I ain’t too big for my britches, and I ain’t got no big goals. I don’t worry myself with big doings or with high and mighty stuff that’s over my head.
I’m cool as a cucumber and quiet as a church mouse. I’m like a babe that don’t need to suck on a milk bottle no more. If I’m a-lying, I’m a-dying.
This psalm sounds more like an actual song than all the others I’ve read so far. The lines pop and are pithy, poetic and repetitive.
“I wait for the Lord,” the psalmist writes, “my soul waits, / And in His word I do hope.” I bet my bottom dollar that line’s in a hymnal.
But what do those lyrics mean? Why is the psalmist waiting for his lord? And what soul-stirring action is this lord expected to take?
In response, allow me to parse verse 3: If bad behavior — however it’s defined — were always punished, no one would be spared.
Then, verse 4: But — as we all know — innocent people are often punished, and “sinners” are often rewarded for their worst “sins.”
So, the way I see it, this poor psalmist is like us all — saints and sinners alike. He’s waiting for the fickle finger of fate to fall on him.
This “Psalm of Ascent” is another one about enemies who “have afflicted me from my youth; / Yet they have not prevailed against me.”
From there on, though, the psalmist uses agricultural images — withered grass, empty-handed reapers and inactive binders of sheaves.
My favorite metaphor is, “The plowers plowed on my back; / They made their furrows long.” But YHWH rescued him and cut those cords.
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.
