July 21, 2002 -- NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST -- Proper 11
Psalm 86:11-17
Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth. (Ps. 86:11)
Color: Green
Psalm 86
Title: “Help against Enemies”
1 Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me,
for I am poor and needy.
2 Preserve my life, for I am devoted to you;
save your servant who trusts in you.
You are my God;
3be gracious to me, O Lord,
for to you do I cry all day long.
4 Gladden the soul of your servant,
for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
5 For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving,
abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you.
6 Give ear, O LORD, to my prayer;
listen to my cry of supplication.
7 In the day of my trouble I call on you,
for you will answer me.
8 There is none like you among the gods, O Lord,
nor are there any works like yours.
9 All the nations you have made shall come
and bow down before you, O Lord,
and shall glorify your name.
10 For you are great and do wondrous things;
you alone are God.
11 Teach me your way, O LORD,
that I may walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart to revere your name.
12 I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart,
and I will glorify your name forever.
13 For great is your steadfast love toward me;
you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.
14 O God, the insolent rise up against me;
a band of ruffians seeks my life,
and they do not set you before them.
15 But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
16 Turn to me and be gracious to me;
give your strength to your servant;
save the child of your serving girl.
17 Show me a sign of your favor,
so that those who hate me may see it and be put to shame,
because you, LORD, have helped me and comforted me.
In this Individual Lament the author draws upon the liturgical language of his times, post-exilic. Virtually every verse is taken from another psalm directly or indirectly, like a quilt of pieces from other psalm-cloths sewn together. As is the case with other Lament Psalms it is not possible to determine the exact nature of the misfortune the writer is speaking about. This psalm could be chanted at communal prayer, as it still is on Yom Kippur, or in personal privacy. While it may have been composed for or by a king, pious Israelites after the exile would have applied and appropriated the language of kingship to themselves as royal sons of Yahweh.
The psalm divides into four sections: verses one to seven, is a cry for help accompanied by the reasons why Yahweh should help; verses eight to ten, is a hymn of confidence in God; verses twelve and thirteen, is a thanksgiving for help received or about to be; and verses fourteen to seventeen, is a further lament and prayer. This last section is unusual. Normally, a Lament will close with a thanksgiving, not repeat the lament.
The Lament verses one to seven. The seven verses of this section repeat the same cry for help with accompanying reasons by using different stock formulas. Yet, the specific reason for the lament is not given. These formulaic prayers are general enough to be prayed in a variety of contexts.
Most commentators assume that this title, “Davidic prayer,” was constructed by a scribe to give the psalm Davidic authority. The style is that of a servant, possibly a human king like David or David himself, addressing an overlord or greater king, clearly Yahweh.
Verse one, Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me,
Hear me, Lord, and answer me: This is a frequent formula in prayers (cf. Ps71: 2; 88: 2; 102: 2).
For I am poor and oppressed: “For,” Hebrew ki, introduces the reason(s) why Yahweh should be concerned with the plight of the pray-er. He has no doubt of Yahweh’s ability to deal with the distress. His problem is making it Yahweh’s concern, getting his attention. It was well known that Yahweh had a preference for the poor, Hebrew `ani, and oppressed, Hebrew ‘ebyon and he lets Yahweh know he fits into those categories and thus merits a hearing. See Psalm 40:17.
In verse two, for I am devoted to you; this is another reason Yahweh should listen. The psalmist is bound to Yahweh by covenant. The Hebrew adjective hasid, godly, faithful, loyal, is formed from hesed, covenant loyalty, God’s loving kindness, the fundamental quality of Yahweh on which the covenant is based and the expected response of humans .
In verse five, For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving,
abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you.
This verse is reminiscent of Ex34:6 (Num14: 18) where the fundamental nature of Yahweh is spelled out. (See Ps 25: 11; 103: 8.)
Praise of and Confidence in the Incomparable God in verses eight to eleven.
This hymnic praise of God expresses faith that God not only is willing to come to the suppliant’s aid but able to do so because of his unmatched and unchallenged power and unequal position among whatever other gods may or may not exist. Either God is the only true and living God or he is by far the greatest among any and all pantheons.
In verse eleven, Teach me your way, O LORD,
: See Psalm 26: 3 and 27: 11. The Psalmist is aware that even his loyalty to Yahweh is due to God’s grace. The incomparable God also provides an incomparable way of life for those who know and glorify him.
Give me an undivided heart to revere your name: Literally, “unite my heart” or “make my heart single.” A double heart was an expression for divided loyalty, an uncentered will.
The Vow of Thanksgiving. 12 I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart,
and I will glorify your name forever.
13 For great is your steadfast love toward me;
you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.
These verses could either be an actual thanksgiving offering or a vow to offer thanks when the deliverance will has been granted.
In verse twelve. The Hebrew has ‘odeka, “I will give you thanks.”
In verse thirteen, you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol. The pray-er is so sure of a favorable answer and has brought to mind past answered prayers that he can speak as though the answer were already a fact, even if it might not, in fact, be. The depths of Sheol: Sheol was conceived of as a place far below the surface, in the very depths of the earth. This underworld is the opposite of heaven, the place where everyone went after death, complete separation from God and from the living. Here the phrase is used metaphorically. To be delivered from Sheol or from its “power,” possibility means to be restored to a relationship with God.
The Renewed Lament.
14 O God, the insolent rise up against me;
a band of ruffians seeks my life,
and they do not set you before them.
15 But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
16 Turn to me and be gracious to me;
give your strength to your servant;
save the child of your serving girl.
17 Show me a sign of your favor,
so that those who hate me may see it and be put to shame,
because you, LORD, have helped me and comforted me.
Lament psalms do not usually end with another or a repeated lament. This section could be a re-cap, a summary, or it could be a personal prayer added onto a pre-existing lament psalm.
In verse fourteen, a band of ruffians: This verse repeats nearly word for word Psalm 54: 3. The “enemy” is still general enough to mean human or non-human, sickness, legal accusations, demons, adversaries.
In verse fifteen, But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, the sentiments in v. 5 (based on Ex34: 6) are repeated here.
In verse sixteen, save the child of your serving girl.
Literally, “son of your handmaid” refers to a slave “born in the house,” born of an already possessed slave-girl and so one belonging to the household by birth as opposed to a newly purchased one. While there was no real difference, a slave was a slave, apparently there was some sort of twisted prestige attached to a “child of your handmaid.”
17 Show me a sign of your favor,
Hebrew ‘oth, has a wide range of meanings in the Old Testament, basically, it refers to an object or event through which or by means of which a person recognizes, learns, remembers or is confirmed in the credibility of something. A divine sign makes God and his activity more apparent, at least to the believer. Here, the pray-er asks for such a sign, evidence of divine comfort, which at the same time is a “warning” to his enemies that there is more to come.
Sermon
We take for granted that we can consult our Bibles in an instant, look up a verse or verses we read in the past and now need to give us either guidance or comfort. This convenience was not available until the past few centuries. Even after the invention of printing the written word would be available in a church, school or library only. And, of course, not everyone could read. Thus, it was necessary to memorize verses from the Bible in order to recall their message at times when they were needed to shed light on a situation or to give comfort. Memorizing goes way back. Even before the Bible was formed as such the revealed word was memorized, so precious was it to the hasidim, the faithful, pious, serious-about-God folks.
Psalm 86 is a pretty good example of what must have happened before such things as prayer books. Like we would do with songs today, people would memorize a verse or two from a psalm and probably couldn’t remember the whole psalm, at least in the case of the longer psalms. They would call up these verses, tucked away in the recesses of their memories, when needed and pray them. Every verse of this psalm comes from another psalm or passage of Scripture and captures a major theological and spiritual point of view. The first seven verses, for instance, say the same thing over and again, but in different words, words taken from other petitionary psalms. They have been strung together, like beads of a rosary, are repeated one after another, to heighten the pray-er’s intensity. The idea would be something like walking up steps, getting closer and higher with each grade. Admittedly, the result can be much like that of praying really “saying,” the rosary, boring, inattentive repetition without much awareness of what is being said. Nonetheless the aberration does not negate the process.
After becoming intensely aware that one is in a dependent relationship, servant to lord, with God through repeated confession, the pray-er praises the uniqueness of God and then petitions, despite the pressing nature of his or her distress, to be like the incomparable God in the “way” he or she lives. So sure that God will respond, the pray-er transcends time and earth, the facts on the ground, and begins to pray from the eternal perspective, as though God had already answered according to verse thirteen, and then quickly returns to earth again in verse fourteen to seventeen, and prays more in the earthly present than in the eternally present. In the eternally present the future and present tenses of earth merge, blend, coalesce. There is no real difference. And it is a wonderful experience, one of the wonders that motivates us to pray like this.
While commentators on this psalm cannot explain why the psalmist returns to “lament” or petition after he has thanked God, why he has departed from the standard form for Lament Psalms, pray-ers of the Psalms, those not merely students of the Psalms, know full well that the earthly realties do not change at the moment our vision and interpretation of them in the light of eternity changes. We know about the “time gap,” and return to petition even after we have glimpses the resolution and are assured of it. Such behavior may not make logical sense, but it makes theological sense.
Passages, burned in our memories as a result of constant repetition, get ignited again and leap forward into our consciousness when situations in which they were prayed either repeat themselves or remind of similar circumstances. As one text joins with another, not originally joined in the written Scriptures, new insights into the eternal perspective emerge and the vision is enriched, layered with fuller meaning. Psalm 86 is a good example of that process. Thank God the psalmist wrote it down so we could not only appreciate his vision but recognize the process in our own lives. As always, once recognized truth can be expanded and applied to broader contexts. Amen.
