Today, we get to work through Psalm 5. This will be a treat :)
(5:1) Of/for the director. With flutes. A song of/for David.
(2) I have said,
"My words, hear, O Yahweh.
Understand my sighing/groaning.
When things are really bad in life, you lose your ability to form words. All that can come out, is groans, and sighs. If someone hears those noises, they have to interpret them, to understand them. And depending on how it came out, they might hear lots of things-- frustration, anger, despair, exhaustion, defeat.
[Apologies for using Hebrew numbering-- everything is off by one.]
The psalmist opens here by calling on God to hear his groans and sighs, and understand them. These groans are like a foreign language that only the psalmist knows-- but he prays that God would be able to translate.
He then continues, verse 3:
(3) Pay attention to the sound of my voice, my King and my God/Elohim,
because to you I pray.
The psalmist knows that there are many elohim he could choose to pray toward. Lots of different gods, and choices he could make. But He has chosen to pray to Yahweh, his King, and his God. And so he points out to God, that this is the choice he has made. "Yahweh, to you, I'm praying. So please, pay attention to my voice.
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Goldingay, Psalms 1-41, 128:
"Declaring simply that Yhwh is king makes an objective affirmation about Yhwh's sovereignty; declaring that Yhwh is "my king" makes an affirmation about the application of that sovereignty on my behalf. It is correlative to my being Yhwh's servant, which implies a commitment on my part but also a commitment on Yhwh's part."
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Verse 4-8:
(4) Yahweh, [in the] morning, you hear my voice;
in the morning I arrange [my prayer] to/before you,
and I keep watch,
(5) for not a God (El) who delights in wickedness, you are.
Evil does not dwell with you.
(6) They shall not stand-- the boastful/foolish-- before your eyes.
You have hated all the ones doing villainy.
(7) You destroy the ones speaking a lie.
The man of bloodshed and deceit, He detests -- Yahweh,
(8) while I, through the greatness of your loyalty, I shall enter your house.
I shall bow down toward your holy temple in fear/reverence of you.
One of things that makes kids, kids, is that they have a strong sense of justice, and right and wrong. If their sibling-- or some neighborhood kid-- hits them, or says something terrible about them, or threatens them, they take that situation, and they come to their parents. This past fall, there were two boys who came over to our house-- kids who had just moved in to a house a block over. These kids came over, and one of them was swearing, using language so bad that most of my kids didn't even understand it. Two of my kids rushed into the house, and it all came pouring out of their mouths. The whole situation, in 30 seconds. What they were doing, was arranging their problem before us. Laying it all out, carefully ordered, in front of us. When they finished talking, they waited for a response. They "kept watch." They knew, that this wasn't something that we'd let slide, because they knew that we have rules for the neighborhood kids, for what is and isn't appropriate in our yard and in our house.
This, basically, is what the psalmist is doing. He knows the kind of people, and the kind of action, that Yahweh hates. He knows what God does to people who are deceitful and violent. And so he dumps the whole situation before God in prayer, and then he waits. He knows that God will act against his enemies.
And then, at the same time, the psalmist knows something else. Let's reread verse 8:
(8) while I, through the greatness of your loyalty, I shall enter your house.
I shall bow down toward your holy temple in fear/reverence of you.
Yahweh is a loyal God. He's reliable. He's faithful. He's the kind of God who, when you go to him with your problem, will help you. And so the psalmist expresses confidence here, that this will end well for him. He will enter God's house. He will bow down toward God's temple, in reverence.
Verse 9-10:
(9) Yahweh, lead me by your righteousness because of my enemies.
Make straight before me your road/way,
(10) because there isn't his mouth reliability;
their inward parts are destruction/ruin/wickedness;
open graves, their throats [are].
Their tongues speak deceit.
There is a road that Yahweh walks in the world. It's the way of light, and truth, and righteousness. This is the road that God uses, and this is the road that He wants others to walk.
The psalmist wants to walk on this road. He wants to be faithful. But when he looks at his life, and his road, he knows that it's a minefield. His enemies have made it so that every step is a danger. They've set up traps, and snares, everywhere. Specifically, mostly, they've done this through deceitful speech. We are truthful people, and we expect people to speak truthfully toward us. And when they don't, we are vulnerable. We take their words, and trust them. And then, if it's a lie, we can end up humiliated, or walking down a terrible, lonely road. Or, worst case, it can get us killed. Lies are destructive.
The psalmist knows all of this. And so he asks God to lead him, on God's own road. He need to detour onto God's road.
Verse 11:
(11) Make them pay, God/Elohim.
May they fall because of their counsel/plan.
In the multitude of their transgressions, banish/scatter them,
because they have rebelled against you,
I'm pretty sure this is the first time in teaching through the psalms, we've found a verse like this, where the psalmist prays that God would do something terrible to someone. Often times, they are far more graphic, and vengeful, than this one. But this one is remarkable for how offensive it maybe sounds to us. "Make them pay!"
Some Christians, when they hear prayers like this, remember Jesus' words from the NT. "Love your enemy. Pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:43-44). Or Paul's words: Bless those who persecute you. Bless, and don't curse" (Romans 12:14).
And here, we have the psalmist saying, "Make them pay." "May they fall." "Banish/scatter them."
What do we do with this?
My own approach, for what it's worth, is to read the Bible sympathetically. Which is maybe an icky way to put it, and open to misunderstanding. What I'm trying to say, is that I don't like criticizing things in the Bible. I don't like putting myself above the Bible, and judging it. I try to be a simple Bible believing Christian, and put myself under it, and hear it as God's word to me.
So can I pray Psalm 5:11? Can I ask God, to make people pay for their evil?
Let me tell you a story, about the one time in my life I remember praying something like Psalm 5:11.
When I was in college, I sprayed lawns as a summer job. My boss, who was also the owner of the company, had a habit of short-changing my pay. Every week, I'd have to figure out what I'd actually earned off commission, because the check was consistently $100-500 short. It was always short. Never over. A few days, in particular, I remember them trying to shave over $200 off-- in a single day.
Let's read James 5:1-6:
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. 4 Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
I don't remember exactly what I prayed, but it was basically the prayer of the worker crying out for justice. Here, we have this wealthy business owner, who lives in a million dollar house, and he's working me over to put maybe a couple thousand dollars in his pocket. That's my money for college. And it's maybe a plane ticket to Hawaii for him.
It's been 20 years since I cried out to God about that, and for 20 years, I haven't quite known if what I did was okay or not. I've been unsettled, and unhappy, about it. But I was peeved, and I needed that money, and it wasn't right.
[And, when I read verse 4, I see that even if I'd kept my mouth shut, and not cried out to God in frustration about that, my lost wages would raise their own cry to God. That money in his pocket, cries out to God, because that money knew it should've been in my pocket.]
Did I do something wrong?
I don't think I did. I think what I did, was completely okay. And what I'd like to do at this point, is come at this from three different angles. And each angle should hopefully make you more open, to praying like this, even if you're not exactly sure how it happened.
(1) Angle #1, for why this type of prayer is okay
Part of the reason that it's okay to pray like this, is that the psalmist is describing the kind of people who can't be allowed to freely live and operate in the world. This is not your garden variety of sinner. We aren't talking about someone who's simply immoral, or idolatrous, or greedy, or angry. The problem people in Psalm 5 are villains.
They are deceitful murderers. No society can function, and prosper, when this type of behavior is tolerated. So even apart from an awareness of what God hates-- we understand that we need, very badly, for God to place limits on these people. We need them to "fall." We need them to be "banished." We need them to not be our neighbors.
This is maybe still a struggle for you. We hear these words differently living in rural ND, than people living somewhere like downtown Chicago, or Baltimore. Every week in these cities, people get shot and killed. There aren't enough police-- they quit, faster than they can be replaced. When you need them, it takes them too long to get your house-- not necessarily because of any fault of their own. They are stretched too thin. Murders are unsolved; murderers are walking around free. Gangs rule the streets.
How are you supposed to raise a family, in a place like this?
The only one who can make these people pay, and put an end to their deceit and violence, is God. So I'm not going to tell someone who lives in a place like this, that they can't pray Psalm 5:11. They need God to make those people pay. They need them to fall, and be banished.
(2) Angle #2, for why praying this type of prayer is okay
A second part of my answer, that keeps me from criticizing the psalmist here, or thinking I have some higher type of faith or spirituality, is this: the psalmist isn't viewing things from his own perspective. He is looking at these villains, and viewing them from God's perspective. He's reminding Yahweh, of what kind of God he is. Yahweh is a God who doesn't tolerate rebellion against himself. He doesn't have much patience for deceitfulness, or violence. The psalmist is asking God, to be the kind of God, that He actually is. To act in line with his character.
And this is not just an OT thing. Let's turn to Revelation 6:9-11 (NIV for no reason):
9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. 10 They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” 11 Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the full number of their fellow servants, their brothers and sisters,[e] were killed just as they had been.
Is this not close to Psalm 5? A holy, and true, and sovereign Lord must, in the end, judge the earth. And if you long for the day when there will be true peace, and if you understand what God hates, these types of prayers will flow out your mouths.
(3) Angle #3, for why praying this type of prayer is okay
As we continue our sporadic study of Psalms, what we are going to see, over and over, is that we can pray to God however we want. We tend to think that we should tell God what He wants to hear. That we need to filter our words, and choose them carefully, so they are pleasing to Him. We think, if we have a problem with God, that we are supposed to keep those words to ourselves, or "mutter" about them to other people.
And this is bunk.
The reason psalms like this are in the Bible, is to encourage you to be honest with God. Express how you actually feel. Tell God what you actually think.
Let me read you something from Goldingay:
"Under pressure, then, it is appropriate to turn to Yhwh, to recall Yhwh's commitment against evil, to ask for one's attackers to be put down, and to ask for deliverance and blessing for ourselves. Christian commentators contrast the psalm unfavorably with Jesus' prayer for his enemies' forgiveness (Luke 23:34). The psalm assumes that it is acceptable to tell God what we want. Perhaps it implies that it is better for desires to be owned than repressed, not just for the sake of our psychological well-being but also for the sake of the assailants from whom we might otherwise seek our own vengeance (cf. Ps. 37:8-9?). We then leave it to God to decide what to do with our prayer" (Psalm 1-41, 133).
So when you are badly wronged, if what you really want, is for God to bring judgment on those people, pray that. Ask God to make it right. Ask God to bring the heat. And this is especially the case if you are dealing with a true villain.
On the other hand, if you are ready to forgive someone, and move on in life, you can pray to God along those lines, instead. You can ask God to bless those who have wronged you. You can ask God to forgive them. And you can serve as a blessing to them; you can forgive them.
How you pray, is up to you.
But there is something you can't do. Let's read from Romans 12:17-21:
17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
What you shouldn't do, is take vengeance on your enemy yourself. That's God's job. Imagine that you, and your enemy, are in a boxing ring together. Your enemy hits you. What comes next? What Paul is saying in Romans here, is that there is one single person who can punch back. You can choose to do what comes naturally here, and be the one to take a swing. But you are better off "leaving space/room" for God to be one punching back. He hits harder, and he will repay.
Verse 12-13:
(12) and may they rejoice-- all the ones seeking refuge in you-- forever.
May they sing for joy,
and may you screen/cover over them,
so that they shall exalt in you-- the ones loving your name,
(13) because you bless the righteous, Yahweh.
Like a shield, favor, you surround him with.
Verses 12-13 are a really nice way to pray for people. All of the people who intentionally, deliberately, seek refuge in God-- may they rejoice in you, Yahweh. May they sing for joy, in you. May you be a screen over them, protecting them. May you do all of that for this church-- for your church.
And may you do all of this, for your own glory and honor. When God protects his people, the natural result, is that we exalt him.
Let's reread verse 13:
(13) because you bless the righteous, Yahweh.
Like a shield, favor, you surround him with.
What kind of God do we serve? The psalmist knows that Yahweh, is a God who blesses the righteous. Who surrounds his people with favor, like a shield, in every direction.
Just stop and think about that, for a minute. The psalmist, earlier, made his life sound like a minefield. Every step was potentially fatal. He's surrounded by-- what? By lying murderers.
But here, the psalmist takes a step back, and looks logically at God, and the world. He knows that God blesses people who live rightly toward him. He knows that God protects his people. And this knowledge, trumps his recent experience.
We often do the reverse of all of this. We look at our lives, and we come to conclusions about who God is, and what He is willing to do, and what He is doing, based on what life looks like now. We base our theology (our views of God and what He is doing and willing to do) on our own experience.
And when life is a minefield, we try to find purpose in it. We try to see God's hand in it. His bigger picture. We talk about God's "sovereignty" or his "will." And so we accept it. And we draw conclusions about God based on a total misunderstanding.
But maybe, we have this completely wrong. Maybe God hates villains. Maybe the day is coming, when He will come in judgment on them, and make things right.
Maybe, God is a shield to his people. Maybe, God blesses his people. And when it feels like our shield is missing, or has huge holes, God expects us to cry out to him in faith, and ask him for help.
So what does Psalm 5 teach us? Why is it in the Bible?
If you find yourself in a minefield, don't be shy about asking God for help. Be bold. Tell God what He needs to hear, and not what you think He wants to hear. And know this, above all: God will do more, if you ask for more.
(1) Of/for the director. With flutes. A song of/for David.
(2) My words, hear, O Yahweh.
Understand my sighing/meditating.
(3) Pay attention to the sound of my voice, my King and my God/Elohim,
because to you I pray.
(4) Yahweh, [in the] morning, you hear my voice;
in the morning I arrange [my prayer] to/before you,
and I keep watch,
(5) for not a God (El) who delights in wickedness, you are.
Evil does not dwell with you.
(6) They shall not stand-- the boastful/foolish-- before your eyes.
You have hated all the ones doing villainy.
(7) You destroy the ones speaking a lie.
The man of bloodshed and deceit, He detests -- Yahweh,
(8) while I, through the greatness of your loyalty, I shall enter your house.
I shall bow down toward your holy temple in fear/reverence of you.
(9) Yahweh, lead me in your righteousness because of my enemies.
Make straight before me your road/way,
(10) because there isn't his mouth reliability;
their inward parts are destruction/ruin/wickedness;
open graves, their throats [are].
Their tongues speak deceit.
(11) Make them pay, God/Elohim.
May they fall because of their counsel/plan.
In the multitude of their transgressions, banish/scatter them,
because they have rebelled against you,
(12) and may they rejoice-- all the ones seeking refuge in you-- forever.
May they sing for joy,
and may you screen/cover over them,
so that they shall exalt in you-- the ones loving your name,
(13) because you bless the righteous, Yahweh.
Like a shield, favor, you surround him with.
