Samuel II: Chapters 1 to 6

Last time, Samuel I ended with the death of Saul and his sons.  Now for the next book.

CHAPTER 1

The second book of Samuel picks up right where the last one left off.  Saul dies at the end of Samuel I, and at the beginning of Samuel II, David finds out about it.  A survivor comes to tell David of Saul’s demise, and upon pressing we learn the messenger played a role in it.  Apparently, Saul’s decision to fall on his sword wasn’t successful.  This guy found him leaning on it, but still very much alive.  Saul begged for a mercy killing and the messenger obliged.  After recounting this story, he gives David the crown of Saul.

Well, David is horrified.  Not only is there the typical mourning, but on top of that, he’s horrified this man played a role in Saul’s death.  In fact, David immediately orders the messenger to be killed.  From one perspective, this is very harsh.  It was a mercy killing, after all.  But it is in keeping with David’s overall philosophy.  Twice he had a chance to kill Saul and twice he refused.  He said then that one mustn’t kill God’s anointed.  So its fair of him to stand by that approach here.  It’s all good politics, for David is now God’s anointed and he wants to make it clear that no one should kill the anointed.

David then gives a song of mourning, and is often the case with songs, this likely does go back centuries.  The song mentions Jonathan by name as a good friend of David, so I wonder if this isn’t the inspiration for some of the David-Jonathan stories that appeared earlier.

CHAPTER 2

Mourning is nice, but David needs a plan.  He asks God if he should go to Judah, and God says sure. Savvy confidant, that God.  Judah is David’s tribe and by far the biggest one in Israel.  Now that the king and the king’s sons are dead, David needs to rally to his base first in order to become the king.  Sure enough, the people of Judah anoint David as their king.

But isn’t not all smooth sailing.  While the end of Samuel I said Saul’s sons died with him, it apparently just meant the ones who went into battle with him.  He has a son called Ishbaal (well, here he’s Ishbaal, apparently elsewhere he’s called Ishoosheth.  Confusing.) still around.  Saul’s old general, Abner (AKA, Saul’s cousin and thus the uncle of Ish-whoever) has him anointed by the people of Benjamin (their native tribe).

Well, it looks like Israel is about to come undone so soon.  They meet in combat and then a rather pathetic incident occurs. David’s main general is named Joab, and his brother Asahel is fighting on his side.  Asahel pursues Abner in battle and though Abner tells him to turn in another direction, he keeps coming at Abner.  Thus they meet and Abner slays Asahel, brother of the opposing general.  This will matter a lot more next chapter.

Despite that, David’s side is winning big.  Judah is a far bigger tribe than Benjamin, after all.  Then Abner, with his forces on the verge of complete destruction, does something brilliant.  He calls out to Joab to ask for a truce, saying that if Joab wins it’ll only lead to bitterness.  He’s got a good point.  David’s side can’t just win the war, but also win the peace to really reign over all.  Abner even says, “How long before you tell the people to stop pursuing their brothers?”  Wow – that’s a very dangerous way of putting it.  He just might inflame Joab that much more to fight.  But instead, it does allow for a truce.

So a truce is had.  Judah had lost 20 men in battle and Benjamin 360.  So Abner’s plea really was a Hail Mary play.  Either he gets a truce or his side will be wiped out.  As it happens, the truce is just that – just a truce.  The war will drag on.

CHAPTER 3

The first verse here tells us it’s a long war.  But a possible break in the fighting occurs when Abner has a falling out with Ishbaal.  Apparently, Ishbaal accuses Abner of being this generation’s Reuben – he slept with the concubine of the late Saul.  Abner is infuriated by the accusation and leaves Ishbaal.  Yeah, this is bad for Ishbaal.  Ultimately, all Ishbaal really has going for him is his claim as Saul’s son.  Beyond that, he isn’t much of a leader or a fighting.  Abner is the fighter.  (And as such, I wonder if he did sleep with the concubine, just to prove his position).

Well, Abner begins a backdoor channel with David, and David is happy to have Abner on board.  He’s no dummy.  Davis has just one request – his wife Michal, daughter of Saul, must be delivered to him.  They haven’t seen each other since she helped David escape. Abner agrees and sends for her.  Paltiel, the husband Saul gave her after David left, goes with, but Abner isn’t having it.  He tells Paltiel to go home and that’s that.  He’s odd man out in this love triangle. 

Abner and David meet and it goes well.  They hit it off, but things immediately go badly once they part.  Joab shows up from a raid and learns that Abner has been there.  He makes a big show of how that’s a terrible idea and Abner is just here to trick David.  But of course Abner is the man who killed Joab’s brother last chapter.  After yelling at David, Joab has messengers sent, telling Abner to return.  (You can see where this is going, right?) Abner returns, and Joab first plays nice.  But he pulls Abner off to the side as if he’s going to tell him something in private.  Instead, he shanks him.  Really, though, Abner should’ve seen this coming.

Speaking of should’ve-seen-it-coming, there’s David.  He knew Joab was enraged, but didn’t do any follow up after Joab screamed at him about Abner.  I guess David figured that since Abner was away it was all over.  Let Joab scream himself out and move on.

But now David is in a pickle.  He invited the opposing general to his place to talk, and he was murdered by David’s general.  But David handles it perfectly.  He does all the right mourning, expresses all the right horror, and all the bystanders come to agree – David wasn’t responsible.  Well, I agree he’s not responsible in the sense that he planned for this or wanted it to happen.  But it was his general and he new how upset Joab was at Abner. 

This reminds me of the Summerdale Scandal in Chicago. In the early 1960s, a group of Chicago police officers were found to be involved in some breaking-and-entering theft.  Chicago can accept some corruption, but this was too much.  Daley got ahead of it, though, and became the biggest backer for police reform.  He had a blue ribbon committee go for the best possible candidate, and he hired their recommendation and let the new chief do whatever he wanted, even if it cost the Democratic Machine some patronage jobs.  Daley became seen as a supporter of reform – a scandal that could have badly wounded him turned into something that made him look good.  That’s what David did with the death of Abner.

CHAPTER 4

This is a short chapter, but it basically ends the Israeli Civil War.  Ishbaal freaks out when he hears about Abner’s death, just proving my earlier point that all he has going for him is his lineage.  He’s not really a leader himself.

Soon, two people come upon him when he’s asleep and kill him, cutting off his head.  The killers bring the head to David, expecting a big reward, I guess.  Clearly, they never read Chapter 1 of Samuel II.  David notes how he had Saul’s killer executed, and then says what happened here is much worse.  So he has them killed – but only after cutting off their hands and feet. 

CHAPTER 5

Time for everyone to make nice. The supporters of Ishbaal tell David that he should be everyone’s leader.  David is more than happy to agree. The Bible says that David was king for 40 years, from age 30 to age 70.  The first seven and a half years were in Hebron during the civil war and rest will be in Jerusalem.

Speaking of Jerusalem, David can reign there because he attacks it and takes it over.  Making it his capital is a savvy move.  He’s the leader of 12 tribes, and where he puts his capital can give some clout to the tribe whose land it is.  Up until not, his capital has been in Hebron, which belongs to his tribe of Judah.  That’s the biggest tribe with nearly half of the people, and putting the capital in their land can create resentment from the other tribes.  After all, there was just a lengthy civil war about who will be king, so David better handle himself well.  So put it in Jerusalem – which isn’t affiliated with any tribe, and so a nice compromise.  By similar logic, the US capital was place on the banks of the Potomac River in Washington DC, a place that hadn’t existed until then – and was made separate from any state.

There’s a weird little bit to this story, though.  Before he attacks Jerusalem, the Jebusite inhabitants mock David and his men, saying: “You shall not enter here: the blind and the lame will drive you away!”  Oh, burn!  You’re no match for our blind and lame.  So David decrees that the blind and the lame are to be his personal enemies, and not allowed to enter his palace.  Hey – wait!  That’s just wrong!  They were just bystanders to the taught. It ain’t like there was a battalion of blind ready to fight you.  That’s mean.  Keep in mind that much of the Bible has edicts about protecting the handicapped and blind.  So here’s David being a dick to them.

One last thing about the conquest of Jerusalem: rather famously, David gets inside by going through the city’s water shaft.  Good move.

After taking Jerusalem, David beats up the Philistines to further solidify his control of the throne.  He keeps asking God for advice in the campaign.  First God tells David to attack and he does successfully.  The second time God tells David to sneak around behind the Philistines and attack them there.  It also works, but I get a kick out of God giving not jus yes/no responses, but formulating military policy.

CHAPTER 6

Now that he’s clearly top dog, time to celebrate!  David has the Ark of the Lord brought to Jerusalem.  David is stoked and dances with abandon in the streets.  It’s a happy occasion – until it stops being happy really suddenly.  The cart carrying the ark starts to tip, and a man puts his hand on it to steady the ark – and dies on the spot.  The Bible says the Lord was angry at him for touching it but – the hell? He was trying to help!  It wasn’t his fault the thing was tipping on the road.  It’s not the intention, though, it’s the principle. This is God’s ark and don’t mess with hit.

David is so taken aback that he assumes that this means he shouldn’t take it to his palace.  Instead, he leaves it outside town with someone named Obed-edom the Gittite.  But then God starts favoring the Gittite, and David yanks the ark back.  That’s a bit comic.  David doesn’t come off too well there.  But Gittite is just a pawn in the story.

David again takes up his manic dancing ways, and that really pisses off Michal, his first wife.  Maybe she loved him when they were young and first married.  Maybe she loved him and helped him escape back in the day.  But she can’t stand what she sees.  She yells at David for exposing himself in the street like any commoner would.  (Unclear: by expose did she mean David’s dancing showed a bit too much of himself, or just that it seemed crass for a king to act so publicly like that?)  Regardless of which she meant, she hates what she sees.  Whatever love they once had is now gone. David tells her to get bent and she dies childless.  In the background, I wonder how she got along with her second husband while David was in exile.  Maybe she loved him, too, and harbors anger at David for breaking them up.  Or maybe she just thinks he acted in far too lowbrow a manner.  

Click here for the next installment: Chapters 7 to 12 of Samuel II.

Samuel II: Main Page

Chapters 1 to 6
Chapters 7 to 12 
Chapters 13 to 19
Chapters 20 to 24

Samuel I: Chapters 27 to 31

Last time, the Saul continued trying to kill David.  Now for the last installment of the First Book of Samuel:

CHAPTER 27

The story of David and Saul takes a rather unexpected twist, and David hands himself over to the enemy.  No, not Saul.  Israel’s enemy: the Philistines.  They’ve been the bad guy for quite some time now, but David tells his 600 men: Guys, look – if we stay here Saul will kill us at some point.  So let’s move to Philistine land where Saul will quit hunting us.  So they do.

As a refuge in Philistine lands, David is expected to raid the Israelis.  David tells his benefactors that’s just what he’s doing, when in reality he’s raiding others in the area, who are traditional enemies of the Israelis.  Oh, that’s nice. He covers his tracks well to make sure his Philistine benefactors won’t find out the real score by killing every person in the towns he raids – male and female both.  Oh, that’s quite a bit south of nice. 

Question: is this real or just a cover story?  Did David really keep this ruse going, and if so are the Philistines dense?  But if David really did raid the Israelis, how could they ever accept them as his king?  I really don’t know the answer to that.  I also don’t know which is worse – David raiding his own people or David engaging in small-scale genocide to cover his tracks.

The Bible says David stayed with the Philistines for 16 months.  This is a rather disturbing interlude.  It does fit in with the interpretation of Chapter 25 as David as shakedown artist.  This may not be the situation he wanted for himself, but he’s on the run from Saul and he’s got to do what he’s got to do to survive somehow.

CHAPTER 28

Now the Philistines are going to attack Israel in full force.  David’s told he is expected to join up.  David’s reply, “Good!”  Really, that’s his reply.  The Bible even includes the exclamation point.  Maybe he’s faking it, but the Bible doesn’t give us a little explanation saying, “David is faking his enthusiasm.  This is one of those items that are so open to interpretation that there’s no way to make more than just a guess.  It’s a Biblical Rorschach test – how you respond tells us more about you than the material itself. 

David is just a minor player in this chapter, though.  The main action is Saul.  He’s horrified to hear that the Philistines are going to strike.  Saul, once a mighty king, has totally lost heart.  Saul consults God, but of course God doesn’t answer Saul calls. 

Saul has a plan – find a medium.  Now necromancy is a no-no.  There are laws against it in the Torah and Saul himself has passed laws against it.  Seeing a sorcerer is a sign you are consulting with foreign gods – for God himself won’t answer these things.  (In other words, the existence – and especially the success of – a sorcerer is a sign that there are other gods.  That tells us something about Hebrew religion in these early days. 

But Saul goes to see one.  Desperate times and all.  He wants to consult with the ghost of Samuel.  He gets a medium to conjure Samuel, and the late prophet is none to happy to see Saul.  Why did you disturb me are – those are Samuel’s first words.  Once again, Samuel berates Saul for not killing everyone when he fought the Amalek, and says God has rejected Saul for that.  Then Samuel gets a memorable parting shot, telling Saul that Saul and all of Saul’s sons will be with Samuel son.  Yeah, that can’t be the news Saul wanted to hear.

CHAPTER 29

But before Saul and his family get wiped out, it’s back to David.  He is marching into battle with the Philistines without complaint against his own people.  Well, David isn’t complaining but then the other Philistine leaders see him and complain.   How can we trust this guy?  Isn’t he “Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands” David?  Get him gone! 

So the Philistine leader breaks the “bad” news to David – sorry, you can’t play these reindeer games with us.  Go back home.  David’s initial reaction isn’t to accept happily and be relieved.  Instead he complains!  “What have I don’t?  What fault have you found in your servant from the day I entered your service until today that I cannot go to fight against the enemies of my lord the king?” 

Wow.  There are a couple ways to interpret that.  First, he’s faking it to keep the affections of this king. Second, that’s he’s probing.  Asking what have I done wrong – maybe David’s worried that his benefactor no longer trusts him (in which case he’s really screwed).  Or how about a third option.  His loyalty isn’t to his people but to his Lord.  That was often the case once upon a time.  It all hinges on how clear and solid an identity the Hebrew had at this stage in history.  Going by the Bible, they had a very clear identity and always did.  But in reality they grew out of the context of Canaan.  They had their God, but the Hebrew still seem polytheistic – just believing there was Their God, not one God.    Heck, even David had a house god he used for his escape when Saul tried to first have him killed.  My hunch is that David is just lying and probing, but there is the other option here.

Regardless, he goes back with his 600 men.

CHAPTER 30

And when David returns to the town of Ziklag, where he and his 600 men live, he finds it in ruins.  While David went off with the Philistine army, some Amalekite raiders took advantage of the Philistine countryside lacking warriors to launch a raid.  Not as bloodthirsty as David is in his raids, they took the women and children back instead of killing them.  They also took the possessions and livestock.  Nice haul.

And boy is David’s 600 men pissed.  They actually start talking about stoning their boss.  Yipes.  David gets ahead of things and consults with God – should we go after the raiders? Yup, God replies, possibly saving David’s life.  So off they go.  Short version: they find them and get all their stuff back. 

But there’s an odd little coda.  During the trip, 200 of David’s 600 men were too exhausted, and had to stay with the baggage during the battle.  Some of the others then say those 200 don’t deserve any of the spoils. Oh sure, give them their wives and kids back, but nothing else.  David comes down hard on this and says no, we won because of God not because of us.  So give back to every man what was once his.  And then we’re told, “And from that day forward [David] made this a law and a custom in Israel, as it is still today.” 

That last line is interesting to me.  Is this story really the beginning of the custom, or was the story created to justify the custom? 

CHAPTER 31

Back to Saul – for one last time.  Last we saw of Saul, Samuel’s ghost told him to buzz off one last time and then told Saul that he and all of his kids will die in battle the next day against the Philistines.

So it’s not really a surprise that it’s come to pass.  Wounded, Saul asks his armor bearer (as always, the armor bearer’s name isn’t given) to kill him.  No way, says the armor bearer.  So Saul falls on his own sword, as does the latest nameless armor bearer. 

The Philistines cut off his head and put his impaled body on one of their walls.  Some Israeli warriors manage to sneak in and take his body and get back. 

The First Book of Samuel ends on a dark note.  It’s like Empire Strikes Back – the hero is still out there, but the situation looks bleak.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Well, it sure is a memorable book.  It’s called Samuel, but it’s really about Saul.  This book is his rise and fall, and for quite a while I can really feel for him.  I side with him massively over Samuel.  Saul was a good king who achieved many impressive things, but Samuel harped on some details.  Then Saul lost his mind and lost his way. He was a bad man - at least he wasn't born bad.  But he lost his way and turned into a disaster.

The new hero emerges in David, but the second half of the book is about the David-Saul dynamic.  Saul is impossible to root for here.  He’s trying to settle a petty score in his own mind that actually hurts Israel.  Then he dies.

One oddity in this book is there is some clear evidence that it was assembled from multiple sources.  I don’t just mean the double stories – twice Saul meets David, twice David escapes, twice David lets Saul live – but the clear ways it messes up the narrative.  We’re told that Samuel never sees Saul again, and then he sees Saul again.  David escapes from Saul’s attempt to kill him, and then it’s forgotten right away. 

Still, it’s a fascinating story, and it’s easy to see why it’s so famous.  

Click here for the beginning of Samuel II: Chapters 1 to 6

Samuel I: Chapters 23 to 26

Last time, David killed Goliath and Saul tried to kill David, so he had to go on the run.  Now let's see what's going on.

CHAPTER 23

Well, David and his men come to the city of Keilah, which the Philistines were attacking.  Before going there, David does something he’s never done before – he asks God for advice.  And God responds!  Truly, God is on David’s side.  At any rate, God tells David to go there, and God will deliver the Philistines to David.  Sure enough, David is successful.

Then Saul hears about it, and his reaction really sucks.  David is there – great, now I can kill him!  Really, Saul?   Really?  David just did your job for you, pal.  There is nothing here about how all of Israel reacts, but David must look like the hero and therefore Saul looks downright treasonous.  But David finds out in advance that Saul is coming and asks God for advice.  That’s twice now David has talked with God.  The Lord tells David that the people of the town will hand David over to Saul.  I’m sure they appreciate what David did for them, but they know what happened to the priests.  They don’t want it happening to them.  (Seriously, though, first the priest slaughter and now this?  Saul must really have a tight hold over the rest of Israel in order to avoid widespread revolts.  I’m amazed that David only has a few hundred men – 600 we’re told around here – under the circumstances). 

David hightails it out of there and has a reunion with Jonathan.  The Bible doesn’t say so exactly, but this looks like their last ever meeting. The most notable part is that Jonathan says that David will be king of Israel some day, and Jonathan his right hand man.  That’s interesting, because Jonathan is the actual heir to the throne.  Having the actual heir say this to David would further bolster the House of David’s claim to be kings, which is likely why this was put in here.

Anyway, Saul keeps tracking David but David keeps slipping through his fingers.

CHAPTER 24

And now the shoe goes on the other foot.  After David has been constantly on the run for the last several chapters, he has a chance to get some revenge.  David and his men are hiding in a cave, and as it happens Saul goes in that very same cave to go to the bathroom.  David has a great chance to kill Saul. His men want him to.  But no, Saul is still God’s anointed king.  You can’t mess with that. 

All David does is go near Saul and cut off some of his robe.  Then he feels really bad about it.  Really, the logistics of this all are a big confusing.  Let’s assume that Saul is taking a dump; that would at least mean it’ll take him longer to go to the bathroom and go away from his robe.  But David and his men have to, 1) recognize it’s Saul, 2) encourage David to get him, 3) David cuts the robe, 4) feels bad, 5) and then dissuade his men from going after Saul again – all while Saul is in the cave.  And apparently all doing it silently so Saul never notices.  Just how close are they to Saul?  It’s possible, but it just seems a bit busy. 

At any rate, once Saul leaves the caves, David shouts out and gets Saul’s attention.  He tells Saul that he is wrong to think David will come after and kill him – he just had his chance and didn’t take it.  This is a fairly well done scene.  Saul finds the former good man that he used to be and admits his guilt.  He agrees that he’s been wrong.

But nothing comes of this scene.  It’s just a one-off temporary reprieve.

CHAPTER 25

This starts off with some bad news – Samuel is dead.  I wonder why the chapter is named after him? He’s the third most important character in it, and is almost entirely absent from the second half.  The real question, I suppose, is why Samuel II is named after him.  He’s dead before that one even begins!

In fact, Samuel is so unimportant to the plotline at this point that his death is just thrown in here, and irrelevant to the rest of the action in Chapter 25.  That action is about David’s new wife, Abigail. 

She’s married to Nabal, who is a lout.  He’s rich with thousands of sheep and goat, and early on David’s men go to his place when they hear Nabal is shearing his flock.  David’s men say that they lived alongside the animals for months and didn’t harm any.  So now they’d like to be given some of the animals.  Now, later we’ll be told that David’s men served as protection for the sheep, making sure no one raided them, but here that doesn’t come up.  We have a band of armed men say, “These sheep of your bosses!  Give us some because we didn’t kill any earlier!”  That sounds like a total shakedown.  Later on we’ll be given a rational that makes Nabal sound worse, but I wonder why the rationale wasn’t included here. 

Well, Nabal thinks this request for animals is crap.  Who is this David son of Jesse?  Screw him!  And word gets back to David, and he responds by gathering 400 of his 600 men to payback Nabal with blood.  Yeah, so far this sounds like a complete and utter shakedown.  Also, I should add that given David’s situation, it would actually make sense if he engaged in shakedowns.  He’s on the run, he’s got 600 men to feed, and these men are warriors.  The Bible doesn’t get into mundane matter like how he clothed and fed them, but he had to do something.  He could rely on the kindness of strangers – and I guess that’s what he’s trying to do.   But when you respond to unkindness by threatening to slaughter everyone, then are you really depending on the kindness of strangers or demanding it?  “OK, we’ll be by your flock and not harm anything and see to it that no one else does, and in return you give us some of you flock.  And if you don’t give us anything, we’ll kill you, your household and all your servants.”  Really, even if David’s story is true and his men did serve as protection, they still come off like a protection racket.  No one asked them to serve as protection, but now that they have, you give them some stuff – or else. 

Yeah, so even if David’s story here is true, he’s totally running a protection racket.  Again, he’s got to pay, feed, and cloth his men someone.  Ain’t no manna raining for the sky in this part of the Bible.  (Quick side note: David was going to attack Nabal with 400 men?  What massive overkill!  He’s a rich guy, sure, but he’s hardly an army unto his self).

However, David never does any massacre – though his plan is to kill every male in Nabal’s household.  Instead, Nabal’s wife Abigail thinks quickly.  She gathers a bunch of stuff and goes to David.  She bows before him and offers all of this stuff and apologizes.  She even throws in an insult to her husband, calling him a scoundrel.  David accepts these terms.  He’s getting something, after all. 

Abigail goes back home but her husband is drunk at a party, so she doesn’t tell him what she did write away.  Once he sobers up the next day she lets him now how close they came to be slaughtered and the Bible reports, “At this his heart died within him, and he became like a stone.”  So he’s really freaked.  I guess he literally didn’t know who David was.  In that case he’s a moron. He dies, 10 days later.

This frees up Abigail to marry David, and they do wed.  David also weds a second woman, Ahinoam of Jezreel, who we just here about in the wedding announcement.  In other wedding news, the Bible decides to tell us here that his first wife, Saul’s daughter Michal is married off to a new man by her dad.

CHAPTER 26

This is one of those chapters that indicate that this part of the Bible came from a combination of multiple sources.  We’ve already had David spare Saul’s life once, so now we get it again.  This is another repeat story.  We’ve had David meet Saul twice (once with the lyre, once after Goliath).  We’ve had David twice escape from Saul with help of one of Saul’s kids (once Michal, the other Jonathan).  And now we get David having a great chance to kill Saul, and opting not to.

Here it’s not a cave.  This time, David and another man sneak into Saul’s camp and see Saul asleep.  David again says its wrong to kill God’s anointed, and instead of killing Saul, takes his spear and water jug. 

He goes away and then taunts Saul’s top military man, Abner, for the terrible security.  You got to admit, Abner earned that one.  The security here really did suck. (Though the Bible says God put all the men in a deep slumber, to explain the unlikely event of David making it in and out unnoticed).  Then David again yells to Saul – just as he did last story.  It’s the same thing; but just told by another author and then later compiled together as one. 

Saul again admits his guilt and apologies.  Again, it doesn’t take.

Click here for the final chapters of Samuel I.

Psalms 73 to 86

The last installment of psalms covered #59-72.  Now for the next batch - which begins the Bible's third book of psalms.

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. 

Click here for the next batch of Psalms (87-98)