Opus 2025-320: The Imperfect Hebrew Shepherd

As I was reading the 23rd psalm on the 23rd day of the month as a regular discipline, I paused a moment and asked myself, “What does the grammar show us?”  I know that’s a regular question that you ask yourself.  One of the clues that got my attention here is in the KJV the verbs at the beginning, at least, ended in “eth.  I’ve been told in the New Testament, which was originally in Greek, that ending means the present tense, which has the idea of continued action.  I’m finding in the Hebrew that ending is usually the imperfect tense, which has the same concept of continued action.

I quickly worked through the entire Psalm and I noticed this consistently.  Almost every verb in this Psalm is in the imperfect tense.  The one that stood out as not being in the imperfect tense was the anointing of the head with oil.  That seem to be a one time process, which would fit together with the idea of being anointed with the Holy Spirit.

What does that say about it a bit of scripture like this?  Does that underlying sense of the Hebrew grammar of continued action speak to us even when we are not aware of the Hebrew?  Is that one of the reasons why this is such a loved bit of scripture?

So much of the Christian walk is a process rather than a crisis.  In my circles, we talked about being saved as a crisis experience, it happens in the moment.  Many theological traditions talk about sanctification as being a process, growth, maturing.  This Psalm is about growing in the main part.  It is a continual lifetime experience.  It makes life into an adventure as we walk into the future by God side.

It’s quite a promise.  And I think as we’re looking at the grammar the promise becomes even more dramatic and more encouraging.

The Shepherd may be perfect, but the grammar is imperfect.

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-321: Dark Thoughts: Timing

We live in desperate times.  That desperation is a bit overblown in comparison with world history but very real when compared to the world I was raised in.  We never locked our house.  The police were our friends.  I was not worried about any other country in the world.  I never worried about going hungry or loss of electricity.  

That world is a thing of dreams.  Every day we see another place where the secret cabal that runs America comes a little more out of the closet as they rip our liberties away.  I fear that things will come to an explosion point.  I also fear that things will never come to an explosion point.  I fear that we will slowly dissolve into another failed culture.  

Psalm 21 speaks to David’s enemies, but for us it speaks to God’s enemies.

(Psa 21:8 KJV)  Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies: thy right hand shall find out those that hate thee.

God’s enemies are not worried about us, for good reason.  They know about the other cheek.  They know about the extra mile.  In spite of that, God tells us to wait.  

Eventually, when He is ready, God will move.  How will we know?  I think when it comes we will know and be sure in the knowledge.  That will be the time for us to move.  In Matthew 10 Jesus sent out the disciples and told them to only go to Israel.  In Matthew 28 He sends them out to all nations.  Situations change.  What is always the same is the difficulty of waiting.

The Bible has numerous indications of waiting.  One that many are familiar with is,

(Psa 46:10 KJV)  Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.

The “be still” does not refer to noise but to motion.  It means to relax and allow God to do His work.

Then you have some of the last words Jesus gave to the gathered disciples,

(Act 1:4 KJV)  And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me.

They were to wait until God gave them the power and blessing of the Holy Spirit.  

And of course we have God waiting,

(Gal 4:4 KJV)  But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,

How appropriate for the Christmas season.  One of the questions David kept asking in the Psalms was “How long, O Lord?”  I am sure we ask the same question.  We are usually told to wait.  A large part of the waiting is to teach us to trust Providence.

We live in desperate times.  That does not mean we are desperate.  The early church knew the meaning of persecution.  They knew desperate times.  In spite of that they were known for their love of each other.  We would do well to remember that.  Much of the reason God seems to take so long is to give people a chance to repent.

He will eventually reach the end of His patience.  Wait for it.

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-270: Law, Talon or Sword?

When reading in Psalm 21 I came across a message that might be considered by modern Israel.  The first seven verses are general praise toward God but the atmosphere changes starting in verse 8.

(Psa 21:8 KJV)  Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies: thy right hand shall find out those that hate thee.

Now David starts to focus on his political situation.  David, as God’s anointed king, understands that his enemies tend to be enemies of God.  He then goes on to detail the punishment for people who are enemies of God and enemies of God’s people, Israel.  It seems rather barbaric and violent.

(Psa 21:9 KJV)  Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger: the LORD shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them.
(Psa 21:10 KJV)  Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from among the children of men.
(Psa 21:11 KJV)  For they intended evil against thee: they imagined a mischievous device, which they are not able to perform.
(Psa 21:12 KJV)  Therefore shalt thou make them turn their back, when thou shalt make ready thine arrows upon thy strings against the face of them.

To us this sounds overly brutal.  That is because we have been sheltered by a culture that is basically Christian in its values and behavior.  We think of the atrocities of the Germans and Japanese during World War II, shudder, and then compare it to how gently we handled them after the war was over.  Sensitive people need to read more and get a flavor of how it was in the past.

Understand the historical context of these remarks.  

Cities unsuccessful in resisting a siege expected certain consequences.  These were not just possible.  They were assured.  A city that was overrun by an enemy assumed three things would happen:  Pillage, rape and murder.  If you managed to survive the carnage then you would be sold into slavery.  Mercy was not on the agenda.  This was standard in the ancient world.  You might ask yourself why cities resisted.  Why not just surrender?  Because there was no guarantee that it would not happen even if you submitted.  The last time we saw this in most people’s minds would be when the Russians entered Berlin.  In the bigger world you might take the Communist takeover of Cambodia into consideration.

Much of the world has moved on.  That is the part of the world that has been influenced by Europeans civilization based on Christianity.  Islam is still living in that past.  The attacks the world witnessed by Hamas were part of that barbaric tradition.

Psalms 21 is in that age.  The targets David mentioned are specifically enemies who have been attacking.  Israel is not building an empire but defending a country.  That would be similar to what is going to happen as Israel responds to Hamas.

Islam has similar statements but with a difference.  Psalms is about defense and response to attack.  The Koran commands are for Muslims against anyone who resists their goal of world domination.  That makes a difference to you and me.

How do we as civilized societies respond?  Usually with the rule of law.  That means a body of rules that have been agreed on and allow people to know how to act.  In the past it has included capital punishment and even slavery.  One of the reasons slavery existed for so long was because the slaves themselves understood their legal position.  They may not like it but they acknowledged it.  If they were the slave owners they would have thought it was fine.

Understand that the rule of law in our nation was not allowed to be ex post facto or have bills of attainder.  The rules were to be clearly stated and punishment was to be evenly meted out.

We are living in a day when the rule of law is being ignored.  What the people ignoring don’t seem to understand is that if they succeed in breaking the system we will go back to the fang and talon rule of the sword.  In that scenario they will be the first to find out how brutal it can be.

Pray that we make it through without everything falling apart.  There are no winners in chaos.

homo unius libri