some believe that this psalm was penned at the time David had fled Jerusalem because of Absalom’s rebellion. Thus the psalmist’s plea expressed his burden to see David (the Lord’s “anointed”) restored to the throne, and so also his own restoration to
Yahweh’s sanctuary as one of David’s appointed singers.
b. But whatever the historical circumstance, it seems clear that the psalmist was speaking with a view to the Lord’s promise of Zion’s future restoration. That is tosay, his desire to go up to Zion reflected his greater longing for the promised day when Yahweh would return and again gather His people to Himself, forgiving and cleansing them, and restoring His kingdom and His dwelling among them with the son of David (Yahweh’s “anointed”) on the throne. This view finds support in the imagery of verses 6-7, and also in the psalmist’s twin parallelisms in verse 10:
One day in the courts of Yahweh’s sanctuary is better than a thousand elsewhere; thus the writer much preferred even a temporary stay at the threshold leading into Yahweh’s house to a settled existence in the dwelling place inhabited by the wicked (i.e., those who don’t know Him).
This comparison indicates that he was using the language of dwelling places to refer to the two “habitations” where people can make their home: They can dwell with Yahweh in His “house,” or “outside” with those who are estranged from Him. The psalmist further reinforced this interpretation by describing those who make their dwelling with Yahweh as those who walk uprightly and trust in Him.
5. And so it seems that the psalmist constructed his imagery to convey his own – and Israel’s – longing for the day of ultimate and final pilgrimage – the day when Yahweh’s covenant children will be gathered back to Him and abide in His house forever. In that day the Lord’s image-sons would be like the little birds that built their nests in the refuge of His habitation. And they, too, would flourish in His presence, secure and fully satisfied, as they live out their lives according to His wise and glorious design for them. “For Yahweh, who is God, is a sun and shield; Yahweh gives favor and honor. No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Yahweh, commander of the hosts of heaven and the armies of Israel, how blessed is the man who trusts in You!” And if this was the writer’s meaning, the psalm’s messianic significance is clear. With all confidence in God’s word through His prophets, the psalmist looked with longing to the day of repentance, renewal and ingathering; the day when Yahweh, through the triumph of David’s Branch, would at last become King of Israel in truth, and so also King over all the earth. Perhaps he saw David exiled, or David’s kingdom in tatters; either way, He knew Yahweh would one day establish forever David’s house and kingdom. One day, all mankind would make a pilgrimage to Yahweh on Mount Zion (Isaiah 2:1-4, 11:1-12).
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 1:36:12 GMT -5
G. Psalm 133 – The Fellowship of Sonship
Once again, the Psalms were composed as songs of worship and devotion – songs that expressed and celebrated Israel’s sonship. Thus many of them celebrate the singular privilege and
blessedness of the Israelites’ intimacy with their covenant God and Father. Out of all the earth’s peoples, the Creator-God granted to Abraham and his descendents to enjoy a unique relationship of sonship. But He did so, not to single out the Abrahamic family, but to use them as His instrument for realizing His ultimate goal to fill His covenant household with people from every tribe, tongue and nation. Israel’s sonship had its goal in a global family of sons and daughters.
Thus the people of Israel weren’t to retreat from the world around them, let alone exalt themselves above the Gentiles who didn’t share their election and privilege. Rather, Yahweh
directed them to fulfill their election of sonship by being His light shining into the surrounding world. It was precisely by living faithfully as the Creator’s covenant son that Israel would fulfillits vocation of mediating His blessing to all the earth’s families. The sons of Israel were called to love their Gentile neighbors by bearing faithful and truthful testimony to them – testimony of their God and Father, who is the God of all mankind, and so also testimony of His intent that His human image-bearers should attain to their created design as image-children. The great commandment of Israel’s covenant Torah was the obligation of undivided love and absolute devotion to their God, but this implied a corollary: The sons of Israel were to love their neighbor as themselves (cf. Leviticus 19:18 with Matthew 22:35-40; ref. also Romans 13:8-10).
This latter obligation pertained most directly to the relationship between Hebrew countrymen, who were covenant brethren. But it also reached beyond the bounds of the covenant household to include the “alien” and “stranger.” Israel would demonstrate its love for God by fulfilling its sonship, and this meant truthfully testifying to the people around them of the divine Father and His loving intent for mankind. Loving God, then, meant loving one’s fellow Israelite, but also loving Gentile neighbors through demonstrated faithfulness in word and deed (ref. Deuteronomy 10:12-19; also Exodus 23:9; Leviticus 23:22; Deuteronomy 1:16-17, 24:17; etc.). If love for God and neighbor were the two great, overarching obligations of Israel’s covenant sonship, it’s not surprising to see brotherly fellowship extolled in Israel’s psalms, alongside the celebration of Father-son intimacy. Various psalms allude to this fellowship, but none speaks of it as directly and joyously as Psalm 133. It is one of the shortest psalms in the Psalter with only three verses, sharing that distinction with two other Songs of Ascents (Psalms 131, 134), and is surpassed in its brevity only by Psalm 117.
1. As noted, Psalm 133 is one of the Psalter’s Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120-134), which psalms are distinguished by their ascending character. (Various traditions associate them
with the three pilgrim feasts, the Levitical ministration, and the return from exile.) They are marked by an upward movement in their argument and/or sentiment (joy, hope, faith,
zeal, etc.). In the case of this psalm, it begins and ends on a high note, ascending from a joyous assertion to a joyous affirmation that clarifies and substantiates the assertion. This psalm is ascribed to David, and he opened by lauding the goodness and delight that attend brotherly unity. His climactic closing, then, suggests that the virtue and value of this unity derive from its relation to the God who reigns from Mount Zion, and who has, from there, directed (“commanded”) His blessing of life to flow down to His people.
The brotherly unity that David extolled has Israel’s God and King at its center, and is associated with the life He has decreed and dispenses from His throne on Mount Zion.
This closing statement can be interpreted two ways, depending on whether the Hebrew expression “unto the ages” modifies the verb commanded or the noun life. Thus David
could have meant that this life that God has decreed endures forever (arguably suggested by the Hebrew syntax and reflected in most English translations), or that the decree itself
stands forever. His statement would then be rendered, for there Yahweh has decreed forever the blessing that is life. Both meanings are possible, and both are consistent with
the overall perspective and teaching of the Hebrew scriptures and the Psalter in particular: Yahweh has decreed life as the everlasting destiny for His creation, and this
decree is sure and steadfast, enduring forever (ref. Psalm 16:7-10, 73:21-24, 105:8, 119:89, 111, 144, 152, 121:8, 125:1-2, 148:1-6, etc.). And so, while David may have
been speaking about life that endures forever, he equally understood that the divine decree behind it is also everlasting, enduring “unto the ages.”
2. The middle part of the psalm, then, has David drawing on two distinct images intended as metaphors to depict the goodness and blessedness of brotherly unity. The first draws on
the anointing of Aaron, Israel’s first and great high priest (v. 2), and the second is the dew that appears in the morning on Mount Hermon and the mountains of Zion (v. 3a).
a. Anointing with oil was a key aspect of Aaron’s preparation to serve as Yahweh’s chosen high priest. Anointing symbolized a person’s consecration to a particular
task, and was employed in Israel in the consecration of kings, priests, and other significant figures in the nation’s covenant life. The first mention of such anointing concerned Aaron and his sons as part of God’s instruction to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus 28:46), which anointing is recounted in Leviticus 8. The text records that Moses poured the anointing oil on Aaron’s head, so that it would have run down his face and into his beard, then dripping down onto his priestly
garment. This is the imagery David drew on, and so he must have had Aaron’s anointing in mind. But this raises the question of why David made this connection; what was there about the event of Aaron’s anointing as high priest that, for him, spoke to the goodness and delightfulness of brotherly unity?
Of course it’s impossible to be absolutely certain, but David clearly penned these words as a Jew thinking from an Israelite perspective. That is, the unity he had in mind is that which was to exist among the members of Yahweh’s covenant household. This unity was covenant unity – the unity deriving from Israel’s mutual sonship, the unity of covenant brethren. The unity David lauded was grounded in and expressive of the nation’s covenant status as Yahweh’s corporate “son,” but it was precisely this Father-son relationship that Aaron was ordained to administer. Thus the imagery of Aaron’s anointing points to the unique and privileged nature of Israel’s brotherly unity: The children of Israel were brethren
because Yahweh had taken them to Himself to be His sons and daughters. It wasn’t merely genealogy that bound them together as one unified family, but divine purpose and election. The Israelite brotherhood reflected Israel’s mutual sonship, and this defining relationship between Father and children stood upon the good and blessed mediation of Yahweh’s ordained priests (Hebrews 7:11-12).
b. The second image is very different, yet parallels the first one in that it speaks of dew “coming down” onto the mountains of Zion. David depicted this dew as descending from heaven onto the high places of Yahweh’s habitation, which echoes the imagery of the priestly anointing oil, which also had its source in heaven as God’s ordination, coming down onto Aaron’s head, beard and robes. As with the first image, there is the question of what led David to think of the morning dew when he considered the goodness of brotherly unity. Was it simply a sense of general pleasantness he associated with both? If so, why connect this dew with Hermon and the mountains of Zion as the place from which Yahweh dispenses life? Beyond that, how does this understanding explain the clear connection between the two images, i.e., the oil and dew both “coming down”? David seems to have had more in mind than generic pleasantness, and once again finding his meaning depends upon treating the psalm in its Israelite context. David penned these words as a Hebrew, chosen by Israel’s covenant God andanointed as His king to administer His rule over His people. Scholars recognize this, and so some believe David wrote this psalm with an eye to his unification of
the nation under his kingship. He accomplished this goal after conquering Jerusalem and making it the settled site of Yahweh’s sanctuary. Thus David ruled over all Israel and Judah from Jerusalem, the precious jewel of the mountains of Zion and the place from which Yahweh exercised His own rule as Israel’s King enthroned between the wings of the cherubim (ref. 2 Samuel 5:1-6:19). David’s imagery drew on the fact that the dew that fell on Mount Hermon, Israel’s tallest peak located at the country’s northern border, evaporated under the
rays of the morning sun to make its way south to fall again on the Judean mountains, including Mount Zion itself where Yahweh had His throne. Thus the morning dew marvelously united God’s covenant land with its life-giving moisture, and so bore its own witness to the goodness of the covenant sons living in unity, united in the life Yahweh bestowed on them (Deuteronomy 30:15-20).
3. David’s two similes reinforce his opening assertion by alluding to the basis and nature of the unity he praised as good and pleasant. It is a brotherly unity that is covenantal rather than biological. It derived, not from shared Abrahamic descent, but participation in the covenant God made with him; it is the unity of mutual sonship that belonged to
Yahweh’s covenant children. David likely penned this song in celebration of God’s accomplishment through him in uniting His covenant household under His own established reign in Jerusalem. In that sense, David understood that he had been the instrument for realizing what Aaron’s anointing anticipated: a family of covenant sons intimately united with their covenant Father and one another. And yet, the preceding psalm – perhaps composed centuries later during Judah’s exile – sets the tone for David’s song by underscoring that what David achieved and celebrated was not ultimate, and so fell short of God’s decree of perpetual life. Psalm 132 reminded the sons of Israel that the object of David’s rejoicing was yet unrealized. What David exulted in – what Yahweh purposed through him – awaited David’s elect Son. He would unite Yahweh’s children in
accordance with the unending life He decreed from Mount Zion.
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 1:39:04 GMT -5
A. Psalm 13 – Sonship and Personal Lamentation
The topic of lamentation is perhaps the best place to begin in considering psalms that express
Israel’s challenges in its sonship. For, not only is lament a predominant theme in the Psalter, it
speaks very powerfully to the struggle of faith and perseverance that confronts every child of
God at various times in his or her life. Lament can reflect the heartbreak and pain of personal
failure in one’s walk with God, but also the grief of unjust suffering and the fear and anxiousness
that come when one senses that God has turned away and forsaken him. Two things, then, are
foundationally important in considering lamentation and its place in Israel’s songs of sonship.
1) The first is that lament, understood biblically, is more than feeling sad about one’s
circumstances; it is crying out to God in the midst of those circumstances. It might
involve pleas for deliverance, but goes beyond mere self-concern and the desire to have
one’s circumstance improve. Lament is grounded in honest and humble acknowledgment
of one’s plight and helplessness in it, and the desperate need for God’s intervention and
provision. In its scriptural use in relation to Israel, lament has a covenant orientation, and
therefore a relational one. That is, Israel’s laments (individual and corporate) reflected
the people’s covenant sonship and what that required of them and their covenant Father.
Thus Israel’s scriptural lamentations aren’t so much about finding oneself in a trying
circumstance and calling upon God in the belief that He can remedy it; rather, they arise
from failures and trials under the covenant relationship and express the lamenters’ hope
and faith in God’s integrity and faithfulness to His relationship with them.
2) Lamentation is grounded in covenant relationship and the truths it entails, and so gives
voice to faith and hope. Thus lament is a crucial aspect of authentic worship – the
worship that God seeks and that honors and pleases Him. This might not appear obvious
at first glance, and some might even disagree, especially when lament is associated with
complaint. But simply the fact that lamentation is a central dimension of the Psalter
shows that, rightly understood and employed, it is absolutely a fundamental part of the
children’s worship of their covenant Father.
There are a multitude of lament psalms in the Psalter. Lamentation, both personal and
communal, is the primary focus of dozens of psalms, and it is a notable feature of dozens more.
Indeed, lament in some form and to some degree is present in virtually all of Israel’s psalms,
even those whose emphasis lies elsewhere (ref. Psalms 11, 14, 19, 30, 33, 46, 52, 63, etc.). And
so any number of psalms could be examined as examples of lamentation, but Psalm 13 is a good
choice because it is concise and contains the essential components of scriptural lament, including
sorrow, complaint, supplication, faith, hope, and patience.
1. Psalm 13 is ascribed to David, and is one of his many psalms that express his lament. The
particular circumstance it speaks to is unknown, and scholars have offered various
possibilities. What is clear is that David’s life – for all its glory and the profound blessing
of his unique relationship with Yahweh – was filled with hardship. In fact, trouble,
opposition and suffering were his constant companions from the time Samuel anointed
him as Yahweh’s chosen shepherd. Whether king Saul, outside and internal adversaries,
and even his own personal failures, David knew adversity and suffering all too well, and
he knew what it was to feel forsaken and in desperate need of Yahweh’s care.
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2. Though not catalogued with the Songs of Ascent, this psalm very much follows an
ascending pattern in its structure and movement. This sort of pattern is actually
characteristic of lament psalms, as they, too, are songs of sonship. That is, they express
the psalmist’s crisis, affliction and pleas for help, but as a child within Yahweh’s
covenant household, and therefore a son confident that his cries and supplication will be
heard and answered by his faithful and loving covenant Father.
So it is with this psalm: It opens with David crying out to Yahweh in his sense of
abandonment. In the face of great opposition and his enemies’ apparent triumph over
him, David felt forsaken by his God; it seemed to him that Yahweh had forgotten him; far
worse, David was tormented by the thought that He had intentionally turned away
(“hidden his face”) from him. David felt utterly alone, left to bear the burden and anxious
thoughts of his own pain and the sorrow that filled his vexed and weary heart (13:1-2).
3. David was concerned that Yahweh had turned away from him, but he knew that such
rejection, even if it were true, would not be the Lord’s final word to him. For David
recognized that, like every Israelite, he was bound to his God as a son to a Father; indeed,
Yahweh had chosen him uniquely and anointed him to shepherd His people on His
behalf. In the heat and agony of his suffering, David felt that the Lord had abandoned and
forgotten him, and yet he knew his God and his own relationship with Him, and so
remained confident that Yahweh would hear his pleas and come to his aid (13:3).
David’s enemies had beaten him down and were celebrating their apparent triumph over
him, most especially their seeming victory over his mind. He felt utterly defeated, and yet
clung to the truth of his sonship and calling, even in the darkness of his despair. Thus he
pled with Yahweh to again “enlighten his eyes” to the truth, and thus strip his enemies of
their triumph and boasting (13:4). For their victory didn’t consist in the physical and
emotional harm they inflicted, but their ability to crush David’s faith and dissolve his
confidence of God’s faithfulness to him and His purposes for him.
4. Thus David ended on the high note of assured faith: “For I, indeed, have trusted in Your
lovingkindness.” This Hebrew noun often rendered “lovingkindness” is a covenantal term
that refers to Yahweh’s kindness and loving favor that flow from His faithfulness to His
covenant commitments. By declaring his trust in the Lord’s lovingkindness, David was
affirming his confidence that He remains faithfully devoted to His covenant and its goals.
David was convinced that Yahweh would arise on his behalf because he knew Him to be
jealous for His own ends, which He has revealed and ratified by covenant charter;
David’s assurance was grounded in God’s integrity and faithfulness, not some whimsical
sense that He is loving, kind and merciful. It was Yahweh’s steadfast veracity that lifted
David’s heart from the dust and reinvigorated it with sure hope that he would again see
His hand of deliverance, just as he had done so many times before (13:5).
Hence David’s exultant song of praise (13:6). Though the pressure and agony of his
affliction had made it appear that God had forsaken him, David needed only to set his
mind again on the truth to be delivered from his deception and despair. Yahweh had
indeed “dealt bountifully” with him, and His disposition and its provision hadn’t
changed. If he would trust and wait, he would surely see the Lord’s hand on his behalf.
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 1:42:16 GMT -5
B. Psalm 74 – Sonship and Communal Lamentation
Scriptural lament is grounded in Israel’s sonship and reflects and gives voice to the struggles of
that sonship, whether on the part of individual Israelites or the nation as a whole. Thus lament is
a predominant theme in the Psalter, with dozens of psalms focusing on personal and communal
lamentation. Whether personal or communal, and whatever the specific circumstance and matter
of focus, all such psalms (as indeed every instance of Israelite lament) express the burden, agony,
and longing that arose from Israel’s intractable inability to fulfill its calling as son of God.
1. Psalm 74 is a good example of Israel’s psalms of lament, and like the thirteenth psalm
considered previously, it contains the essential elements of lament. But unlike Psalm 13,
which gives voice to David’s personal burden, Psalm 74 expresses the nation’s collective
lamentation. And yet both psalms – as indeed all of the psalms of lament – have the
covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel as their fundamental premise and
primary point of concern. Even when the lamentation is deeply personal, it is always
covenantal; like all of the psalms, the psalms of lament are songs of sonship.
Psalm 74 is one of the twelve ascribed to Asaph (Psalms 50, 73-83), a Levite (descendent
of Gershom) and music composer appointed through David as one of the leaders of the
worship choirs (ref. 1 Chronicles 6:31-39, 15:16-19, 25:1-8; 2 Chronicles 5:1-14, 29:30).
But this ascription raises questions, in that the psalm describes a circumstance of
immense calamity and desolation that didn’t exist during Asaph’s lifetime.
a. Some scholars believe the psalm refers to the Babylonian siege and destruction of
Jerusalem in 586 B.C., while others associate it with the carnage and desecration
perpetrated by Antiochus Epiphanes in the middle of the second century B.C.
Either way, Asaph was long dead, and couldn’t have penned the psalm. This has
led some to conclude that the ascription (A Maskil of Asaph) either indicates that
the psalm was composed by one of Asaph’s descendents, or that it reflects
Asaph’s style of writing. Others believe that Asaph did indeed pen it, but that he
wrote as a prophet (ref. again 1 Chronicles 25:1-2), enabled by the Spirit to
perceive the future desolation of Jerusalem and its temple.
b. The other option is that Asaph was writing about a crisis in his own day (perhaps
Absalom’s insurrection against his father David), but treated it hyperbolically for
the sake of rhetorical effect. That is, he was using the language of invasion,
calamity and destruction to convey the gravity and implications of Israel’s
unfaithfulness and rebellion against the Lord (ref. esp. vv. 18-21).
Though certain descriptors in the psalm are consistent with the desecration of the
sanctuary by Antiochus Epiphanes during the Maccabean period (vv. 3-4), the overall
description and lament seems to best suit the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian
army in 586 B.C. Not only does the psalmist refer to the burning of the temple (v. 7), he
attributed that calamity to God’s rejection and punishment of Israel (v. 1; cf. 2 Chronicles
36:11-21; Lamentations 1-2), which was not the case with the Maccabean situation. If
this view is correct, it indicates that the psalm’s ascription pointed to a descendent of
Asaph, or another psalmist connected with him somehow.
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2. The psalm is composed in three distinct sections that reflect the dynamics of scriptural
lament. It begins with the psalmist crying out to Yahweh in view of calamity that had
befallen him, his Israelite brethren, and Yahweh’s dwelling (vv. 1-11). He then extolled
God’s sovereignty and power as Creator and hinted at His enduring purpose for His
creation (vv. 12-17). Lastly, the writer called upon Yahweh to remember His covenant
with His people Israel – not only because that covenant serves His creation and its
destiny, but also out of zeal for His own integrity and testimony in the world (vv. 18-23).
a. Echoing other psalms of lament, Psalm 74 opens with a cry of desperation: “O
God, have You rejected us forever? Why does Your anger smoke against the sheep
of Your pasture?” (cf. 6:1-3, 10:1, 13:1-2, 17:1, 25:1-2, 28:1-3, 38:1-3, 88:1-9,
94:1-7, 102:1-11, 130:1-2, etc.). Whereas many of the lament psalms are deeply
personal, this one is overtly communal; the psalmist raised his voice on behalf of
the household of Israel: “the sheep of Your pasture,” “Your purchased
congregation,” “the tribe of Your inheritance that You redeemed” (vv. 1-2a). And
inasmuch as he was concerned for the covenant nation, he was equally concerned
for the covenant habitation (v. 2b). For it was Yahweh’s presence with them that
distinguished Israel as His covenant people – His son (cf. Exodus 4:22-23, 6:1-8,
15:17, 25:1-8, 29:42-46), and it was precisely Yahweh’s rejection and departure
from them that the psalmist was lamenting.
Thus the focus of the psalmist’s lament wasn’t the nation’s suffering, but the
desolation of the Lord’s dwelling place. He cried out to Yahweh to bring
retribution against Israel’s enemies, not because of what they had done to His
people, but because of what they were doing to Him: defiling and ultimately
destroying the place of His enthronement, thereby demonstrating their arrogance
and brazen challenge to His authority and rule as King (vv. 3-8). It was this pagan
affront that most vexed the psalmist, and he was perplexed and troubled that the
Lord was silent concerning it, and perhaps even indifferent toward it (vv. 9-11).
b. Having raised his complaint to God, the psalmist extolled Him as his king – the
sovereign Creator-Lord who works His wonders in the earth, bringing deliverance
to His own as part of His commitment to sustain His creation and its order (vv.
12-17). Though deeply vexed by the destruction wrought by these adversaries and
their sneering disdain for God and His people, the psalmist knew that Yahweh
remained Lord of His creation, and therefore King over all men. He had shown
Himself faithful to His covenant and His people in the past, and the writer
affirmed this by drawing on images of God’s sovereignty in the natural order:
- The One who wields all power over the earth’s creatures and natural
processes is the One who divided the sea by His strength and crushed the
Egyptian leviathan (vv. 13-14; cf. Isaiah 51:9-10, also 26:1-27:1).
- He set the boundaries of the sea and dry land and controls the rain and
streams that water the earth (v. 15; cf. Psalm 104:1-13), and He provided
His people with springs of water in the wilderness and brought them into
Canaan across a dry riverbed (Exodus 15:22-27, 17:1-6; Joshua 3-4).
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- He is the God who created the luminaries and separated day and night (v.
16; cf. Genesis 1:1-5), and He caused light to illumine His people and
their habitation while dispatching darkness to enshroud His adversaries
(ref. Exodus 10:21-23; cf. also Joshua 10:12-14; Isaiah 38:1-8).
c. It was this God – the God who is ever-faithful to His creation and His intent for it
– that the psalmist knew, acknowledged, and appealed to. He knew that his God is
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who had covenanted with the
children of Israel on behalf of His creation, and thus he was convinced that
Yahweh would not remain silent and unresponsive forever; He would yet act on
behalf of His people and deal justly with those who opposed both them and Him
Thus the writer appealed to Yahweh to take note of the enemies that had spurned
His name and afflicted His covenant children (vv. 18-19), and consider their highhanded opposition in the light of His covenant and His unyielding commitment to
it (v. 20). Surely that would motivate Him to arise as their deliverer and not
abandon them to their adversaries like a turtle dove that is devoured by a wild
beast (v. 19). The psalmist believed that Yahweh would hear and respond to his
pleas because He is a faithful God, a God who always “keeps covenant.” And so,
when He acted on their behalf, He would also display and exalt His own
righteousness. By honoring His people’s pleas, Yahweh would be pleading His
own cause – not just before Israel, but in the sight of His adversaries (vv. 22-23).
3. This sort of appeal wasn’t unique to this particular psalmist, but echoes the pattern of
thinking and interaction exhibited by the Lord’s faithful ones throughout Israel’s history.
Abraham demonstrated it when he refused to accept the spoils of victory from the king of
Sodom, recognizing that his triumph was God’s triumph, and unwilling to do anything
that would suggest otherwise (Genesis 14). So Moses pled with God to relent from
destroying His people out of jealousy for His own reputation and honor and
accomplishing the outcome for which He had called them (Exodus 32:1-13). The same
perspective is reflected in numerous other psalms (ref. 25, 31, 44, 59, 79, 83, 109), and
the pleas of God’s leaders and prophets (cf. 1 Samuel 17:1-47; 2 Kings 19:1-19; 2
Chronicles 6:13-33; Nehemiah 9; Daniel 9; Jeremiah 14; etc.).
All of this underscores that human faithfulness is simply enacted faith in God’s own
faithfulness; it is unshakeable confidence and trust that He will uphold all that He has
purposed, disclosed and promised, and bring it all to pass exactly as He intends. Human
faith and faithfulness, then, is recognizing and living into the truth of being scripted into
God’s comprehensive story. Such faith doesn’t merely concede that God works all things
with a view to His own glory, but that He manifests and has determined to perfect His
glory by transforming and flooding His creation with its effulgence. The One who is
eternally and infinitely glorious has determined to attain the consummate fullness of His
glory by summing up everything in the heavens and the earth in His glorified Son.
The lament of God’s faithful children, then, is eschatological angst: It is their agonized
longing, not for relief from earthly suffering, but for their glorious revealing that will see
the whole creation liberated and taken up in that glory as their Father becomes all in all
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 1:44:35 GMT -5
C. Psalms 42-43 – Sonship and Persevering Faith
Lamentation is central to Christian life and worship because of the already-but-not-yet nature of
the believer’s present sonship. As the apostle John noted, “Beloved, now we are children of God,
and yet what we shall be hasn’t yet appeared” (1 John 3:1-2). Christians are “of Christ,” meaning
that they share in His life and likeness by His indwelling Spirit. And yet their christiformity is
never complete in this present life – first, because their bodies are mortal, bound over to
corruption and death, but also because their inward renewal is a work in progress. Christians
reflect Christ’s fragrance and glory into the world, but imperfectly; they are being transformed
into His likeness from glory unto glory by the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Lament gives voice to the suffering, angst and longing that characterize sonship in its present
form, and such lament is worship because it acknowledges and reaches out to God according to
the truth of who He is, who we are, and the destiny He has ordained for us. Thus lamentation and
faith are inseparable in the lives of God’s children in the present age: Neither exists without the
other, they imply and inform one another, and neither can be rightly understood apart from the
other. So it is that the psalms of lament characteristically ascend to a climax of faith, even as
psalms that especially focus on the psalmist’s faith have lament as their backdrop. For, in this
life, faith trusts God for what is lacking; it holds tightly to Him with a view to all things
becoming what they are destined to be.
Faith defines sonship, even as Jesus was the preeminent man of faith as God’s beloved son. So
faith is a predominant theme throughout the Psalter (even as it is inseparable from lament).
Indeed, one could point to any of the psalms in considering the theme of faith, and yet there are
some that have the subject of faith as their centerpiece. One such psalm is Psalm 42, which
together with Psalm 43, forms one continuous poem. (Scholarship is largely agreed that these
two psalms were originally one composition, but both the Masoretic Text and Septuagint (Greek
translation of the Old Testament) have traditionally separated them, perhaps because Psalm 42 is
ascribed to the sons of Korah, while Psalm 43 is anonymous.)
1. The centerpiece of both psalms is the thrice repeated refrain, “Why are you in despair, O
my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet
praise Him…” (42:5, 11, 43:5).
a. Notably, the psalmist directed his plea toward himself, confronting himself with
his own despondency and the fact that it resulted from an unwarranted and
debilitating crisis of faith and hope. He didn’t provide any detail regarding the
underlying circumstance, but his poem indicates that his anguish was due to his
separation from God and his longing to be restored to Him (vv. 1-2).
He likened this longing to the way a languishing deer longs for water in the
parched wilderness: It doesn’t simply look forward to its next drink; it pants with
feverish thirst, able to think of nothing but its desperate need for water, and
unsure when, or if, it will find a stream or other water source. This was the
psalmist’s anguished “thirst,” but not for physical water, but the water of life that
flows from the spring that is the living God Himself: “My soul thirsts for God, the
living God; when shall I come and appear before God?” (v. 2).
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b. The psalmist found himself separated from God and desperately longing to be
with Him again, and his song indicates that this separation was physical. That is,
he could no longer come to Yahweh’s sanctuary and worship Him there (ref. vv.
2, 4). It seems that the psalmist was away from Jerusalem and the temple against
his will, but he may have penned this psalm shortly after the temple was
destroyed (ref. v. 4). Many scholars associate this unwilling separation with
David’s exile from Jerusalem during Absalom’s insurrection (2 Samuel 15). The
idea is that this psalm was composed by David’s Korahite singers, but to express
his despair and longing during his exile from Jerusalem.
c. The exact circumstance is uncertain, but not the general situation. Whether
speaking for himself or David, the psalmist agonized over his separation from
God, and then having to endure the taunts of adversaries who sought to shatter his
faith and hope by claiming that God had abandoned him (vv. 3, 9-10). Indeed,
these taunts seem to have met with some success, for the writer himself confessed
that he felt rejected and forgotten by God, so that even his own tears joined the
refrain, “Where is your God?” (cf. vv. 3b, 9, 43:1). He was physically distant
from God’s presence, but he also felt the agonizing sting of relational distance.
And so, at the very same time that he was confronting himself with the error of
his despondency, he conceded that his soul was indeed despairing (vv. 5-6).
2. Thus the psalmist’s deep struggle: outward opposition and derision on the one hand, and
an inward crisis of doubt and despair that pressed him to the point of hopelessness. It was
from this vantage point that he expressed his longing to again be in God’s presence; he
yearned to be able to worship Him at His sanctuary, but as being reconciled to Him, and
therefore able to silence his tears and shut the mouths of those who reviled him.
And he was convinced that this restoration would come; though in his heart he felt
abandoned and overwhelmed by the sense that God had turned His hand against him (v.
7), his mind reminded him that his heart was wrong; the Lord would yet command His
lovingkindness toward him and bring him back into His light (v. 8). For Yahweh
remained ever true and faithful to His covenant and His people, and so hadn’t rejected or
forsaken him, however things might appear. Thus the psalmist thrice exhorted himself to
hold fast to his hope, with the confidence that he would yet find himself in the refuge of
God’s presence. And this confidence would enable him to withstand the outward and
inner assaults that were pressing so hard against him.
3. Psalm 43, then, completes the poem by articulating the psalmist’s prayer to God.
Whereas Psalm 42 expresses the writer’s confidence regarding God and His faithfulness,
it doesn’t have him petitioning Him in prayer. That falls to this second part of the poem.
In fact, Psalm 43 is entirely a prayer, other than its closing repeat of the refrain that binds
the two psalms together. In Psalm 42, the writer noted the scorn and reviling of his
adversaries; here, he cried out to God to deliver him from them and their oppression. And
whereas he previously identified these persons simply as enemies, he now identified them
as an “ungodly nation” (vv. 1-2). (The noun rendered nation is characteristically used of
Gentile peoples, which lends some support to those who argue that the psalmist penned
this psalm after Babylon’s conquest of Judah.)
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Similarly, Psalm 43 gives voice in prayer to the hope that is a central theme in Psalm 42.
There he expressed his confidence that he would be restored to God (relationally as well
as geographically), but here, he externalized that hope through a plea to Yahweh to bring
it about. He believed the Lord’s lovingkindness would restore him to His presence, and
now he pled with Him to dispatch His light and truth to guide him back (43:3-4).
The psalmist expressed this in terms of returning to Yahweh’s “holy hill” as the site of
His sanctuary (His “dwelling places”), but his desire was to return to Yahweh Himself,
not a physical location as such. Most importantly, he recognized that God’s light and
truth would guide him back to Him. This imagery suggests two related meanings:
1) The first is that the writer was indeed speaking of his longing to return to
Jerusalem and Yahweh’s sanctuary (whether or not they still stood intact at that
time), and he believed the divine light and truth would guide him there in the
sense that those images connote God’s goodness and integrity respecting His
purposes and promises. Yahweh had pledged a day of restoration when He would
regather His covenant people to Himself and cause them to be His son in truth,
and the psalmist was simply affirming that this truth, upheld by God’s goodness
and faithfulness, would lead him back to His presence. When Israel’s exile finally
came to an end, so would his own.
2) But there is also a non-physical dimension to the writer’s words. By pleading for
God’s light and truth to guide him back to His presence, the psalmist was tacitly
acknowledging that his return to Yahweh wasn’t really a matter of geographical
relocation, but restored relationship, and that would involve repentance – i.e.,
reordered thinking and a right perspective. In this sense, the writer’s plea for the
Lord to send out His light and truth was a plea for fresh insight and understanding
on his own part. Regardless of whether he was allowed to return to Jerusalem, the
psalmist would find the restoration he sought in a renewed sight of the truth and a
revitalized commitment to it.
And so, while it’s doubtless true that the writer longed to return to the covenant land and
Yahweh’s dwelling on Mount Zion, he also understood that his relationship with Israel’s
God transcended temple worship. That relationship was grounded in knowledge of the
truth and trust in the One who is truthful, and so he needed to answer his own
despondency and desperate longing with faith and the settled hope it engenders. For any
worship offered in the absence of faith is empty ritual; it is nothing more than unknowing
interaction with a remote and untrusted deity. Conversely, where faith is present, there is
no distance between God and the worshipper, wherever that person may reside, as Jacob
and Joseph learned during their lifetimes. In the end, whatever separation existed between
the psalmist and his God, it was the result of his flawed perception and lack of faith, not
geographical distance. Yahweh hadn’t gone anywhere; it was his heart and mind that had
strayed away. And so the ultimate answer to the writer’s sense of abandonment and
despair wasn’t physical relocation, but renewed faith and hope. Hence he ended his song
with the same refrain of repentance and self-exhortation that had carried it along: “Why
are you in despair, O my soul? And why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I
shall again praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God.”
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4. These psalms can seem remote to the contemporary Christian and his life experiences,
making it easy to brush past them and be detached from their pathos. But a closer look
shows that the psalmist was experiencing no small crisis of faith – a crisis that, in its
essence, confronts every one of God’s children at some point in their life. They may not
share the writer’s particular circumstance, but all know the desperation of feeling distant
from God and abandoned by Him to those who assault them and torment them with
taunts of “where is your God?” At some point, every son of God wrestles with doubts and
fears, and many have been in the place of despairing of all hope. But like the psalmist,
they must grasp in the darkness what they know to be true and demand of themselves that
they cling tightly to it in faith, and so revive their hope. As it was for him, so it is for all
the children: Yahweh’s integrity and demonstrated faithfulness to His word and His
purposes – which have now become yes and amen in Jesus – assure them that He has not
forsaken or forgotten them. If they will but reach out for His light and truth, poured out
for them by His Spirit, they will find all sense of distance and alienation evaporate, and
once again they will be singing the praise of God and the Lamb in His presence.
This two-part song, then, makes an immense contribution to the Christian’s
understanding and life with God. Among other things, it illumines the nature, role and
crucial importance of faith and hope, and it underscores the inseparable relation between
them. In this way, it exposes the natural human counterfeits that have sadly found a place
in much contemporary Christian teaching and practice.
a. Faith and hope are two aspects of the same phenomenon in that faith gives present
existence to what is hoped for and substantiates what cannot be seen (ref.
Hebrews 11:1). Put simply, faith is the conviction (settled belief) of the truth as
God has made it known, while hope is the sure confidence that that truth will
come to pass as God as pledged. One cannot truly believe God without trusting
that He will fulfill His word; conversely, such trust is grounded in informed faith.
b. Faith and hope are inseparable and fundamental to a living relationship with the
living God. But, understood in the scriptural sense, they are also exclusively the
property of God’s people. That is, human beings in their natural existence know
nothing of genuine faith and hope. This is because both have God and His truth as
their premise and object. There are, of course, natural counterparts to faith and
hope, but they are entirely personal and subjective and are bound to individual
concerns and interests. They reflect what a given person desires and expects to
occur or exist in the future, not what God has disclosed and pledged.
This sort of “faith” and “hope” are purely individual and radically human, having
no necessary relation to any particular divine entity or any objective truth. To the
extent that such an entity is implicated, it is only as the perceived instrument for
obtaining that which the individual believes to be good and appropriate and hopes
to secure. Scriptural faith and hope are antithetical to this; they are entirely
objective and centered in the person, word and work of God. They have nothing
to do with individual desires, goals, and expectations, but are the appropriate
human response to objective truth as God has revealed and enacted it.
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 1:48:01 GMT -5
D. Psalm 10 – Sonship and Imprecation
The already-but-not-yet present state of God’s renewal in Christ means that the Christian’s
sonship exists in a circumstance of imperfection – not only in terms of his own person, but also
the world he inhabits. Hence sonship in the present order of things has lament at its heart. And
this lament isn’t sadness, regret or complaint as such, but eschatological angst: It is the
dissatisfaction and anguished longing that result from awareness of the destiny God has ordained
for His creation and the fact that the creation – including the children themselves – has yet
attained to that destiny. Hence lament both authenticates the children’s present faith and hope
and gives expression to it. Put differently, there is no genuine faith and hope where there is no
lamentation. This is one reason why lamentation is central to Christian worship.
This is the context for understanding imprecation. Imprecation is often simplistically defined as
verbally cursing another person; in terms of the Scripture, then, imprecation would involve
calling on God to carry out such a curse or fulfill the desire for a bad outcome. Imprecation is so
prevalent in the Psalter that the phrase, imprecatory psalms, is commonly used for the psalms of
this sort. But scriptural imprecation – and the imprecatory psalms in particular – must be
understood in terms of lament. Imprecation isn’t calling down God’s wrath on one’s enemies out
of personal concern; it is an aspect of the eschatological angst that gives voice to faith and hope.
Thus imprecation is fundamental to biblical lament, and so to the children’s authentic worship of
their God and Father. Failure to understand this is the reason that so many Christians struggle
with the imprecatory psalms and whether they apply to them, and if so, in what way.
Just as lament is a core theme in the Psalter, so is imprecation. Again, there are numerous psalms
that are commonly classified as imprecatory, but imprecation is either implied or overt in
virtually all of the lament psalms. Lament can exist without imprecation (such as when a person
is lamenting his own failures), but scriptural imprecation always involves lament, since the
imprecator is calling on God to address situations and persons that are afflicting and vexing him
because they oppose what is right and good. And, as with psalms of lament, there are both
personal and communal imprecatory psalms. Psalm 10 is a good example of a personal one, but
one in which the psalmist spoke on behalf of all those among Yahweh’s people who love Him
and are jealous for Him and His honor and the vindication of His truth and power.
1. Imprecation and lament arise from affliction and suffering, and so both involve
petitioning the God who is able to give relief. So Psalm 10 opens with the psalmist
pleading with God to take note and arise on behalf of those who are suffering at the hands
of wicked men: “Why do You stand afar off, O Yahweh? Why do you remain hidden in
times of trouble?” (v. 1). This is one of only two anonymous psalms in the first book of
the Psalter, and its anonymity and lack of specificity make it difficult to discern the
circumstance the psalmist was referring to. The Septuagint joins it with Psalm 9 as one
poem, and the two do share an aligned acrostic structure. These two psalms are also
aligned chiastically: Psalm 9 ends on an imprecatory note (vv. 19-20), but as a song of
praise and thanksgiving; Psalm 10 is prayer of imprecation that ends with a doxology of
praise. If this conjoining is correct, Psalm 10 is associated with David. But even if David
did pen this psalm, it’s still uncertain what he meant by “times of distress.” The only
clarification the psalm provides is that this was a circumstance of oppression and
affliction resulting from the willful and malevolent schemes of wicked men (v. 2a).
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2. The psalmist didn’t directly identify this distress, but he was clear in what he sought from
Yahweh: He called on Him to turn these wicked schemes and actions back onto the heads
of the evil men who were perpetrating them. He wanted them to suffer the very things
they were subjecting their victims to (v. 2b). He then went on describe these evil-doers so
as to show that this retribution was just and justly deserved (vv. 3-11). His description is
multi-faceted, but he saw their arrogance as their fundamental offense.
a. They were men who were consumed with themselves – their sense of greatness,
power, and personal agenda, and this self-glory left them exalting themselves
above the living God, to the point of regarding Him as irrelevant, if He exists at
all. They were arrogantly unafraid to exploit and crush Yahweh’s people, because,
if He does exist, He was silent and uncaring, if not impotent. But as for their gods,
these men believed that they were mighty and triumphant and had granted them
supremacy over their adversaries, leaving them untouchable (vv. 3-6).
b. With such assured confidence, these evil-doers felt no restraint whatsoever. They
gave themselves with abandon to their self-interests, consecrating their minds,
mouths and limbs to their own agendas. Achieving their desired ends was all that
mattered, and other people were simply instruments to be used in that purpose.
Hence they were eager, unashamed, and even proud to exploit and oppress those
under their power, which apparently included at least some among the children of
Israel. Whether or not these men felt justified in their violence and oppression,
they were confident that no one would challenge them – not even Israel’s God, to
whom the afflicted and oppressed were crying out. If He did exist, He was distant
and unconcerned; He’d forgotten them and took no notice of their plight (v. 11;
cf. also Psalm 14, 94:1-7, and Isaiah 10:5-15; note also Ezekiel 8-9, which
addresses the same phenomenon among the Israelite people).
3. After rehearsing with Yahweh the shocking arrogance and shameless aggression of these
oppressors, the psalmist again called on Him to arise and exact retribution against them
(v. 12). Whereas they believed Israel’s God was unaware and unconcerned about His
people, and so would never call this wickedness and oppression to account (v. 13), the
writer knew that Yahweh does see, and he urged Him to respond accordingly – to “take
all of this mischief and vexation into His hand.” And he was convinced that the Lord
would take action on their behalf, for He had come to the aid of His people many times in
the past when they humbled themselves and cried out to Him (v. 14).
- Hadn’t He delivered them from their bondage in Egypt?
- And hadn’t He come to their rescue over and over again during the era of the
Judges, even though their repentance was fleeting and they quickly returned to the
same pattern of unfaithfulness that had incurred their affliction and subjugation?
Though Israel had shown itself to be an incorrigibly unfaithful son, Yahweh remained
steadfast as a faithful father and husband because He cannot deny Himself; whatever men
might do and whatever their waywardness and infidelity, He remains committed to His
purposes and their accomplishment (ref. Ezekiel 19:1-44, 24:1-27, 34:1-31, 36:1-38).
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4. The psalmist’s desire wasn’t simply that God would rise up against those afflicting him
and his companions, but that He would “break the arms of the wicked and evil-doer” so
as to uncover and purge all evil from them. His concern and longing for justice
transcended the immediate and circumstantial; he longed for Yahweh’s complete triumph
such that there was no more wickedness to be found in the earth (v. 15).
Thus he brought his song to its climax with an exultant declaration of his faith and
confident hope in Yahweh, the God of Israel who is King – not just king over His people
Israel, but over all the earth and all men.
a. The psalmist proclaimed Him as the everlasting ruler of all creation, the sovereign
Lord who raises up nations and brings them down, even as He had made the man
Abraham into a great nation and driven out many other nations before them to
give them the land He covenanted to them and their patriarchal fathers (vv. 16-
17a; cf. Genesis 12:1-3, 15:1-21; Exodus 15:1-18; also Psalm 47).
b. Yahweh acted against human wickedness and rebellion when He drove out the
Canaanite nations and gave His people their land as He promised, and the
psalmist had no doubt that He would continue to be faithful to Himself, His
character, His purposes and His people.
Yahweh had shown Himself perfectly faithful from the moment He ratified His covenant
with Abraham. He had carried His covenant children through the centuries and always
heard their broken, needy cries, whether they came to Him from His sanctuary on Mount
Zion or from a distant land (Genesis 32; Exodus 2:23-3:10; Psalm 34:1-6). He had
demonstrated repeatedly that His heart is ever inclined toward His people, and He
rejoiced when they sought Him as humble, dependent, and grateful children. Thus the
psalmist was fully confident that Yahweh heard his pleas on behalf of the oppressed and
afflicted. Indeed, he believed that the Lord heard their inner longing and groaning, not
just their outward cries (v. 17). Such a God would surely arise and come to their aid.
But again, the writer’s burden and plea looked beyond his own circumstance and the
injustice and oppression he and his fellows were enduring. He pled with Yahweh to arise
against wicked men and their evil plots, but in view of the Lord’s own pledge to purge the
world of its corruption, banish the curse and death, and impart new life to mankind. The
Lord had sworn by Himself and He would keep His word.
Thus the psalmist knew that, however it might appear in the moment (v. 1), Yahweh was
neither distant nor indifferent to the affliction and cries of His people. Indeed, He “heard
the longing of the afflicted” – their inward desires and groaning, and not simply their
voiced prayers, and would surely come to their aid – not by delivering them from all
injustice and opposition, but by “strengthening their heart” to be able to endure the
things they were suffering. He was going to arise on behalf of the powerless (here, the
“orphan” and the “oppressed”) and vindicate them in the sight of their enemies. But this
mighty deliverance awaited the day of judgment Yahweh ordained at the beginning; the
day when man will no longer cause terror in the earth – not because the King rises up to
destroy him, but because He triumphs to finally make him man indeed (vv. 17-18).
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 1:50:34 GMT -5
Excursus: Imprecation and Christian Sonship
Imprecation is an important feature of the Psalms, which shows that it was a fundamental aspect
of Israel’s life and worship as Yahweh’s covenant son, but in a particular sense. Many think of
scriptural imprecation as simply calling upon God to eliminate one’s adversaries or oppressors.
Such imprecation is nothing more than self-concern that looks to God for deliverance from
personal difficulty. But this perspective doesn’t at all reflect the nature and orientation of
imprecation in the Psalms (or elsewhere in the Scriptures).
As seen, scriptural imprecation is an aspect of lament, which is a core expression of faith and
hope, not dissatisfaction and unhappiness because of unpleasant personal circumstances. Lament
is eschatological angst: it looks eagerly toward and longs for the purging and restoration God
has promised from the beginning. Thus lament is as much a Christian phenomenon as it was an
Israelite one; though Christians live in the “fullness of the times,” they, too, look with longing to
the full realization of God’s intent for His creation. Christians live in faith and hope, and so are a
lamenting people. But this means that they are equally an imprecating people, since imprecation
pleads with God to act on behalf of His own designs; to arise on behalf of His people and
creation and put all things right by eliminating all that contradicts and opposes His purposes and
will (ref. Psalms 5, 11, 12, 52, 54, 79, 83, 94, 137, 143, etc.).
Imprecation, then, reflects and gives voice to concern and zeal for God and His creation, not for
oneself per se. In its scriptural form, imprecation expresses jealousy for what God is jealous for,
and thus it is a key dimension of worship – Christian worship as much as Israel’s worship during
the era leading up to Messiah’s coming. Imprecation is an aspect of true worship, but only in its
scriptural sense; God is neither honored nor worshipped when people entreat Him out of selfconcern for the sake of their own ease and comfort (cf. Psalms 35, 36, 40, 56, 57, etc.).
But if imprecation continues to be a dimension of worship in the Christian era, does this mean
that it is unaltered from its previous Israelite expression? Put differently, can a Christian, in his
own worship, claim for himself and lift up to God the imprecations found in the psalms in the
way that the various psalmists expressed them? If not, why not, and what should be different
with Christian imprecation? Perhaps a more significant question is how imprecation – whether
Israelite or Christian – should be understood and approached in the light of Jesus’ insistence that
true sonship involves loving one’s enemies and praying for one’s persecutors (Matthew 5:43-48).
Given that Jesus issued this instruction to His fellow Israelites (not to the Christian community
that was yet to emerge after His resurrection and ascension), one might reasonably conclude that
He found fault with imprecation, even as it occurs in the Psalms. The implication that follows
from this is that such psalms express the psalmist’s personal sentiment, not the attitude and
prayer orientation that God desires. And if this is the case, then one must rethink the way in
which the imprecatory psalms are inspired scripture. But these quandaries are resolved when
imprecation is understood and applied scripturally.
1. Almost certainly Jesus’ instruction about enemies would have startled and even confused
at least some of those listening to Him on that hillside in Galilee. Jesus suggested as
much with His introductory qualification, “You have heard it said, but I say to you…”
This showed that He recognized that His teaching differed from His countrymen’s
traditional understanding of how they were to view and relate to their enemies.
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They’d been taught that they were to hate their enemies (i.e., those who were not their
Israelite “neighbors”), and this instruction had a basis in Israel’s Torah. While some have
argued that hatred for enemies was a rabbinical innovation not prescribed by the Law of
Moses, the Torah did indeed speak to this issue.
a. First of all, the Mosaic obligation of neighborly love was broad and provided no
explicitly concrete definition of a “neighbor” (cf. Exodus 20:16-17, 21:12-14,
22:7-15; etc). But to the extent that the Law did define the concept, it associated a
neighbor with a fellow Israelite, a proselyte, or a Gentile “God-fearer” (ref.
Leviticus 19:17; cf. Exodus 12:3-4, 22:25-27 and Deuteronomy 4:41-42, 15:1-3).
b. On the other hand, the Law clearly identified certain men as enemies: Israel’s
enemies were those who opposed God, His covenant, and His covenant people.
Initially, this term applied to the nations of Canaan whom God would destroy in
removing them from His sanctuary land (Exodus 23:20-28; Numbers 10:33-36).
Later, “enemy” designated any and all people groups that opposed or threatened
Israel’s security and peace in the land (Leviticus 26:3-39; Numbers 10:9).
c. And, while the Law of Moses didn’t specifically command the sons of Israel to
“hate” their enemies, it did directly and explicitly require them to destroy or
subjugate them and radically disassociate themselves from them and their culture
and practices (cf. Exodus 23:20-24; Numbers 21:1-3; Deuteronomy 3:1-6, 7:1-26,
13:6-15, 20:10-17, 33:26-29; also Joshua 11:1-23). The Law established Israel as
Yahweh’s unique covenant “son,” and this sonship obligated the nation to live as
a people fully consecrated and devoted to Him; all who threatened or interfered
with Israel’s covenant identity and life were to be regarded as enemies and dealt
with severely, even to the point of death.
Thus it’s easy to see why Jesus’ instruction would shock His Israelite hearers. In fact, the
only way one can argue that Jesus was simply reaffirming the Mosaic Law is if His
instruction is limited to relationships within the covenant community. For the Law did
prescribe a benevolent attitude toward “enemies” (Exodus 23:4-5), but this referred to
fellow Israelites with whom a person had an estranged or hostile relationship. And so this
particular commandment to do good to an “enemy” simply reiterated the Law’s general
requirement of love for one’s fellow countryman (Leviticus 19:13-18); it said nothing
about loving Gentile adversaries. But Jesus didn’t seem to be placing any sort of
limitation on His directive. In fact, if He was simply reaffirming the Torah’s
commandment to love one’s fellow Israelite, it was pointless (and even confusing) for
Him to contrast His instruction with His audience’s understanding; they were already
well aware that they were to love one another. No, He was saying something more; He
was calling His hearers to rethink and reorder their attitude toward all enemies.
2. This raises two crucially important questions: First, in what way, and with what right,
was Jesus altering Yahweh’s command to Israel that they deal harshly with their national
enemies, whether by subjugating them or even slaying them? And second, how should
Christians understand His directive and apply it to their use of the imprecatory psalms?
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a. With respect to the first question, Jesus was clearly altering Israel’s obligation
toward enemies as prescribed by the Law of Moses. But this alternation was a
matter of fulfillment, not deviation or abrogation. By His own insistence, He
hadn’t come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them (Matthew
5:17). And this fulfillment wasn’t a matter of doing the Law as such, but of
embodying it and living out its truths; Jesus fulfilled the Law by being the Son,
Servant, Disciple and Witness the Law defined and prescribed to Israel.
The Law had demanded that Israel deal harshly with their enemies, but as those
enemies threatened and opposed God’s purposes in the world. Israel was His
chosen instrument for banishing the curse and bringing creational renewal, so that
opposing Israel was opposing Him and His cosmic designs. Jesus’ directive didn’t
suggest that His Father no longer sought the destruction of His enemies; rather, it
pointed to the astonishing truth that He intended to achieve that end through the
Messiah He had sent into the world. Israel’s God was going to eradicate His
enemies by eradicating all enmity. God was going to take upon Himself, in the
person of His incarnate Son, all human enmity and opposition – within Israel and
the wider Gentile world – and put it to death, thereby reconciling to Himself all
things in creation (ref. 2 Corinthians 5:14-19; Colossians 1:19-20).
Thus Jesus’ directive didn’t deny, degrade or nullify Yahweh’s instruction
regarding enemies; rather it pointed to the fact that He was going to fully execute
it. As God’s True Israel, He would fulfill the commandment to destroy God’s
enemies by crucifying all enmity in Himself.
b. This, then, is the key to understanding the Christian’s relationship to the
imprecatory psalms and to imprecation as a key aspect of true worship. At
bottom, that relationship involves owning Jesus’ imprecation – His condemnation
of all that opposes His Father’s purposes and work in the world. If the
imprecatory psalms give voice to eschatological angst by recording the psalmists’
cry to God to act on His intent to vanquish all that opposes Him and them, Jesus is
the quintessential imprecator: He is the One in whom all of the imprecatory
psalms find their “yes and amen,” for His life, death and resurrection fulfilled
every longing for judgment and renewal that burdened the psalmists’ hearts. And
so, whether or not they were aware of it, all such psalmists uttered a messianic
cry, yearning for and crying out to Yahweh to accomplish all that He had pledged
concerning Israel and the wider world and establish His everlasting kingdom.
Israel’s psalmists longed for that great day, and Christians inhabit it; they live in
the “fullness of the times” in which the Messiah has triumphed over all enemies
and taken His throne at the right hand of power (cf. Matthew 28:18; Ephesians
1:18-23; Colossians 2:15; Hebrews 1:1-3). Jesus has won the victory God
promised and inaugurated the kingdom of His new creation, but all enemies are
not yet eradicated (1 Corinthians 15:20-28). Jesus has yet to consummate His
triumph in the renewal of all things, so that His people continue to worship their
God as imprecators; like the psalmists before them, they live in a state of
eschatological angst marked by fervent faith and assured hope (Romans 8:12-39).
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 1:53:47 GMT -5
E. Psalm 50 – Sonship and Idolatry
As songs of worship grounded in Israel’s sonship, the Psalms speak to all of the issues of sonship, including the various challenges and obstacles the Israelite people encountered in
seeking to live faithfully as Yahweh’s children. Those challenges are reflected in the Psalms of lament and imprecation, but also in Psalms that address Israel’s rebellion, hypocrisy, and propensity toward idolatry. For all their desire and commitment to faithfully fulfill their sonship, the children of Israel discovered and often lamented the fact that they were utterly incapable of doing so. Yahweh had raised up and nurtured sons and daughters as a faithful Father, but His children continually strayed and abused that relationship and its privilege and obligation.
It’s not surprising, then, that numerous psalms center on Israel’s waywardness, and Psalm 50 is one of them. It is one of the twelve psalms ascribed to Asaph, yet it isn’t grouped with the other eleven that begin Book Three of the Psalter (ref. 73-83). Again, Asaph was a composer and seer, and under David’s direction, the Levites appointed him as the chief musician among those charged with overseeing Israel’s worship (ref. 1 Chronicles 15:16-19, 16:4-7, 25:1-6; also 2 Chronicles 5:12, 35:15). Some of his psalms are deeply personal (Psalm 73, 77), while others are communal and speak on behalf of the Hebrew nation (Psalm 74, 78, 79, 80). And consistent with his status as a seer, some of Asaph’s psalms speak on behalf of Yahweh Himself (Psalm 81, 82). Psalm 50 is one such psalm, and in it Asaph gives voice to Yahweh’s indictment of Israel’s idolatry and its bad fruit in their relationship with Him and their brethren.
1. The psalm conveys the image of a courtroom scene, and Asaph began by introducing Yahweh, the judge, much as a court representative announces a judge’s entrance at the
start of proceedings. Asaph introduced Him as the almighty sovereign over all creation, but especially as the covenant God of Israel. Yahweh summons the earth from its rising
to its setting, but does so as the Lord who is enthroned in glory on Mount Zion. And He here summons the earth and heavens together, as comprising the entire created order
(Genesis 1:1), to stand as witnesses to His judgment of His covenant people (vv. 1-6). Asaph portrayed the creation as standing together with its Creator in His indictment of
Israel, thus underscoring that it is faithful to Him in a way that His covenant sons are not. Furthermore, he depicted Yahweh as coming forth from Zion as a consuming fire that
rages like a tempestuous whirlwind (v. 3). But he employed this terrifying imagery to emphasize God’s fearsome power in judgment, not destruction; when He arises to judge, no one and nothing can escape the fire of His gaze and discernment. Here, He calls His covenant people into judgment, designating them His “godly ones” to indicate at the
outset that the issue is their failure to fulfill their calling as His image-children (vv. 5-6).
2. After introducing Yahweh in this way, Asaph began to speak for Him, as if He Himself were addressing the sons of Israel. This address comprises the balance of the psalm (vv.
7-23), and sets out God’s indictment of Israel’s faithfulness. It consists of two primary sections, with the first setting out the essential issue behind Yahweh’s indictment (vv. 7-
15), and the second presenting specific particulars as evidence (vv. 16-23). The two sections correspond to each other also in the fact that each concludes with a similar
directive to repent and reorder their relationship with Him (cf. vv. 14-15, 22-23).
a. After summoning His witnesses (the created order as jury) and the people of Israel (the defendants), Yahweh began to address them, establishing the reason for His indictment and the nature of Israel’s offense. And His words show that the fundamental issue in their offense wasn’t their behavior, but their perspective: It wasn’t so much what they were doing or not doing, but how they were thinking and perceiving their relationship with their God; their culpable actions were simply outward expressions of the perversion in their hearts and minds. Hence Yahweh’s opening remark (v. 7): “I am God, your God. I do not reprove you for your sacrifices, and your burnt offerings are continually before Me.”
This remark illumines the people’s sense of their relationship with God, and so their expected counter-claim against His charges. In effect, Yahweh articulated in advance the very argument that He knew Israel would offer in its own defense: How could He charge them with violating the covenant relationship? They had demonstrated their faithfulness to the covenant and its demands by being scrupulous in presenting the offerings and sacrifices He prescribed. God answered this unspoken objection in a way that is perhaps unexpected, but
that gets to the very heart of His concern (vv. 9-13). The defendants believed that their dutiful observance in offering sacrifices proved their devotion, but the truth
of the matter was something else altogether. Yahweh’s answer shows that Israel’s worship, for all its conscientiousness, was actually idolatry: The covenant children believed they were giving something to their God, and so situated themselves at the center of their worship. Yes, they were presenting their
sacrifices to Yahweh as required, but they were doing so out of their provision. Israel’s worship was to express their unilateral relationship with their God; instead, it followed the bilateral pattern that characterizes all human religion – the idolatry that is human spirituality centered in oneself. God’s reply to Israel’s sacrificial offerings exposed the truth that their worship was really about themselves. Whether or not they were conscious of it, they perceived their offerings as something they were providing to God, not as His
gracious provision to them. They saw themselves as giving Him gifts out of their flocks and fields, when every creature already belongs to Him (vv. 9-11). There is absolutely nothing that He lacks, but even if He did need something, He would never ask them, for the reality is that they had nothing to give Him; everything they have access to is already His (vv. 12-13; cf. Isaiah 66:1-2).
Thus God confronted His covenant children with the shocking truth that their worship, whatever they believed it to be, was no different from the ritual practices of the pagans. The Israelites disdained the Gentiles as ungodly idolaters, but they were guilty of the same perspective and mindset. People in the ancient world viewed their acts of worship as tending to the needs of their divine masters. The gods were greater than men, but they, too, required sustenance and provision.
Thus sacrificial offerings were believed to supply the deity to whom they were presented, and the hope was that this provision would secure the god’s favor.
So God framed His indictment to show Israel that they shared that same perspective in their worship; in some sense they, too, believed that they were providing for some need in Him. In His words, they were giving Him sacrificial flesh to eat and blood to drink (v. 13). But in fact, Yahweh needed nothing and received nothing from them. Every created thing – including them – already belongs to Him as Creator and Lord, so His relationship with all of His creatures is entirely unilateral; He gives and they receive (Psalm 104).
There was nothing the children of Israel could give to Him, but this didn’t mean they had no obligation to Him. They were obligated, in their worship and daily lives, to acknowledge their unilateral relationship with Him by offering to Him their sincere and perpetual gratitude and humble dependence. This is what they owed Him, and this is what He required from them (vv. 14-15; cf. Psalm 51:14- 17; Isaiah 66:1-2; Micah 6:6-8; also Romans 11:33-36).
b. The people of Israel would have expected God to point to practical failures in any indictment He brought against them, but He instead insisted that idolatry was their fundamental offense. Their actions weren’t the issue so much as their perspective and attitude; they were worshipping Him in the way the Gentiles worship their gods, “scratching His back” in the hope that He would reciprocate. In the end, their worship wasn’t about Him, but about them (cf. Isaiah 44:9-17). But this didn’t mean Yahweh found nothing to condemn in Israel’s conduct; indeed, idolatry always leads to ungodly behavior, for it is axiomatic that people begin to resemble what they worship. The Lord set Israel apart to be a godly
people (v. 5) – a people who mirrored Him as His image-children. But instead they joined with the nations in being ungodly, reflecting the idols fashioned in the
minds and hearts of humans who are severed from God’s life and mind. And this inward ungodliness expressed itself in every sort of ungodly conduct.
And so Yahweh advanced His indictment from Israel’s idolatry to the evil practices that flowed from it (vv. 16-21). And the marrow of that evil was the nation’s flagrant hypocrisy and hubris. In the face of their overt wickedness, the Israelite people continued to congratulate themselves that they were God’s holy election, uniquely set apart and bound to Him by covenant. They were above the pagans and their detestable idolatry; they were a royal and priestly nation. But in fact, it was precisely their unique privilege that incurred for them greater guilt than that of the unclean Gentiles they so despised. They were confidently selfassured in their covenant status, but Yahweh insisted that they had no right to even speak of His covenant Torah – not among themselves and certainly not to the Gentile peoples. For all their dutiful obedience, the covenant household was an undisciplined and unfaithful son who hated Yahweh’s words and instruction. He had chosen them and set them apart to be His light to the nations, but instead they stood in the darkness in rebellious solidarity with the rest of mankind. Despite their unique privilege and high calling as sons of the true God, Israel had become an idolatrous house indistinguishable even from Sodom and Gomorrah (vv. 18- 20; cf. Isaiah 1:10-15, 66:1-4; Jeremiah 2:1-13, 16:1-18; Ezekiel 16, 23).
3. The children of Israel were blind to their own arrogance and ungodliness, and they tacitly ascribed the same blindness to their God. They were oblivious to their true condition, and they acted as if Yahweh were equally oblivious. Indeed, His silence in the face of their idolatry and wickedness reinforced their delusion that they were faithful children whose
devotion in sacrifice and offerings honored and pleased Him (v. 21). But this was far from the truth. The Lord had held His peace while His covenant sons continued to dishonor and disobey Him, inflating themselves in their own eyes even while their hearts and hands were defiled. This pattern marked their lives with one another, but also their relationship with their God. He had remained silent for a season, but now He was confronting His people with their offense and the judgment they were bringing down on their own heads (vv. 22-23): Their dutiful observances didn’t cloak the truth that they’d actually forgotten their God. He saw through their apparent piety and recognized that their worship was self-centered and self-concerned. And so they must not conclude that His previous silence indicated His ignorance or indifference. Whether or not they discerned it, He recognized that they had reimagined Him in their own image, and their idolatry would not stand. If they didn’t consider His words and repent, He would arise and “tear them to pieces” in devastation, desolation and exile, just as He’d pledge through Moses centuries earlier (Deuteronomy 28-29).
Israel’s idolatry was its core offense, and all of its evil practices were simply the rotten fruit of that ungodly root. This idolatry desecrated the nation’s relationship with Yahweh and polluted the people and their institutions, and it was from this perspective that He warned them to consider and repent: In terms of their idolatry, this would involve
rethinking and reordering their relationship with Him – offering to Him “sacrifices of thanksgiving” that express humble, dependent and grateful hearts (v. 23a). And forsaking
their idolatry would bear its good fruit in all of the dimensions of their lives as God’s covenant children. It would find them “ordering their way aright” (v. 23b).
Yahweh called His people to return to Him, and He reiterated, as He had done so many times over the centuries, that He would meet their gratitude and dependence with His
protection and deliverance. If His children would but trust Him and submit to His care with thankful hearts, He would arise on their behalf and show Himself to be their Savior.
This was Yahweh’s word to Israel through Asaph, and the psalmist made no mention of how the people received his song. But the scriptural record suggests that it fell on largely unresponsive ears, if not deaf ones. For the trend of Israel’s covenant life was ever-downward; David’s kingdom would soon fracture and be reduced to two small tribes, with both sub-kingdoms (Israel and Judah) moving inexorably toward desolation and exile. Judah would watch Israel’s destruction, and yet not learn from it. Indeed, at the very threshold of Judah’s desolation, Yahweh observed that “from the least even to the greatest, everyone is greedy for gain; from the prophet even to the priest, everyone practices deceit. And they heal the brokenness of the daughter of My people superficially, saying ‘Peace, peace,’ but there is no peace” (Jeremiah 8:10-11). The covenant son seemed to be incurable, but the Father would yet show Himself to be Israel’s Savior. In due time, He would arise and heal Israel by embodying Israel and bearing its brokenness in Himself in the person of His incarnate Son. In that day, Israel’s God and Great Physician would fulfill His own name, Yahweh our righteousness (Jeremiah 23:5-6).
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 1:57:31 GMT -5
Excursus: Idolatry and Thankfulness
Psalm 50 is notable in that it presents thankfulness as God’s answer to idolatry (ref. again vv. 14,
23). And this perspective isn’t unique to this psalm; indeed it is the consistent biblical witness.
Whether explicitly or indirectly, the Scriptures hold out thankfulness (gratitude) as antithetical to
idolatry, as also the antidote for it. Of course, this thankfulness must be understood biblically, for
gratitude as humans naturally understand and express it is actually a manifestation of idolatry.
1. And so the place to begin is with a scriptural understanding of thankfulness. In the
Hebrew scriptures, there is no distinct word or word group for the concept of
thankfulness/thanksgiving. Rather, thankfulness is a connotation of the Hebrew word for
confession, where confession refers to one’s open agreement with truth as God makes it
known, whether that truth pertains to God Himself, His words, or His works. Thus the
Hebrew concept of confession parallels the New Testament concept, for the Greek noun
rendered confession literally translates as speaking the same.
The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament provides this commentary on the
Hebrew word used to express thankfulness:
“The best rendering of the term is confession… this verb was predominantly employed to
express one’s public proclamation or declaration of God’s attributes and his works. This
concept is at the heart of the meaning of praise. Praise is a confession or declaration of
who God is and what he does. This term is most often translated “to thank” in English
versions, but such is not really a proper rendering… the O.T. does not have our
independent concept of thanks. The expression of thanks to God is included in praise; it is
a way of praising.”
This commentary notes that this same Hebrew word is used in the Old Testament to
convey the idea of praise, underscoring that thanksgiving, praise and confession are
inseparable and mutually interpreting concepts in the Hebrew scriptures. Put most
simply, confession is agreement with God and His manifest truth, and this agreement
necessarily expresses itself in praise and thankfulness/thanksgiving. To agree with God is
to know Him and His works as they truly are, and this knowledge cannot help but
provoke praise and gratitude.
This is why the scriptures insist that thankfulness is an essential aspect of worship, so that
there is no authentic worship where thankfulness and thanksgiving are absent. In the case
of the nation of Israel, their worship was centered in a prescribed system of sacrifices and
offerings, and this is why the Hebrew scriptures speak of sacrifices of thanksgiving and
praise as fundamental to the true worship that Yahweh seeks and that honors Him (cf.
Leviticus 7:11-14, 19:23-24, 2 Chronicles 30:22, 31:2; Psalm 26:6-7, 27:6, 54:6, 107:21-
22, 116:17; Jonah 2:8-9; also Hebrews 13:15). It wasn’t that the physical sacrifices and
offerings were irrelevant – indeed, Yahweh prescribed them. But they were made
authentic and honoring when they proceeded out of hearts filled with praise and
gratitude; hearts that acknowledged and celebrated the unilateral relationship between
covenant Father and sons.
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2. Grasping the antithetical and antidotal relationship between idolatry and thankfulness
depends on a scriptural understanding of thankfulness, but also a scriptural understanding
of idolatry. In the modern world, idolatry is often caricatured as a primitive religious
practice in which people worship imagined spiritual entities and powers, whether those
images are given physical form or only exist as concepts. Thus people commonly
associate idolatry with unenlightened, pre-scientific human cultures. And because it is a
religious phenomenon, idolatry doesn’t exist among secular people. How can a person
who doesn’t believe in any sort of deity or divine power be an idolater? One cannot
worship that which he doesn’t acknowledge as even existing.
But a biblical understanding of idolatry shows that it is a universally human phenomenon,
regardless of historical setting, culture, religion, education, etc. Not only are all human
beings idolaters, they are inherently and consummately so; in the words of John Calvin,
the human mind is a perpetual idol factory. From the Bible’s perspective, idolatry
transcends the ritual worship of imagined gods; it speaks to the essential condition of
human existence and the fact that each human being is effectively his own god.
a. The fall left the human creature alienated from the God whose image he bears,
and imprisoned within a broken self that has died to the truth of itself. Human
beings are thus left with the catastrophic circumstance of having to perceive and
process all things – including themselves and their existence – through a distorted
mind. As sentient beings, people live in their own minds, but their minds are
alienated from God, and so alienated from the truth of themselves. Having lost the
true God, man has no choice but to be his own god: to think and judge and act out
from himself as his ultimate reference point.
b. In the end, then, there are only two “gods”: the true God in whose image and
likeness humans were created, and the human person himself. All other “gods”
are simply constructs of a person’s effective self-deification and self-worship.
This is true of material and immaterial idols, including demonic ones. People
embrace and worship spiritual powers because they believe those powers will
serve their own perceived self-interest.
Idolatry is thus the very marrow of human existence under the fall. All people are
idolaters because all people are radically self-centered; every person perceives and
executes life through the lens of himself. The “gods” a person fashions emerge from his
own mind and serve his perceived interests, and this same dynamic applies to people’s
interaction with the true God. They perceive God through their own mind and its notions,
and thus embrace and worship an imagined facsimile; their relationship with the true God
is just as idolatrous as any relationship they might have with a false deity.
This dynamic highlights the truth that human beings cannot, in themselves, arrive at a
true knowledge of God; He must disclose Himself to them. And that is true even of
people’s knowledge of Jesus, the incarnate God. His fellow Israelites observed Him in
person, and yet their knowledge of Him was skewed by their own perspectives and
premises. Jesus Himself asserted that no one knows Him except the Father, and those to
whom the Father reveals Him (cf. Matthew 11:27; John 6:40-45).
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God has fully disclosed and interpreted Himself in the person of His incarnate Son, and
the result is that human beings can only truly know Him by knowing Him in the person
and messianic work and triumph of Jesus. And the Spirit is the key to this knowledge –
the Spirit of God who has become the Spirit of Christ. He conveys the knowledge of God
through transformation, not information: He causes people to know God by forming and
perfecting in them the life and mind of the Messiah who is the fullness of the living God
(cf. John 14:8-20, 15:26-16:15; 2 Corinthians 3:16-18; also Romans 8:9-10).
3. These considerations, then, allow us to understand the antithetical and antidotal
relationship between thankfulness and idolatry. Idolatry is nothing more than natural
human spirituality; it is the way in which humans express their inherent spiritual nature as
divine image-bearers in the context of their alienation. Regardless of the object of their
devotion and worship, all people in their natural condition are consummate idolaters. It
doesn’t matter whether they call their god Yahweh, Allah, Nature, or Nothing; in every
case they are worshiping self-fabricated, self-serving “gods,” and therefore worshiping
themselves (cf. Exodus 32:1-4; Isaiah 44:9-20, 46:1-7, 57:1-7; Jeremiah 2:1-28, 3:6-9,
44:15-18; Hosea 2:1-13; Habakkuk 2:18-19; Revelation 17:1-5,18:1-3).
And because idolatry is the most basic manifestation of estrangement from God, it is also
characterized by the absence of thankfulness as the Scripture defines it. For thankfulness
is confession of the truth: It is agreement with God in one’s perspective, understanding,
and valuation, and then the acknowledgment of that agreement in one’s attitude,
orientation, words and deeds. How, then, can one manifest this sort of thankfulness – this
agreement and confession – respecting a God he doesn’t truly know? It’s not simply that
idolaters are unthankful, it’s that idolatry absolutely precludes thankfulness because it is
antithetical to it.
This shows, then, that thankfulness is the antidote to idolatry in two respects: first, in
regard to a person’s essential relationship with God, and then in his continuance and
growth in that relationship. The first has to do with coming to know God in truth; the
second has to do with growing in that knowledge. In terms of coming to know God
through faith in Christ, thankfulness isn’t the cause or means of that knowledge, but it is
the first and most fundamental manifestation of it. The Spirit is the effective agent in
bringing a person to the knowledge of God, and He does this by imparting God’s own life
to that person through union with the resurrected Messiah (Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 2:1-
6; Colossians 3:1-4). But the evidence and first fruit of that union is thankfulness –
gratitude that confesses this God who is now known in a vital spiritual union. This is the
primary and most important sense in which Christians are thankful people; thankfulness
isn’t so much what they do as what they are as image-children.
So the nurturing of this essential thankfulness is the greatest safeguard against the inroads
of idolatry in the lives of God’s children. Thankfulness is grounded in genuine
knowledge and agreement with the truth, so that the Christian who devotes himself to
being grateful (in the biblical sense) is the one who is committed to faithfully fulfilling
his sonship – to growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus the Messiah unto the goal
of attaining to the measure of the stature of the fullness that belongs to Him.
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