Here’s yet another idealistic “Psalm of Ascent” from David’s or Solomon’s kingly perspective.
The first verse says it all: “Blessed is every one who fears the Lord, / Who walks in His ways.”
Then you’ll be happy as a lark, have a load of kids and live to “see your children’s children.”
This “Psalm of Ascent” has two basic messages, both conveyed in figurative language.
One is that a person gets nothing without YHWH’s favor, not even a good night’s sleep.
The other is that kids — “fruit of the womb” — are “like arrows in the hand of a warrior.”
“Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them,” says Solomon, who had 700 wives.
This is a seriously funny psalm — not funny ha-ha, but funny as in curious and odd.
The poet mentions the Jews’ joy “[w]hen the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion.”
“Bring back our captivity,” the poet adds. “Those who sow in tears / Shall reap in joy.”
Is the psalmist saying that some people can only be happy when they are so, so sad?
This “Song of Ascent” is another short and simple — though idealistic — psalm.
“Do good, O Lord, to those who are good,” prays the Old Hebrew poet to YHWH.
Then he tells YAH to get rid of bad guys who insist on going “their crooked ways.”
Like a number of other psalms, this one — another “Psalm of Ascent” — has so much more literary value than others. As I suspected yesterday, I see my man Asaph’s marks all over it.
Still, this is another psalm focusing on Israel’s enemies, but the writer says YAH “has not given us as prey to their teeth [and] / Our soul has escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers.”
Even if this psalmist were the wise Asaph, he takes too much for granted. But how could the old poet ever know the Nazis would murder six million innocent Jews? And where was YHWH then?
At first glance, this psalm seems as simple as 1-2-3. But even Rev. Spurgeon gets it wrong.
It compares humanity to YHWH as servants to Master and maids to Mistress — as slaves.
Spurgeon, however, sees the roles as children to Father, though those words are not used.
The preacher misses the point — that slaves “are … filled with contempt” for the Master.
But maybe Spurgeon hated his real father. He also says humans are blind, “devoid of sight.”
The psalmist, though, admits that our fates as slaves simply depend on the Master’s mercy.
The first verse of this “Song of Ascent” is familiar from a hymn that my mother often sang: “I was glad when they said to me, / ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord.’” Mom’s life was one of words and music. Toward the end of it, she had no words left to share, but she could still hum the tune.
The actual psalm is about Jerusalem, the city of peace, a place where the 12 disparate tribes of Israel could hike up — or ascend — Mount Zion to worship together. Spurgeon takes this psalm a step further, saying, “[T]hose who break the peace of the [Christian] church deserve to suffer.”
The old preacher mentions “[s]trife, suspicion, party spirit, [and] division,” in particular, within the church as being “deadly things.” But those “ingredients” — another term he uses — sound much like the hatefulness baked into every evangelical Christian church that I ever attended in my life.
The song ends: “For the sake of my brethren and companions, / I will now say, ‘Peace be within you.’ / Because of the house of the Lord our God / I will seek your good.” Don’t misread that last word as I did. It’s “good.” And if we can’t sing all of those words, maybe we can hum a few bars.
This is probably the second most familiar psalm in its entirety, next to the 23rd Psalm. It’s short, another “Song of Ascent” — inspirational lines to sing while going up or, in this case, looking up.
It was read at the funeral of Senator Sam J. Ervin, a grandfatherly figure and country gentleman who found big-city fame in the halls of D.C., but returned to his tiny hometown in the hills of N.C.
“I will lift up my eyes to the hills — / From whence comes my help?” Reading the verse now after hearing it often, I noted its punctuation — an em dash in the middle, a question mark at the end.
People don’t recite the verse that way, as if the speaker has made a statement and then pauses for an instant — in wonder or deep thought or confusion, maybe — before asking their question.
The answer, of course, comes in the second verse: “My help comes from the Lord, / Who made heaven and earth.” I do agree, except that I don’t spell “Lord” as the Old Hebrew psalmist does.
And I’m not so sure that “the hills” alone are God’s Country, as it were. The iSoul is everywhere, in everything; from Hawksbill at sunrise to Bird Island at sunset; and in every breath we do take.
This short psalm is all about dealing with a liar. Although — or maybe because — he was a fibber himself, King David hated serial liars with a passion. He wanted them to drop dead.
The king’s impassioned plea in this very first “Song of Ascents” is one that we all can easily relate to: “Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips / And from a deceitful tongue.” Aaa-men.
That has been my prayer for eight years now. I hate liars — one, in particular. And while ol’ YHWH’s at it, He can please save us from the long red tie, fake tan, and bad combover, too.
This is a good psalm, believe it or not, for Ash Wednesday. It’s the longest psalm of all — 176 verses filling 10 pages in my study bible. It’s basically all of the psalms balled in one long song.
After wading through this plodding composition, I’m ready to give up reading all psalms for Lent. No, just kidding. There are a few good lines — like a song with rotten verses but a great chorus.
When I was a child, my folks signed me up for the Bible Memory Association; but since I spoke as a child, I called it Bible Memorization. That was easier to say and made perfect sense to me.
Now, being a grown man, I’ve put away childish malapropisms, but I still remember, “Your word have I hidden in my heart, / That I might not sin against You” — which is this psalm’s 11th verse.
Then there’s the evergreen comprising the 105th verse: “Your word is a lamp to my feet / And a light to my path.” Those were two verses I heard when I whined about memorizing Bible verses.
Knowing what I do now, I would have picked other lines to learn — verse 83, for instance: “For I have become like a wineskin in smoke….” Imagine a fresh-faced six-year-old reciting that simile!
Another good line is in verse 90: “You established the earth, and it abides.” That sounds just like the verse in Ecclesiastes that inspired the title of the best post-apocalyptic novel ever published.
Yes, the earth abides, and so does The Dude, even though this fellow has become not so much like a smoky wineskin, as, like, a soiled Persian rug that, you know, tied the room together, man.
Still, most of this longest of all psalms is the same old shazbot — David’s self-righteousness and paranoia about enemies lying and scheming against him. He was the King, but he was no Dude.
