Salutation
... in the name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen. Through the prayers of our
holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen. Glory
to You, our God, Glory to You.
O Heavenly King: Prayer to the Holy
Ghost
O
Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, You are everywhere and fill
all things, Treasury of blessings, and Giver of life: come and abide in us, and
cleanse us from every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One.
Maschil of Asaph.
Give ear, O my people, to my law. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old: which we
have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide [them] from their children, showing the generation to come the
praises of the Lord, His strength, and His wonderful works, which He has done: for He
established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded
our fathers, so that they would make them known to their children: so that the
generation to come might know, the children [who] should be born; [who]
should arise and declare [them] to
their children: so that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the
works of God, but keep His commandments; and might not be like their fathers, a
stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation [that] set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast
with God.
The children of Ephraim, armed, carrying
bows, turned back in the day of battle. They
kept not the covenant of God. [They] refused to walk in His law, and forgot
His works, His wonders, which He had showed them.
He did marvelous things in the sight of
their fathers, in the land of Egypt, [in]
the field of Zoan. He divided the sea,
and caused them to pass through. He made
the waters stand as a heap. In the
daytime also, He led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire. He split the rocks in the wilderness, and
gave [them] drink as [from] the great depths. He brought streams also from the rock, and
caused waters to run down like rivers.
Yet they sinned more against Him by
provoking the most High in the wilderness.
They tested God in their heart by asking meat for their lust. Yes, they spoke against God. They said, “Can God furnish a table in the
wilderness?” Behold, He struck the rock.
The waters gushed out. The streams overflowed. “Can He give bread also? Can He provide flesh for His people?”
Therefore, the Lord heard, and was offended. Fire
was kindled against Jacob. Anger also
came up against Israel: because, they believed not in God, and trusted not in His
salvation: though He had commanded the clouds from above, opened the doors of
heaven, rained down manna on them to eat, and had given them of the bread of
heaven. Man ate angels’ food. He sent them food to the full. He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven.
By His power He brought in the south
wind. He rained flesh also on them as
dust, feathered fowls as the sand of the sea. He let [it]
fall in the heart of their camp, round about their habitations. So they ate, and were well filled: for He
gave them their own desire.
They were not estranged from their lust. But while their meat was yet in their mouths,
the fury of God came on them, slew the fattest of them, and struck down the
chosen [men] of Israel. [In spite of] all this they sinned
still, and believed not for His wondrous works: So He consumed their days in
vanity, their years in trouble.
When He slew them, then they sought Him. They returned and enquired early after God. They remembered that God [was] their rock, the high God their
redeemer. Even so, they flattered Him
with their mouth. They lied to Him with
their tongues: for their heart was not right with Him; nor were they steadfast
in His covenant. But He, [being] full of compassion, forgave [their] iniquity, and destroyed [them] not. Yes, many a time He turned His anger away, and
stirred not up all His fury: for He remembered that they [were] flesh, a wind that passes away, and comes not again.
How often they provoked Him in the
wilderness, grieved Him in the desert! Yes,
they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. They remembered not His hand, the day when He
delivered them from the enemy; how He had wrought His signs in Egypt, His
wonders in the field of Zoan, had turned their rivers to blood, and their lakes,
so that they could not drink. He sent different
kinds of flies among them that devoured them; and frogs that destroyed them. He gave also their increase to the caterpillar,
their labor to the locust. He destroyed
their vines with hail, their sycamore trees with frost. He gave up their cattle also to the hail,
their flocks to hot thunderbolts. He
cast on them the fierceness of His anger, fury, indignation, and trouble, by
sending evil angels [among them]. He made a way for His anger. He spared not their soul from death, but gave
their life over to the pestilence. [He] struck all the firstborn in Egypt,
the chief of [their] strength in the
tabernacles of Ham: but made His own people go forth like sheep, and guided
them in the wilderness like a flock. He
led them on safely, so that they feared not.
But the sea overwhelmed their enemies.
He brought them to the border of His sanctuary, this mountain [that] His right hand had purchased. He cast out the heathen also before them, and
divided them an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel dwell in
their tents.
Yet, they tempted and provoked the most-high
God, and kept not His testimonies: but turned back, and dealt unfaithfully like
their fathers. They were turned aside
like a deceitful bow: for they provoked Him to anger with their high places,
and moved Him to jealousy with their graven images.
When God heard, He was offended, and
greatly abhorred Israel: so that He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent [which] He placed among men; and
delivered His strength to captivity, His Glory to the enemy’s hand. He gave His people over also to the sword;
and was offended with His inheritance. Fire
consumed their young men. Their maidens
were not given in marriage. Their
priests fell by the sword. Their widows
made no lamentation.
Then the Lord awoke as
one from sleep, like a mighty man Who shouts by reason of wine. He struck His enemies in the hinder parts. He put them to a perpetual reproach. Moreover He refused the tabernacle of Joseph,
and chose not the tribe of Ephraim. But [He] chose the tribe of Judah, the mount
Zion that He loved. He built His
sanctuary like high [palaces], like
the earth that He has established forever.
He chose David also His servant, and took him from the sheepfolds, from
following the ewes great with young. He
brought him to feed Jacob His people, and Israel His inheritance. So He fed them according to the integrity of His
heart; and guided them by the skillfulness of His hands.
________
If you have been
blessed or helped by any of these meditations in Psalms, please repost or share
all of them.
[1] We
would commit a grave mistake if we saw in the wars of the Israelites some sort
of physical jihad. Unquestionably, many
Israelites made this same mistake. The
flesh of man always wants to take credit for what God is doing, and thus misunderstands
His true intention. This is jihad, all right,
but it is a completely spiritual jihad: it has physical implications, only
because Adam, with the whole human race, became entangled with demonism. It is Yahweh’s jihad against demonism, which,
in no small part, is involved with extricating man from his sin that is at
stake here. Until this idea is firmly engraved
on our minds, and planted in our hearts, we cannot understand this Psalm, or
any other Psalm. The wars of God are against
spiritual evil, not against flesh and blood.
The salvation of flesh and blood from demonic evil is a painful process.
Many die in this surgery, due to their
own fault: they grow to love evil, and hate God, beyond all possibility of
change. From beginning to end, this Psalm
is about God’s spiritual war against evil.
Asaph tells us plainly that his story is a parable about, to
him, ancient history; about things which happened as much as eight hundred
sixty years previously. He plainly
declares that the purpose of his parable is to preserve Yahweh’s testimony by
carefully teaching it to their children.
This, is a children’s story. The
testimony of Yahweh is preserved, not by the children’s rote memory, but by the
fact that God’s Law becomes engraved on their minds, and planted in their
hearts, so that they become living epistles of God’s goodness. In other words, God’s war against sin in the
children’s lives has succeeded to the point that they become sincere
believers. Most of their parents did not
receive such victory.
We cannot identify Ephraim’s specific failure. Perhaps this is a reference to the unbelief
of the ten spies, who opposed the entry into the promised land: these spies
were afraid, and turned back, even though they had witnessed all of God’s power
displayed in Egypt and at Sinai. This is
a parable written for children, so it is not at all out of place to find here a
practical metonymy in Ephraim for the ten unfaithful spies and the multitudes
that followed them. In any case, this is
not the point. The point is, “They kept not the covenant of God. [They]
refused to walk in His law,” because they had a memory failure (God is being
gracious here, one does not simply forget a living, talking pillar of fire and
smoke, that is still present with them, listening to their unveiled disrespect,
but this is a parable for children, after all).
The point is not their physical failure, their cowardice in the face of
opposition, but their spiritual unbelief in God’s ability to keep His part of
the Covenant (all of it). God gives the
Covenant, the Israelites do nothing more than receive the gift of Covenant by
faith.
Now Asaph reviews details of the miracle of
the Exodus from Israel’s perspective, concluding with a reference to the Rock
that gives Water, Which is Jesus, the Rock Who gives the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father only;
but Jesus gives Him, in that it is the occasion of Jesus’ prayer, that the Father
send the Holy Ghost.
Yet, all these miracles did not suffice to
separate Israel from unbelief, so strong was Satan’s grasp on their souls. It is not that God was not strong enough to
pry them away from Satan’s grasp, but the weakness of sinful flesh prevented
it. The outcome is more insults to God,
so much so that even Moses is lead away, and now, on a second occasion, strikes
Christ, his Rock in the face, foreshadowing the Roman beatings in 33 AD.
Make no mistake: God was offended by
this. There were dire consequences: but
even in the midst of them “Man ate angels’ food” which foreshadows Christ the Living
Bread, Who is our communion.
Instead of being blessed by the greatness of
God’s miraculous bounty, many of the Israelites were carried away by the lust
of their unbelief and died. God “struck
down the [elect] of Israel.” Moreover,
almost all of the rest died, wandering in the wilderness of their own unbelief,
for no good reason at all. “He consumed their
days in vanity, their years in trouble”: forty years of them.
This agony is in reality, part of the healing
process. It is the punishment that
refreshes their memories (Hebrews 12). Yet
even in this, their belief is double minded.
We note in this that God’s objective is not the destruction of their
flesh, which He could have accomplished with a single stroke back in
Egypt. God’s objective is the healing of
the flesh, the separation of the flesh from sin, the building of unwavering
faith, the making of the godlike person.
Nevertheless, because the flesh is so easily torn, it is necessary to
repeat the painful lesson again, and again, and again.
Asaph returns to the scene of the Exodus from
Egypt’s perspective, which the Israelites had witnessed. The point is that the Israelites are being
tempted to return to the place of great death.
The entry into the promised land fits against this Egyptian backdrop,
because Canaan was allied with Egypt, which we suspect because of the Amarna letters. The Canaanites are not cast out because, God
in His cruelty, desires to steal their property; but because, God in His great
mercy, intends to redeem as many of them as possible: which is why the conquest
of Canaan takes from 1446 until nearly 1000, and is not complete until David
and Solomon are exalted by God: and even then stands on shaky ground.
Thus, Asaph continues with a brief mention of Israelite
failures in the period of Judges, with echoes into the kingdom period. These portions are brief, because this is a
parable for children, and Asaph is directing their attention toward the Law of
God.
Once again, the result is that God is offended. He destroys the Tabernacle. The Ark of the Covenant is captured by the
Philistines: rather, God is fed up and removes Himself to the Philistines, to
indicate His strong displeasure. This is
no immediate joy to the Philistines, since God immediately begins to trouble
them. Asaph emphasizes that God Himself caused
this, not the might of the Philistines.
The Philistines do not yet realize this, but many of their number will
enter into God’s redemption during the time of David: they will become David’s
personal bodyguard, so deeply do they fall in love with Yahweh, the Living God.
It is not God who awakens.
For children, the dullness of the Israelite people is expressed with a
reverse figure of speech. The “hinder parts”
refers to the “emerods” of 1 Samuel 5:6. God certainly has a sense of humor: this
intense physical discomfort is referred to as a spanking. The parable ends with the spotlight on David,
the Shepherd King; not on the Joseph tribes, especially Ephraim. Here we see the reason for the earlier
reference to Ephraim. The king will come
from Judah, from Zion. Asaph does not
reveal his own anguish to children, in that the physical kingdom of David lies
in ruins, but he sees the eternality of the promise, which is only fulfilled in
Jesus, the ultimate Shepherd King. His
Kingdom is not of this world. The wars
of the Psalms are about spiritual warfare, not physical warfare.
