How Long God?

How long O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

These are the opening words of Psalm 13, a desperate prayer for help, to a God that doesn't seem to be there. 

The psalmist is undergoing intense pain and sorrow and has come to the end of the road. We are not given the source of the author's trials, but it is the silence that is the most devastating.

So the psalmist cries out, "Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!" daring to believe that God has a personal interest in his or her plight, begging God to answer before it's too late; before his or her "eyes sleep the sleep of death...and the enemy prevails."

The psalmist in the end turns to Yahweh's hesed, his steadfast love, promising praise in recognition of God's deliverance.

But this Psalm is not formulaic, and does not promise that if we start at one end of the prayer and come out at the other, all doubt and pain will be replaced by trust and joy.

That is not the intention of the prayer, nor the reality of life. The Psalm is a voice for our deepest fears and our most painful moments and breaks us from the illusion that faith solves all of our problems.

It gives us permission to exist in the "in between," allowing us to embrace the tension of speaking to God both in language of lament and praise, of being abandoned and delivered, of hope and despair. 

For a scholarly treatment of Ps 13 see, Mays, J.L. Interpretation, 34 no 3 Jl 1980, 279-83.

A Matter of Preference

Psalm 14 is identical to Psalm 53 - except for one thing. Well two things, but one major. Do you know what it is? If you like to figure stuff out on your own, compare the two, otherwise read on. 

The Book of Psalms is actually a collection of five books.

Last month I wrote about how the book of Psalms is actually a compilation of five books. 

This explains why two identical Psalms exist in the Bible. Psalm 14 is part of the first book and Psalm 53, the second. 

But back to the difference: Psalm 14 and 53 use different names for God. Psalm 14 uses Yahweh (English Bibles = LORD) while Psalm 53 uses Elohim (English = God). This actually is the significant difference between Book Two (Ps 42-72) and the rest of the Psalms.

Book Two is known as the Elohistic Psalter, which is a fancy way of saying it prefers to use Elohim for the name of God, against the rest of the Psalms, which prefer Yahweh. 

This tells us a lot about how the Bible came to be the way it is. At one point, Book Two was a complete collection used by a specific community as their worship manual. And for reasons unknown to us, they preferred the name Elohim over Yahweh (cf. Ps 40.17 & 70.4).

Do you prefer one name for God over another? When you pray, do you pray to Jesus? Yeshua? The Father? Yahweh? Jehovah? God? Spirit? Or maybe even Baby Jesus?

And what do think it means that you would be more comfortable with one name or another? Would it be healthy for you to vary the way you speak about God? Would it enrich your spiritual life?

A Thanksgiving Lament

Many of us will turn to the book of Psalms this Thanksgiving for reflections on the blessings we have experienced in the past year. After all, the Hebrew title for Psalms is tehillim, "praises".

The book of Psalms is actually five books:

Book I: Psalms 1-41
Book II: Psalms 42-72 
Book III: Psalms 73-89
Book IV: Psalms 90-106
Book V: Psalms 107-150

Note how the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, are God's instructions to his people for the journey of life; the Psalms, are his peoples' response - how they think the journey is going.

Ironically, two-thirds of the Psalms are laments! They are complaints asking God why the world is the way it is.

This should speak volumes to us regarding the nature of the human response to life. Life is hard and messy. Things do not always go according to plan. There is tremendous joy, but there is also tremendous pain. 

This Thanksgiving, we can embrace the corporate thanks of a Psalm like 136, where the leader of the people would shout:

                                Give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good!

To which the people would give a resounding:

                                for his steadfast love endures forever.

A response that may flow even better in the original: ki le olam hasdon! Literally, "for his covenant love for us is unending!"

This being said, we should also make room for those whose only light at the end of the tunnel may be the...

for there is a reason that the Bible contains the painful words of a Psalm like Psalm 88:

                                   But I, Yahweh, cry out to you;
                                       in the morning my prayer comes
                                              before you.
                                    Yahweh, why do you cast me off?
                                        why do you hide your face from
                                              me?

Psalm 88 is unique in the entire Psalter (Gk. psalterion, after the psalms that were to be accompanied by a stringed instrument) as it ends without a reflection of hope or a thanks to God for deliverance.

Some may find it interesting that such a dismal lament made it into the canon, but this speaks poignantly about the God of scripture. There are others whose journey, although not identical, has been similar to your own, and God wants you to know that.

People experiencing the Psalm 88 reality may find solace, no matter how small, in simply voicing the words of the Psalm.

Those of us who walk alongside those experiencing such trials, should allow space. We should allow them honesty. They are walking the line between life and death, whether in mind or body and such space is sacred ground.

Embrace the tension and be there for them.

The NAME

Have you ever wondered why the Bible capitalizes all the letters in GOD or LORD? For instance, Psalm 29.1 "Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength."

The original Hebrew for the word here is not the actual word for Lord (adonai) or God (elohim) but rather the actual name of the Israelite God - Yahweh.

Some may be familiar with the traditional name "Jehovah" which is a combination of the consonants of YHWH and the vowels of adonai - thus Yahowah - the "J" and the "V" arose during the 1500s in a German translation of the Bible.

If the original Hebrew text includes God's actual name why do we not have it in our Bibles?

During the late part of the first millennia B.C. the Jews stopped using the actual name of God. They did this either out of a fear of taking "Yahweh's name in vain" - a rather typical human practice of allowing the pendulum to swing to extremes - or to highlight that Yahweh was not simply the local Jewish God but that he was the God of the entire world.

Respecting the Jewish perspective on this issue, translations of the Hebrew Bible substituted the LORD (adonai) for Yahweh and when the original text read "the Lord (adonai) Yahweh" they recorded it as "the Lord GOD."

I borrow from John Goldingay here, who notes that there are distinct disadvantages to the practice of avoiding the use of Yahweh.

First, there is tremendous power in a name; names open the door to relationship and names allow access. We are distanced from God in many ways by not using his name. Think of the amazing difference in level of connectedness you have with people whose names you know vs. those you do not.

Second, like the name Jesus (which means "savior"), the name Yahweh connotes immense power. It means I am who I am / I will be who I will be / I will be with you (Ex 3.14ff). There is incredible significance in connecting God's saving activity in the world with his name.

Back to Psalm 29 - this may have been originally a Canaanite hymn of praise to Ba'al, as we have a text that is almost verbatim to this, with Ba'al replaced for Yahweh. The potency of this passage is limited if we miss what Israel was doing in this hymn.

By replacing Ba'al with Yahweh, they were challenging the cultural presuppositions of the day - that Ba'al was the god in control of the rain that brought life to all people. They were saying, "Nice music, but you have the wrong words." It is our God, Yahweh, who is really in charge, who is really in control.

So what's in a name? A whole lot more than it may first appear.