Psalm 74: Communal lament

l   Metaphors: V1: sheep of your pasture (Psalm 23, reminds us of shepherd, king, deities. Taps into an existing relationship and how that relationship will work. Sheep of your pasture and not your slaughterhouse). V19: dove (powerlessness, helplessness prey, metaphor for the people of God), wild beasts (the nations). V22: rise up oh God (on your feet, you’re been sitting with your hands in your pockets, anthropomorphic metaphor).

l   Imageries: V1: anger smoke. V4: Foes roared. V5: those who swing axes. V11: garment: fold of cloth, like hands in his pocket. There’s a job to be done and God’s not working on it. V13-14: water of chaos, cosmic battle imagery, splitting open, crushing, defeating. Why this language? Because they have just been crushed. Taps into history as well as the experience they are responding to. V16-17: Creation imageries.

l   Parallelism: V2: Congregation, Mt Zion. Contrasting V3: Everlasting vs ruins. Advancing V2: nation vs purchase vs inheritance vs Zion. V4. V7: lots of burning stuff happening. Pillar of smoke from God’s anger.

l   Repetitions: V2: Remember.

l   Time is a problem here. In what relation to those events is this poem? This is a sharp memory, sharp reality, but a distant event.

l   Progression: v4-7a there’s a dominant image, treating a beautiful wooden building as a firewood. Lots of tree imagery in the temple. Treating these previous wood as wood in the forest which you hack off to create fire.

l   Different uses of words: V1, 10, 11, what are these words doing? They’re questioning. Rhetorical questions in one sense (doesn’t require an answer), but not really because they require protection, an action, not an explanation. Asking a question of God in order to elicit a response from God.

l   2^nd person verb forms: all asking God to do something. 1^st half: describing what the enemies have done. 2^nd person finite: describing something God has done.

l   At the end: Direct, unapologetic, forceful petition. 13-17: perfect verbs. Then 18-23 a series of imperatives (either positive or negative).

l   Ideas:

n   Absence/inaction.

n   Destruction of people and place.

n   Covenant, election, salvation.

n   Victory. Kings conquer enemies in order to establish a safe and stable environment for their people.

n   Creation: God’s power and sovereignty. V12 especially. Demonstration of Yahweh’s sovereign rule. V13-15. V14 leviathan: God’s rule over cosmic order. Starts ambiguous between creation and redemption. Ends with creation. All turns to dust, but creation still stands.

l   Where it starts, where it finishes: Lamenting at what we have lost. It starts with the people and ends with God’s own name/God’s reputation, for a rhetorical purpose. People getting together for the inaction of God. Concern about how the enemies have mocked God.

l   Setting after 587BC, but before the temple’s rebuilt (or else there wouldn’t be the “everlasting ruins”). Could be written in the land after the return from exile. Could be people gathering where they used to gather for worship and seeing the rubbles of what used to be glorious. Immediacy of memory rather than physical presence.

l   The “War Stand” of Ur: Memorial of victory. Demonstrates the powerful redeeming work of God.

l   The “Perpetual ruins” (2^nd temple) are a living experience for the Jews today.

l   For what should we lament as a Christian community? What does the church lament for these days?

l   One way poems can work is in liturgy.

Psalm 73: Wisdom psalm

Categorisation/Genre:

l   Not lament. Differences between V14 vs lament: speech acts, the words of the psalmist are directed to himself and others, not to God. They key thing is lament is speaking directly to God. Here it’s grumbling, speaking “behind God’s back”. Confession: kind of. Ps73 is an example of a wisdom psalm, which are psalms that meditate on a long history of God’s fidelity and teach the generations to trust in God’s faithfulness.^[1] A temple entrance liturgy. As a whole: V28, speaking to God, with a communal component, “Tell of your deeds”= testifying. A testimony = a witness of God’s goodness and to elicit a similar kind of response from the hearers.

Structure:

l   “Surely” ach: V1, 13, 18. A key structural marker.

l   V1-12: Complaint. Prosperity of the wicked the focus of V4-12.

l   V13-17: Irresolvable tension. There’s a turn at the end, “their end”.

l   V18-28: Solution, a complex one.  

l   “Heart”: V1, 7, 13, 21, 26.

Context:

l   Book 3 of Psalter: wrestles with the exile (great crisis of Israel’s faith)

l   Psalm 73: anticipates the conclusion to that crisis.

l   Israel’s worship: hear from the word of God, in particular their history (the saving deeds of God)

l   They key to this psalm is to recognise the nature of true blessing. They key function of this psalm is to reconfigure what It means to be blessed.

l   Psalm 72: speaks of the prosperity of Solomon, which arise out of kingship done in righteousness, wisdom. Solomon was terrible from the start: 1King 1&2, Solomon did judicial assassination of one of his rivals. So it’s deeply ironic that Psalm 72 is a psalm of Solomon, because if the king did what’s righteous, Psalm 73 wouldn’t be happening. This Psalm makes us come to grips with living in a broken world. Psalm 73 depicts a reality that deeply conflicts with the opening statement.

l   The key here is “envy”: this is the shalom of the wicked. Shalom doesn’t exist where there is lack of righteousness. When we take God out of the factor, then the wicked do indeed prosper. The only way you can envy the wicked is when you take God out of the picture. Because with God in the picture, there is a horrible future awaiting the wicked.

Exegesis:

l   V1-3: The psalmist starts off by voicing his confusion and jealousy about “why do the wicked prosper?”^[2] He is confused because “surely, God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart!”, yet he sees “a world that does not seem to reflect God’s values and God’s kingdom.” Our faith becomes stuck if this conflict is not resolved.^[3] The psalmist is representing the voice of those who are oppressed by the faithless.^[4] V4: The wicked having no struggles “until death”, but some split the word up to “to them,” and “health” (wholeness, be complete), meaning they have no problems for their health.^[5],[6] The Hebrew word used for “fat” can be used figurative for flourishing, healthy.^[7] So, it could be “their body is fat” or “their body is healthy”.  

l   V5: Other people suffer, they do not.

l   V7: “Eyes bulge out” is a cartoon-like illustration, and the eyes expresses what is inside the person.^[8]

l   V8: The nature of the trouble they are planning is oppression, or extortion, the heavy financial burdens they can place on their victims.^[9] The reason for their confidence is that they make their plans “from on high” from their powerful position.^[10]

l   V9: “They set their mouths in heaven and their tongues roam over the earth”. A merism (a pair of contrasting words used to express totality or completeness): the first merism is the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1). The wicked are not only “looking down at the faithful to speak against them, but also looking up to heaven to speak against God.”^[11]“The wicked can let their tongues loose in a way that has implications for the whole earth.”^[12]

l   V10: Most translations indicate that his (God’s) people have turned to the wicked ones.^[13] The wicked are doing so well that the people get drawn to them.

l   V11: “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?”: A response to the conduct of the wicked. “If there is a God, then this God has no play in our affairs. We carry on as we wish.” The fact that the faithless are able to get away seem to suggest that God does not take any notice of what goes on and does not bother with affairs of this world.^[14]

l   V13: “All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hand in innocence.” The key here is “in vain”. “I have kept my heart pure, but how is God good to me?” His commitment to God has been pointless. It seems as though righteous life was pointless.^[15] This is like Job: “does Job trust you for nothing?” The psalmist does not get any payoff and sees his faith as futile. But that is unfaithful. Psalmist is saying, “Can’t speak, I try to understand it, but I am stuffed either way. Try to make sense of it and just doesn’t work.”

l   V14: The psalmist is personally affected by the wrongdoing of the faithless.^[16]

l   V15: the psalmist acknowledges that to speak in this matter would be inappropriate because he has a responsibility in leading God’s people, so to be faithless towards God was also to be faithless towards them.^[17]

l   V17: Turning point, where the psalmist went “into the sanctuary of God”. The simple ordinary experience of worshiping God. James KA Smith: “Desiring the Kingdom”: secular liturgies. What we ought to do when we gather as communities of faith is to reconfigure who we are, what we desire, how we see the world and how we conduct ourselves in it. One of the problems of Protestantism is our liturgicism is thin.

l   V18: There is the option of translating this as “you will set them on slippery ground” or “you will set them in falsehood. The prosperity of the wicked is like a bad dream, you toss and turn! The wicked “fall to ruin”: There is double meaning to the Hebrew word used for “ruin”. Ruin probably works better given what follows. Deception can also work for what is in front. The double meanings of the words were probably chosen because they have the double meaning. Part of the meaning will be lost in English no matter which way we translate it. Another option is to include both meanings: “deceptive place of ruin”. This could be speaking eschatologically, or maybe the fact that the wicked don’t know God is the reason they “fall to ruin”.

l   V19: The fall of the wicked will be sudden and complete.^[18] Psalmist realises there’s something wrong with how he sees the world before.

l   V25: It is only God that one needs.^[19]

l   V26: “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” The limitations of “I” is set against the limitlessness of “God”.^[20] Many modern translations use “strength”, but the word means “rock”, referring to a place of refuge or God as a constant place of security.^[21] Andrew Sloane loved this verse. He went to a funeral to the wife of the person who supervised his doctoral degree, and he used this verse, and this was a few months before he died. You can hear from his words that his flesh and heart are failing. That’s where the psalmist lands. This is the climax of the psalm, this is what it’s all about. What is it to be blessed? It’s not that those around us love us and our deeds prosper. To be blessed is to have God in the end: true prosperity theology, the definition of prosperity.

l   V28: The psalm ends with “the nearness of God is my good. I have set Lord Yahweh as my refuge”. This is the first time Yahweh is mentioned in this psalm. God’s presence with him is the ultimate good.

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[1] Jacobson, ““The faithfulness of the Lord Endures Forever”,” 116.

[2] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 584.

[3] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 593.

[4] John Goldingay, Psalms Volume 2: Psalms 42-89 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 400.

[5] Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms: Volume 2, 548.

[6] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 586.

[7] Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms: Volume 2, 548.

[8] Goldingay, Psalms Volume 2: Psalms 42-89, 405.

[9] Goldingay, Psalms Volume 2: Psalms 42-89, 405.

[10] Goldingay, Psalms Volume 2: Psalms 42-89, 405.

[11] Goldingay, Psalms Volume 2: Psalms 42-89, 405.

[12] Goldingay, Psalms Volume 2: Psalms 42-89, 406.

[13] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 586.

[14] Goldingay, Psalms Volume 2: Psalms 42-89, 407.

[15] Goldingay, Psalms Volume 2: Psalms 42-89, 408.

[16] Goldingay, Psalms Volume 2: Psalms 42-89, 408.

[17] Dan Wu, “The Psalms and perplexity: mediating with the psalmist on the puzzle of existence,” in Stirred by a Noble Theme: The book of Psalms in the life of the church, ed. Andrew G. Shead, (Nottingham: Apollos, 2013), 244.

[18] Goldingay, Psalms Volume 2: Psalms 42-89, 410.

[19] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 592.

[20] Goldingay, Psalms Volume 2: Psalms 42-89, 415.

[21] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 588.

Psalm 51: Penitential psalm

Penitential psalms “base pleas for forgiveness on the Lord’s faithfulness.” The poems reflect “the psalmist’s recognition that he or she has not acted with faithfulness toward God or neighbour and thus base their pleas solely on the character of the Lord.” (51:1).

Structure:

l   Words are a communicative phenomenon. Requests: When I ask you to do something, and you do it, the world changes.

l   V1-2: opening requests for forgiveness

l   V3-6: confession: there has to be a few motivations for God to forgive. We can’t ask God to forgive if we haven’t done wrong. The person who you’re asking for forgiveness for must be both willing and capable of forgiving.

l   V7: Shift in metaphor

l   V7-12: requests. Instruct. Sacrifice of penitence. Pick up on verbal clues, eg. Crushed heart etc.

l   V18-19: Jerusalem + cult

Themes:

l   Using similar words in Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

l   Restoration of the spirit. Restoration of the national spirit.

l   The need for God’s forgiveness and transforming grace.

l   Sometimes we see paintings of Bathsheba as an “exhibitionist”, which is a distortion. It’s more David as voyager.

Exegesis:

A straightforward confession of transgression against God and humanity, with a plea for restoration and proper action in the future.^[1]

V1-2: The psalm opens with a single word which is translated into four words in English: “have mercy on me”: David opens by asking for God’s mercy. It’s a call for God’s grace.

3 pleas for mercy, 3 images used: blot, wash, cleanse (as in the cult)

V3: clear statement of the consciousness of sin, the psalmist couldn’t get this out of his mind.

V4: Sin has a divinely orientated direction to it/ a God dimension. Priority of God in all relationships in life. This is poetry: you don’t try and tie it down, you allow it to do its work. This language confronts us with an acute awareness of where we are when we stand before God as sinners. God’s verdict is right. Psalmist is rightly the victim of divine judgment.

V5: “I have been a sinner from the time my mother conceived me.” If the essence of sin is rebellion, its origin is in our fallen nature.^[2] Concupiscence: a badly ordered overweening desire, every time a human being have sex, concupiscence is there. Augustine thinks sin is a sexually transmitted disease. This verse is talking about universal sin, not original sin. The psalmist could not find any point in his history where he had not offended against God.

V6: strangely translated in NIV. It’s literally “surely truth is what you desire in the inward parts. You make known to me in secret places your wisdom.” It’s not talking about his mother’s inward place where he was conceived, but his own inwardness.

Confession leads to subsequent petitions. It’s not just forgiveness.

V7: Hyssop is used in cultic contexts: dip hyssop in blood and splash things with it. Exodus 12:2, Leviticus 14 (cleansing of lepers), Lev 19 (corpses). Washing, whiter than snow etc.

V8: a request that current circumstances be reversed.

V9: “hide your face”: normal context is in

V10: heart and spirit used in parallel.

V11: advancing parallelism: Do not cast away your presence… do not take your Holy Spirit from me. This is one of two references about presence of God and Holy Spirit in OT (the other one is Isaiah 33:10-11).

V12: The gift of a willing spirit, a life orientated to God. Transformation is the landing point in this psalm. Unless there is transformation, or else forgiveness is pointless (like a dog goes back to his vomit). We see that David asks for God’s mercy so that he can be restored to the joy of God’s salvation.^[3]

V13: Once the psalmist’s sin is forgiven and his life is transformed, it will teach others and join in the same journey.

It’s not an absolute statement. It’s about what really counts as penitence.

With God’s hesed restored in him^[4], David changes his attitude towards other people and God. He accepts his responsibility to his fellow humans and will teach them God’s way. He offers his “broken and contrite heart” to God.^[5]

V16-17: No sacrifice can atone for it.

V18-19: The community recognising that sin is always before them, and in their national history. Any present or future they have is dependent on the transforming forgiveness of Yahweh.

Theology:

l   Deep personal awareness of universal sinfulness. Self-assessment rather than assessment we make of others.

l   For God to remember sin no more means sin is no longer in human existence. That can only take us in the final transformation of all things. It’s eschatological. A new future where the current order of things is no more.

l   The promises stir up our longings for transformation. Future in Christ.

l   A good psalm to use for preaching.

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[1] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 454.

[2] John Stott, Favourite Psalms: Growing Closer to God (London: Monarch Books, 2003), 55.

[3] Stott, Favourite Psalms, 56.

[4] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 458.

[5] Stott, Favourite Psalms, 57.

Psalm 46: Psalms of Zion

Structure (based on location of the Selah):

l   V1-3: creation and earth

l   V4-7: Zion and nations

l   V8-11: nations and earth, war and rule

Genre:

l   Psalm of confidence (the mood).

l   Where is that confidence physically located? In Jerusalem.

l   Psalm of confidence in the God of Zion.

Context:

l   Era of Hezekiah? If there was a specification, all the specifications have been removed.

Literary features:

l   If the earth gives way, the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. A picture of uncreation.

l   The waters of chaos are connected specifically with historical salvation. There we see Yahweh’s victory in the sea.

l   The word “earth” is found throughout the psalm. The “earth” stitches the whole psalm together.

l   “Help”. V1

l   “Roar”, “stagger”: first two sections. V3, V6 same word.

l   “Nations”. V9, 10, 11.

Exegesis:

V1: “Refuge”: run to hide.

“Strength”: someone you have with you.

“Helper, found in trouble, a lot”: In times of trouble Yahweh is known to help a lot.

A series of noun statements puts emphasis on factual statements about God rather than the human attitude of trust.^[1]

V2: uncreation.

V4: narrative shifts. Second snapshot, we’re in the realm of: the city of God. The city is peaceful but nations rage. A city in the midst of the chaos of history. Gihon Spring (next to the city of David) doesn’t count as a river. This is not a description of geography. So why does this open with a river if there’s no river in Jerusalem? “River” reminds us of the Garden of Eden: fruitfulness, life, sanctuary, holy place where God is. Peace-making presence of God.

All geographical locations in Hebrew are feminine. Cities are feminine.

V5: “She will not fall”. The mountains fell, but Jerusalem doesn’t fall, and the nations do fall. The stability of Zion is in the midst of chaos.

V6: We are here in the context of violence. The earth melts.

V7: Yahweh of hosts: condensed covenant language. Yahweh is a covenant name given to Israel, for them to invoke their relationship with Yahweh. Yahweh is with us! God of Jacob: ancestral traditions. Jerusalem is the religious, political and military centre of Israel.

V8: seems like an abrupt shift. But when we recognise the scenery of the nations in chaos, then it’s a clear shift. Yahweh has brought desolation on the earth. The previous forces of politics and nature are subdued. The marks of a devastating military defeat.

V9: Yahweh makes wars cease by winning the wars. Yahweh imposing Yahweh’s orders on a rebellious world.

V10: A war context: people standing in rebellion against Yahweh, and Yahweh addresses the rebellious nations saying, “be still/stop, or you’re stuffed”. The only appropriate response is to worship. “Be still”: often misused as a call to calm contemplation. It is not contemplative spirituality. It’s a call to submission, action.

Theology:

l   Bringing together the presence of God and blessing. The concrete form which the blessing takes. A stable reign of good kings who does God’s will in Israel and in the world.

l   This affirmation in the presence of God became presumptuous: “God is with us, so we can do what we like.” Examples: Jeremiah 7.

l   How does this psalm work in a world where Jerusalem had fallen and the Temple is no more? This is not about Jerusalem, but it’s about God. It’s only because God in the midst of the city that it will not fall. If God is not in the midst of the city, then it’s like any other city.

l   It’s used eschatologically. As Christians, we need to reconfigure the presence of God radically. Jesus said he will “destroy this temple and I will resurrect it in three days”: This is talking about Jesus’ body. It’s also used now: anytime the world has fallen apart and history gone nuts, we will not fear, for God is our refuge and strength.

l   Andrew Sloane was in US in 1999 and suddenly received news his father suddenly had a stroke in Sydney and they didn’t know if his father will survive the day when he took the plane to LA, to Sydney, to RPA. This psalm gave him peace.

Psalms of Zion:

l   Jerusalem, by William Blake: theology of Zion misused.

l   Zion psalms are important because of what they do. God’s protection of Zion. The greatness of Yahweh in and for Zion.

l   Ps76: Yahweh’s victory being established in protecting Zion.

l   Ps125: Those who trust in Yahweh are like Mt Zion, which cannot be shaken.

l   “Black mills” are often used by Blake with reference to the established church in England.

l   Misuse of our own agenda as God’s agenda: “My project” is Yahweh’s project, therefore it cannot be critiqued.

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[1] John Goldingay, Psalms Volume 2: Psalms 42-89 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 67.