Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: From the Beginning | Part 3: The Flood | Part 4: The Sabbath | Part 5: Deliverance | Part 6: Isaiah | Part 7: Jeremiah | Part 8: Minor Prophets | Part 9: The Gospels | Part 10: Acts | Part 11: Pauline Epistles 1 | Part 12: Pauline Epistles 2 | Part 13: Hebrews | Part 14: General Epistles | Part 15: Revelation | Part 16: Job | Part 17: Psalms 1 | Part 18: Psalms 2 | Part 19: Psalms 3
One Psalm derives from Creation that God is wise:
5 To him that by wisdom made the heavens: For his mercy endureth for ever. 6 To him that stretched out the earth above the waters: For his mercy endureth for ever. 7 To him that made great lights: For his mercy endureth for ever: 8 The sun to rule by day: For his mercy endureth for ever: 9 The moon and stars to rule by night: For his mercy endureth for ever (Ps 136).
This Psalm is an antiphonal hymn, with each verse including the refrain “For his mercy endureth for ever.” To our Western tastes this seems boring and distracting, but that’s because we don’t understand what’s going on here. Musicians will understand what “antiphonal” means: the leader reads or sings the first statement in the verse, and the chorus or audience repeats the refrain each time. This does two things: it cements the refrain in the minds of all who hear, and it allows them to hear plainly the “verses,” which specify the multiple ways the refrain is demonstrated. Thus it feels choppy to us, occasionally dividing sentences right the middle. It’s not intended to flow smoothly, like a Byron poem; it’s intended to challenge and convince the mind.
Let me take a moment, then, to develop the main idea in the Psalm before I develop the main idea of this post.
I’ve written before on the Hebrew word hesed, which is the “mercy” repeated in the refrain. It’s best captured, I think, as “steadfast loving loyalty.” The Big Idea, then, is that God has a loving relationship with his people and he will be unfailingly loyal to it. Every one of the 26 verses in this Psalm gives evidence of that fact.
It is a pleasure and a privilege to know and walk daily with such a person.
But we’ve come to this Psalm because of specific point the psalmist makes in verses 5-9. He cites God’s creative work—heaven, earth, the sun, the moon—as being products and therefore evidences of his wisdom.
What’s wisdom? It’s not simply intelligence, although it does include that. In Hebrew the word emphasizes the practical: wisdom is the ability to get things done. It’s close to what we call “common sense,” though it isn’t all that common.
The idea here is that God executed his purposes perfectly, flawlessly. The heavens and the earth and the sun and the moon are, and function, precisely as he intended them to, and thus as they should.
We sometimes come across people who seem to do everything right: perhaps an extremely well-disciplined musician or athlete. They execute well because they are diligent to practice and practice and practice and practice. And there’s always the possibility that they might miss a note, or a line drive.
God’s not like that. He executes perfectly because that’s who he is. He knows how to get things done, and right, every time. The cosmos is evidence of that.
And in the context of this Psalm, it’s evidence as well of his unfailing loyalty to his commitments.
I’ll note that the theme of wisdom is developed deftly, and much more thoroughly, in the book of Proverbs. We’ll get there in a bit.
But first, we need to look at one more theme, and then one more Psalm, one that’s completely given to a consideration of creation.
Two more posts on the Psalms, then one on Proverbs, and then we’re done.
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
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