A Companion to the Old Testament Writings: Volume 3 of Three

By Donald W. Haynes

The Jews divided their sacred writ into three sections—the Torah and Histories; the Prophecies; and the Writings. This book is about the writings—Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Daniel. Their content constitutes in a special way God’s Word for our times. This is a companion to one’s reading of the Bible. For each book there is an introduction, a section on “history and setting”; then, “Looking at the Text,” “Eternal Truths in this book,” and “Golden Texts. “Eternal Truths” are essential contributions made in this book to our contemporary idiom and theological situation, especially in American culture

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669836872

Donald W. Haynes

Dr. Donald W. Haynes is a retired United Methodist clergy and a member of the Western North Carolina Annual Conference. He is a graduate of High Point University and Duke University Divinity School. His honorary Doctor of Divinity is from Pfeiffer University. His first appointment was in 1954. He has thirty-eight years as a full time parish minister, four as Conference Director of Ministry, a term as District Superintendent, and has served six churches since his retirement. Also, after retirement, from 1999-2016 he was Director of Wesleyan Studies at Hood Theological Seminary, a racially diverse academic community affiliated with the AMEZ denomination. This is his seventh published book; others are in either biblical studies, Methodist history and doctrine, or “Singing our Faith,” a book on hymn stories. He is widowed, father of three children, seven grandchildren, and five great grandchildren. His hobbies are writing, woodwork, and yard work.

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CONTENTS

Introduction To Wisdom Literature of the Bible

PART I

The Book of Psalms

Introduction to the Psalms

An Overview of Psalms 1-150

A Thematic Arrangement of All the Psalms

I. Hymns of Praise

II. The Wisdom Psalms counseling us to follow God’s Word

III. Psalms of Trust and Confidence

IV. The Psalms of Individual Lament (complaint)

V. Psalms of Community Lament

VI. Imprecatory Psalms

VII. Royal Psalms

PART II

The Proverbs

The Book of Job

The Book of Ecclesiastes

The Song of Songs

The Book of Lamentations

The Book of Ruth—God’s Inspired Response to Ezra

The Book of Esther

The Book of Jonah

Daniel—The Man and the Prophecy

Endnotes Part I

Endnotes Part II

Introduction To Wisdom Literature of the Bible

The Hebrews divided their sacred Scriptures into three categories: Law, Prophets, and Writings. The writings are something of the Hebrew philosophy of religion. There is enormous variety and diversity in the writings, but their central focus is more on the moral and spiritual life and conduct of an individual in relation to God and to the faith community. There are a number of memorable heroes in the writings. Dating the writing of most of the wisdom books is virtually impossible. Some are written by one author ; others, anonymously, and some, like Psalms and Proverbs, are collections of inspired writings written over many centuries of time.

In Israel there were three groups of leaders in Judaism—priests, prophets, and wise men. The latter had no authority but their writings reflected their response to the mind and questions of the "people of the land.

•The 150 Psalms are the hymnbook of the Jewish Temple. Some are the most precious of all Scripture and have led millions to a God-changed life. Most are for all generations and all cultures, but some are very Zionist and ethnocentrically Jewish; some are complaints; some are imprecatory, a word meaning to pray for God to place a curse on their enemies.

•Proverbs is a collection of wisdom sayings, not nearly all by Solomon! They are several smaller collections gathered over generations from very early times to the Greek era, mostly advising how to live a good life. Very few proverbs are repeated in the New Testament because they are not Christological. Importantly, the word sophia is feminine. When Wisdom is the subject of a sentence, it means a wise woman who is urging the simple to embrace wisdom. Others are words from fathers to sons.

•The Song of Songs restores to Christianity the potential beauty of erotic love and the most intimate of all human relationships. Unlike Christian Puritans, the Hebrews considered the body as the temple of the soul and therefore what God created as good. The Song provides a sensuous, pure Hebrew concept of love and marriage. Here, it is a drama.

•Ecclesiastes was written by a cynical philosopher who bordered on heresy; yet the Hebrews were inspired by God to place this book in the Bible because all of us are tempted to be cynical at times! Perhaps we should be more lenient toward dissenters; God is!

•Lamentations is associated with the prophet Jeremiah. After a long lament of his troubles and suffering, he then writes in 3:21, But this I call to mind; and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’ The book ends on a sad note.

•Job is the Bible’s major response to the question, Why do bad things happen to good people? The Book of Job is a theodicy, which, in Milton’s words, justified the ways of God to man. Job insisted that his suffering was not because of his sin. Job nor his friends have Hebrew names, and Uz is not a Hebrew city or tribe. The book’s prologue and epilogue are prose; the rest is presented here as a drama.

•Ruth was a Moabite, member of an enemy tribe east of the Jordan River. Yet God inspired this beautiful story about her. Naomi and her husband had gone to Moab to escape a famine; he and their married sons died there. In Naomi’s returning to Israel, she advised her daughters-in-law to remain in Moab and marry again. Ruth was determined to go to Israel with her mother-in law. She did and married Boaz. Their son was Obed; his son was Jesse, and his son was David. Many centuries later, we read in the book of Ezra about the genocide of Canaanite women. God inspired the book of Ruth to be written, revealing that even King David was not pure Jewish. It is a powerful biblical testimony against racism.

•Esther was a Jewish girl in Babylonia when the Persian Empire conquered the Babylonians. As the plot unfolded, Esther was selected as the new queen and her bravery saved all the Jews in the capital city of Susa from genocide. Like Jonah and Daniel, God inspired the book of Esther to illustrate the bravery of Jews during days of captivity. It is one of two books in the Bible that does not have the word God in it and was the last book to be adopted as a book of the Jewish Bible when the Jews met in 90 C.E. in Jamnia.

•Jonah’s story is well known. It is written in the third person, is technically not a prophecy, and no writer can be identified. Jonah was called to preach to Nineveh, a most feared and hated city. He ran from God’s call. He was thankful for his own deliverance from being thrown overboard at sea, and reluctantly preached in Nineveh, but when they repented, Jonah pouted and wanted to die because God loved even the Ninevites! Like Ruth, it is a powerful statement against tribal or systemic racism.

•Daniel is arguably the most unusual and misinterpreted book of the Bible. Part of it is about Daniel, a young Jew in captivity in a foreign country who, along three other young Jewish men, were chosen to serve in the king’s palace They all kept their faith in God and were miraculously saved from death. Future generations have been taught about their bravery and faith. The rest of Daniel is apocalyptic and subject to end time prophecies that are very controversial. Daniel is the only book of the Bible of which a large part was originally written in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. This and other factors make Daniel dated as the last book written in our Old Testament, long after Daniel had lived.

Introduction to the Psalms

Psalms is the longest book of the Bible, more psalms are memorized than any portion of the Bible, and more people look to the psalms for comfort and spiritual strength than any other scripture. The Psalter’s importance as an influence on our faith can hardly be exaggerated. They have been a shaping influence from the beginning of Jewish religious life and theological thinking. Each of us impoverishes our spiritual life if we do not go often and deeply into the psalms as the Word of God for the people of God. We read the psalms to learn the ‘way of righteousness.’ Psalm 1 insists, Their delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law, they meditate day and night. The New Testament is saturated with citations from the Psalter.

Brevard Childs has a helpful introductory word for our study of the psalms:

The Torah (Instruction) of God is the living word of God as mediated through its written form as sacred scripture. With the written word, Israel is challenged to seek the will of God. These prayers now function as the Word of God itself. ¹

We come to the psalms from where we are in our present life season, mood, or personal need:

•You might be biblically illiterate, turning pages with no previous biblical reading.

•You might be a religious seeker for the meaning of life itself, or in a life crisis

•You might be a new Christian convert.

•You might be a person who reads your Bible regularly with a lot of favorite psalms

•You might be coming with some disenchantment about scriptural authority,

•You might believe that God dictated the Bible and the biblical writers were stenographers!

•Or, you might be a Bible scholar or clergy who is wanting to dig more deeply.

Each of these journeys reflects an underlying premise that affects your interpretation of every biblical verse. Therefore, as we approach the psalms in this book, you might agree, disagree, or just never thought this way! Some of my commentaries are liberal and some are conservative. I am centrist.

In the Hebrew Bible, the title to the Book of Psalms is t’hillim (Songs of Praise) though some of them were never sung and some could not be defined as psalms of praise. John Calvin found in the psalms the whole faith of the whole person articulated. He described the Psalter as the anatomy of all the parts of the soul, for there is no affection anyone will find in himself whose image is not reflected in some psalm. All the griefs, sorrows, fears, misgivings, hopes, cares, anxieties—in short all the disquieting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated—the Holy Spirit hath here pictured exactly. ²

Prior to the late nineteenth century, most biblical teachers outside Germany saw the Bible uncritically as the inspired Word of God. However, the influence of what is called biblical higher criticism began to come from Germany to Britain and then to America about the time of the American Civil War era. The work of British scholar A. B. Davidson in 1883 broke the back of conservative biblical theology. Harvard, Yale, and Boston schools of theology followed immediately in America. By the end of the nineteenth century, an entire school of thought began to see the Bible in the context of the history of Mid-East religions—Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Greek. Therefore, biblical history was trusted only if confirmed in some other culture. Most Christians in the pew were not made aware of this at that time.

In the 20th century, a newly critical school called form criticism came of out of German Christianity. That is, every biblical text must be interpreted in the life setting that that influenced the biblical writer’s life setting rather than divine inspiration. No longer was the Bible the faith once delivered to the saints.

In the twentieth century, biblical higher criticism was taught in the mainline British, and American Protestant denominational seminaries Most undergraduate courses in religion also reflected the higher criticism viewpoint. Biblical preaching declined as most clergy shifted from biblical exposition to topical preaching. Present company included, we began where t he people were.

A major shift away from higher criticism was marked by the game changer scholarship of Yale Professor Brevard Childs, first published in 1979: The canon assured an unbroken series of sacred annals which were preserved from the time of Moses. The establishment of authorship maintained its authenticity, the divine inspiration its truth, the uninterrupted succession its purity. ³ It has been continued by his graduate students who developed their own careers following his early death. The Jews adopted their inspired write at the Council of Jamnia in 90 CE and the Christians did it in 467 C.E. when Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria wrote to most of the Christian churches an encyclical listing the Jewish canon and the present twenty-seven books of the New Testament as the Word of God for the Christian church

Walter Bruggemann, a pre-eminent scholar today, reflects the contribution of critical scholarship but in his book, The Message of the Psalms presents what he calls letting the text have its evangelical say, to make its evangelical claim. He acknowledges that our critical work can serve our religious experience but it must be a servant, not a master. ⁴

By 1983, most Protestant Churches had agreed on what came to be called the Revised Common Lectionary. The lectionary takes the congregation through the scriptures in a logical pattern, and in a three year cycle but many preachers never feel free to preach from a text more apropos for a cultural, congregational, or personal crisis or inspiration. This has brought biblical preaching back into vogue. Some find sermon series more memorable than biblical hop skotch. The late Lyle Schaller defined a good sermon as meeting two criteria: 1) Is it the Word of God? and 2) Is it speaking to the people in the room that day?" The preacher needs to have the freedom of being led by the Holy Spirit.

An Overview of Psalms 1-150

The word psalm means praise song if literally translated from Hebrew. Our English word psalms comes from the Greek Septuagint translation and the Greek word "psalmoi means music of stringed instruments." They were sung in Temple worship to the only musical instruments of that era—strings! When referring to any individual psalm, we should never say, psalms. Each psalm is singular.

Many of the psalms we love and read and commit to memory. They are devotional, meditative, reflective. The psalms contain humanity’s words to God and God’s Word to humanity! They do not reflect a secular view of life, but a theocentric view; that is, God is the center of all life, secular as well as sacred. The premise of theocentricity is that we are not free, amoral homo sapiens; we are created by God, inspired in our decision-making by God’s Spirit, and accountable to God.

As Brevard Childs wrote in 1976, I would argue that taking seriously the psalms as we find them in the canon would enhance their value in the life of the Church. This would transform traditional poetry into Sacred Scripture for the later generations of the faithful. ⁵

If we are perceptive as we read the psalms, we see in them the reflection of the entire spectrum of experiences of our lives; indeed, we see the life experience of the entire human race. Everyone’s image is reflected in this mirror. The various psalms reflect a time of praise, trust, anxiety, alienation, resentment, self-pity and even hatred. Any careful reader must see in some psalms extravagance, hyperbole, and anger. All the griefs, sorrows, fears, misgivings, hopes, cares, anxieties, and affirmations are expressed. Others, the ones we love most, reflect seasons of well being when joy breaks through the despair, light dispels darkness, and the intrusion of God’s grace which makes all things new. Mortimer Cohen, a Jewish scholar, writes this about the psalms: The Book of Psalms is a collection of inspired poems telling how the psalmists of Israel met sorrow or joy, fear or trust, dark sinning, or righteous living. Whether we are lonesome and unhappy, depressed, guilty and ashamed over our wrongdoing, or so overjoyed that we lack words to express our feelings; we can find the words of a psalmist who is in the same ‘mood of the soul.’ ⁶

Dr. Walter Brueggemann assures us of the inspirational reality of the psalms and prophetic writings: We can be sure that these were indeed specific, unprecedented, individuals who made ‘out of the ordinary’ utterances, and who were understood as having a peculiarly connection with God. This made them effective channels between God and humankind. ⁷

The Psalter assured the Israelites, and assures us, that this book speaks a word of God to each of us in our need; the psalms are a living voice to us. They are an invaluable source for the care of our souls, and we deny ourselves a great solace if we do not read them often, commit some verses to memory, and see in others a paranoia, bitterness, and spiritual pride that we best avoid! If we are wise in recognizing the authority of scripture, we shall meditate on these older forms even as we

The Theology Reflected in the Psalms

articulate praise to God in a new format of prayer, music, or preaching. The psalms, in sync with all inspired writing, do not squeeze God’s divine word into our contemporary molds; rather, our task is to fit cultural contemporaneity into the paradigm of divinity. Often this requires us to adapt to what Jesus repeatedly called the Kingdom of God and what John Wesley called the scriptural way of salvation. It is in God that we ultimately find our strength, not government nor economic wealth nor any modicum of security that we find in this present age. The world of the scriptures is a Kingdom whose foundation is expressed in Isaac Watts great hymn: O God our help in ages past; our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blasts and our eternal home. This is the paradigm of the Bible.

The psalms are devotional honest to God confessions and affirmations and petitions. There is a psalm for every season of the soul—some are a balm and others are a flame. Some reflect a spiritual conceit with which we all might be afflicted from time to time! Others reflect a paranoia that we all know! Still others ask God to punish our enemies, a demented spirituality we must avoid. Israel suffered so many setbacks, so many military defeats, so many times of famine that they naturally questioned God. The psalms are sprinkled with references to the wicked, and the mystery of their having health and wealth when that psalm writer did not. If we are honest, we might have been guilty of revenge toward and hatred of those who have used, abused or manipulated us.

Clinton McCann of Eden Theological Seminary sees the psalms as anticipating Jesus’ bold presentation of God’s claim upon the whole world. ⁸ In Jesus, we see the embodiment the wisdom and trust/confidence to which some psalms call us—calm, serenity, inner peace, forgiving and being forgiven, living a simpler life style, and recognizing that happiness is not in stuff but in our innermost being.

The Hebrew name of God was YHWH. Miss the vowels? God’s name was too holy to be written or spoken; vowels were omitted in writing and in speaking. English translations added vowels and spelled YHWH as Yahweh (Yah way). Various translations have translated it differently, but most commentators insist that Yahweh is a verb which is more powerful than a noun because God defined himself to Moses as ’I Am’; tell him that ‘I Am’ sent you. (Exodus 3:14)God is also defined a Love.

The various psalms relate to almost every life situation—praying to God for forgiveness from our sins, lamentation about God’s apparently overlooking our suffering, being thankful for God’s steadfast love, and our asking God to punish our enemies. However, as diverse as the psalms are, there are key words that we see repeated so often that we can find a unity within their diversity. As you read again the psalms, look for these themes—happiness, trust, and righteousness.

The first key word found in seventeen of the psalms is the word, happy. The Hebrew word for happy is often translated blessed. Blessed is defined as always being derived from God, not from life circumstances— Bless the Lord O my soul and all that is within me…Bless the Lord O my soul and do not forget all his benefits. (103:1-2) The key to human happiness in the Psalms is when our lives are oriented to God and centered in God’s instruction—the Torah! The journey to happiness is to trust in God as our refuge, and love our neighbor! Happiness is rooted in God’s Word, assuring us of God’s steadfast love—another term you see often in the psalms. In the New Testament letter of I John we see the foundation of grace theology: We love because God first loved us. (4:19)

The second key word is "hasa," most often translated trust and sometimes as strength. It occurs twenty-five times in the Psalms. Hasa is to entrust one’s whole self and circumstances to God’s care and love. The foundational theme in the psalms is the confidence that God’s love enables our trust. We see this summed up in Psalm 131:2a, c): "I have calmed and quieted my soul….(131:2a,)

The third theological keynote of the psalms is the word righteous or righteousness. We so often define this word as one’s morality, but in the psalms, the word is not so much moral rectitude as it is grace-filled relationships. Righteousness is rooted in love.

However, the old psalmists also struggled with complaining about their troubles. Twenty-nine of the psalms are called Lament or complaint psalms. Some are personal and some are community lamentations. Seventeen are even praying for God to punish or kill their enemies. These are called imprecatory. Lastly, some were written for the coronation of a king; so they are called royal psalms.

Let’s take a look and all one hundred and fifty psalms, arranged by themes.

A Thematic Arrangement of All the Psalms

We turn to the psalms in so many of our life occasions—a life crisis, or simply when we want a word from the Lord devotionally. Yet we need to know which specific psalm is more pertinent to our immediate need. This book arranges the psalms thematically so you can find the psalm quickly in the index that meets your present life need. These are the themes which scholars cite:

1.The "Hymns of Praise" were originally sung in Jewish worship. The subject invariably is to praise God with our voices, timbrels and lyres. Many of these were converted into hymns by Christian poets or hymnologists. A familiar example is Psalm 100.

2.The Wisdom Psalms urge us to follow the Law of God, walking the walk of God’s will. The psalms are instructional, counseling us to obey the Mosaic laws which the Jews called The Torah. The epitome of these psalms is 119:7-14.

3.The psalms of "Trust and Confidence are some of the most familiar psalme and the ones we naturally go to when we are down." Obviously, the most familiar is Psalms 23. Other favorites are Psalms 46, 90, and 121.

4.The "Lament Psalms" are complaints, often wondering or even resenting that God has allowed them to be mistreated or to suffer. If we are honest to God, we complain also! If we feel that it is unchristian to complain, remember that God inspired these to be in the Bible just so that we would not feel guilty if we are on our own pity pot.

5.The second group of lament or complaint psalms are not personal but are Community Lament when the Jews, as a people, feel that God has forgotten them. In 2022, 75% of the American people do not believe that our country is going in the right direction. We also are experiencing a decline in both church membership and cultural influence. Sunday School has since the 1840’s been the church’s means of nurturing children, youth and adults in biblical, moral, and ethical insights and convictions. Today, Sunday School is in a free fall and thousands of Christian Education buildings are mostly empty. We are experiencing some community lament.

6.The word "imprecatory" means putting a curse on someone. The Imprecatory Psalms do just that! Why are they in the Bible? Because good Jews and Christians still do just that! We see it in war, and we see it daily in our polarized society. God inspired them as a warning to us.

7.The last category—Royal Psalms—were sung when Israel or Judah had a new king or queen or when one was being honored in some special way. Few will be among your favorites unless you live in a country with a royal family.

I.

Hymns of Praise

Introduction:

Hymns of Praise psalms were usually sung in Temple worship. They extol the glory and greatness of God. They are lyrics by which the congregation sang their history. They were Israel’s praise of God expressing their experience of his active presence and power in the history of his people. All these forty-three hymn psalms begin with a call to worship. Typical is, It was by the Word of God that the heavens and earth were made. That is the prevailing motive for the praise of God by the people of God. They are still relevant.

Psalm 8 is one of the most frequently quoted and preached of all the psalms. The opening verse is O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! It has been called a lyric echo of Genesis 1. The hymn is marked by such originality, imagination, elevation of thought, and artistry in the handling of its theme that it has won for itself a special place with all readers—ancient and modern. ⁹ The God who created the universe is given a personal pronoun—Our Lord. This opening line enwraps the entire psalm, and is inherent in all evangelical preaching.

The passage that is the most theological is vss 3-6:

"When I look at your heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and the stars which you have set in place; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals that you care for them? You made them a little lower than angels, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet…."(NRSV) (NIV, which uses masculine pronouns, is more accurate Hebrew)

This is a sharp contrast between the greatness of God and the littleness of humankind. The vision of God’s majesty is similar to the opening line of a popular hymn from Sweden which we know as How Great Thou Art: "O Lord, our God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds Thy hands have made." The vastness of the universe is amazing, but the Creator astronomer is greater than the astronomy. We are discoverers, not inventors, when it comes to unlocking the secrets of the earth, our solar system, and whatever we find in the future about other galaxies. This psalm is not cultic at all; it is universal and cosmic. It is like Isaiah 6:3— Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.

Then the subject shifts from the Creator to the created. The theology of Deism in the age of the Enlightenment emphasized the phrase, "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels. It is God who crowns us with glory and honor. We are made by the Creator in the Creator’s own image, and we are given dominion over the works of thy hands." Our power over the rest of creation gives is a moral responsibility that is derived as God-given, not inherently human. We are to care for the rest of creation—plants, animals, earth, sea, and sky. Sinners that we are, unless our hearts are attuned to God’s will, we will exploit the animal and plant kingdoms, and planet elements.

Psalm 24 has three parts. It begins somewhat like Psalm 8 as an affirmation that God is the Lord of all creation. Someone has said that God applauds when a person uncovers nature’s secrets of what is within the earth, in the sea, or in the air. God says Eureka, at last you found coal to burn, electricity as a source of power, petroleum which provided the several fuels for energy, the power of the nuclear energy, the value of the solar system for home heating, and medicines like penicillin hiding" in mold for centuries.

The second part (vss. 3-6) defines those whose character gives them access to the hill of the Lord: He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not give his/her soul to what is false or swear deceitfully.

Then in vs. 7, the scene shifts thirdly to the gates of the holy city. The ancient doors refer to culture and sin that have shut out the Creator! This is a symbolic expression of the human heart against God—our sin. God is calling us to lift those doors and let our Creator in to redeem us. (We find this theology in Revelation 3:20 Behold I stand at the door and knock….) Who is this? The Lord of hosts; he is the King of glory. When we lift the gates or doors of our sinful soul, the King of Glory comes in and converts us to being one of clean hands and pure hearts. ¹⁰

Psalm 29 celebrates the glory of God in a thunderstorm. It has the metaphors we see in the hymn How Great Thou Art. Yet after all the hymn’s references to thunder and lightning and wind and rain, we come to a marvelous ending that should quiet our fears during the storms of life—either those of nature or of circumstances. The affirmation is, How great Thou art; how great thou art!! It also could be the inspiration of a hymn like Majesty, Worship His Majesty!

In verse 10, the psalm changes completely; now its religious strength is expressed: May the Lord give strength to his people. Sometimes it is a long, even torturous journey, from the storm and stress to peace and rest, but as Charles Albert Tindley put is so fittingly,

"When the storms of life are raging stand by me.

When the world is tossing me like a ship upon the sea,

Thou who rulest wind and water, stand by me."

He was writing in 1906 as a Black man; so, he knew whereof he spoke and preached. After five poignant stanzas, he comes to the final affirmation:

"When I’m growing old and feeble, stand by me.

When my life becomes a burden, and I’m nearing chilly Jordan,

O Thou Lily of the Valley, stand by me."

YES!!!! At age eighty-seven, I understand Dr. Tindley and am blessed by his closing stanza. The psalmist made the same affirmation: …In his Temple, all cry, ‘Glory.’

Psalm 30 is a song of thanksgiving following recovery from a sickness. He uses verbs like healing, and restored, from being near death which he poetically called hell and the pit. In a nutshell he is praying, Thank God I am better. Perhaps survivors of COVID can identify with this psalm!

Vs. 4 calls for a wider measure of thanksgiving. In that day, they identified sickness with God’s anger (knowing God’s name to be Love, we have a more Christ-focused theology). However, even with their beliefs, they could affirm, "Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning." It is so true that the breaking of dawn with a display of God’s creative artistry at sunrise often diminishes the thoughts and fears of our night’s tossing and turnings.

Verses 6 and 7 refer not to physical sickness, but to financial reverses: I said in my prosperity, ‘I will not be moved.’ But he was dismayed, as many an entrepreneur, employee, or healthy person has been when recessions, corporate sales, loss of job, inflation, stock market reverses, or diseases and accidents change our lives abruptly.

Augustine assured us in his well-known prayer that Thou hast made us for thyself; our soul will not rest until it rests in thee. Jesus said, Whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

In Vss.11-12 The psalmist ends his journey on a positive note: You have turned my wailing into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy so that my soul may again praise you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever.

Psalm 33 begins Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him. It is a psalm of thanksgiving and praise to God as creator and protector of his people, and as the author of morality. It concludes, We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love rest upon us even as we put our hope in you. There is nothing unique in this psalm, but it reinforces the Jewish confidence and trust in God’s being their shield and protector. It has much the same message of many of our Christian gospel hymns like, On Christ the solid rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand…. A favorite of millions is

"How firm a foundation…is laid for our faith in his excellent word!

What more can I say that to you I have said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled."

Verse 3 is "Sing to the Lord a new song. Newness is not always a virtue; new songs may be foolish or shallow songs. Some contemporary praise songs written by people with no theological training have been called 711 songs— seven words sung eleven times. Their popularity is often short-lived. At the same time, we must take care that hymnody does keep pace with cultural changes. Too many of the older generation’s gospel hymns all ended with the sweet by and by. To remain relative, hymnody must always be open to new songs." Therefore, verse three is apropos.

With verse 10-11, the theme of psalm 33 changes to history, contrasting the futility of human planning with the counsel of the Lord. The Lord brings the counsel of nations to nought. (v. 10) Robert Burns said this euphemistically, The best laid plaid of mice and men gang aft a’gley. (go oft astray) Political platforms and elections, legislation actions, and theological trends in religion all fade with time, but the counsel of the Lord stands forever. (v. 11)

Perhaps the wisest verses of all are 16-17: A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength; the war horse is a vain hope for victory…. The psalm closes serenely with strong verbs: wait, help, shield, trust, steadfast love, hope.(vss. 20-22).