Welcome! We are continuing our series on
the Psalms of Ascent, Psalms 120-134. Today’s passage is Psalm 129, and before
we dig into the Psalm in earnest, I do want to say a little about it and about
others like it. Psalm 129 is an example of what is called an imprecatory psalm. The word imprecatory comes from the Latin word imprecatio which means to pray against. In imprecatory psalms
the psalmist prays against his enemies, asking God for various bad things to
happen to them. Some other psalms that are imprecatory in nature are Psalms 7,
35, 59, 69, 83, 109, 137, and 139. Some of the things the psalmists say include
bring their violence to an end, may they be disgraced and put to shame, may they be like chaff before the wind, consume them in wrath, may they be blotted out, pursue them with Your tempest, and may their descendants be cut off. These
are harsh words! What are we to make of them?
On the one hand we have Jesus’ clear
instructions about loving our enemies. For example:
“But
to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate
you, bless
those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If
someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes
your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to
everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand
it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
– Luke 6:27-30
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor
and hate your enemy.’ But I
tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun
to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the
unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward
will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than
others? Do not even pagans do that?” – Matt. 5:43-47
And Paul
reiterated Jesus’ teachings in Romans:
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
– Rom. 12:14
I think these passages are pretty clear. I
don’t think we have any business going around declaring curses on our bosses,
or the people who work at the IRS, or your professors (I have special interest
in that one), or anyone else. This is clearly not appropriate and in fact a
clear violation of the spirit of these passages.
But at the same time, I think it is going
too far to say that there is no place at all for any kind of imprecatory
sentiment. For example, we have Paul’s statement in Galatians:
I am
astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in
the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no
gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are
trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach
a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!
As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is
preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s
curse! – Gal. 1:6-9
So what is the answer? How do we apply the
imprecatory psalms? My understanding is that they generally express a desire
for God’s righteousness to shine forth, for God to administer justice, to right
wrongs. Because they can be harsh in wording to our ears, we can assume there
is an unrighteous anger in them, a desire for petty revenge, or a sentiment of
bitterness, but I personally don’t think that is really there; instead, these
things are things we tend to read into
the passages.
Again, listen to some of the things the
psalmists say: bring their violence to an
end, may they be disgraced and put to
shame, may they be like chaff before
the wind, consume them in wrath, may they be blotted out, pursue them with your tempest, and may their descendants be cut off. Even
the last one would cause there to be an end to the behavior, assuming their
descendants would be continuing whatever this bad behavior is.
Compare these sentiments in the psalms to,
for example, the ridiculous speech in The
Princess Bride about what it means to duel “to the pain” as opposed to “to
the death.” I don’t think it is appropriate for me to quote the whole passage,
but the speaker says he will cut off from his opponent various body parts, one
at a time, but leave his ears, so that (and I quote) “every shriek of every child at seeing your
hideousness will be yours to cherish – every babe that weeps in fear at your
approach, every woman that cries, ‘Dear God, what is that thing?’ will
reverberate forever within your perfect ears. That is what ‘to the pain’ means.
It means that I leave you to live in anguish, in humiliation, in freakish
memory until you can stand it no more.” (Unquote.) Obviously this is going way too far.
Most of the imprecatory statements in the
psalms speak of putting an end to the actual act, shortening their duration.
And this is entirely appropriate. It is good
and appropriate to pray that a
terrorist be stopped, that a kidnapper be caught, a murderer arrested, and so
on.
The other important thing I see in the
imprecatory psalms is an affirmation of the principle that vengeance is for God
to give, not us. In these psalms the psalmist is asking God to take action; he
is not saying he will take action himself (like our man in the Princess Bride)
or calling on his countrymen to do so. We see this principle in Deuteronomy 32
and in Romans 12, which quotes from Deuteronomy:
Do
not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is
written: “It is Mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. – Romans 12:19
The imprecatory psalms are generally an
asking of God to do just this, to
bring justice to an unjust situation.
Beyond this, in both the Old Testament and
the New, we see imprecatory statements with regards to defending God’s truth
against false teachings, against idol worship, against things that lead people
astray from God, and I think this too is entirely appropriate. This is what we
see in Galatians 1 when Paul says let anyone be accursed who presents a false
gospel that leads people astray.
So
with this understanding, let’s look at Psalm 129.
“They have greatly
oppressed me from my youth,” let Israel say; “they have greatly oppressed me
from my youth, but they have not gained the victory over me. Plowmen have
plowed my back and made their furrows long. But the Lord is righteous; He
has cut me free from the cords of the wicked.” – Psalm 129:1-4
The
history of Israel in Old Testament times is filled with periods of war, where
Israel’s enemies tried to destroy them. It also contains the time of the exile,
in which Israel was defeated, its people carried off into captivity. The
brutality of these times we can only imagine, and not imagine well, because it
is so foreign to our experience. But Israel did experience these things – the
people the psalm writer talks about experienced it since their youth, that is, over their whole lives.
The picture of the plowmen is quite graphic and unsettling.
This vivid image – of something digging into their backs like a plow digs
trenches into a field – speaks of acute, unbearable pain, of scars that last a
lifetime.
But the Lord is
righteous; He has cut me free from the cords of the wicked. I picture the
ropes and harness holding the oxen to the plough being cut, broken, putting an
end to plowing, putting an end to the enemies’ ability to inflict suffering and
pain. I also picture a man held by cords, tied, bound, and of God coming with a
sword to cut through all of these cords, setting the man free.
How
does this apply to us? I think of Proverbs 5:22:
The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare them; the cords
of their sins hold them fast. – Prov. 5:22
Very
few of us have experienced physical bondage, physical torture, and the like.
But all of us to one degree or another have suffered the bondage and
suppression of sin, the work of Satan to entrap us and enslave us into doing
things that, although they once maybe gave some pleasure, later seem to only
have kept us enslaved. This is the nature of sin. For us the plowmen are Satan
and his demons. Some of us have great
emotional scars left behind from our earlier days under that plow.
Some
of us still voluntarily return to position ourselves under that plow. But the
cords have been cut! We are cut free! We do not need to remain with the plow on
our backs. Move away! Cast off the plowmen! And rejoice, for the cords have
been cut! He has cut me free from the cords of the wicked!
The
second half of the psalm says this:
May all who hate Zion be
turned back in shame. May they be like grass on the roof, which withers before
it can grow; a reaper cannot fill his hands with it, nor one who gathers fill
his arms. May those who pass by not say to them, “The blessing of the Lord be
on you; we bless you in the name of the Lord.” – Psalm 129:5-8
Yes, this is imprecatory in nature, but the spirit is one of,
“Lord, take action. Make them stop.” The image of grass on the roof is one
maybe not familiar to us, but in Bible times people would often pack their
roofs with mud which would dry and become relatively impervious to rain. Being
dirt, however, grass and weed seeds would invariably be mixed in with the mud,
and so during the growing season people’s roofs would come to life. But because
the layer of mud on the roof was thin, and because the thin layer of mud would
quickly dry out, the grass would not be able to live long; the thin mud and the
lack of water couldn’t support its roots, and so the grass would wither and
die. This dead grass was unfit for anything; too little to even gather for any
purpose at all. The psalmist says, let their enemies be like this; let them not
be able to persist but be stopped quickly. Let them, like the grass, have no
real impact on anything.
What is meant by the last verse? We get a strong clue in the
book of Ruth.
Now Naomi had a relative
on her husband’s side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelek, whose name
was Boaz. And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick
up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.” Naomi said to her,
“Go ahead, my daughter.” So she went out, entered a field and began to glean
behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging
to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelek. Just then Boaz arrived from
Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, “The Lord be with you!” “The Lord bless
you!” they answered. – Ruth 2:1-4
These are very similar greetings. The point here is not that
the people were to shun the Israelites’ oppressors; the idea is that it would
be ridiculous to imagine people harvesting grain up on the roof so that people
would give a traditional greeting to the harvesters such as you see here in
Ruth. It’s simply a continuation of the picture that they would be like the
grass on the roof that quickly withers and produces no harvest; no harvest
means no harvesters. In spirit this
is very similar to Paul’s “may they be accursed” speaking of those who teach a
false gospel. Paul’s intent too is that God would stop them quickly before they
could do real damage to the church.
Now in a few minutes we are going to enter back into worship
and then transition into communion, remembering the Lord with the bread and the
cup. Sometimes we do this different ways, so let me explain what we are doing
this week. We will not move the chairs, but keep them as they are. After we
sing three songs, I will continue to play the keyboard quietly, and during that
time I encourage you to spend time in prayer thanking Him for His sacrifice,
rescuing you from the cords of bondage, cutting you free eternally from Satan
and from everything else that could keep you from Him. When you are ready, take
the bread and cup and remember Him; the bread symbolizing His body and the cup
symbolizing His blood shed for us.
In preparation for this time, let’s go back to one verse in this psalm.
Plowmen have plowed my
back and made their furrows long. – Psalm 129:3
Jesus in a way literally experienced this. His clothing
removed, His back exposed, He was whipped with a brutal device, the flagrum, or
flagellum, made of leather with small balls of lead on the end. It is very
unpleasant to even begin to imagine this, but this is what Jesus went through.
And unlike the psalmist, Jesus was not able
to say the next verse that “He has cut me free from the cords of the
wicked.” It was not God’s will that His
enemies would be stopped, but that they would continue with blow after
agonizing blow. This was agonizing for Jesus and agonizing for His Father,
beyond what we can begin to imagine. Jesus could have at any time ended the suffering,
calling a legion of angels to rescue Him, but He did not do so because He
knew it was God’s will for Him to stay there, and He obeyed His Father. He also
knew why it was being done, why it had to be done, so that He could be the Lamb
that takes away the sin of the world, so that He could save us. God, God the
Father and God the Son, so loved us that He would do this so that we would not
perish but have everlasting life.
This happened 2000 or so years ago, but we are not talking
about ancient history. He is here now; to Him who is and was and ever will be
this was an “eternal moment” and His love for us is as fresh for us this moment
as it was that day 2000 years ago, ages before you were even born. He knew you
then; He loved you then, just as He knows you and loves you now.
We don’t need to get over our fears and anxieties as much as we
need Him. We don’t need to become more disciplined as much as we need Him. We
don’t need to avoid temptations and overcome our sins as much as we simply need
Him. None of these other things are our root issues. Our root issue is our
relationship day by day and hour by hour with Him. Seek first the kingdom of
God and His righteousness (not ours), that is, seek first Him, and all these things shall be added unto you.
He has saved us. He has cut us free. He has died for us yet He
lives. He desires our love, our hearts, our wills, our minds. He desires that
we yield to Him, that we fully allow Him to rule us and lead us. He desires
that we fully yield to His Spirit who helps us grow and more fully connect to
Him. Let us worship Him and confess our love to Him, who is our everything.
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