PSALM 73
The third book of psalms gets off to a promising start, with a
different sort of psalm. This psalmist
is writing about his personal experiences with God – most notably his struggle
with doubt and how he overcame it.
It’s the eternal question: if God is good and powerful, then
how come so many rotten people have power, place, and privilege? This leads the
psalmists into doubts and bitterness.
Finally he begins to wonder if he should speak and behave as the bad
people do. After all, they seem to bear
their burdens lightly while he’s weighed down by them.
However, instead of religiously breaking bad, the psalmist
rallies and returns to the Lord. The
problem is that his rationale isn’t very convincing. He decides that God will give the bad people
what they deserve. He’ll strike them
down and it’ll be swift and it’ll be awesome.
It’s nice that he believes that. It’s even nicer if he saw examples of this
happening, where the bad people he knew received a swift comeuppance. But I don’t buy it. This doesn’t always happen, regardless of
what the psalmist might allege. Life isn’t
one big episode of My Name Is Earl.
PSALM 74
This is a psalm of mourning.
In fact, it’s called “Prayer at the Destruction of the Temple” so its
after the fall of Judea. The psalm
certainly lives up to its title. The
psalmist is horrified, beginning, “Why, God, have you cast us off forever?” He is feeling it in a bad way for sure.
He spends much of the psalm recounting the glories of the
Lord – his successes, his victories, all that he had done – and it’s all in the
past tense. Now, the people of Israel
are in ruins.
The psalmist doesn’t come to a cheap, happy face solution (a
la Psalm 73). Instead, he just urges God
to come back and remember his people.
Please look to your covenant again.
It’s a nice psalm. It
hits its mark effectively.
PSALM 75
It’s another psalm about God. It thanks God and calls on him to do
wonderful things. Oh, and it also denounces
the bad people. Yeah, it’s nothing we
haven’t heard before.
Well, check that.
There is one new thing. It says
of the wicked, “Do not raise your horns!”
Wait: horns? Huh? The footnote says that horns were symbols of
strength, and ….that makes sense. These
were people that raised animals, and rams butting heads are animals showing
their strength. So though that reference
doesn’t hold up well over the centuries, it actually works pretty well.
PSALM 76
OK, time to begin the second half of psalms! It’s a fairly short psalm praising God. The main subject of praise is power, as it
calls him, “Terrible and awesome are you, stronger than the ancient mountains.”
Interesting word choices – “terrible and awesome.” Either we’re losing something in the
translation or our images of what a God should be is very different from that
of the ancient Hebrew. Or both.
You know who was terrible and awesome? Ivan the Terrible of Russia. In fact, his nickname – which we translate as
terrible – in Russian can mean terrible or awesome. Interesting combination – and it’s the same
combination this psalm uses to discuss God.
In other words, the Bible is accidentally drawing a parallel between God
and Ivan the Terrible.
I get a kick out of that.
PSALM 77
This is an interesting psalm. It’s another one about God (of course), but
this psalmist has his own take on the almighty.
He says, “When I think of God, I groan.”
Oh, that’s different from the typical platitudes to his awesomeness.
Oh, this guy also thinks God is literally awesome, don’t get
me wrong. But he’s living in the time of
the Babylonian Captivity. And if God is
so powerful and awesome and amazing and above it all—then why has he let his
people be ruined? It can only mean that
he’s abandoned them. Hence the groaning.
It’s a psalm to God, or rather a psalm to the absence of
God. You get all the heartache that many
other psalms have, but this time the one person you can normally reach out to
in a psalm is the one person he feels he can’t reach out to: God.
Interesting choice to put this psalm in the Bible. It’s part of the religious experience,
though. It’s not even doubt in this case
– he still believes – but a sense of abandonment; a sense that God his hid his
face. Hence the decision to put this
into the Bible – to better encapsulate the full religious experience.
I like this psalm.
PSALM 78
Weighing in at 72 verses, this is one of the longest psalms
in the entire Bible. It also has a
different feel to it. Most psalms are
personal and emotional. This one is more
philosophical and detached.
It looks over the history of the Hebrew and God, noting that
God has given his laws and commandments, and the Hebrew have often been a
complaining, unfaithful bunch. Given
that I’m reading psalms in tandem with the Torah, this psalm gives me a big
sense of déjà vu, as it refers to all the things I just finished reading. You get complaining, the calf, the 40 years
wandering – all that. And then they
repent and follow God.
But instead of living happily ever after, the Hebrew
backslide eventually after getting their kingdom. And God, infuriated the first time, is even
more upset now. The first time he wanted
to wipe out the Hebrew, but Moses talked him out of it. Now?
He’ll let them be destroyed.
Most of this psalm read like something written during the
Babylonian Captivity, but it apparently ends with the destruction of the
northern divided kingdom of Israel. It
ends by talking about the wonders of the House of David. (Well, it just mentions David, but stuff in
this psalm clearly is beyond his lifetime).
So even though this psalm reads a bit like an answer psalm
to #77 – here’s why God abandoned us – it really isn’t. It’s talking about a different era, but
despite that it still gives a philosophical answer to the personal pain of the
psalmist in #77.
It’s an interesting psalm, a bit dry – but it does make a
nice change of pace from the others. And
this far in, being a change of pace is most of the battle.
PSALM 79
Time for another psalm from the Babylonian Captivity
years. It’s a call for God about how
horrible the Hebrew have it now. Like a
previous psalm, it asks, “How long, LORD?
Will you be angry forever?” It’s
not a bad psalm, but I’ve read this before.
It asks to be pardoned and apologizes for sins, and all that stuff.
PSALM 80
It’s another psalm from Babylon. I’ve seen to run into a
vein of them. OK, I get that they are
arranged this way. That makes
sense. But it would make for easier
reading if they were divided up a bit more randomly. As is, you read a lot of the same thing and
get sick of it. Then a new patch comes
along and that’s a lot of fun for a little bit, but when you get a bunch of the
same thing, it wears rather quickly.
Well, this is another one about the loss of the Promised
Land. The hook is that it makes an
analogy about being God’s vineyard. It’s
well made, I guess.
It’s another psalm ending with a prayer to have their old
stature restored. Just reading all the
psalms that say this, you get a definite idea of how huge it was for them to
have Persia take over and let them go home.
If it had taken longer for Babylon to fall, maybe their faith would lose
its fervor. If Persia takes a different
tactic, maybe the Hebrew religion dies out.
In fact, it’s amazing they kept the religion going after the
loss of the Promised Land. After all,
they were promised this land, and they lost it.
So much for that God. But instead
the loss of land is reinterpreted as a result of their lack of faith. So they apologize profusely – and they get it
back! It works out!
These psalms might be wearing on me, but they show the
spirit that allowed the Hebrew religion to survive its darkest moments.
PSALM 81
This one is called “An Admonition to Fidelity.” Yeah, it’s about being faithful to God. That’s a reasonable theme for a psalm. It’s fairly typical. The most interesting feature is that around
verse 7 God starts talking in first person.
In fact, the rest of the psalm is form the point of view of God, noting
how he’s let bad things happen to the Hebrew when they’ve turned from him, but
looked after them when they don’t. Most
of this psalm is thus the psalmist recording what he heard God tell him.
Also, at one point god says, “There shall be no foreign god
among you.” Foreign god, not false
god. This is another of those subtle
signs that the ancient Hebrew really weren’t always that monotheistic. And this one is especially notable because
the words are supposed to be coming from God himself.
PSALM 82
It’s a short psalm, just about eight verses. Most of this calls on God to uphold the
lowly, the poor, the fatherless, and those unable to stand up for
themselves. This is probably a psalm by
someone born poor and lowly, for whom God is the one chance to get a place for
himself against the high and mighty.
But it’s another psalm that signals other gods exist. Actually, it says so about as directly as
anything in the Bible. The title is “The
Downfall of Unjust Gods” – fictional creatures can’t be unjust, because they
don’t exist. More than that, at one
point the psalmist writes: “The gods neither know nor understand, wandering
about in darkness, and all the world’s foundations shake, I declare: `Gods
though you be.’” Yup, Gods though you
be.
PSALM 83
This is a psalm asking for help against Israel’s
enemies. It’s a very parochial
psalm. It’s less about grand themes
appealing to all humanity and more about this particular god helping this
particular people. It makes God look
like just another near East deity.
There is one nice phrase: “My God make them like tumbleweed,
into chaff flying before the wind.” OK,
that’s nice but it’s a minor psalm.
PSALM 84
This is a different psalm.
It’s a psalm from the perspective of a pilgrim coming to Jerusalem during
the days when Jerusalem was still the capital and the First Temple still
stood. The short version is the psalmist
is thrilled to be there.
That makes sense if you think about it. In the modern world, it’s easy to take travel
for granted, even over vast differences.
But back then, not only was travel more difficult, but if you weren’t
there, you’d have no idea what the place looked like. There was no internet or photography or
anything. So the pilgrim might be coming
from 50 miles a way but it could still feel like he’s coming from the other
side of the moon.
PSALM 85
This is another short psalm from the Babylonian
Captivity. It’s the same as many: hey
God, you used to forgive us for our misdeeds?
Will you ever do that again? How long will you be angry? C’mon, Lord – through us a bone here!
That conquest of Babylon by Persia really saved things for
the Hebrew religion. Without that, it
likes evaporates. You can only say these
things for so long before deciding that God really has abandoned you for all
time.
PSALM 86
For the first time in a while, it’s a psalm attributed to
David. And it feels like one of those
older psalms, too. It’s a psalm praising
God by a guy without much self-doubt. He
says he is devoted to God and thanks God’s mercy from rescuing me. There is talk of enemies who have gone after
the author, but how God has pulled him through.
This is a psalm by a guy who has survived the bad times and it looking
back at it, thanking God for his successes.
One interesting line: “None among the gods can equal you, O
Lord.” Yeah, that line implies that
polytheism is real. Later on, to be
fair, he says, “For you are great and do wondrous deeds, and you along are
God.” So it’s blurry on the existence of
other gods.
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