Psalms

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Psalm 30

I will praise you, Lord, you have rescued me
and have not let my enemies rejoice over me.

O Lord, I cried to you for help
and you, my God, have healed me.
O Lord, you have raised my soul from the dead,
restored me to life from those who sink into the grave.

Sing psalms to the Lord, you who love him,
give thanks to his holy name.
His anger lasts but a moment; his favour through life.
At night there are tears, but joy comes with dawn.

I said to myself in my good fortune:
“Nothing will ever disturb me.”
Your favour has set me on a mountain fastness,
then you hid your face and I was put to confusion.

To you, Lord, I cried,
to my God I made appeal:
“What profit would my death be, my going to the grave?
Can dust give you praise or proclaim your truth?”

The Lord listened and had pity.
The Lord came to my help.
For me you have changed my mourning into dancing,
you removed my sackcloth and girdled me with joy.
So my soul sings psalms to you unceasingly.
O Lord my God, I will thank you for ever.

Commentary


This psalm, written by David, is given a secondary title in the Bible: “Canticle for the dedication of the house”. As the title suggests, the psalm was written for either the dedication of David’s own palace in Jerusalem (see 2 Samuel 5:11), or for the dedication of the sanctuary, for the Temple was not built in David’s time. It may also mean, and many scholars think that it does, that the psalm was later adapted for use on the Feast of Hanukkah, the Feast of the dedication of the Temple which was instituted by Judas Maccabeus in 165 BC, to commemorate the restoration of the Temple that year.

Without this secondary title the psalm would seem to be a thanksgiving song to God after a severe illness. If indeed it was used for the Hanukkah feast then it was re-interpreted so that the deliverance of the individual, in vv. 2-8, came to be understood as the deliverance of the nation from the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes. This is an important point because it illustrates that down the centuries the psalms have been re-interpreted for each generation, so that the enduring message of the psalm could be read in the new situation, and new people could receive guidance and hope from them. It is important that we truly hear these inspired prayers interpret our own spiritual lives for us.

I will praise you, Lord, you have rescued me
and have not let my enemies rejoice over me.

O Lord, I cried to you for help
and you, my God, have healed me.
O Lord, you have raised my soul from the dead,
restored me to life from those who sink into the grave.

Sing psalms to the Lord, you who love him,
give thanks to his holy name.
His anger lasts but a moment; his favour through life.
At night there are tears, but joy comes with dawn.

I said to myself in my good fortune:
“Nothing will ever disturb me.”
Your favour has set me on a mountain fastness,
then you hid your face and I was put to confusion.

To you, Lord, I cried,
to my God I made appeal:
“What profit would my death be, my going to the grave?
Can dust give you praise or proclaim your truth?”

The Lord listened and had pity.
The Lord came to my help.
For me you have changed my mourning into dancing,
you removed my sackcloth and girdled me with joy.
So my soul sings psalms to you unceasingly.
O Lord my God, I will thank you for ever.
                                           (vv. 1-12).

The psalmist begins with a burst of praise and thanks to God for his deliverance from death. He feels that he has been hauled up from the pit of death, like a bucket from a cistern, or a prisoner from a dungeon (see Jeremiah 38:10). He had, obviously, put his faith and trust in God, so his deliverance is a triumph for faith also. If the ever present enemies had got the upper hand in his death, it would be a shattering blow to his faith (v. 1). He now realizes how closely his life depended on God’s mercy and loving-kindness. God has healed him, so he now accepts life as a gift from God, with gratitude. Besides, death would have been a grim affair for him. David did not have our revelation of eternal life with God after death, and he felt that death somehow cut him off from contact with God. But now, with the gift of life given back to him, he can see things from God’s perspective. Some of the attitudes he formerly held must go in consequence (vv. 2-3).

Just as the psalmist called initially upon himself to praise God, so now he enjoins the community of God’s people to do the same, especially if they truly love God, for what he has experienced as an individual is also true for the community of faith. The whole psalm bears testimony to this
(v. 4). He declares that the anger or wrath of God lasts but a moment, while His favour remains for life. He is not trivializing the wrath of God here, but saying that since it is the wrath of God, it springs from a different source from the anger of human beings (see Hosea 11:8).

God has placed us in a moral universe which operates on inexorable laws, which we break to our own destruction. For example, if we work against the laws of agriculture we destroy the harvest; if we break the laws of architecture we destroy buildings, with loss of life; if we break the laws of health which govern our bodies, we destroy our lives; if we interfere with our environment, we can wipe out life from the planet. The suffering entailed because of this is spoken of in the Bible as the wrath of God. It is meant to be an instrument of God’s grace given to us for repentance: it is not intended merely for destruction, as the anger of man often is. The wrath of God is also given for our instruction in the ways of God. As we begin to open up and learn from it, we experience God’s mercy and forgiveness, and we are healed. Thus God makes everything turn out for the good for those who turn to Him in sincerity (see Romans 8:28; 2 Corinthians 4:17-18). The pain that the Lord permits us to suffer as we slowly learn to walk in His ways is not worth talking about, when we compare it with the weight of glory that He is offering to anyone who will accept His guidance and His redeeming grace. This is why David breaks out again to proclaim the triumph of God’s grace over all the events of life. There is always another day, a fresh start, a resurrection after death. God’s grace and power can accomplish anything, so the psalmist overflows with joy and gratitude (v. 5).

Looking back, the psalmist realizes that he did not always have his present humble joy. Instead, he had the self-complacency and self-confidence of one who had not been tried and tested. Only now does he see that he was relying upon himself, and not at all upon God. It took the heavy trial he has just come through to bring him to rely upon God in a real way. It is a salutary revelation to discover that one has been seeking the self, with its many goals and demands, when one should have been seeking God’s will, which alone can give proper direction to one’s life. While proclaiming ourselves religious we were, in fact, on an ego trip. It is sheer grace and mercy on God’s part to disillusion us about this, and to enable us to face reality as it really is, in ourselves. This opens the door to growth and new life. Our lives are in fact utterly dependent on God, so it is sheer folly to rely on self, which only puts off the day of grace.

David did not face the truth until God hid His face from him, until God withdrew His favour. The bed of suffering brought him to his senses, as it does with so many of us, and it made him search his own soul. He then recognized the hand of God in his pain, which requires of him to desist from the self-assurance that was leading him astray. Now he finds himself afflicted, both externally in his sickness, and internally in the confusion and lostness of his soul. He is thrown into a real crisis that opens his eyes to recognize the grace God is offering in the very withdrawal of His favour. It was this combination of the wrath of God with the saving grace offered to him that released this man from the death of soul and body. It was a veritable resurrection! Whereas it would have been a tragedy to be released in body but remain dead in sin (vv. 6-7).

The Scriptures tell us that God only acts out of love, so it is important for us to see the wrath of God in this light also. Whatever God allows to befall us, if we turn to Him it will become a means of salvation for us. And we must not limit Him just to healing our bodies, which we must eventually leave behind us in death. This would be to short-change His gift of salvation, which includes the whole person. Jesus illustrated this principle in the healing of the paralytic. He had been asked only to heal the body, but He began with the healing of the soul. The body was also healed; but the primary healing is that of the inner man, and this healing affects everything else in life, and can even cause the outward healing of the body (see Psalm 145:17; Mark 2:1-12).

David had prayed fervently to God for his life, because he had seen where he was wrong. This is exactly what God wants us to do when we experience His wrath, or any kind of sorrow. David reasoned that his healing would release him to praise God, whereas his death at this point would accomplish nothing, either for God’s glory or his own salvation (vv. 9-10).

The Lord saw that the motives of David’s heart were sincere, so He responded with His healing grace. The result was that David committed himself to God in humble trust, and his heart was changed – the more important healing. His gratitude overflows to God now. The sorrow and mourning have been transformed to dancing and joy. He realizes, too, that his life has been given back to him so that he can testify to others who need a similar transformation (vv. 11-13).

This psalm celebrates one of the greatest enlightenments along the spiritual journey. Most beginners in prayer are unaware of their motivation, both in seeking God and in the service of their neighbour. So often they seek themselves in God, for they must enjoy prayer, and feel peace, and be able to report significant experiences in prayer. They contrast their own enthusiasm with religious fervour, and deceive themselves that they are truly relying on God in faith and trust, whereas, in fact, they are relying on their own health, strength, vigour and freshness in the spiritual journey. This has a very blinding effect, and they can become real Pharisees without realizing it. They fast twice a week, pay tithes, attend prayer meetings and many religious functions – all of which makes them feel better than their fellow beings, who are worldly in their ways. Moreover, they do not realize that their propensity to criticize and condemn others, their fault-finding, is equally worldly, unloving and unspiritual!

Nevertheless, God sees the heart, and behind all our faults there is often a sincere desire to seek God. So in mercy, and in response to our prayer for a deeper union with Him, God may allow sickness or tragedy to befall us, while at the same time keeping a distance from us in prayer. We appear to have lost everything in one fell swoop! The result of this is often that our world falls apart, and many of our theories and tidy doctrines go with it – those neat explanations and “answers” that we offered to others in their need, but which do not stand up to a real test. They are seen now to be hollow, for they were not born in the furnace of suffering.

Dazed and confused we go seeking God differently now. Using no religious clichés to hide our emptiness, we just cry out to God in loneliness, darkness, even maybe despair. God would achieve nothing from the death or destruction of our spiritual lives – we know that. Yet this is what seems to be the inevitable result of this trial, which came both from our own stupidity and sinfulness; as inevitable as the hand of God stretched out to save us. If we have the wisdom to reach out to grasp that hand, which appears only to punish us, we will find to our astonishment that we meet a loving Saviour. He wants to use this suffering to open our eyes to new self-knowledge, which is essential to growth. Our personal history is, like the history of mankind as a whole, made up of a combination of God’s action in our lives and our response to it. God uses the ordinary stuff of daily living to sanctify us, but we must be willing to let Him teach us. Then we discover that whether particular circumstances came about through our own fault or not, He will use them for our sanctification if we are open to learn. How good God is!

With repentance, a deep joy breaks out in us, for we now know by experience what before we knew only by hearsay. The result is spontaneous praise, and a desire to share the testimony of God’s goodness with others. So that they, too, will know this joy, becoming open to this interior grace of enlightenment, which will speed them on the road to the final liberation from the self. Only those who have thrown off the sackcloth of the domination of the self can really dance for joy.

Perhaps we can now appreciate the sheer joy and delight of Mary of Magdala on Easter Day, when she heard her beloved Jesus call her by name in the midst of her mourning in the garden. Turning round, she threw herself at His feet and clung to her beloved Master in ecstatic joy. Surely that lovely Jewish lady, for whom the Psalter was a daily prayer book, remembered the final words of this psalm which found wonderful fulfilment in her at that moment: “The Lord came to my help. For me you have changed my mourning into dancing, you removed my sackcloth and girdled me with joy. O Lord my God, I will thank you for ever.”

An Easter Church is one that has passed through the crucible of suffering, and has gone on to the joy of the victory of Christ, in living the resurrection in its daily pilgrimage. It is one that is empowered by the coming of the Spirit of God in all her actions, and the power of the Spirit in her apostolate. Hence joy, praise and thanksgiving are her constant expression of prayer to God, and these sentiments are even found in her petitions.

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