These five Psalms are the last of the “songs of ascents,” Psalms 120-134, which are supposed to be a cycle of songs sung on the pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem. Except for Psalm 132, they are all quite short.
Psalm 130: Throughout the Old Testament, there has been a decided emphasis on salvation through obedience. One is supposed to obey the Law to the letter, and in exchange for this God will not bring you sufferings or just snuff you out altogether. But here in Psalm 130, we have another of the occasional glimpses of a different sort of theology, in this case a theology of forgiveness.
If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?Fearing someone for their power of forgiveness seems off-kilter at first blush, but consider the context: EVERYONE is guilty, and their only hope is forgiveness, so of course the decision-maker is someone to inspire a certain amount of trembling. (This strikes me, incidentally, as a very Christian sort of passage.)
But with you there is forgiveness, therefore you are feared. (3-4)
And here’s a lovely passage, I think:
My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning. (6)
Psalm 131: A very short song of abject humility, echoes the “watchman waiting for morning” line with a metaphor which doesn’t ring quite as well to the modern ear:
But I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother,Really, I’m not even sure what that means.
like a weaned child is my soul within me. (2)
Psalm 132: A longer Psalm in three parts. First, it recalls David’s oath to build a suitable temple for the Ark of the Covenant. Second, it expresses the need and desire of the people to go and worship at the “dwelling place.” And third, it recounts God’s promises to David to provide leadership, prosperity, and success to Israel. As usual in the Old Testament, the contractual nature of religious practice is much in evidence, with the implication that “here we are, God, doing our part by coming to worship in the proscribed manner; don’t let us down with your part of the bargain.”
Psalm 133: The first line of this short Psalm conveys the meaning of the whole: How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! (1) If you continue past that very quotable first line, though, you get a great example of how ringing sound bites from Psalms often seem pretty curious when they are not cropped out of their surrounding text:
How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!Anyone here especially like oil running down into their beard? No?
It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard,
Running down on Aaron’s beard, down upon the collar of his robes. (1-2)
Psalm 134: Three short lines, the condensed version of which is: “Praise the Lord! Left up your hands and praise the Lord! May the Lord bless you!” This is religious practice at its most fundamental level. Even when this simplified, however, there is still an element of the contractual in the picture: Praise, that you may be blessed. You do your bit for God, and God will do his bit for you.
Next Time: The Penultimate Psalms!
This Week's Text: Psalms 130-134
6 comments:
When you get to 139, slip into the library or bookstore and read Margaret Wise Brown's _The Runaway Bunny._
Honest! they go together!
I started following this blog a few posts ago through your RSS feed. I find it to be nice to read your summary as you go through, although my own studies aren't in the same section of the Scriptures right now.
You wrote, "Throughout the Old Testament, there has been a decided emphasis on salvation through obedience."
This idea of obedience kind of reminds me of these verses:
John 14:15 "If you love me, you will obey what I command.
John 14:23 Yahushua replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
John 14:24 He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
John 15:10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.
1 John 5:3 This is love for Elohiym: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,
Elohiym is the Hebrew word usually translated "God" as you probably already know, and Yahushua (or Yeshua) is the actual original name of course, as you probably are aware of also--just so nobody is confused by those words who might read this comment.
So I see the same theme in the new testament also, and find it very interesting that both obedience as well as Grace seem to be in both the old and new testament.
There does seem to be a tendency in Christian churches to focus more on the grace, but I find lots of verses that show the importance of obedience also. It's kind of like ---- We are given grace, so because of that great gift, we WANT to be obedient. That's how I have come to understand it through studying the Scriptures.
As for the oil, "How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard,
Running down on Aaron’s beard, down upon the collar of his robes. (1-2)"
Actually the oil is very important and the idea of oil running down a beard is common during being anointed. After King David was anointed, the Spirit of YHWH came upon David from that day forward it says (1 Samuel 16:13).
The oil is also very important because the word Christ is from Greek Kristos which is from the Hebrew word Moshiach, or Mashiach, which means "the anointed".
So Christ means "the anointed" because Christ is YHWH's annointed (Isaiah 61:1 & Luke 4:18).
And an anointing also involved oil when someone was physically literally anointed. And we also know for certain that Christ had a beard. We know this from reading Isaiah chapter 50, which is part of the prophesy of Christ.
It is written, Isaiah 50:6 I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting.
Many times in the past I've thought the "old" and "new" testament as people call them were different, but the more I read and study the more I see harmony between them.
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There's something sort of Buddhist (or is it Hindu?) about that weaned child image: the idea that souls are merged with the godhead until they are born in human bodies, at which point the acknowledge their separation but long to merge again - their souls long for the breast of god[dess].
You pick out such evocative verses! I like the repetition in the watchman waiting for the morning, too, and I want to clarify the weaned child verse, but every time I try to pin it down, it slips away a little, for various reasons.
For one, though I don't usually turn to psychological readings of texts, it suggests to me perhaps the distinction between self and other. The weaned child has come to peace with the fact that it no longer has that unity with the mother that comes from freedom of access to nursing, I suppose psychoanalytic critics might say, but I'm not sure whether that means that it no longer craves something exterior to itself for fulfillment or whether it continues to crave it but accepts the difference because it has a different kind of unity that is based on internal completeness.
For the first of those possibilities, though, since the context explains that the author does not want to meddle with heavenly things, and the speaker is the baby while God is the mother (and kudos to them for that metaphor), it raises the problem with the first that, by extension, the speaker is saying that he no longer craves to be unified with God, or have access to God, or whatever. And that doesn't sound right. The second possibility seems to have almost the same problem; if the speaker desires but no longer cries for the mother (aka God), it's still a statement of independence, and that again doesn't sound right.
So, I don't really have any conclusion other than that the critical techniques I'm used to don't seem to generate a consistent reading, which isn't that big of a shocker, given all of your analysis of these pieces and their gaps and contradictions and so on.
@Elaine: Well... OK. Why not.
@Anon: Belated thanks for your interesting comments. I am looking forward to the jump from the Old to the New Testaments, and curious about how similar or dissimilar they will seem to me.
@Nichim: I can dig it.
@Jennifer: Maybe! My feeling is, though, that similes here in the OT are not profoundly subtle as a general rule. Things tend to be powerful like an ox, not powerful like a gesture. I suspect that the weaning reference was completely transparent to the original audience, and just seems fuzzy to us because we have different and diverse strategies for raising babies.
Good point about Psalm 139, However your statement, "Throughout the Old Testament, there has been a decided emphasis on salvation through obedience. One is supposed to obey the Law to the letter, and in exchange for this God will not bring you sufferings or just snuff you out altogether" I don't believe is quite true...Have you considered that the order of things is not obedience then salvation but salvation (relationship) then obedience? Look more closely at the Songs of Ascent Psalms 125-129, they back that idea up.
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