Having grown up in a family in which my dad had a steady job and our schools were safe and our churches more often encouraging than not, deliverance is a hard concept for me.\u00a0 What does it look like?\u00a0 Not everyone has this problem because not everyone has mastered the art of projecting illusions.\u00a0 But those of us who do imagine ourselves to be self-contained could use a refresher.<\/p>\n
Psalm 31 offers such a primer.\u00a0 It’s an odd psalm really.\u00a0 It seems to go in several directions at once, almost as though its creator wished to evoke either the mental turmoil of the one seeking deliverance or the ecstasy of the one receiving it.\u00a0 Some scholars have thought of it as two or even three different psalms welded together (much as one sees in 1-2 Chronicles, for example).\u00a0 This is possible, but the text has come down to us as a single work.\u00a0 As the commentator Samuel Terrien puts it, “It is a cry of fear and love for the Lord, which ends with an exhortation addressed to all true adorers of Yahweh.”\u00a0 Nicely said.<\/p>\n
The psalm opens by expressing confidence in the God who provides deliverance, coupled with a plea for further deliverance (v. 1 [2 in Hebrew]).\u00a0 On the one hand, the psalmist sees God’s rescue as an abiding reality, as one of those anchor points for the life of faith.\u00a0 Yet, on the other hand, deliverance is also an ongoing need, and thus a future possibility.\u00a0 It is never a final result, a reality that is fixed and immovable.\u00a0 Deliverance is a process, and it is also a relationship in which the one delivered recognizes her or his ongoing contingency and thus dependence on God.\u00a0 (And as Christians aware of the eschatological dimensions of God’s work, we would add that final deliverance comes only when God makes all things new and draws us into the divine being at the end of time.)<\/p>\n
The psalm then offers us an anatomy of deliverance that includes the end of shame (or perhaps we would say, alienation), moral clarity about idolatry and the ways it produces disloyalty to God, a deeper awareness of the possibility of humans having a trusting relationship with God, and finally a new capacity for celebration concentrating on the praise of God.<\/p>\n
This last part, beginning, in verse 19 (20 in Hebrew), seems to many scholars to be a separate psalm.\u00a0 Perhaps it originally was a free-standing hymn.\u00a0 No one knows.\u00a0 But I am interested in the fact that it has been associated with the cry for deliverance early in Psalm 31.\u00a0 What is the connection?\u00a0 Since the association of two such elements appears in many psalms, it would be good to know the answer.<\/p>\n
Perhaps part of the answer is that human beings who can celebrate and can give due honor to God (and as appropriate, to other men and women) are free.\u00a0 They are no longer enslaved to whatever evil had previously shackled them.\u00a0 Even if they remain in the outward condition of subjection to evil, their capacity for rejoicing marks them as liberated people.<\/p>\n
This last idea requires some further development.\u00a0 Hear the words:<\/p>\n
How great is your goodness, which you hid away for those honoring you!<\/p>\n
You made them for those taking refuge in you, in the presence of human beings.<\/p>\n
You hid them in a secret place before your face [perhaps: a secret place only you knew about],<\/p>\n
away from human contamination.<\/p>\n
You hid them in a booth away from quarrelsome [or maybe, gossipy] tongues.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The image is of a God who tucks away the best possible gifts until human beings truly need them.\u00a0 The psalmist expresses the confidence that not only God’s work, but even the timing and execution of that work, reflect divine care for our weakness.\u00a0 Such hard-won confidence, the result of suffering and spiritual struggle, allows the psalmist to celebrate in public and to invite others to join in, whatever their personal experiences.\u00a0 And so the deliverance spreads, accentuated and reinforced by the words of a community whose collective memories allow it to recall its best experiences before God as a model for all things to come.<\/p>\n
Perhaps there is no better way to end these remarks than with the ending exhortation of the psalm itself: <\/p>\n
“Love Yahweh, all his loyal followers, Yahweh the protector of the trusting and the ruler over the rest who act too proudly.\u00a0 Be strong all who hope in Yahweh, and [God] will strengthen your heart!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u00a0 This is how delivered people talk.\u00a0 I’d like to join them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having grown up in a family in which my dad had a steady job and our schools were safe and our churches more often encouraging than not, deliverance is a hard concept for me.\u00a0 What does it look like?\u00a0 Not everyone has this problem because not everyone has mastered the art of projecting illusions.\u00a0 But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[64075,2670,1300,64098,64097],"class_list":["post-594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bible","tag-confidence","tag-mark-hamilton","tag-psalms","tag-worship"],"yoast_head":"\n
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