Psalms 87 to 98

The last installment of Psalms took us into the second half.  Now for the next psalm cluster:

PSALM 87

This is a short psalm – just seven verses.  And I got probably less out of it than any psalm in the Bible so far.  Actually, that’s a rather impressive achievement, considering how quickly I’m blowing through many of these. 

It’s about Zion.  Apparently, it’s a nice place.

PSALM 88

This psalm is the opposite of Psalm 86.  Whereas that is a psalm of confident devotion by one who has survived the bad times, this is a psalm of utter despair by someone feeling desolate. 

Everything is wrong for this guy.  The Lord is his salvation, but he feels that God has abandoned him.  Only God can help him, but God has hidden his face from the psalmist.  He wails, “Why do you reject my soul, Lord?”  Ouch. He feels numb from God’s wrath.  He still turns to God for help, but since God isn’t responding, the psalm concludes with the line, “My only friend is darkness.”  That’s as dark and depressing a final line in any psalm.  It’s as dark and depressing as any line in the psalms.

Also, here’s an interesting quirk – he feels everyone is turning away from him because of God.  “Because of you my acquaintances shun me.”  This is intriguing.  Sure there is a tradition in the psalms of everyone abandoning the psalmist because of his religion, but usually they’re portrayed as evil people of bad guys or something one-dimensional.  Here it’s different – it’s people he knows, who presumably are also Hebrew.

So why do they abandon the writer?  Maybe they sense that God has also abandoned him.  Perhaps, but that doesn’t make them look good, and would also be a reason to leave this poem out of psalms altogether.

I have another idea.  It could be a psalm by the prophet Jeremiah.  He is known to be a writer.  Richard Elliot Friedman argues that Jeremiah is the likely writer of theDueteronomic history (Deuteronomy, plus Joshua, Judges, the two Samuels, and the two Kings) and this psalm steals the line about God hiding his face from that.

Also, Jeremiah was a profoundly lonely prophet.  He preached doom and darkness – Jeremiads, we call such speeches after him – and no one wants to hear that.  This could be Jeremiah wondering about how he’s alienated people by being a prophet and now he’s lost God’s ear.  Ouch.  Also, Jeremiah lived through the conquest of Judea and was among those who fled to Egypt.  Maybe this was written then.

It could be something totally different, but I like to think that this is a psalm by Jeremiah.

PSALM 89

This is a nice long psalm that closes out the third book of psalms.  It is long – 53 verses – and it is nice.  It’s a lamentation over the loss of the independent kingdom.  It’s an interesting combination of mournful/personal and philosophical/historical.

OK, God – you made a covenant with David to let his family rule forever and ever.  That’s the first part of the psalm.  And really, who can compare with the Lord?  The second part of the psalm.  Actually, it occasionally shows a belief in multiple gods: “Who in the skies ranks with the Lord?  Who is like the Lord among the sons of the gods?  A God dreaded in the council of the holy ones, greater and more awesome than all those around him!”  If you read that, while it both praises God and his power, it indicates that there are more gods, just not as impressive ones.

So we’ve gotten that there’s been a vow to David and that it was the God of gods who made the vow.  So now we’ll take it back to David.  He’s the one God chose, and his family shall rule forever.  So now comes the twist – what happened?  We no longer have a kingdom!  How can this happen?

It’s not that God violated the covenant with David, but the Israelites violated their covenant with God.  Thus the kingdom fell.  So this psalm thus explains how Israel could fall if God had said David’s family could rule forever.  And it ends on a personal note, with pleading for how long will God hide from his people?  Will he ever show them his former mercy? 

Well, the actual last lines praise God, but the main emotional thrust is one of mourning – but it has enough sense to curry favor with the big man at the end.

PSALM 90

This kicks off the fourth book of psalms, and it’s the shortest book, covering just psalms 90 to 106.

It’s a decent psalm, with the main focus being the immensity of God.  His anger is consuming, his power is so massive, no one can comprehend him.  It’s another psalm apparently written during the Babylonian Captivity as it ends with a plea for God to relent.  I guess that is one reason it notes how God is beyond anyone’s comprehension.  Because if he wasn’t, then you have to explain the lost of Jerusalem, but since he is beyond, just because you can’t understand him doesn’t mean he ain’t, y’know, God. 

This psalm is introduced by saying it’s, “A prayer of Moses, the man of God” but it’s apparently not the same Moses as Exodus. 

PSALM 91

It’s a psalm praising God.  Yeah, another one like that.  Most of it is pretty standard stuff but I think it oversells its case.  It gives the standard testament to how God will rescue you and God will shelter you if you believe.  Then it flatly declares, “No evil shall befall you, no affliction come near your tent.”  C’mon.  Believe that believe in God still suffer downfalls. Religion is supposed to help you pull through those periods, not avoid having them altogether.

The last stanza is different, though.  It’s from the point of view of God.  The psalm doesn’t telegraph in advance that it’s changing point of view from the psalmist to the Lord, but that’s what it does.  You just have to figure out while reading it that all the “I”s here only makes sense if God is saying them.

PSALM 92

This one is called “A Hymn of Thanksgiving for God’s Fidelity.”  That’s a nice pleasant title, but it really isn’t a very pleasant psalm.  It falls into the standard trap of psalms – it becomes more concerned with punishing enemies than anything else.  We’re told sinners are destined for eternal destruction and that all your enemies shall perish, and be scattered.  In fact, the psalmist really seems to get off on this, as he writes, “My eyes look with glee on my wicked enemies; my ears shall hear what happens to my wicked foes.”  It’s the same old damn good-evil, black/white worldview that ruins many psalms.  I have no use for shit like this.

PSALM 93

Time for a five-verse psalm.  It’s called “God Is a Mighty King” and it is entirely about God and his might.  There is nothing else here; it’s just praising God.  I find the Bible the best when it’s about humans, and this has nothing to do that. 

Meh.  Next. 

PSALM 94

Next is one of those psalms I absolutely loathe.  It’s not just a good people versus bad people pure black/white psalm, but it’s one primarily focusing on (and taking joy in) the punishment of the wicked.  Good thing the wicked aren’t complex people with their own motivations.  Good thing they are just y’know, one-dimensional stick figures of evil.  I bet they go around all the time tying damsels to railroad tracks and laughing maniacally.

Well, here the attributes of the evil are: despising the Lord (of course), being proud, mouthing haughty speeches, and boasting.  What I do find interesting is the presentation of the evil as those in power, the people with all the real control, and the righteous few on bottom need to appeal to God to straighten things out.

OK.  I can understand a cry for giving those haughty blowhards on top a comeuppance.  But the psalm completely loses me when it calls for them to be crushed, for them to be put into a pit for the wicked.  Psalms of vengeance aren’t my thing.

Actually, this psalm may have lost me even before that.  This psalm reminds me of much of what I don’t like about organized and politicized Christianity in the modern world. There’s a division of the world into black-and-white, a clear and overwhelming assumption that they’re on the side of God (while at the same time damning the others for being prideful), and last but not least a massive persecution complex.  This seems like the official psalm for those that parrot the line about a War Against Christmas.  I have no use for this.

PSALM 95

This is just another psalm of praise of God.  It’s fairly standard stuff.  The last stanza shifts to God’s point of view, which would be more interesting if I hadn’t read the same thing in Psalm 91.

One other thing of note here – the psalm apparently believes in multiple gods.  It refers to God as “the great king over all gods.”  It then just says he’s “our God.”  So Hebrew religion didn’t really start as monotheism but polytheism.  He was the only God they were supposed to worship, and he was also the most powerful God.  That’s nice. But as long as there was a polytheistic tradition, there was a desire to worship other gods with idols and all that.  So eventually the religion evolved into a belief in monotheism.  But you can see traces of the old polytheism in many parts of the Bible, including here.

PSALM 96

This is another psalm that just praises God.  So I don’t have any overt problem with it, but as a non-believer I don’t have much to say about it.

There are some nice elements here.  Most notably, we’re told that God stands for fairness, justice, and faithfulness.  That’s nice.  It’s good that God isn’t just powerful, but also a good guy who stands for the right thing. (The Bible – the original Superman comic!)

Also, there is an interesting line indicating that there are other gods – God is “to be feared above all gods” immediately followed by a line indicating that there are no other gods, “For the gods of the nations are idols.”  Actually, now that I think about it, that doesn’t really mean the other gods don’t exist.  That just means that their gods take physical form.  That’s the context the Hebrew religion grew out of.  They just took it to another level, and later monotheism developed out of it. 

But if God is all-powerful and is – as the top of this psalm says, “Lord of all earth” – why does he just have one people he looks after?  If he’s really God of all earth, shouldn’t he be concerned with all earth?

PSALM 97

It’s another psalm about how great God is.  It notes that justice and right are his foundation.  That’s nice.  It sure beats the psalms that say his foundation is power.  But this one also talks about God’s power, most notably a line stating, “The mountains melt like wax before the Lord.”  Nice imagery there.  People who serve idols are idiots serving worthless objects.  Hurrah for God!

PSALM 98

This one is called “The Coming of God” and even though I’m trying to pay attention to each psalm, within five minutes of reading it, I’d forgotten what was in it. The short version is that this is another psalm praising how great God is.  Yeah, there’s been a run of those psalms lately.  

Click here for the next psalm dump.