It has been a long time -- one year minus a day -- since I published anything in this series, and frankly that post wasn't very strong. Which means it is past time to get back in the saddle, especially with Ash Wednesday having come and gone.
I was recently asked to speak online about the Bible to some villagers from Pakisan, and happily said yes. When subsequently asked which Bible passage I would discuss, I felt a bit pushed and rushed (yup, that's one of my character flaws) and hurriedly said "Psalm 40."
I wish I could say I chose that psalm because it's always spoken to me, but that would be a lie. Instead, it popped into my head because at that moment one of my brain cells happened to remember that U2 often closes their concerts by performing an abbreviated version of it.
Who am I to ignore a voice that enters my head at a time like that? It could be the "low whisper" mentioned in 1 Kings 19:12, or the "word behind" mentioned in Isaiah 30:21, right? Probably not, but maybe so.
* * * * *
It has been said that "the Bible is meant to be studied, not read," and Psalm 40 provides a good example of why this is true. Only 17 verses long, it fits onto a single page of most Bibes and can be finished in a breeze if you are merely reading the words. I just timed myself and was done in 85 seconds.
We should not merely read words, however. We should pay close attention to what those words are, the context in which they were written, and what they meant at the time the text was composed.
Psalm 40 is attributed to King David, who reigned 3,000 years ago and whose native language was probably a nascent form of Hebrew that fizzled out of use even before Jesus was born. But the oldest surviving copy of Psalm 40 is a Greek translation written down centuries after David died. The oldest surviving Hebrew copy was not written down until circa 1,005 A.D., and is actually a translation back into Hebrew from Greek.
In the modern English translation I consider my "go-to," the ESV, the psalm's first four verses read as follows:
I waited patiently for the LORD;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
He drew me up from the pit of desctruction,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the LORD.
Blessed is the man who makes
the LORD his trust,
who does not turn to the proud,
to those who go astray after a lie!
It is tempting to traipse through these words and pay only slight attention to the adjectives and adverbs, but if you slow down and marinate in them and take each one seriously, you will find there is lots of meat on the bone.
Verse One talks not just about waiting for God but waiting patiently for him, and man oh man isn't that distinction an important one in today's world of short fuses and shrunken attention spans? We should never forget that God freed the Hebrews from Egypt and guided them to the Promised Land after four centuries of enslavement.
Verse Two talks of God not only coming to the rescue, but coming with a rescue far greater than a promotion at work or good score on a test. Rather, he pulls the psalmist from a pit of destruction then gives him a lasting, life-changing gift by securing his steps on a rock (rock was, and in many places still is, the world's foremost symbol of stability and permanence).
Verse Three credits God not with helping the psalmist to sing but with flat-out putting a whole new song in his mouth. And before you perceive something negative from the word "fear" being used, please recall that many words do not transfer directly from one language to another; it is no secret that when ancient Hebrews spoke about fear of God, they were speaking not about being scared but about being in awe, often to the point of trembling.
It is not perchance that Verse Three flows directly from referencing fear to referencing trust, with Verse Four then grabbing the baton and proclaiming that those who trust God will be "blessed." We must pay attention to both words, for what this psalm affirms is that God blesses those who trust him.
Now is not the time for my personal testimony, but I do have to mention that for many years trust was a major missing ingedient in my relationship with Christ. When I finally trusted him (and approached him without ulterior motives) he answered my plea by pulling me out of a pit that felt bottomless. It was a pit I had filled with alcohol by drinking sneakily, and heavily, almost every day for years. Had I not come to trust Jesus, I probably would have have died at the bottom of that pit several years ago.
Anyway, the word "trust" is not hidden in the psalm. It's sitting right there in the open. But we are apt to overlook it when we read casually rather than intently.
* * * * *
In June 2020 a professor at Trinity College Queensland, John Frederick, wrote of the Old and New Testaments that "without the Old, we cannot understand the New, and without the New, we have an incomplete understanding of the Old...the New Covenant is incomprehensible apart from what preceded it. The Old is in the New Revealed, the New is in the Old Concealed."
As Psalm 40 progresses, it offers glimpses of what Frederick meant.
In Verses Nine and Ten the psalmist says "I have told the glad news...I have not restrained my lips...I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation." Such lines here in the Old Testament sure seem to foreshadow the importance of carrying out the Great Commission, even though the Great Commission would not be given until after the resurrection of Christ, do they not?
Psalms can't help but be psalmy, of course, so a lament rears its head in Verse Twelve when we read that the psalmist has been "encompassed" by "evils" and "overtaken" by "inquities" more numerous "than the hairs of my head." Nevertheless faithful, he appeals to God for deliverance and the psalm closes with a pair of verses that yet again remind me of foreshadowing: Verse 16 speaks of "all who seek" being able to "rejoice and be glad," while Verse 17 sees the psalmist refer to himself as "poor and needy" without expressing even a scintilla of doubt that deliverance is coming... These sentiments will echo resoundingly much later in history, specifically in the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus declares "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3) and promises "seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened" (Matthew 7:7).
I had read Psalm 40 before, but for some reason I didn't think of those connections until I perused it again a couple weeks ago. I guess that's a good example of why we should read the Bible more than once and pay studious attention when we do. You never know what it is you're going to glean from it today compared to yesterday.
To be continued...
