Nehemiah: Chapters 1 to 7

Last time was Ezra.  Now for Nehemiah.

CHAPTER 1

The Book of Nehemiah is basically telling the same story as the Book of Ezra: the return of the Jews from Babylon.  However, whereas that book was from the point of view of a priest, Nehemiah is a politician.

This begins with Nehemiah in Persian, and he hears that Jerusalem has fallen into total disrepair.  He’s horrified and weeps to God, hoping that God will remember to have mercy on his people once they atoned for their previous transgressions.  This is pretty standard stuff, and pretty short (11 verses).

CHAPTER 2

Nehemiah is at the table of King Xerxes.  OK, this is the second or third Persian emperor since the fall of Jerusalem, and we’re told that it’s the 20^th year of his reign, so clearly Nehemiah isn’t hurrying back too soon.  Anyhow, our main character sits at Xerxes’s table, and the emperor notices that Nehemiah is blue. Nehemiah explains the problems at Jerusalem and the emperor gives him a blank check to fix the place up.  In ancient Greek history, Xerxes is a bad guy.  He’s the guy who invaded Greece.  But the Jews love him. 

So Nehemiah goes to Jerusalem and, problem solver that he is, immediately begins planning to rebuild the wall.  Now the first act is over and we’ve found out main event for this Biblical book – building the city wall.  You also get the entry of the bad guys – the gentiles of the land.  Here they just mock the Jews, but they’ll soon be a much bigger problem.

CHAPTER 3

This is a dull chapter that just catalogues the people who involved in the building project.  

It picks up a little at the end when we return to the plot.  The enemies mock the Jews and try to oppose their efforts.  Frankly, they seem worried.  After all, Judah had once been the imperial power, and it doesn’t sound like they appreciate a possible return to prominence for its people. The building of the all quickly gets going, though, and they soon have it halfway built.

Also, and I could be wrong about this, but I believe this is where we first encounter a brand new word in the Bible: Jew.  You can’t have that word for much of the Bible.  The word Jew comes from Judah, the main tribe of Israel and the major of the two tribes of the Kingdom of Judah.  As long as there are 12 tribes, you can’t say Jews.  As long as there was even a divided kingdom, you can’t use that word.  You could once the Assyrians took over the northern kingdom, but by that time both Kings II and Chronicles II didn’t have much more to go, and I don’t think either said “Jew.”  It would be out of place given the trust is the history of all the tribes, not just the one.  Ezra could’ve mentioned Jews, but if so, I missed it. 

Also, much of this book is written in first person.  Scholars apparently believe that this really is the hand of Nehemiah.  Duly noted.

CHAPTER 4

The wall keeps going up, with gaps in it being filled.  I imagine them using old bits of newspaper and paper mache.  At any rate, now the plot kicks it up a gear.  The enemies of the Jews progress from mockery to direct action.  They decide to threaten the Jews in Jerusalem, but the builders are tipped off.  Nehemiah has them take up arms.  From here on out, half will build and half will guard.  That’ll slow up work, but then again it’ll allow work to continue, because the enemies won’t attack when the Jews can defend themselves.  Building continues, from sun up to sun down.

CHAPTER 5

Now we get a new wrinkle in construction – Jews exploiting other Jews.  Apparently, the moneylender Jews are forcing the others into debt and poverty and the others don’t like it one bit.  For Nehemiah’s construction project to work, he needs people to stay united. 

Always the problem solver, Nehemiah takes action to keep things going.  He approaches the moneylenders and chews them out.  Don’t you know you’re not supposed to charge interest to other Jews? He lays into them and they back down entirely, agreeing to return everything and exact nothing further from their brethren.  Crisis averted, so the building can proceed apace. 

Also, we get a brief bit noting what an upright, honest governor Nehemiah was.  He didn’t ‘take any money as food allowance, though he could’ve and previous governors had.  Nehemiah is really coming off good here, people.

CHAPTER 6

The enemies are getting desperate.  The wall is nearing completion and all their fiendish plans have come for naught.  At this point, I’m imagining the area gentiles led by Dick Dasterdly and Muttley the Mutt. 

Time for a new plan.  They say they want to meet Nehemiah to discuss things with him.  Nehemiah quickly surmises that “discuss things with him” means “murder him in cold blood” and politely declines, saying he’s too busy in Jerusalem.  They keep trying, but he keeps declining. 

Now Dick Dasterdly starts spreading rumors that the Jews are plotting a rebellion.  Nehemiah denies it.  Wow, that was an easy plot to foil.

They still have one trick up their sleeve.  Dick and Muttley get a prophet to tell Nehemiah that people are coming to kill him, so he should hide in the Temple.  Wait – the Temple?  That’s sacred territory.  No way he’s entering that.  He sees through this plan.  It’s a plan to make him look like a coward – one willing to violate God’s orders.  So he blows it off. 

And the wall is finished.  It took just 52 days.  OK, I’m impressed.  With all of these stories, I figured it was taking months or ever years.  52 days!  Man, Nehemiah is one of the best problem solvers in the Bible.  He’s the Joseph of his time.  Come to thing of it, Joseph was an administrator, too. 

CHAPTER 7

Time for the big dedication of the newly walled city.  But first a census.  It’s a very long, dull chapter that just lists people, but at the end we’re told there are 42,360.  That’s the same number as in Ezra.

There is a key difference, though.   In Ezra they came right away, whereas here the census comes in the reign of Xerxes, not Cyrus the Great.  Did they really have a completely stable population for all that time?  Color me deeply skeptical.  They had a census taken, OK, but then the Bible writers but the numbers at two different places.  It was right once, probably here, as 42,360 coming out at once are too big a group to be manageable. 

Click here for the rest of Nehemiah.

Nehemiah main page

Chapters 1 to 7
Chapters 8 to 13

Psalms 138 to 150

Here is the previous psalm bunch.  Now for the final 13 psalms:

PSALM 138

It’s another psalm praising God.  It’s a nice psalm, but nothing especially notable.  God is praiseworthy for strengthening the spirits of the faithful, for helping the lowly, the opposing the proud, and for having mercy.  I got to admit, those are good reasons to praise God.

PSALM 139

This one begins, “Lord, you have probed me” and my mind imagines God being a smash alien on a flying saucer with the psalmist tied down to a table.  I know he doesn’t mean that kind of probing, but that’s where I went with it. 

But the psalm gets going and it’s a very good one.  It starts out about how God has tested the psalmist, and knows everything about him.  He must – after all, he’s God.  He’s all-knowing and all-seeing.  He created all and there is nowhere you can go to get away from him.

And glory to him, because his creations are so numerous and wonderful.  The psalmist doesn’t talk about mountains or rivers that God made, but instead the psalmist thanks him for making the psalmist himself. At one point he says of God’s creations, “Were I to count them, they would outnumber the sands.” Well, sure, God created the sands, too.  So if he just created one other non-sand thing, he’s got the sands beat. 

It turns a little violent at the end with talk of how the psalmist hates those who hate the Lord, but otherwise it’s a heart-warming psalm.

PSALM 140

At this point, it’s pretty damn difficult for any psalm to say anything that original.  They’re all variations on the same themes, so they run together.  And I certainly have trouble saying anything interesting about any of them.

This one is a praise of the Lord psalm attributed to David.  I can believe it’s a David psalm, as most of it is about how enemies tried to kill me and the evil set a trap for me.  That was true in David’s life, but it doesn’t really resonate with me.  Show me a psalm about a person having internal doubts instead.

PSALM 141

It is another psalm attributed to David – and it’s a good one.  It’s a plea to God for help.  The main theme is that David is only good with help from the Lord.  He asks, “Set a guard, Lord, before my mouth, keep watch over the door of my lips. Do not let my heart incline to evil, to perform deeds in wickedness.”  That’s a refreshing bit of modesty from a Davis psalm. 

Also, I just love this line near the top of the psalm: “Let my prayer be incense before you.”  Yeah, I just like that. 

Later it gets violent, as psalms often do, as it says, “May their leaders be cast over the cliff.”  Yeah, that’ll happen in psalms.  But the main thrust is a man pleading with God to help him be morally upright in his life.  That’s a worthy psalm.

PSALM 142

This is another David psalm, and it’s a man desperate for help.  As it typically the case with David, the problems are external, not internal.  It’s not personal doubt or turbulence, but enemies he must overcome.  This is what – the 30^th or 40^th psalm like this so far? 

It has a nice intro, as he begs permission of the Lord to vent a bit but then it’s standard stuff; nothing I haven’t read a few dozen times before.

PSALM 143

This is another David psalm, and it’s good, but they all sound the same at this point.  David starts off tentatively, pleading to God not to be judged, because “before you no one can be just.”  His enemies are after him, and his spirits are low.  He can only turn to the Lord, “for I entrust my life to you.” 

It’s a nice psalm, and I’d probably have more to say if it doesn’t sounds like a dozen previous psalms.

PSALM 144

This is a pretty good psalm, and it doesn’t exactly remind me of any previous ones; an amazing achievement this deep in.  Parts of it remember me of different psalms, but the overall effect is original.

It begins a militaristic psalm as David (the attributed psalm writer) calls for help in battle.  But then it takes an unexpected introspective turn in the second stanza.  David asks, “Lord, what is man that you take notice of him; the son of man, that you think of him?  Man is but a breath, his days are like a passing shadow.”  Aside from the unexpected turn in this psalm, that is just beautifully written stuff.

At the end, David veers his attention to the future, asking, “May our sons by like plants, well nurtured from their youth, our daughters like carved columns, shapely as those of the temple.”

He’s good from getting ready for battle, to wondering about the relationship between man and God, to remember what he’s fighting for – and all along he’s got God in mind.  Yeah, this is a nice psalm.

PSALM 145

Here’s a milestone for myself – it’s the last psalm attributed to David.  The David psalms go out with a decent one, but nothing great.  It’s a psalm praising God.  OK.  It’s nice and stuff.  But it’s rather telling at this point that the best line – “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abundant in mercy” is one I’ve heard before.  After you’ve read 140-plus psalms, they all blur together.

PSALM 146

This is a nice little psalm that praises the Lord as the friend of the little guy.  God is the guy who looks out for orphans, sets prisoners free, loves the righteous, protects the resident alien, and raises up those bowed down.  Oh, and we’re also flatly told, “Put no trust in princes.”  This is a psalm quite likely written by someone from the marginal social classes.  It sure reads like that’s the case.

PSALM 147

At 20 verses, this is the longest remaining psalm.  In fact, from here on out, each psalm is shorter than the one before.

Though it’s 20 verses long, I don’t have much to say about it.  This is just a psalm praising God; plenty like that before.  The only part I found memorable at all was this, “[God] takes no delight in the strength of horses, no pleasure in the runner’s stride. Rather the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him.”

OK, first God-taking-pleasure-in-people-fearing-him has got to be my least favorite type of praise-the-Lord psalm.  It makes him sound like Kim Jong Il or something.

Second, that is just a very weird intro to it.  He takes no pleasure in horses?  Where does that come from?  How does that lead to taking pleasure in fear?  It just strikes me as odd and random.

PSALM 148

It’s another praise-the-Lord psalm.  This one is a bit weird, though.  It praises God for all creation, which other psalms have done, but this takes it a different direction. Now, instead of praising God for making water, the water should praise him.  Yeah, this psalm calls on the creations of God to praise God.  Sun, moon, angels, heavens, waters, sea monsters, hail, clouds, wind, animals – are all told to praise God.  Oh, and “kings of the earth and all peoples” too. 

This psalm has a certain energy to it, I’ll give it that.  It’s one that reminded me of a rock song or something.  Christian rock, obviously.

PSALM 149

It’s another praise-the-Lord psalm.  We seem to be ending with a run of them.  It’s standard stuff, until it takes a (standard) dark turn halfway through. 

After all the typical talk of how wonderful God is, the Hebrew are told to rejoice, “With the praise of God in their mouths, and a two-edged sword in their hands.”  Wait – with a two-edged sword?  Yep, as the next verses say, “To bring retribution to nations, punishment on peoples, to bind their kings in shackles, their nobles in chains of iron.”  Oh, so praise God so we can overpower (and kill) people. 

Eh, I like the generic first half better.

PSALM 150

Here it is – the last fucking psalm!  It’s a simple, six-verse praise-the-Lord psalm.  Oh good, haven’t had one of them in a while …

This one gets the band back together.  We’re going to praise God with lyre and harp and horn and tambourines and dance and strings and pipes and crashing cymbals.  This is the most musically inclined of the psalms, that’s for sure.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

My intent in reading the psalms as I went through the rest of the Bible was simple.  When I’d previously tried reading the psalms straight through, it was a nightmare; the Bataan Death March of Bible reading.  They all start to sound the same and wear on me.  Then go on for another 90 psalms.

Frankly, that happened again.  But at least it wasn’t as bad just reading a few a day. 

I’m told that these are among the highlights of the Bible for many.  I guess they go better if you have faith.  Some were great – actually, many were.  But reading them all – they really do start to sound like the same – and then go on for another 90 psalms.

My favorite ones were ones where an individual cried to God for help, because there was nowhere else he could turn to.  People experiencing internal torment – that’s what religion best serves.

My least favorite psalms were the ones calling for vengeance.  Far too often, psalms pitted the world as Good People versus Bad People, and the latter should be crushed. Also, Good People are those who believe in God and Bad People don’t.  This reminds me of many of my least favorite aspects of the highly religious – some (NOT all or even most) are extremely judgmental and so damn sure of themselves that they have no problem treating others like shit for going against them.   (For example, see the entire Republican Party these days). 

I didn’t get much out of the praise-the-Lord psalms for the most part, but they just left me flat, where the crush-non-believers psalms actively bugged me.

Well, I’ve made it though psalms.  It’s the third time I’ve done that – but the first time I’ve actually paid attention to all of them.  So I got that to be proud of.  

Click here to start Proverbs.

Ezra

Last time, Chronicles II came to its end with the Jews going to Babylon.  Now they come back in the Book of Ezra.

CHAPTER 1

Now it’s time for the homecoming.  The histories of Kings and Chronicles both end with the conquest of Judea by Babylon, and this one picks up as the Babylonian Captivity ends.  Cyrus, Persian emperor, gives a decree that the Jews are to be let back into their old land and allowed to rebuild the temple. 

There is some wise political common sense going on here.  They were defeated by Babylon and turned into a servant people, with the leaders forced to move to Babylon.  Now Cyrus has taken over, and as the old saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  He defeated the Babylonians and the Jews hate the Babylonians, so make the Jews happy and he’ll have a bulwark people in the western portion of his empire.

So they all take off, and we’re told that their neighbors help them gather up their stuff to go.  That’s nice of them.  And they’re allowed by Cyrus to take all their church bling with them as well. 

CHAPTER 2

This is one of those boring chapters, which just gives a bunch of lists.  It lists who is going back and what their ancestral houses are.  In all, 42,360 people come back – not including servants.  There are 7,337 of them, so nearly 50,000 in all.  I can’t tell if this is just adult males (as in previous censuses) or altogether.  I want to say altogether, because this has nothing to do with military service. 

CHAPTER 3

The gang is back in Canaan, so it’s time to give burnt offerings to the Lord.  Also, they need to rebuild the Temple.  It’s 538 BC, 48 years after the destruction of the old temple, and they have Cyrus’s permission to rebuild.

There is a touching seen when they break ground for the new temple and we’re told that the, “heads of ancestral houses, who were old enough to have seen the former house, cried out in sorrow as they watched the foundation of the present house being laid.”  I don’t think that “sorrow” is the right word here, but that is a beautiful image to add in here.  And it makes sense.  After all those years of hoping and yearning to return – it’s really happening!  This would be a nice part to read right after going over some of the Babylonian Captivity psalms.

CHAPTER 4

The rebuilding hits a snag, as all the non-Jews who live in the area aren’t happy to see it going up.  They first offer to help the Jews build the Temple, but are rebuffed, saying – no, it’s just our responsibility and Cyrus gave us the duty of doing it.

When they are rebuffed, the Gentiles of the land get pissed and try to stop construction.  They bribe people and do whatever they can to frustrate the plans.  This goes on through all of Cyrus’s reign and Darius’s reign. 

The Bible doesn’t explain this at all.  Why did they first try to help out? Why were they rebuffed?  Why did they try to sink the project?  I can answer the latter ones better.  Maybe they’re afraid that a new Temple will be a signal of renewed Jewish political ambition, and these guys lived under Jewish rule for quite a long time.  The Jews rebuff them because they feel it really is their duty to do it, and they probably fear that a combined construction effort will help lead to placing other gods in the area.  That’s what ruined them last time, after all – all the other idols and gods being sacrificed to.  OK, so why did the neighbors offer to help in the first place?  Maybe they were hoping to use this as a way to get their gods along side the Hebrew God.  This way, you might forestall any ambitions and separateness on the part of the Jews right at the outset – nip it in the bud, as it worse.

Or not.  I’m just guessing here.

But by the reign of the third emperor, Artaxerxes (I guess this is Xerxes from Greek history), the Gentiles get a bit more active in their opposition.  They write the emperor, asking him to kill the project.  They point that that Jerusalem has a habit of ruling over rather than being ruled, and the people are prone to rebellion.  The emperor agrees, and orders the construction of the temple to be abandoned. 

Note: the part of the Bible includes some of the letters going back and forth, and these letters were written in Aramaic instead of Hebrew, as most of it was.

CHAPTER 5

But the temple construction is begun again as the Jews do their own letter writing.  This section is actually kinda dull.  It’s a bunch of beaurocratic back-and-forth.  It’s office politics, but on a bigger scale. 

CHAPTER 6

And the Jews win the battle of office politics.  Darius orders a search of governmental archives, and it shows that Cyrus did in fact give the Jews the right to rebuild the Temple in keeping with their religious beliefs. 

And so it is done.  The Temple is built and dedicated. 

CHAPTER 7

Rather belatedly, the title character of the book shows up: Ezra. He’s a priest and a descendent of Aaron.  To be exact, he apparently comes 16 generations after Aaron, going by the begottings listed here. 

Ezra is an easy to overlook Biblical figure, but he’s arguably a really big deal.  That’s an argument I got from “Who Wrote the Bible” by Richard Elliot Friedman.  He notes that the Torah is believed to have been written by four different sources and then combined and edited together by a fifth source, called the Redactor.  Friedman argues that Ezra is that Redactor.  He’s the right man in the right place at the right time.

Let’s see.  Here we learn that Ezra isn’t just a priest, but: “a scribe, well-versed in the law of Moses given by the Lord, the God of Israel.”  Oh, and the Persian emperor, “granted him all that he requested.”  So he’s got the full backing of the man with power to enforce God’s laws with the Jews once they come out of exile.  Yeah, that’s the right man in the right place at what would be the right time.

Most of this chapter is a copy of an official document, and that document is Xerxes statement to Ezra.  In short, Xerxes tasks him with having the law of your God in Judah and Jerusalem.  He’s given full control over their religion.  He is to appoint judges and instruct those who don’t know the laws and execute judgment on those who won’t obey the laws of Ezra’s God.  By “execute judgment” the statement makes clear that includes death itself, if it is deemed appropriate. 

Basically, Ezra will be made religious czar – backed by the actual czar.

Let’s take a few seconds to note how important this will be for the rest of the history of Jews.  One of the ironies so far is that they’ve been surrounded by God’s miracles but very poor at observing God’s laws.  Doubly the irony, in the post-miracle phase of Judaism, Jews are much better at observing the laws.  God parts the Red Sea, only to see them worship a golden calf.  They have miracle in the times of Judges, but keep lapsing from God’s ways. Their first king consults a soothsayer and their second king – David himself – has a household idol.  (He uses it to escape Saul).  Elijah destroys the priests of Baal in an epic showdown, but that makes no impression on people.  Time and time again, the Hebrew went away from the straight and narrow.  Hell, 10 tribes totally fade into the woodwork of surrounding communities.

But from around 500 BC onward, Jews are much better at staying on bath.  Oh, sure some mix fabrics and not all the laws of the Torah will always be observed.  But there will be no more widespread Baal worship.  They do a much better job holding the fort on the central matters.

There is the obvious non-believer answer to this oddity – the miracles never happened but were just folklore (which is also why they happened way back when, even to the Bible writers).  But I think that misses something much more important.  The issue isn’t why they lapsed so much then, but why they DIDN’T lapse so much afterwards.  And that lack of lapsing is largely the product of Ezra.

He’ll take the different sources before him – the J & E sources (which was likely long sense combined into one), the P source, and the D source of the Torah, combined with the entire D history cycle (and the P history cycle in Chronicles) and meld them into one.  They weren’t intended to be melded into one.  Heck, Friedman and others note that P is pretty much an entire alternate Torah.  But the Redactor synthesized them very well, and made the Word of the Lord speak with (largely) one voice.  Now that there was one main text, it was just a matter of implementing it.

To put it another way, up until now, the Hebrew religion had been constantly evolving. Whether it evolved due to diving revelation or human manufacture is beside the point.  But with Ezra, it was becoming set in stone.  And it’s easier to stray from something fluid than something fixed. 

Ezra is thus an often overlooked figure, but a damn important one. (Well, this is all assuming that he is the Redactor, but that seems likely). 

CHAPTER 8

Ezra and his caravan go to Judah.  The most notable thing about this chapter is midway through, something knew happens in the Bible – it switches to first person.  So far, the Bible has always been in third person. Oh sure, there are times people talk and you get some “I” talk.  Even God talks.  But now the narrator becomes the “I” guy.  We have Ezra expressing his own personal feelings and thoughts.  This is a connection unlike any other we’ve had so far in the Bible.

For the most part they aren’t too memorable, with one exception.  He wonders if he’ll need royal protection to travel from Babylon to Jerusalem without being attacked by bandits.  He decides he has to go without, because he told the emperor that God would look after them.  It would look lame if he said God would protect them and then ask the emperor for protection.

Oh, one of the guys in the caravan is Hattush, descendent of David.  I know from reading Richard Elliot Friedman’s “Who Wrote the Bible” that there is a mention in either Ezra or Nehemiah of the descendents of David coming back, but then they drop out of the narrative, never mentioned again.  (Rather odd, given that they’re supposed to be the leaders of the Jews).  I guess this is the blink-and-you-missed-it mentioning. 

CHAPTER 9

Ezra arrives and immediately confronts an abomination – Jews are marrying out of the tribe.  Even Levites and priests are going for the local girls.  Ezra is utterly horrified at this “intermingling.”  He tears his cloak and lays down before God, too humiliated to raise his face to him. 

As far as Ezra is concerned, as soon as the Jews have been granted mercy by God to atone for their past misdeeds – BOOM – there they are, making more misdeeds.  Apparently, this is a rule from somewhere in the Torah.  He’s horrified.

Ezra comes off like a jerk here, but ask yourself this: without this sort of militant backbone, would the Jews survive as a people for the next 2,500 years or so.  Of all times, this is when it helps to be militant, because Ezra is about to oversee religious consolidation.  That means enforcement of the consolidation.  Let things slide, and the entire consolidation project slides with it.  (Later on, once the religion has become fully consolidated, letting people ignore the rules won’t be as big a deal, but right now there is really no guarantee that the religion will survive).

Also, of all the rules to violate – intermarriage actually matters.  Again, I’m not looking at this through modern sensibilities of individuals marrying who they want.  Instead, I’ll just say this: this is the easiest way for the Jewish people to melt/merge into other groups. 

Ezra comes off like a jerk here, but being the right man at the right place at the right time means you’re the right jerk at the right place at the right time.

CHAPTER 10

They come up with a solution to the intermarriage crisis – all Jews should abandon their Gentile wives and the kids they had with them.  Yeah, Ezra sure comes off like a jerk here, indeed. 

The rule is decreed to all, who are made to attend a ceremony.  It’s in the rain and they are shivering, and they use the weather as an excuse to briefly delay implementation, but implementation happens.  A few refuse to go along with it, but most do.  This is presented as something of a happy ending.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

There isn’t much too this book on the face of it, but based on the Biblical scholarship I’ve read, Ezra is one of the most important figures in the Bible.  He doesn’t come off as very likable, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t very influential.

Click here to begin Nehemiah.

Psalms 125 to 137

Here is the previous psalm bunching.  Now for this chunk:

PSALM 125

This is another short psalm (they all are around here).  It promotes trusting in the Lord. The Lord is like the mountains; he’s there forever.  (Fun fact: according to continental drift theory, the mountains aren’t there forever).

I do like the line, “Do good, Lord, to the good.”

PSALM 126

This is a psalm about the sheer joy of returning to Jerusalem after the Babylonian Captivity.  I can’t quite tell what the time frame is.  The first half makes is seem like it’s something that’s already happened, but the second half makes it seem like it’s something the psalmist hopes will happen.

I assume it’s the latter, and the first half of the psalm is just something of a daydream he’s having; a “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” sort of moment. 

PSALM 127

This psalm has two main thoughts.  First, all labor is in vain unless the Lord is involved.  The phrase “In vain” is used three times in the first two verses, and the worse “unless” comes up twice in the first verse alone. 

Then comes the second stanza that frankly feels a little like a different psalm, where the psalm glories in having sons.  Both halves of the psalm are well done and nicely written, but I’m not sure what one has to do with the other.

My paternal grandmother would like this one.  She loved having sons a lot. 

I hope this psalmist had a lot of sons instead of daughters.  I’d hate to think someone with a lot of daughters would write something like this.  I have an aunt and uncle you had seven kids – all girls.  They felt the same way about their daughters as this psalmist says you should feel about having sons.

PSALM 128

We’re still in the midst of Short Psalm Valhalla.  This six verse-r is about how wonderful life is if you fear the Lord.  Your wife will be fruitful, your kids will be great, and life will be wonderful.  It’s a well-executed psalm.

PSALM 129

At eight verses, this is actually the longest psalm since #124 (which was also eight verses). 

It’s an “us versus them” psalm about how bad a guy’s enemies are treating him.  But don’t worry – God has just cut him free.  So all hail the Lord!

PSLAM 130

It’s a psalm appeals to God for mercy.  It’s OK, but nothing special.  The most distinctive feature is that a line is repeated back-to-back.  The end of one sentence is “more than sentinels for daybreak.” Then the next sentence begins “more than sentinels for daybreak.”  It’s a bit odd, but it actually works.

PSALM 131

This is a psalm about being humble that’s attributed to David.  Yeah, I hope that’s a misattribution because David isn’t really my go-to guy for humbleness.  The first line says my heart isn’t proud and then we’re told he doesn’t busy himself with great matters – man, this better be a false attribution. 

It’s only three verses long, one of the shortest psalms of all.

PSALM 132

Well, it’s been a nice run, but we finally have a psalm that hits double-digits in its verse count.  18 verses!  It’s practically “War and Peace” and the last bunching of psalm stubs.

It’s just a recap of the covenant of David.  In it, David promises to worship God and find a place for him in this world (the temple is son Solomon will build) and in return God pledges that David’s line will forever rule Israel.

It’s clear that this psalm is from the Babylonian Captivity.  The psalmist wants God to remember this.  He wants to go back to Zion.  It’s an OK psalm, but it’s more a history lesson than anything.  Most of it is pretty dispassionate under the circumstances.

PSALM 133

Like Psalm 131, this is just three verses long.  It’s a version of a community where people get along.  The first line reads, “How good and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell together as one!”  That does sound good and pleasant. But it’s a shame the psalmist doesn’t really elaborate much beyond that, because this could’ve been one of the better psalms after a start like that.

PSALM 134

For the third time in the last four psalms, this is just three verses long.  And it’s just a psalm praising God.  Well, that’s the type of psalm I get the least out of, and with just a modest length that there really isn’t much to get out of it anyway.  Eh, next. 

PSALM 135

OK, finally back with some longer psalms and Psalm 135 is a rockin’ psalm in praise of the Lord.  Normally praise of Lord psalms don’t do much for me (that’s life as an non-believer), but this one – I dunno.  It had a good beat and I could dance to it.

It’s just so exuberant.  It's a rockin’ psalm.  It begins by calling for praise of God, and then gives a bunch of reasons.  But it also keeps the energy of the opening verses.  I can’t give a good reason why I liked this one so much, other than to say I felt all of its exclamation points where earned.  I guess it just seemed like such an honest and open celebration.

It gets a little weird midway through, though.  You get all these lines celebrating God, and then you’re told, “He struck down Egypt’s firstborn.” Er, wait.  Yeah, I know he did and I get that it’s a sign of his power – but are we really making that a source of celebration?  Hurrah, he killed children!  Yeah, that’s weird.

It also goes back and forth on the existence of other gods.  Early on, it says hat “our Lord is great than all gods.”  That indicates polytheism is real.  But later on it notes, “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands” so they aren’t just foreign gods, but false gods.  So monotheism it is.  It’s also well written, as it says of the idols, “They have mouths but do not speak; they have eyes but do not see; They have ears but do not hear, nor is there breath in their mouths.”  Well done, psalmist, well done.

When this psalm is finished, I felt that someone should strike a power chord on a guitar.  It just seemed like a good way to end this one.

ROCK ON!

PSALM 136

This one reads like the B-side to Psalm 135.  Actually, it might be better to call it a rough draft of Psalm 135.  It’s the same basic psalm – a praise of the Lord.  It’s full of events from the Torah explaining why God is great.  It even uses some of the same events, including the tenth plague.  In fact, not only do both psalms note some kings God slew, but they even note the same ones!

I really hope this is the work of a different psalmist than Psalm 135, because if it’s the same guy, he’s clearly copying himself too much.

This psalm does have some originality.  It has a refrain.  In fact, I think it’s the biggest refrain in all the psalms so far.  Every single verse ends with the line, “for his mercy endures forever.”  Well, if you’re going to praise God, praising him for mercy is a quality reason.  (But it does lead to some odd moments, as we’re told how he kills all the Egyptian first born, and then the next line is about his mercy.  Yeah, that’s a bad fit). 

26 verses, 26 times God’s mercy endures forever.  I believe that is a record. 

Again, ROCK ON! 

PSALM 137

This is one of the most beautifully written psalms of all.  It’s a short psalm (nine verses) but it’s one of the most memorable.  It begins with maybe the most beautiful line in the entire books of psalms (and perhaps of the entire Bible): “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat weeping when we remembered of Zion.”

Right away, you know the time and place of this psalm (in Babylon, during the captivity) and you get the mood – a sad longing for what once was but no longer is.

The sad mood of remembrance continues.  The captors torment the psalmist and his brook, asking for them to sing a song of Zion.  But how can we sing those sings in a foreign land?   I suppose he means the triumphant psalms and songs of David’s success – which would be greeted with gleeful, ironic laughs from the Babylonians. 

But the psalmist pledges he’ll never forget it: “If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget.  May my tongue stick to my palate if I do not remember you.”  Again, it’s just well written.

So you can imagine the horror that you get when you get to the last line of the psalm, which is the most disgusted and morally reprehensible line in the entire Bible.  The psalmist says of the Babylonians: “Blessed the one who seizes your children and smashes them against the rock.”

GAAAHHH!!

Holy smokes – it’s a call for child murder.  That, that – that isn’t what you expect.  That said, it is foreshadowed as he doesn’t like the Babylonians.  And it fits in with the theme of many psalms of pitting good versus evil and calling for vengeance.  But this is so stark and sudden.  You go from melancholy to murder just like that. And not just any murder, but the murder of children!  Scary reality: this last line sounds like something out of the Holocaust. 

Thus in nine short verses Psalm 137 show the Bible at its best and worst.  

Click here for the final psalms