buy from amazon.com
buy from amazon.co.uk

FIVE – Psalm 73

The Old Testament begins with seventeen books of history and concludes with the seventeen books of the prophets. In between come the five books of wisdom or poetry: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs.

The book of Psalms is a collection of songs and poems from many different writers. One hundred of the psalms have titles naming an author: seventy-three name David; eleven name ‘the sons of Korah’; two name Solomon; Moses and Ethan are named once each – and Asaph is named for Psalm 73 and eleven others.

Psalm 73 is classic work of observing, deep-thinking FIVE.

In the early verses, the psalmist observes the world as if from afar – and does not like what he sees: he is distressed at the prosperity of the wicked (Psalm 73:2‑3).

It was a commonplace at that time, throughout the interacting cultures of the region, to believe that the righteous would prosper and the wicked would come to nothing – that the good would be rewarded and the evil would be punished. Psalm 1 and Psalm 37 both proclaim this theme. This is the cause of distress for our observer FIVE in Psalm 73: Asaph observes that the wicked are prosperous, and this is sufficient challenge to his faith that his ‘feet are close to stumbling’ (Psalm 73:2). The full scale of the injustice he sees is described in verses 4 to 9: the wicked and arrogant are also proud and violent, and full of spite and folly – and yet they are healthy, well fed, untroubled, and powerful. This is the objective analysis of the observer FIVE.

It gets worse: people are turning to these evildoers and proclaiming on account of their prosperity that God clearly pays no regard to good and evil. People who live regular, difficult lives – ‘stricken all day long, chastened every morning’ – are deciding that their efforts to live righteously have been wasted efforts, because in contrast to their own ordinary, difficult lives, it seems that ‘the wicked are always at ease, and increase in riches’ (Psalm 73:10‑14).

Asaph paints these observations in vivid colors – the FOUR wing of FIVE – and there is a clear temptation to envy – also on the FOUR wing of FIVE. And now we see the faithful, loyal SIX wing of FIVE deeply distressed as all that it knows of God is challenged (Psalm 73:16): Asaph is tempted even to go along with those who are turning to the wicked, but that would be untrue to all that he has held dear – untrue to all that he knows (Psalm 73:15). Therefore, he sticks with what he knows: he goes faithfully to the sanctuary despite everything – and it is there, in prayer before God, that all becomes clear to him once again (Psalm 73:17). There he recounts what he knows: that the downfall of the wicked will be great in the end; that the place of wickedness is a dangerous place, whatever prosperity may be there; that while there may be prosperity in wickedness for a while, there is no security, and nothing of eternal value to be found (Psalm 73:17‑20,27).

It is a painful and difficult thing for SIX to move a boundary, to change an understanding. Based on his FIVE observations, Asaph’s SIX wing has nudged the definition of the lot of the wicked from ‘nothing good in this world’ to ‘nothing good that lasts’. It was a move sufficiently important to justify his FOUR wing’s creating a Psalm.

Asaph repents of his earlier doubting, and gives thanks for God’s faithfulness throughout – and for God’s faithfulness into eternity (Psalm 73:21‑24). God is his sober joy, his one desire, strong and sufficient forever, despite the envy and despite the pain: this is Asaph touching a redeemed SEVEN – which is FIVE thriving under pressure (Psalm 73:25‑26,28). And the security type EIGHT is also here – as Asaph foresees the final downfall of the prosperous wicked (Psalm 73:18‑20,27).

In the earlier section on ‘access all areas,’ we noted that FIVE has no easy access to ONE or TWO or THREE. In the early verses of the psalm Asaph observes the injustice of the world but he feels only sadness and bewilderment – not the inflamed anger at unfairness which is so distinctive to ONE. On finding his own resolution in the temple he is not suddenly overcome with compassion for the wicked as individuals or determined to go out and woo them back to God one by one – which would have been the instinct of TWO. Neither does he feel the burden to win them back to God as a group – which would have been the vocation of THREE. For Asaph the observer, it is enough to tell faithfully of God’s works and God’s goodness to any who will hear, while the wicked go the way that they will go (Psalm 73:27‑28). Asaph has wisdom for those who choose to seek it, and will tell of it as he can – and this is the vocation of FIVE.

Asaph’s journey was the journey of FIVE. He needed to make a decision about how he would live. He reached a point where he had to interpret what he knew and apply it to his life, even though it was difficult to understand. To do this he went to the temple, where in quietness he could still, or rise above, the endlessly churning mind – and there he learned to see the wisdom of ordinary humble goodness, compared to the vain glory of the prosperous: he learned that true wisdom is a simple, righteous life.

The five Old Testament books of ‘wisdom’ are well named – for they all show aspects of FIVE throughout. Distinctively within the Old Testament, they incorporate philosophical ideas that derive from the creative interaction of many cultures – although they come to us through faithfully Hebrew selection and discernment.

During the reigns of David and Solomon, Israel was a proud and wealthy nation, attracting visitors from far and wide. Centuries earlier, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had traveled often and traveled widely – from Ur near the Persian Gulf in the east to Egypt in the west. Later, during the time of the exile a single empire covered territories ‘from India to Ethiopia’ (Esther 1:1) – and influences from even that far afield can be detected in the books of wisdom.

The ideal of wisdom was highly prized in all those eastern cultures: to observe and understand the details of how the world worked, to distil the wisdom from the observation, and then to teach it and pass it on, in public or in private.

The book of Proverbs comes directly from this tradition. It is a book of head wisdom: pieces of advice, each in a short, punchy, memorable format – in words – based on observations of the world around, observations of how the world works. It attempts no great theology or understanding of any great divine plan. It just says: this is how it is, and this is how to deal with it.

A universal concept for faith across all the cultures of the region was the conviction that everybody, good or bad, must surely get what they deserve in the end – the eastern religions call it karma. This is not a Hebrew concept – from the history of the Hebrew people – and yet it is found in many of the Psalms, and the Hebrew scholars have to address it, as we have seen in our review of Psalm 73. The problem is that it does not appear to be universally true: people do not always get what they deserve in the end; often they get better or worse than they ‘deserve.’ As well as being the subject of Psalm 73, this is the subject of two whole books from the wisdom section – Job and Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes, observing the state of things at FIVE, produces beautiful poetry at the FOUR wing – and great sadness at the SIX wing, because there does not seem to be any simple rule to make everything all right. The writer’s solution is to be content with what there is: to stay happy – the link to SEVEN – come what may. This almost has hints of the kind of eastern philosophy that became Buddhism – to choose to disconnect from suffering and to be content – though the idea is filtered through Hebrew scholars to be true Hebrew Scripture.

The book of Job is more complex, with Job’s comforters insisting – in accordance with convention – that his suffering must be the result of sin (Job 4–31) – until Elihu brings God into it, suggesting that the wisdom of God could be far more complex, and way beyond our understanding, and that we should not dare to question it. This Job concedes, and then God speaks to confirm it (Job 32–37). God who is wise beyond our understanding may send things to try us, or discipline us like a loving parent – or just see and understand things that are beyond the reach of our human minds. This is one carefully thought out solution to the problem of suffering – a scholarly work of FIVE.

The most wonderful thing about the Song of Songs is that it was included at all in the collection of books that we acknowledge as Scripture. Its two lovers sing their passion and celebrate each other’s sensual physicality. In the poetry of FOUR it is a FIVE observation that sex and sensuality are wonderful things. If the book had been left out of the Bible, there would have been no explicit celebration of the joy of physical sexuality in our Scriptures – but they put it in, so there is – our own gentle karma sutra.

And finally the book of Psalms itself contains fragments of ideas from many sources – such as repeated references to ‘the gods’ (Psalm 82:1; Psalm 82:6; Psalm 86:8; Psalm 97:7) – as well as distinctively Hebrew texts – like an entire history of the nation in Psalm 78. And all of it is edited and compiled – by wise and studious FIVEs – for the people of the one true God of Israel – as their book, their collected poetry and wisdom, their Scripture.

next >>

amazon.com

amazon.co.uk