If you don’t believe me when I say King David was a royal jerk, you need to read this psalm for yourself. His paranoia is in full bloom, as he wishes every bad thing imaginable on his enemies.
“Let his days be few,” David orders YHWH, “And let another take his office. / Let his children be fatherless, / And his wife a widow.” It gets worse. He even wants the man’s children annihilated.
As for himself — the poor, poor, pitiful king — David says, “But You, O God the Lord, / Deal with me for Your name’s sake; / Because Your mercy is good, deliver me.” Lord, have mercy is right.
This short psalm studies war some more. Its subtitle is “A Song. A Psalm of David,” who, in my book, wasn’t just the jawbone of an ass; this dude was the full monty of megalomania.
The last four lines are key: “Give us help from trouble, / For the help of man is useless. / Through God we will do valiantly, / For it is He who shall tread down our enemies.”
But who chose the stone, loaded the sling, and flung that fifth smooth projectile at Goliath? Who dropped that first bomb on Hiroshima? And now who always pulls the damn trigger?
This lengthy psalm opens the fifth and final section of the Book of Psalms. It basically deals with the importance of thanking YHWH for the good things He does. The psalm’s three basic settings are the darkest night, the desolate wilderness and the storm-tossed sea — all fearful places still.
One passage is especially familiar. I chose it years ago to use as an epigraph for a novel about an old shrimp boat captain on the North Carolina coast: “Those who go down to the sea, / Who do business on great waters, / They see the works of the Lord, / And His wonders in the deep.”
This psalm’s theme is that YHWH requires thanks for His part in saving His people from danger. If they’re ungrateful, “He turns rivers into a wilderness, / And the watersprings into dry ground; / A fruitful land into barrenness, / For the wickedness of those who dwell in it.” That isn’t gracious.
So, now millenia later, is our “wickedness” to blame for the destruction of the natural world? And is climate change somehow retribution for our lack of appreciation? You’d think the conservative folks among us would read this psalm and straight away become environmentalists. But, uh, no.
Charles Spurgeon writes that this psalm’s theme is: “Holiness is happiness” — and he’s right in an ass-backwards kind of way. This lengthy psalm of 48 verses once again gives the history of the Israelites, focusing on their failures in holiness, at least according to their good lord, YHWH.
A more accurate thematic statement would be: Unholiness is unhappiness. We see in this psalm how YAH punished the Children of Israel in ancient times, first for worshiping a bull statue made of gold jewelry during the Exodus, then fire-breathing sun god Baal, and then “idols of Canaan.”
The psalmist points out that YHWH even punished the natural world — a body of water, at least — on His chosen people’s behalf: “He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it dried up.” That was just before He drowned the whole Egyptian army in it and made Cecil B. DeMille’s cinematic career.
In another passage, the psalm tells how YAH punished His children “[w]hen they did not destroy the peoples, / Concerning whom the Lord had commanded them.” Genocide, anyone? I guess that’s how Israel justifies genocide now. Bibi Netanyahu needs to be voted out of office for good.
Then there’s the bit about the Golden Calf — “the image of an ox that eats grass.” YAH’s latest chosen ones of various denominations (mainly unmarked twenties) say they’re fine worshiping a con man who’s full of bull and a gold-plated ass. How about another pandemic and insurrection?
“Regard Him not as a puny God,” writes the Rev. Charles Spurgeon in reference to this psalm, “but look to His omnipotence and seek to know the power of His grace.” What does that mean?
Spurgeon’s commentary, which I generally ignore, is full of religious platitudes and assumptions that support only one interpretation of scriptures — a fundamentalist Christian view of the world.
When the psalmist says, “Make known His deeds among the peoples,” he then lists what he and Spurgeon, too, see as good deeds — the famines, the pestilences, the plagues for Israel’s sake.
But I try to see other sides as well — of the poor folks who died in the floods, or from swarms of flies, lice and locusts, or from the fatal misfortune of being the oldest child in an Egyptian family.
As the old saying goes, God (or YHWH or Mother Nature or the iSoul) may be good all the time, but at the very same time God is bad and everything in between, depending on the perspective.
This is one psalm that warms the cockles of my heart because it lays out the beauty, the glory and the mystery of nature, with descriptions of sky and land and sea; of plants and trees and animals; and of humanity’s place in this wonderful world, as well as in a spectacular universe.
Also, one particular passage sounds like a couple of other famous writers: “The young lions roar after their prey, / And seek their food from God. / When the sun rises, they gather together / And lie down in their dens. / Man goes out to his work / And to his labor until the evening.” Familiar?
The first writer who comes to mind is Ernest Hemingway, both in The Sun Also Rises — that title from Ecclesiastes — and in The Old Man and the Sea, when the old fisherman dreams of lions. The former novel is for strong, young folk; the latter, for old failures like Santiago, Ernie and me.
The other writer is, of course, whoever wrote Ecclesiastes and/or the Book of Job. His identity — and the author was certainly male, given the culture(s) in which both works were produced — isn’t actually known, though Solomon usually gets credit for the former book. But I don’t think so.
Now, sure, if Solomon did actually schtup the Queen of Sheba, then he might have had access to the greatest library in the ancient world — at Alexandria — and he just might have been able to sit around writing smart books. But with 700 wives and 300 concubines? Nope, not a chance.
This is another psalm that’s often quoted, with lines like: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, / And forget not all His benefits”; and “As a father pities his children, / So the Lord pities those who fear Him.”
There are several other well-known passages in this psalm, but that’s part of the problem. When we read an isolated verse or hear one shouted from the pulpit, we aren’t getting the whole story.
For example, “[t]he Lord is merciful and gracious, / Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy.” OK. But in other psalms, YHWH is said to be jealous, wrathful and even indignant toward good men.
In this psalm, YHWH is described as a god “Who forgives all your iniquities, / Who heals all your diseases, / Who redeems your life from destruction,” and so forth — until, of course, He doesn’t.
That, as many theologians say, is YAH’s biggest public relations problem — explaining why bad things happen to good people. “As for man, his days are like grass,” and YAH is the lawnmower.
I’m in trouble. Here’s my problem, and I need a solution quickly. Why? Because I’m old; my health sucks, and “I am like a pelican in the wilderness; / I am like an owl of the desert./ I lie awake, / And am like a sparrow alone on the housetop.” That’s this poet’s story in a nutshell.
This isn’t David or Solomon — the psalmist, I mean. This psalm sounds like it was written by either my man Asaph or a son of Korah. This man appreciates nature and knows how to use metaphor and simile. This sad song about living and dying is one of the best psalms I’ve read.
“For I have eaten ashes like bread, / And mingled my drink with weeping, / Because of Your indignation and Your wrath, / For You have lifted me up and cast me away,” the psalmist tells YHWH. “My days are like a shadow that lengthens, / And I wither away like grass.” How sad.
As a student of constructing compositions, I’m confident that whoever penned this psalm also wrote Ecclesiastes — this psalm, in fact, being a 28-verse, condensed version of the greatest book in my Bible. The “preacher” basically says: I am earth, nothing but dirt; You are stardust.
This is the psalm that evangelical supporters of their lying cult leader — also a rapist and crook — need to read. It’s labeled “A Psalm of David,” but could easily be called “A Psalm of Donald.”
In the voice of hypocritical David, the psalmist says, “I will set nothing wicked before my eyes; … A perverse heart shall depart from me; / I will not know wickedness.” The denials sound familiar.
“Whoever secretly [or in Donald’s case, publicly] slanders his neighbor,” says David, “[h]im I will destroy; / The one who has a haughty look and a proud heart, / Him I will not endure.” Oh, really.
Finally, the psalmist claims, “He who works deceit shall not dwell within my house; / He who tells lies shall not continue in my presence.” And David — like Donald — says he himself is “perfect.”
This is a famous psalm — the hit “Make a Joyful Noise” song — though that same phrase was used a couple of psalms ago. “Serve the Lord with gladness; / Come before His presence with singing.” Maybe that’s why Amish singing and quaint Sacred Harp singing are done a cappella.
“We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” There’s that old sheep/shepherd metaphor again — like Isaiah’s “All we like sheep have gone astray,” and the 23rd Psalm’s “The Lord is my shepherd.” All you gotta do is watch the TV news or read the paper, and, yep, we’re sheep.
The psalm closes with a number of religious buzzwords: thanksgiving, praise, bless, mercy and truth. Using buzzwords can save time, but I wonder if people miss the point of them after a time. So are buzzwords like sheep as well? Maybe the wooliest buzzwords should be more like bees.
