Oh, please, don’t kill me! I’m up to my neck in hot water! I’m sinking in quicksand! I’m in over my head! There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! It wasn’t my fault! I SWEAR TO GOD!
Good lord, now I’m wondering if David was a paranoid schizophrenic, the way he keeps whining about having so many enemies. And as a paterfamilias, I bet he was chock-full of inner demons.
This is yet another psalm in which David wants YHWH to deliver him from what he fears, maybe to justify his own bad deeds. The devil couldn’t make him do it if he was on a mission from YAH.
At first I thought this longer psalm might be different. I noticed a number of nature images, like fire and rain, silver and gold, sheep and doves. This psalmist also gives ol’ YHWH a nickname that I hadn’t seen before, calling the universal soul YAH (or JAH, in the KJV). Acronyms indeed.
But, no, this psalm — like so many others — explains why the State of Israel is and always has been about war, even mentioning one of the hotspots we hear about now in the news — no, not Gaza, but the Golan Heights, which this psalm calls the “mountain of Bashan,” where YAH lives.
Unlike Yeshua’s loving “Father” in the Gospels, YAH says, “I will bring [your enemies] back from Bashan, / I will bring them back from the depths of the sea, / That your foot may crush them in blood, / And the tongues of your dogs may have their portion from your enemies.” That’s harsh.
Well, which is it? Fire or rain, silver or gold, sheep or doves? Loving father or angry god? Old or new? Or can YAH be everything to everyone at the very same time? I guess that’s possible. As YAH told Job just one book back, “I can do what I please, pal, and I don’t ever have to say why.”
This psalm is both invocation and doxology, its lines nothing new. As a boy, I might rise from my pew at the end of a service and hear my father say these familiar words: “God be merciful to us and bless us, / And cause His face to shine upon us.” It was one of three benedictions he used.
Pop never used this psalm at the start of “preaching” or as part of the liturgy, just as a worshipful way of saying so long every third Sunday. I can’t recall a single invocation he used, and his only Doxology was the one in the hymnal. But his goodbyes — to his last breath — were memorable.
Get up, go out and shout, people! Holler, whoop and yell about whatever it is you love so well. Call it by name, sing out without shame, then climb the tallest tower to scream from its steeple.
While you’re up there, look around at all there is to see — the mountains, hills and valleys; the forests, lakes and leas. Ain’t it great! Ain’t it grand — all this rolling, verdant land! And the trees!
The question now is, what do we sacrifice to keep things so? Do we change our ways to keep a good balance till the end of our days? Or do we just kneel and pray, and watch it all fade away?
After a standard Old Hebrew greeting and salutation in verses 1-4, this psalmist points his pen in verse 5 at “You who are the confidence of all the ends of the earth, / And of the far-off seas.”
From that point on — in verses 6-13 — that divine “You” could just as well be called “Nature” or “Gaia” or “Gitche Manitou.” Then those last eight verses would make perfect sense in any circle.
Water in its various forms is the psalm’s dominant image — as ocean waves, mountain streams, majestic rivers, but mainly as rains that come down to make “the little hills rejoice on every side.”
Thanks to these life-giving showers, “The pastures are clothed with flocks; / The valleys also are covered with grain; / They shout for joy, they also sing.” I would bet they also danced in that rain.
The subject matter of this psalm is like so many others — and David’s paranoia is wearing me down — but I can tell that some other, more talented scribe wrote this one.
Unlike other psalmists, this guy uses similes and metaphors, saying David’s enemies “sharpen their tongue like a sword” and that the arrows they shoot “are bitter words.”
Still, having spent the better part of this day working on a toilet with more work yet to do, I have decided that fixing the crapper is more important than parsing an old poem.
After all, Jesus said holiness can wait when there’s work to be done — to pull an ox or ass out of a pit, he said. Without a fixed toilet, that’s exactly where my ass would be.
In this psalm, young David is wandering in the wilderness, still on the run from King Saul’s men. With his life in the balance, David yearns for YHWH’s protection like a cool drink of water in the desert. “My soul thirsts for You,” says the warrior-poet and future king. “My flesh longs for You.”
Good God Almighty, what a pickup line! And have you seen his sculpture in Florence? Jeez, I wonder if David used that come-on later to get Bathsheba into bed (or maybe “Hey, baby, how you doin’?” is all any king needs to say). Anyway, much of the imagery in this psalm is like that.
David is “satisfied as with marrow and fatness” (he likes a little meat on their lovely bones). He praises them “with joyful lips” (any mention of lip-smacking joy is always hot). And he thinks of them “on my bed … in the night watches” (the they/them/theirs can be either singular or plural).
But wouldn’t you know it, right when young Dave’s nocturnal meditations start getting good, he remembers the king’s men on his tail, and he goes off half-cocked, saying he wishes they’d all be ripped to pieces by jackals. He ends with something like, “Liars, liars, pants on fire.” Amen.
Yes, there are two sides to every story, but as I read these psalms I am surprised that so many deal with a corrupt, lying leader — you know, someone like a Trump or a Netanyahu nowadays.
So why don’t true believers in “God’s word” now oppose lying autocrats and thieves of freedom? “They delight in lies,” this psalmist says. “They bless with their mouth, / But they curse inwardly.”
This is an oft-quoted psalm. “He (YHWH) only is my rock and my salvation; / He is my defense; / I shall not be moved,” the poet says twice. That last line even appears in a famous protest song.
But if we “wait silently for God alone” to save us — that is, if nobody fights back or speaks out — then who will ever be moved enough to protect our freedoms before the prison door slams shut?
Divided, our world shakes as things fall apart. Cold, hard facts confuse us. Good or bad, rich or poor, right or wrong. On top today, on the bottom tomorrow. One side is up, the other side down. The key questions are: Who’s the judge? Will justice prevail? And what the hell’s taking so long?
