Psalms 29-34

Psalms 29-34

            Psalm 30 merits a comment for two reasons: first, it causes us to reflect on the Israelite view of death and the afterlife. Ancient Israel did not have the fully developed sense of the afterlife that we see in the New Testament, especially say in Revelation. The Hebrew name for the place of the dead was sheol. The word itself doesn’t appear in the 2011 NIV, where it’s translated realm of the dead, nor does it appear in older NIVs, where it is translated grave. Whether you see the word in translation or not, it’s there. Sheol is described as a pit, sometimes a slimy pit. Sometimes it’s described as a swampy place where the muck and weeds will pull a person under the water, a far cry from the new Jerusalem’s golden streets! Israel knew that death was beyond human experience and human existence after death was conceived as a shadowy kind of half-reality. As Israel reflected and developed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, they understood more and more that the God who cared and protected them in life would also care and protect them in the afterlife. (Consider Psalm 6:5: “Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave?”) So, Psalm 30 gives us a glimpse of an era in which God’s people were unsure about what happened after death but they clearly saw it as something they wished to be delivered from.

            The second thing in Psalm 30 that I note is in verses 5 and 11, and that is the beautiful promises of God’s intervention, “His anger lasts only a moment; weeping stays for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. You turned my wailing into dancing and my sackcloth into garments of joy.” I observed in connection with Psalm 13 that this confidence is coupled with the troubled cry, “How long?” And certainly Christian experience demonstrates that God’s blessings aren’t always immediately apparent. I used the word eschatological twice in yesterday’s blog. The word means pertaining to the last things, and it is a way to refer to the great restoration of the creation that will occur when Christ returns in glory. Our confidence, that the Lord will transform weeping into joy, is thoroughly eschatological. We may mourn every day of our life, but we live in the hope that on that day all things will be transformed for our good. It makes waiting an essential part of Christian experience, but as Paul says, “For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently” (Romans 8:24-25).

            Psalm 31 is quoted by Jesus on the cross. It’s a prayer of confidence, even in trying circumstances. Verse 22 captures the point of the psalm, “In my alarm I said, ‘I am cut off from your sight!’ Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help.” God hears and cares, even when we think He doesn’t.

            Psalm 32 is a classic expression of confession and the joy of forgiveness.

            Psalm 33 contains an expression of the Biblical view of creation which affirms the basic thrust of Genesis 1, namely, that the Lord created all things out of nothing, simply by speaking them into existence. It’s also a reminder of the power of God’s Word. What He says happens.