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Wednesday 10/23/24
Thru the Bible: Psalm Book II: chapters 58-61
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When an Edomite is a Amarean
Psalm 58:1-11,
Sadly there is more I can say about the superscription of this Psalm that it’s content. Not because the content lacks significance, but rather that it is so plainly written that there is little I could offer in the way of enhancing your grasp of it.
We’ve already seen the superscript of this Psalm last week in Psalm 57 and it occurs 3 other times as well. Here in Psalm 58, in Psalm 59 and in Psalm 75 written by Asaph and it appears in Book III. This introduction has two variants.
One goes like this:
“ For the choir director Jeduthun”
The other like this:
“according to the al-tashcheth style”
Personally I believe they are probably both correct. I believe the text should read, “For the choir director Jeduthun, according to the al-tashcheth style.”
Al-tashcheth means “do not destroy” which may be as I said, a reference to an actual style of music which bore that name, or perhaps a well known song which began with these words and therefore would give Jeduthun the music direct a clue as to how to put this Psalm to music. Much about this is ambiguous and is therefore not a hill to die on. However, that there was a real music director named Jeduthun is certain and so I will introduce him to you.
Psalm 58…
“(1) For the choir director Jeduthun”
Ok here is a little history. Jeduthun was a Levite, who along with Asaph and Heman were directors of music and seers who reported directly to King David. These and their sons continued their administrations under Solomon after David died.
1Chron. 16:37-42,
“(37) So he left Asaph and his brothers there before the ark of the covenant of the LORD to minister before the ark regularly, as every day’s work required; (38) and Obed-Edom with his sixty-eight brethren, including Obed-Edom the son of Jeduthun, and Hosah, to be gatekeepers;
(39) and Zadok the priest and his brethren the priests, before the tabernacle of the LORD at the high place that was at Gibeon, (40) to offer burnt offerings to the LORD on the altar of burnt offering regularly morning and evening, and to do according to all that is written in the Law of the LORD which He commanded Israel;
(41) and with them Heman and Jeduthun and the rest who were chosen, who were designated by name, to give thanks to the LORD, because His mercy endures forever; (42) and with them Heman and Jeduthun, to sound aloud with trumpets and cymbals and the musical instruments of God. Now the sons of Jeduthun were gatekeepers.”
1Chron. 25:1-3,
“(1) Moreover David and the captains of the army separated for the service some of the sons of Asaph, of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who should prophesy with harps, stringed instruments, and cymbals. And the number of the skilled men performing their service was:
(2) Of the sons ofAsaph: Zaccur, Joseph, Nethaniah, and Asharelah; the sons of Asaph were under the direction of Asaph, who prophesied according to the order of the king.
(3) Of Jeduthun, the sons of Jeduthun: Gedaliah, Zeri, Jeshaiah, Shimei, Hashabiah, and Mattithiah, six, under the direction of their father Jeduthun, who prophesied with a harp to give thanks and to praise the LORD.”
2Chron. 5:11-14,
“(11) And it came to pass when the priests came out of the Most Holy Place (for all the priests who were present had sanctified themselves, without keeping to their divisions), (12) and the Levites who were the singers, all those of Asaph and Heman and Jeduthun, with their sons and their brethren, stood at the east end of the altar, clothed in white linen, having cymbals, stringed instruments and harps, and with them one hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets—
(13) indeed it came to pass, when the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the LORD, and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and praised the LORD, saying:
“For He is good, For His mercy endures forever,”
that the house, the house of the LORD, was filled with a cloud, (14) so that the priests could not continue ministering because of the cloud; for the glory of the LORD filled the house of God.”
There isn’t much to go on as to the identity of the protagonists against whom David is calling for justice. However, since much of these Psalms seem to be categorized within a certain time period, it is a pretty safe assumption that these “mighty ones, who judge” are either those elders who execute judgments at the gates for Israel OR Saul’s immediate counselors whom Saul consulted regarding David – how to defeat him.
Psalm 58…
“A Davidic Miktam. Do you really speak righteously, you mighty ones? Do you judge people fairly?
(2) No, you practice injustice in your hearts; with your hands you weigh out violence in the land.
(3) The wicked go astray from the womb; liars err from birth. (4) They have venom like the venom of a snake, like the deaf cobra that stops up its ears, (5) that does not listen to the sound of the charmers who skillfully weave spells.
(6) God, knock the teeth out of their mouths; LORD, tear out the young lions’ fangs.
(7) They will vanish like water that flows by; they will aim their useless arrows. (8) Like a slug that moves along in slime, like a woman’s miscarried child, they will not see the sun. (9) Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns–whether green or burning–He will sweep them away.
(10) The righteous will rejoice when he sees the retribution; he will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. (11) Then people will say,
“Yes, there is a reward for the righteous! There is a God who judges on earth!”
As we have to often note in Psalms, enemies under the Old Covenant were treated differently than they are under the mercy of the New Covenant.
Some of you may wonder why that is. I mean, I know you understand the difference between the covenants, but the enemies of God’s people are not part of that covenant so why are they treated so differently from one covenant to the other?
Well part of the answer is in the covenant itself. Jesus did not just die for our sins, but also for the sins of the whole world. All sin has been dealt with, mankind simply has to enter into a trusting and submissive relationship with the One Who addressed sin once and for all. If one enters His kingdom by trusting Him, submitting to Him and proclaiming Him as their new Lord – the price paid is applied to them.
The gospel is the spreading of the good news that sin has been dealt with, right standing with God is available to all and Christ has been judged for all who will submit to Him in faith.
That being true, the only true enemy we have is the devil and his angels and even he has already been defeated. As such we pray blessings on our would be enemies, and ask the goodness of God to lead them to a change of heart.
Another reason is more about us than our enemies. Now that we are born again, we have the nature of God within us. It is our primary goal in life to assume the nature of Jesus Christ. As such we do not pray against our enemies, but rather for them. Even as our Lord on the cross petitioned the Father for the forgiveness of His tormentors and executioners.
So the major differences in the way we pray to God regarding our enemies and the way those under the old covenant prayed are based upon the covenants themselves and the new nature we now have in Christ. There is more to it than this oversimplification, but this is enough to get your mind going in the right direction.
The one piece of instruction I’d offer regarding the judgment of unjust officials is to pray mercy for them. Pray blessings and never under any circumstances curse them or desire their harm. And if you find yourself in the unhappy position of being the target of their persecutions – still pray for them and commit your soul to God as to a faithful Creator.
Psalm 59:1-17,
“(1) For the choir director: “Do Not Destroy.”
A Davidic Miktam. When Saul sent agents to watch the house and kill him.”
There is only one place in scripture that seems to fit the stated condition and that is found in 1 Samuel 19:8-12 which reads,
“(8) Now once again there was war. So David went out to fight the Philistines. He defeated them thoroughly and they ran away from him. (9) Then an evil spirit from the LORD came upon Saul. He was sitting in his house with his spear in his hand, while David was playing the lyre. (10) Saul tried to nail David to the wall with the spear, but he escaped from Saul’s presence and the spear drove into the wall. David escaped quickly that night. (11) Saul sent messengers to David’s house to guard it and to kill him in the morning. Then David’s wife Michal told him, “If you do not save yourself tonight, tomorrow you will be dead!” (12) So Michal lowered David through the window, and he ran away and escaped.”
The difficulty with this is that in the body of this same Psalm David mentions foreign enemies or foreign nations which he did not encounter until later. So it is possible that this was a song in development, beginning in his heart when Saul had his house surrounded and ending later when his enemies were many.
“Deliver me from my enemies, my God; protect me from those who rise up against me. (2) Deliver me from those who practice sin, and save me from men of bloodshed.
(3) LORD, look! They set an ambush for me. Powerful men attack me, but not because of any sin or rebellion of mine. (4) For no fault of mine, they run and take up a position. Awake to help me, and take notice.
(5) You, LORD God of Hosts, God of Israel, rise up to punish all the nations; do not show grace to any wicked traitors. Selah
(6) They return at evening, snarling like dogs and prowling around the city. (7) Look, they spew from their mouths–sharp words from their lips. “For who,” they say, “will hear?”
(8) But You laugh at them, LORD; You ridicule all the nations.
(9) I will keep watch for You, my Strength, because God is my stronghold. (10) My faithful God will come to meet me; God will let me look down on my adversaries.
(11) Do not kill them; otherwise, my people will forget.
By Your power, make them homeless wanderers and bring them down, Lord, our shield.
(12) The sin of their mouths is the word of their lips, so let them be caught in their pride.
They utter curses and lies. (13) Consume them in rage; consume them until they are gone. Then they will know to the ends of the earth that God rules over Jacob. Selah
(14) And they return at evening, snarling like dogs and prowling around the city. (15) They scavenge for food; they growl if they are not satisfied.
(16) But I will sing of Your strength and will joyfully proclaim Your faithful love in the morning. For You have been a stronghold for me, a refuge in my day of trouble.
(17) To You, my Strength, I sing praises, because God is my stronghold–my faithful God.”
It is a strange concept for me even now, when I consider God as the Almighty – to be referred to as “my faithful God”, and yet, in the intimate connections I’ve known Him in at various points along my journey I can so completely identify with those words to have written them myself.
Psalm 60:1-12,
“(1) For the choir director: according to “The Lily of Testimony.”
A Davidic Miktam for teaching.
When he fought with Aram-naharaim and Aram-zobah, and Joab returned and struck Edom in the Valley of Salt, killing 12,000.
This account is found in 2 Samuel 10 and 1 Chron. 19. The difficulty is that these passages refer to a battle with the Ammonites and the Arameans. Now this is not a huge difficulty but it is one that could trip you up so I thought I’d address it.
Deuteronomy 26:5 refers to Jacob himself as a wandering Aramean. This is because he was semi-nomadic throughout a portion of his life and because both his mother and grandfather were from Mesopotamia which the Hebrews considered to be Arameans.
As you know Jacob’s brother was Esau from whom came the Edomites and there is where the connection is between the Arameans and the Edomites in the minds of the Jews. It was more a matter of lineage than geological location.
Joab, as you may remember, was the General who commanded David’s army.
2 Samuel 10:1-19,
“(1) Later the king of the Ammonites died and his son Hanun succeeded him.
(2) David said, “I will express my loyalty to Hanun son of Nahash just as his father was loyal to me.”
So David sent his servants with a message expressing sympathy over his father’s death.
When David’s servants entered the land of the Ammonites, (3) the Ammonite officials said to their lord Hanun,
“Do you really think David is trying to honor your father by sending these messengers to express his sympathy? No, David has sent his servants to you to get information about the city and spy on it so they can overthrow it!”
(4) So Hanun seized David’s servants and shaved off half of each one’s beard. He cut the lower part of their robes off so that their buttocks were exposed, and then sent them away.
(5) Messengers told David what had happened, so he summoned them, for the men were thoroughly humiliated. The king said,
“Stay in Jericho until your beards have grown again; then you may come back.”
(6) When the Ammonites realized that David was disgusted with them, they sent and hired 20,000 foot soldiers from Aram Beth Rehob and Aram Zobah, in addition to 1000 men from the king of Maacah and 12,000 men from Ish–tob.
(7) When David heard the news, he sent Joab and the entire army to meet them.
(8) The Ammonites marched out and were deployed for battle at the entrance of the city gate, while the men from Aram Zobah, Rehob, Ish–tob, and Maacah were by themselves in the field.
(9) When Joab saw that the battle would be fought on two fronts, he chose some of Israel’s best men and deployed them against the Arameans.
(10) He put his brother Abishai in charge of the rest of the army and they were deployed against the Ammonites.
(11) Joab said, “If the Arameans start to overpower me, you come to my rescue. If the Ammonites start to overpower you, I will come to your rescue.
(12) Be strong! Let’s fight bravely for the sake of our people and the cities of our God! The LORD will do what He decides is best!”
(13) So Joab and his men marched out to do battle with the Arameans, and they fled before him.
(14) When the Ammonites saw the Arameans flee, they fled before his brother Abishai and went into the city. Joab withdrew from fighting the Ammonites and returned to Jerusalem.
(15) When the Arameans realized that they had been defeated by Israel, they consolidated their forces. (16) Then Hadadezer sent for Arameans from beyond the Euphrates River, and they came to Helam.
Shobach, the general in command of Hadadezer’s army, led them.
(17) When David was informed, he gathered all Israel, crossed the Jordan River, and came to Helam.
The Arameans deployed their forces against David and fought with him. (18) The Arameans fled before Israel.
David killed 700 Aramean charioteers and 40,000 foot soldiers. He also struck down Shobach, the general in command of the army, who died there.
(19) When all the kings who were subject to Hadadezer saw they were defeated by Israel, they made peace with Israel and became subjects of Israel. The Arameans were no longer willing to help the Ammonites.”
Psalm 60…
“God, You have rejected us; You have broken out against us; You have been angry. Restore us!
(2) You have shaken the land and split it open. Heal its fissures, for it shudders.
(3) You have made Your people suffer hardship; You have given us a wine to drink that made us stagger. (4) You have given a signal flag to those who fear You, so that they can flee before the archers. Selah
(5) Save with Your right hand, and answer me, so that those You love may be rescued.
(6) God has spoken in His sanctuary: “I will triumph! I will divide up Shechem. I will apportion the Valley of Succoth. (7) Gilead is Mine, Manasseh is Mine, and Ephraim is My helmet; Judah is My scepter. (8) Moab is My washbasin; on Edom I throw My sandal. Over Philistia I shout in triumph.”
(9) Who will bring me to the fortified city? Who will lead me to Edom?
(10) Is it not You, God, Who have rejected us?
God, You do not march out with our armies. (11) Give us aid against the foe, for human help is worthless. (12) With God we will perform valiantly; He will trample our foes.”
Now I will freely admit that other than the superscript to this Psalm, I see very little in the Psalm that sounds like the account we just read in 2 Samuel. The only thing I can assume is that these are the words David spoke in response to the way King Hanun treated his messengers. David had sent these messengers in good faith, with the intention of offering sympathy and continuing an alliance they had enjoyed with the Ammonites under the reign of Hunan’s father. This response showed an unwillingness to continue that alliance and so David may have felt as if God had rejected them.
While that would fit the known facts, it does seem a bit of an overreaction, which may have more to do with the nature of Hebrew poetry and songs than anything else.
You see, unlike English, Hebrew poetry relied upon two devices to emphasize meaning – these are parallelism and figures of speech.
There are 5 types of parallelism – synonymous, antithetical, synthetic, climactic and emblematic.
The 10 most common figures of speech include: Simile, Metaphor, Implication, Hyperbole, Paronomasia, Pleonasm, Rhetorical questions, Metonymy, Anthropomorphism and Zoomorphism.
I believe David’s seemingly overstated thought of God turning against them to be an example of Hyperbole which is the literary use of exaggeration for the purpose of stressing a point.
Many take exception with the idea that anything in scripture is being overstated, but I believe that to be a miscalculation on their part due to an unscriptural view of scripture.
We have to understand that all language and its various parts were created by God Himself. So to claim that any expression of language is in itself somehow beyond God’s use in scripture is itself a little agnostic. God both created and makes use of all He creates.
In the end, the Bible is a book composed in a language and therefore makes use of all the linguistic devices those languages employ.
Lee Strobel in his book “The case for the Real Jesus” quoted an uncited British author who said, “We should treat the Bible like any other book in order to show it’s not like any other book.” and in principle I agree with him. After all it was Jesus Himself Who said to the Jewish leaders, “(39) You study the scriptures thoroughly because you think in them you possess eternal life, and it is these same scriptures that testify about me, (40) but you are not willing to come to me so that you may have life.” – John 5:39-40
By this Jesus was not diminishing the role or the importance of the scriptures, but He was emphasizing that the scriptures were not the end-game, but were merely a means to an end. They are the invitation to come to know God in reality. They are the handshake leading to the relationship, but they are not the person or the relationship themselves.
One big mistake people make who bring unrealistic and even unscriptural expectations to the Bible is that they attempt to understand all of scripture literally. Now they do this with the most honest and reverent intentions, but it cuts them off from many blessings and creates untold difficulties by doing so. To be certain, the historical portions of scripture are intended to be read and understood literally, but even then there are times when the natural language might employ the use of linguistic devices which are not to be understood literally and I think these points are driven home quite nicely by our last Psalm of the evening – Psalm 61.
Psalm 61:1-8,
“(1) For the choir director: on stringed instruments. Davidic.
God, hear my cry; pay attention to my prayer. (2) I call to You from the ends of the earth when my heart is without strength.
Here David uses the words “ends of the earth” which we know to not be literal on several grounds.
First, David never traveled outside of the middle east though he knew lands existed further out than his personal travels. So even if this passage were implying there were points at which the earth itself ended – being flat rather than a globe – he still never visited there, much less cried out to God from every ending point under heaven.
Secondly, the words “ends of the earth” do not mean termination points, but the farthest and most remote places relative to the land given to the Israelites. Again, this is still hyperbole and cannot be taken as literal. It either means that David was himself far from Jerusalem – the place God dwelt between the cherubs over the Ark of the Covenant and the location God had placed His name OR that such was how he felt – far, distant and removed from God’s immediate presence and help.
Lead me to a rock that is high above me, (3) for You have been a refuge for me, a strong tower in the face of the enemy.
We know that David here is referring to God as His rock, a metaphor or simile often employed by the Psalmists. In no way is scripture ever instructing us that God is somehow a piece of granite or marble or limestone, but that He is solid, secure, fixed and immovable. A solid and sound help in times of need.
(4) I will live in Your tent forever and take refuge under the shelter of Your wings. Selah
Again here we have a Hebrew figure of speech which is both implicative and zoomorphism. That is, an attribute of an animal (in this case a bird – possibly a hen as Jesus referenced regarding God’s protection over Israel) is being cast as belonging to God which He Himself may or may not actually have. I think one would be going beyond the pale to claim it impossible that God has wings, since His attributes are seen throughout creation, but this verse is not saying He does authoritatively by inspiration. It is a comparative analogy.
“(5) God, You have heard my vows; You have given a heritage to those who fear Your name.
(6) Add days to the king’s life; may his years span many generations.”
David is probably not asking for a supernaturally long life span, but rather is referring to his continuation before God’s presence forever as the next verse states.
“7) May he sit enthroned before God forever; appoint faithful love and truth to guard him.
(8) Then I will continually sing of Your name, fulfilling my vows day by day.”
The Bible is first and foremost an inspired writing revealing God. It is secondarily a writing which reveals Him relationally through those who knew and related to Him in faith. It is a book of stories – real, not imagined, but stories nonetheless. Life has a story shape to it and so this makes the Bible relevant and relatable. It draws upon all of the wonder devices which God baked into languages, making it a rich and multilayered book which can be read, meditated upon and studied throughout one’s life without ever coming close to exhausting what it has to offer. Finally it is God’s hand outstretched to mankind to come and know Him better.
Blessings!
Tri
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