What stands out?
l Not angry forever.
l The name of Yahweh.
l The bit where Moses says “show me your glory”
and Yahweh declares his name as “Yahweh Yahweh, slow to anger, abundant in hesed”,
Ex34.
l Talks a lot of different things: Moses, dust
(Genesis), elements of history.
l Godhead as fatherly. V13“As a father shows
compassion to his children”. Naming the Godhead as father is something Jesus
does then invites us to do. The notion of a name is distinct from the notion of
a metaphor. There are lots of different metaphors of God throughout the bible,
not necessarily naming God as father.
Pattern:
l Starts with praise. Ends with “Praise Yahweh,
my life/my soul/my being/my self” (lots of translation options). Starts and
ends with exaltation.
l Middle bit: a history supporting the claim.
l All the “who” statements in V3-5.
l It is possible to praise when feeling pretty
glum.
l All are called to join us in exaltation. At the
end, we are called to join them. Not praising alone. Know who we are praising.
The chief end of humanity is to glorify God.
l Start and end with praise: but how do we convey
to those in the middle of crisis that praise is the stance they ought to adopt?
Tell them of the promises of God.
What mood does the Psalm convey?
l Remembering the goodness of God, throughout
history.
What responses does the Psalm call for?
l Praise and remember the goodness of God.
How does your understanding of Yahweh’s hesed
inform your theology of God?
l Who God is.
l Character of God in V8: The Lord is merciful
and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
How does your understanding of Yahweh’s hesed
inform your relationship to God?
l What God does.
l The relationship with God in V3-5: who forgives
all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the
pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good,
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
l The hesed is V11-12: For as high as the
heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who
fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our
transgressions from us.
How might you use this Psalm in comforting
someone in need (at church, in your home, at work)?
l To remind the vulnerable person of the
character of God and our relationship with God. Especially the hesed:
how great God’s love is.
l V6 God will work justice at the end: The Lord
works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.
l Righteousness and mercy: putting the two
concepts together.
l Can be used in: Chronic or terminal diseases.
Grief: Ongoing context. In the midst of a crisis. Or when something is very
uncertain (disease still being investigated): point out to what is certain to
cling on in the time of uncertainty.
l Emotions can be helpful in tapping us into
something true about the world, eg. Joy in weddings, when birth of a child goes
well, making a great achievement. However, emotions of sadness is also
appropriate in some contexts, eg. Sadness in the lose of a child. However, the
sadness can also get attached to something that’s not the right trigger for the
sadness. The psalm can be used to try to shift this.
l V3 “Heal your diseases”: is this a promise? The
psalmist reminding themselves some of the way Yahweh has shown Yahweh’s
fidelity to the psalmist. It’s not “any disease will be healed by Yahweh”. But
remembering anytime the psalmist had been ill and not died from it: a statement
recognising all past healings and all future healings is a gift from God, not
that all future diseases will be healed by God.
l What do you do for those whose experience of
their father had been anything but “compassion”? If you struggle to see God in
your father, then you will struggle to see the father in your God. To try to
find with them an experience that will resonate, eg. The mother, the aunt,
someone from school, etc. in order to think of the “father” and think of good
things, and attach them to the cosmic God.
Thanksgiving psalms:
l Hymns speak of God’s characteristics.
l Andrew Sloane thinks Ps103 is more of a hymn
than a thanksgiving.
l Thanksgiving: the intimacy of the relationship
it entails. For example, we can praise someone who we’ve never met, who has
never done anything for me. We can’t thank them though because we are not in a
position to thank them for something they’ve done specifically for me. Hymn is
generally 3rd person. We can only thank in the second person.
l A few things need to be true about the world in
order for thanksgiving to work. We can’t thank people who try to harm us. You
can only thank someone who had done something in your favour. Acknowledging
something that’s true of this relationship (the benefit you received), and
acknowledge this is from the good of God, there is another tie between us, we
are tied together in the relationship.
l The different work they do theologically.
l Most of the thanksgivings are individual
thanksgivings.
l The genre is usually introduced with the
intention to thank Yahweh. Close with the repaying of a vow. It’s a thanks
offering and there’s an element of ritual embedded in the thanksgivings.
l Pure thanksgiving psalms are quite uncommon
compared with hymns and lament. Thanksgiving as a phenomenon is not rare in
psalter as laments end with thanksgiving. Often, we tie specific times of
distress/circumstances that generated the prayer to which God responds and for
which we give thanks. To thank and testify= todah/yadah. Giving thanks
is always connected with distress. A pure thanksgiving is a retrospection on
the past and a response now, when one has found oneself in a spacious rather
than a confined space. If Paul is reflecting on the patterns of psalmic piety,
when Paul talks about giving thanks, it’s not about ignoring the times of
distress, but after the times of distress, God has demonstrated goodness, and
on our part, is a response of thanksgiving. Not to ignore the broken world, but
in the context of a broken world, in others brokenness and our own brokenness,
we experience the good of God.
l The dependent relationship we have with God:
however we understand our relationship with God, absolute dependence on God is
fundamental to our existence. We exist as those who depends on God. When we
thank someone, we acknowledge that our good had been dependant on their being
good to us.
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