Honey from the rock

More voices clamor for our attention now than ever before. Loudest of all, consumerism says we can buy the good life. And listening to any lie often enough, we believe it. So choosing which voice to heed is vital.

An Asaph psalm.

¹ Sing joyfully to God, our strength!
Shout triumphantly to Jacob’s God!
² Raise a song, strike the tambourines
play the pleasant lyre and harp.
³ Blow the ram’s horn at the new moon
at the full moon and on our feast day.[1]
⁴ Because it’s a statute for Israel
decreed by Jacob’s God.
⁵ A law he gave to Joseph’s family
when he went to war against Egypt
and I heard a voice I didn’t know.

⁶ “I relieved the load from his shoulder
and took the brick basket out of his hands.
⁷ You cried out in desperation
so I set you free.
Hidden in the thunderstorm
I answered you.
I tested you at the Waters of Meribah.[2]
⁸ Listen my people while I warn you—
if only you’d listen, Israel.
⁹ You shall have no foreign god among you.
You shall not bow down to an alien god.
¹⁰ I am Yahveh your God
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide
and I will fill it.
¹¹ But my people didn’t listen to what I said—
Israel didn’t want me.
¹² So I let them follow
the dictates of their stubborn hearts.
¹³ If only my people would listen to me
if only Israel would walk in my ways
¹⁴ how quickly I’d subdue their enemies
and conquer all their foes.
¹⁵ Those who hate Yahveh
would cringe before him
their doom being forever sealed.
¹⁶ But you I would feed
with the finest of wheat.
With wild honey from the rock
would I satisfy you.”

This psalm opens with the worship leader’s call to joyful observance of sacred festivals pointing back to the exodus. While these festivals were held only in Jerusalem, the mention of Joseph’s family alludes to Israel’s breakaway northern kingdom, making the psalm inclusive of the entire nation. The leader ends his call by admitting—as the nation’s representative—that he heard an unknown voice in the exodus, God’s voice, which then addresses us in the rest of the psalm.

God refers to various situations—from Egypt to Sinai—in which he asked the Israelites to listen, trust him and obey and they refused, unwilling to believe he had their best interests at heart and knew best. So God let them go their own way. Now, centuries later, the Israelites continue to run after foreign gods. Even so, God still counts them his people and utters his pathos-filled cry, “If only my people would listen.”

God calls his people to reject other gods and obey him wholeheartedly. Alluding to the baby bird’s total dependence on its parents, he invites them to open their mouths wide in anticipation of all he’ll provide. If only they’ll worship and trust him alone, he promises prompt protection and the very best life has to offer.

O God, you called your people Israel before they knew your voice, and you loved me like that too. Help me not to limit your grace, which counted lost rebels your people and pled with them to come home. Help me believe you’ll give me the best I could ever ask for if only I hear your voice. Amen.

During your free moments today, meditate on God’s gracious invitation:

Open your mouth wide
and I will fill it.

[1] The psalmist refers to a series of three autumn celebrations occurring in succession:  the Feast of Shelters, or Tabernacles, the Day of Atonement and New Year’s (Rosh Hashanah).

[2] In his extended plea (vv. 6-16), God alternates between addressing his people directly and speaking about them—as if to a third party.

Make your face shine on us

What do you do when you or your loved ones suffer for going astray and it seems God is behind it? Where else can you turn when you know he alone can bring you back into the light of his face?

An Asaph psalm.

¹ Listen, Shepherd of Israel
who leads Joseph’s descendants like a flock
and sits enthroned above the cherubim.[a]
Show your glorious light
² to Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh.
Call on your strength and come save us!
³ Bring us back, God!
Make your face shine on us
and we’ll be rescued. 

⁴ Yahveh God of heaven’s armies
how long will you be annoyed
by your people’s prayers?
⁵ You’ve given us only tears for food
washed down by jarfuls of yet more tears!
⁶ You’ve made us
a source of contention to our neighbors
an object of derision to our foes.
⁷ Bring us back, God of heaven’s armies!
Make your face shine on us
and we’ll be rescued.

⁸ You brought a vine out of Egypt.
You drove out the nations and planted it.
⁹ You cleared the ground
and it took root and filled the land.
¹⁰ The mountains were covered with its shade
the mighty cedars with its boughs.
¹¹ It sent out its branches to the sea
its shoots to the Euphrates.
¹² Why now have you broken down its walls
so every passer-by can plunder its fruit?
¹³ So wild boars from the forest can root it up
and every pest of the field devour it?
¹⁴ Turn back, God of heaven’s armies!
Look down from heaven and behold.
Take care of this vine.
¹⁵ Protect the root you yourself planted
the son you yourself made strong.
¹⁶ It’s been chopped down
and burnt by fire—
destroyed by your angry frown.
¹⁷ May your hand of protection
rest on the man you chose
the son of man you yourself strengthened.[b]
¹⁸ Then we’ll never turn away from you.
Give us life and we’ll call on your name.
¹⁹ Bring us back
Yahveh God of heaven’s armies.
Make your face shine on us
and we’ll be rescued.

The psalmist describes God as Israel’s shepherd-king since the ancient world often pictured kings as shepherds, protecting and providing for their people. The problem is that God isn’t doing either. The psalmist argues this in her extended metaphor of the transplanted vine, implicitly recounting Israel’s history from the Exodus to David’s expanded kingdom.[c] Instead of protecting Israel, God has broken down their wall. Instead of feeding them, he lets the nations feed on them! The psalmist’s pathos-filled cry asks God why, after putting so much into this vine, he’s now forsaken it—why Israel’s creator has become their destroyer. Not only are Israel’s prayers unanswered. They seemingly annoy God. Thus, he must turn back to them, so they can turn back to him.

Naming three tribes representative of Israel’s idolatrous northern kingdom, the psalmist identifies herself with and intercedes for God’s wayward people. She sees that Israel’s dire situation is the direct result of their abandonment by their warrior-God. So with gradually increasing intensity, she ends each of the psalm’s three sections with a refrain recognizing that God alone can rescue Israel, bring them back to him and restore them to their ancient Aaronic blessing.[d] The psalmist ends with hope, envisioning that blessing being so rich that his people will never turn away again.

Though our idols aren’t made of stone, Lord, your people are as lost today as the Israelites of long ago. We once flourished—we now languish under your frown. Turn back to us, so we can turn back to you. Look down, see our plight. Make your face shine on us and we’ll be saved! Amen.

In your free moments today, pray these words:

Bring us back, Yahveh God of heaven’s armies.
Make your face shine on us and we’ll be rescued.

[a] This alludes to the ark of the covenant, viewed as God’s earthly throne. Since it was covered by two cherubim, the Israelites imagined God as enthroned above the cherubim.

[b] Prior to Israel’s exile, the son mentioned here and in v. 15 was taken as a metaphor for Israel. Afterward some Jews took it as referring to the Messiah.

[c] Israel was often pictured as a vine (e.g., Isa. 5:1-7). The psalmist is also picking up on Jacob’s prophecy in which Joseph is likened to a fruitful vine (Gen. 49:22). Since God has reversed Israel’s situation from flourishing under his blessing to languishing under his curse, the psalmist now asks God to reverse his reversal. Brueggemann and Bellinger (2014) 349.

[d] Num. 6:22-26.

From Jerusalem’s rubble

Evil has long asserted its dominance in our world, bringing us untold brokenness, violence and shame. Sometimes it seems things just go from bad to worse, making us ask, How long, O Lord, how long?

An Asaph psalm.

¹ O God, pagans have invaded your land.
They’ve defiled your holy Temple
and reduced Jerusalem to a pile of rubble.
² They’ve fed the corpses of your servants
to the birds of the sky
the flesh of your faithful
to the beasts of the earth.
³ They’ve poured out their blood like water
all over Jerusalem
leaving no one alive to bury the dead.
⁴ We’ve become a disgrace to our neighbors
the scorn and derision of all around us.
⁵ How long, Yahveh?
Will you hold onto your anger forever
and your jealousy burn like wildfire?

⁶ Pour out your anger on the pagans
who don’t acknowledge you
on the kingdoms
that don’t call on your name.
⁷ Because they’ve devoured Jacob
and devastated his home.
⁸ Don’t hold our past sins against us.
May your compassion intervene quickly
because we’ve sunk very low.
⁹ Help us, God our deliverer
for the honor of your name.
Rescue us and atone for our sins
because your reputation is at stake.
¹⁰ Why let these pagan nations scoff:
“Where is their God?”
Let us see the nations learn
that you avenge the blood of your servants.
¹¹ Let the groans of the captives reach you.
By your strong arm
rescue those condemned to die.
¹² Pay our neighbors back to the nth degree[1]
for all the insults they’ve hurled at you.

¹³ Then we, your people
the sheep you yourself take care of
will give you thanks forever.
From one generation to the next
we’ll sing your praise.

This psalm describes the same national disaster Psalm 74 surveyed—Jerusalem destroyed, its Temple desecrated, its people massacred. The stench of rotting flesh fills the air as vultures and dogs tear at the corpses of God’s faithful littering the blood-soaked streets. The psalmist is likely one of the groaning captives mentioned, who must endure the pagans’ vicious mockery: “Where is their God?”

The psalmist is scandalized by that, but that’s not her question. She knows the devastation evidences not God’s absence, but his presence—his anger over Israel’s sins. The question eating her is how long God will continue punishing his people and leave his enemies unpunished. She urges him to punish the atrocities’ perpetrators, not their victims, and alternates between asking him to rescue his people and judge his enemies because he’s both merciful and just. She also asks God to forgive his people’s past sins, implying that they’ve repented of them. Since God is their shepherd and they bear his name in the world, their desolation reflects very badly on him. So she asks him to rescue and restore them.

Despite the psalmist’s overall bleakness, her final word is “your praise” (tehillateka).[2] She thus ends with hope, imagining the day when God restores his people and their sad laments give way to endless praise.

Lord, thank you for welcoming our honesty even when we’re barely able to handle our pain. I cry with the psalmist, “How long till you put everything to rights?” Forgive my sins, rescue and bless me for the honor of your name. And help me believe your love always has the last word. Amen.

In your free moments today, meditate on these words:

Help us, God our deliverer, for the honor of your name.
Rescue us and atone for our sins because your reputation is at stake.

[1] Literally, “seven times over.” Unless we’ve suffered what the psalmist is suffering, we shouldn’t judge her for asking God to repay his enemies (v. 12). Americans would have had a roughly equivalent situation after 9/11 had the terrorists razed Washington DC, including the White House and Capitol Building. Because Jerusalem’s Temple was the symbol of Israel’s national identity in much the same way that those buildings are to American identity. Yet even without suffering such wholesale devastation, America reacted to 9/11 by invading Afghanistan. On one hand, we should agree that asking God to put everything to rights is vital. On the other, Jesus takes the psalmist’s math in the opposite direction in Matt. 18:22. Brueggemann and Bellinger (2014) 346-47.

[2] Marvin E. Tate, Psalms 51-100 (1991) 301.

Those who don’t learn from the past…

How do we maintain our hope despite our long list of failures and sins? Interestingly, this psalm recites Israel’s many sins—so very like the Church’s today—to bolster, not erode, the hope of God’s people.[1]

An Asaph psalm.

¹ My people, listen to my teaching
and pay attention to what I say.
² I’m going to tell you stories[2]
that will unspool a riddle from the past—
³ about things we’ve long heard and known
stories our ancestors passed down to us.
⁴ We won’t hide them from their descendants.
We’ll sing Yahveh’s praises to the next generation
telling of his miracles and power.
⁵ Because he established laws for Jacob
and entrusted his teachings to Israel
giving our ancestors strict orders
to teach them to their children.
⁶ So the next generation would learn them
and pass them on to their children—
children yet unborn—
⁷ that they too would trust in God
keep his commandments
and remember his powerful deeds—
⁸ unlike their ancestors
a willful and rebellious generation
whose hearts weren’t true to God
nor were their spirits faithful.

⁹ Though armed with bow and arrow
Ephraim’s warriors turned tail
on the day of battle.
¹⁰ They didn’t keep God’s covenant
and refused to follow his teachings.
¹¹ They forgot what he’d done—
all the miracles he’d shown them.
¹² Down in Egypt, on the plains of Zoan
God did miracles in full view of their ancestors.
¹³ He split the sea in two
and led them through it
piling the water up like a dike on either side.
¹⁴ He led them with a cloud by day
a blazing light by night.
¹⁵ He split rocks open in the wilderness
and let them drink deeply
as from an underground sea.
¹⁶ He made streams gush out of stone
and pour down in torrents.
¹⁷ But in response
they only sinned against him more
defying the Most High in the desert.
¹⁸ They deliberately tested God in their hearts
by demanding their favorite food.
¹⁹ They railed against him, saying:
“Can God spread a feast for us in the desert?
²⁰ Yes, water poured out in torrents
when he struck the rock.
But can he also give us bread
and serve his people meat?”
²¹ When Yahveh heard this
he was furious and fire blazed against Jacob.
God’s anger flared against Israel
²² because they weren’t willing to trust him—
to believe he’d take care of them.
²³ Even so, God ordered the sky above
to open heaven’s portals wide
²⁴ and rain down manna to feed them.
He gave them the bread of heaven—
²⁵ mortals ate food from heaven’s court
and ate all they could too.
²⁶ Then he drove the east wind across the sky
and moved the south wind powerfully too.
²⁷ He rained meat down on them like dust
a flock of birds like sand on the seashore.
²⁸ He brought the birds down
right in the middle of his camp
all around his residence.
²⁹ They ate their fill
of the very food they craved.
³⁰ But while they were stuffing their faces
and their mouths were still full of food
³¹ God’s anger flared up
and killed Israel’s finest young men
wiping out the nation’s best and brightest.
³² But despite all this
the people went on sinning.
Despite God’s miracles
they still didn’t trust him.
³³ So he made their lives vanish like a breath
and ended their years in terror.
³⁴ When he’d killed them
the rest turned to him for help—
turned and sought him eagerly.
³⁵ They remembered God was their rock
God Most High their redeemer.
³⁶ But in fact, they only paid him lip service
lying to him through their teeth.
³⁷ Their hearts were unfaithful to him
untrue to his covenant.
³⁸ Yet being compassionate
he atoned for their rebellion.
Instead of destroying them
he repeatedly reined in his anger
and held back his wrath.
³⁹ He was mindful of the fact
that they were just made of flesh and blood
a breath of wind that passes by
never to return.

⁴⁰ How often they defied God in the wilderness
and grieved him in the wasteland
⁴¹ repeatedly testing God’s patience
provoking the Holy One of Israel.
⁴² They were oblivious of the power
revealed when he redeemed them from their foe.
⁴³ the signs he performed in Egypt
his miracles in the land of Zoan.
⁴⁴ He turned their rivers into blood
making the water undrinkable.
⁴⁵ He sent swarms of flies
that ate the Egyptians alive
and frogs that drove them mad.
⁴⁶ He fed their harvest to grasshoppers
their produce to locusts.
⁴⁷ He blighted their vines with hail
their fig orchards with frost.
⁴⁸ He handed their cattle over to hailstorms
their flocks to lightning strikes.
⁴⁹ He unleashed his burning anger against them—
fury, indignation and distress.
He sent a band of destroying angels among them.
⁵⁰ He freely vented his anger
not sparing the Egyptians’ lives
but letting the plague ravage them.
⁵¹ He killed all of Egypt’s firstborn sons
emasculating every man in all the tents of Ham.[3]
⁵² He led his people out like sheep
herding them like a flock through the wilderness.
⁵³ He led the Israelites to safety
with nothing to fear
while the sea swallowed up their enemies.
⁵⁴ He brought them to his holy land
the mountain he himself won.
⁵⁵ He expelled nations before them
and marked out an inheritance
for each of Israel’s tribes to pitch their tents in.
⁵⁶ But even then
they went on challenging God Most High
paying no attention to his laws.
⁵⁷ Instead they turned away
and acted treacherously like their ancestors
as unreliable as a warped bow.
⁵⁸ They provoked God with their hilltop shrines
and made him jealous with their idols.
⁵⁹ Hearing what they were doing
God became furious and
totally rejecting Israel
⁶⁰ abandoned his residence at Shiloh
the Tent where he lived among humankind.
⁶¹ He let the seat of his power be captured
the ark of his glory fall into enemy hands.
⁶² He turned his people over to the sword
venting his anger on his inheritance.
⁶³ Fire devoured their young men
and their brides heard no sweet songs.
⁶⁴ Their priests were killed by the sword
and their widows sang no sad songs.

⁶⁵ Then Yahveh jumped up as if from sleep
and burst out like a warrior inflamed by wine.
⁶⁶ He beat back his foes
and put them to everlasting disgrace.
⁶⁷ But he rejected Joseph’s descendants
and overlooked the tribe of Ephraim.
⁶⁸ He chose the tribe of Judah instead
and Mount Zion, the place he loves.
⁶⁹ There he built his sanctuary on the heights
established it to stand—like the earth—forever.
⁷⁰ He chose his servant David also
taking him from the sheep pens
⁷¹ from tending nursing ewes
to shepherd Jacob his people
Israel his inheritance.
⁷² David cared for them with selfless devotion
and guided them with skillful hands.

The psalmist takes us twice around the roller coaster ride of God’s amazing grace and Israel’s appalling rebellion. After God graciously rescues them, his people become entitled. Despite his legendary patience, they repeatedly play with the fire of his holiness and then, after getting burned, only pretend to seek him. Finally, God lets pagans cart the ark away, leaving his people unable even to sing a dirge.

The tragedy ends only when God, jumping up like a startled sleeper or a wine-inflamed fighter, defeats Israel’s foes and makes three epic choices signaling a new beginning. He chooses Judah—not Ephraim, whose warriors turned tail.[4] He chooses Zion, permanently establishing his house there. And he chooses David to shepherd his people, which David does selflessly and skillfully.

Thus, the psalm implicitly tells God’s people three things they can do to flourish in his care: worship God faithfully in his Temple—not idols on every hilltop—serve David’s reigning son, and trust and obey him faithfully. The psalm also gives them hope since God does everything needed to redeem them and refuses to give up on them.

God’s pain and frustration relates to us today as much as to ancient Israel. Seeing us pursue the gods of this age, Jesus weeps over his Church as he once did over Jerusalem. And still he won’t give up on us.

Like Israel, we easily slide into presumption and pretense, Lord. Yet you don’t let go and your cross proves you’ll withhold nothing from us that’s for our good. Help me to submit to David’s reigning Son, Jesus, worship and obey you alone, and hold onto hope both for myself and for your Church. Amen.

In your free moments today, meditate on these words, which relate to David’s “greater son” also:

He chose his servant David…
to shepherd Jacob his people, Israel his inheritance.

[1] McCann (2015) 520.

[2] The stories the psalmist recounts range from Exodus to 2 Samuel.

[3] In ancient Egypt, a man’s first son was the proof required to authenticate his manhood; Goldingay (2007) 505.

[4] This suggests that the psalm was written after Jeroboam founded the northern kingdom of Israel, making Ephraim its dominant tribe, while Judah dominated the southern kingdom (1 Kings 12).