Psalms for Everyone, Part 2

Psalms 73-15

John Goldingay

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781611643770
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Westminster John Knox Press is pleased to present the seventeen-volume Old Testament for Everyone series. Internationally respected Old Testament scholar John Goldingay addresses Scripture from Genesis to Malachi in such a way that even the most challenging passages are explained simply and concisely. The series is perfect for daily devotions, group study, or personal visits with the Bible.

In this volume, Goldingay explores Psalms 73-15. The psalms, Goldingay says, show us four ways to speak to God: in words of praise, thanksgiving, trust, and supplication. Goldingay provides brief commentary on each psalm and shows how each one can be relevant to contemporary life.

PSALM 73

God Redeems Now

Composition. Asaph’s.

¹ Indeed, God is good to Israel,

to the pure in heart.

² But I—my feet all but turned aside,

my steps were nearly made to slip.

³ Because I was fixated on the exultant,

on the well-being of the faithless that I can see.

⁴ Because there are no pressures threatening their death;

their chest is portly.

⁵ In human burdens they have no part;

they are not afflicted with other people.

⁶ Therefore majesty lies around their neck,

though a coat consisting of violence wraps around them.

⁷ Their eye bulges because of hardness;

the schemes in their mind have overflowed.

⁸ They scoff and speak of evildoing,

from their position on high they speak of extortion.

⁹ They have set their mouth in the heavens,

and their tongue walks about on the earth.

¹⁰ Thus blows come again and again to his people,

and abundant water is drained by them.

¹¹ But they say, “How does God recognize it?

Is there recognition with the Most High?”

¹² There—these are the faithless people,

carefree forever, as they have amassed wealth.

¹³ Indeed, was it for nothing that I had kept my heart clean

and washed my hands in innocence,

¹⁴ when I have come to be afflicted all day long,

and my reproof happens morning by morning?

¹⁵ If I had said I would speak out thus—

there, I would have betrayed the company of your children.

¹⁶ But when I thought about how to understand this,

it was a burden in my eyes,

¹⁷ until I came to God’s great sanctuary,

so that I might consider their end.

¹⁸ Indeed, you will set them among deceptions;

you are making them fall to lies.

¹⁹ How they are coming to destruction suddenly;

they are come to an end, they are finished, through terrors.

²⁰ Like a dream when one wakes up, Lord,

when one stirs, you will despise their shadow.

²¹ When my mind is embittered,

and my heart—I am cut through,

²² then I am stupid and I do not understand;

I became a monster with you.

²³ But I have been continually with you;

you have held my right hand.

²⁴ By your purpose you lead me,

and afterward you will take me to honor.

²⁵ Whom do I have in the heavens?—

and with you, I have not wanted anyone on the earth.

²⁶ When my flesh and my mind are spent,

God is my mind’s crag and my very own forever.

²⁷ Because there—the people who are far from you perish;

you are terminating everyone who is unfaithful to you.

²⁸ But me—nearness to God is good for me;

I have made the Lord Yahweh my refuge,

so as to speak out about all your acts.

Last night we went to a concert by rock-country-bluegrass-folk artist Steve Earle. I first heard him at Nottingham Rock City when he was still fairly fresh out of prison where he had been for drug-related offenses. Twenty years later in a club in Disneyland (!), one of his songs declared that he now believes in prophecy and miracles, and “Yeah, I believe in God, and God ain’t me…. I believe in God, but God ain’t us.” Steve Earle was washed up, finished, but he told the audience when introducing another of his songs, “I had my second chance,” though he also rejoices in the fact that every day is another second chance. He has been married seven times (twice to the same woman), “but this is the first time sober.” When I listen to an addict who is now so full of life, commitment, and creativity referring to how things once were, it can mean I am listening to someone who embodies the miracle of God’s reaching into someone’s life, and it encourages my faith and hope.

Psalm 73 talks about persecution rather than addiction, but it speaks of that same miracle as an object of faith and hope: “By your purpose you lead me, and afterward you will take me to honor.” If the psalmist were an addict, it would be someone who has just come to his or her senses and knows that it is impossible to pull oneself out of the pit of addiction and is beginning to see that there is a higher power with whose help it might be possible to climb out. In the psalmist’s case, coming to one’s senses means coming to see that this higher power is also bigger than his persecutors.

In terms of the typology I outlined in the introduction, Psalm 73 is a kind of psalm of trust but also a kind of thanksgiving psalm. In Psalms for Everyone, Part 1, I noted that the psalms see two stages in God’s answering a prayer. Stage one means that God has heard the prayer and made a commitment to doing something concerning what we prayed about. Stage two means God has actually acted. Psalm 73 belongs between stage one and stage two, and it looks back on the process of coming to a conviction that God is going to act. So in accounting for its attitude of trust it tells a story like a thanksgiving.

The beginning sums up the point. The psalmist has reached a point where it is possible to make a positive affirmation of God’s goodness to Israel—though the faithless people who appear in subsequent verses are quite likely to belong to Israel, so the psalm nuances its point by noting that this affirmation about God’s goodness concerns Israelites who are pure in heart, the kind of people who have the right attitude to God and to other people. Affirming the point also reminds the people who listen to this thanksgiving that they need to belong to the company of the pure in heart. After the affirmation indicating the stance the psalmist can now take, the psalm tells the story that lies behind the affirmation. It notes that many people are doing very well in life and are proud of it. They are arrogant in relation to God and thus in relation to other human beings. “Their eye bulges because of hardness”—maybe the phrase is equivalent to being hard-hearted; it suggests looking at other people in a callous way. Further, the reason they are doing so well is that they treat other people so callously. They bring suffering to people and threaten to overwhelm them like a flood.

Western culture often encourages us simply to make it our ambition to join the people who are doing well, and the “prosperity gospel” joins in. What’s the point of being a person who is pure in heart and whose hands are not stained by the blood of the innocent? The answer to the question came to the psalmist through going to the sanctuary. The psalmist came to realize once more the truth that many psalms presuppose. The fact that faithless people are doing well now does not mean they will do well forever, and the fact that innocent people are suffering does not mean they will suffer forever. God really is involved in earthly life and will restore the innocent person to honor and see that justice is done to the faithless. While the Old Testament recognizes that things do not always work out that way, it also recognizes that the occasions when it doesn’t work out can easily come to dominate our thinking in excessive fashion. At least, that had been the psalmist’s experience. But going into the sanctuary reinforced the awareness of God’s involvement. After all, the faithless have been pressurizing and causing trouble, but the psalmist is alive to tell the tale: “I have been continually with you; you have held my right hand.” And God will continue to do so. So I don’t need to look to some other god or for some earthly way of pulling myself out of the hole I am in. No, I am powerless to do anything about my situation. I am not God. But God is God.

It is frustrating that the psalm doesn’t tell us what it was about going to the sanctuary that reshaped the psalmist’s thinking and attitude. Maybe it was the telling of the story of God’s involvement with Israel, especially the deliverance from Egypt and the putting down of the Egyptians. Maybe it was hearing other people’s testimonies to God’s acts in their lives. Maybe it was hearing the temple choir sing of God’s greatness. Maybe it was simply being in the place where God was present, invisibly enthroned. The psalm’s failure to clarify this point for us invites us to infer that the point doesn’t lie there. The point is that in some way the psalmist’s thinking got reframed (as happened to Steve Earle through a twelve-step program), ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Psalm 73: God Redeems Now
• Psalm 109: How to Deal with Being Swindled
• Glossary