“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.