Part 1: Getting Started | Part 2: Personal Transcendence

The psalmist has shown in verses 5-8 that God is transcendent in his person and attributes; now he pivots to consider God’s works.

⁹ Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them. ¹⁰ Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain; thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm. ¹¹ The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them. ¹² The north and the south thou hast created them: Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name. ¹³ Thou hast a mighty arm: strong is thy hand, and high is thy right hand. ¹⁴ Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face (Ps 89.9-14).

God is powerful enough to rule over the sea (Ps 89.9). This is no paean to some Israelite version of Neptune with his trident; the psalmist will show shortly that God is not just a “sea god.” So why does he start with the sea?

To someone in the ancient world, nothing on earth was stronger than the sea; it does as it wishes, whether in a few inches of tidal shift or in a 30-foot wave crashing over a hapless boat. Israel is a coastal nation, and all who have seen the sea have been awed by its immenseness and its power.

And Yahweh, God of Hosts (Ps 89.8), rules over it.

It’s hard to know where Ethan the Ezrahite conceived the idea of God’s stilling the raging sea. We think of Jesus on the Sea of Galilee, of course, or of Jonah being protected from the raging storm by a great fish. But neither of those events had occurred by Ethan’s time. He did know, however, about God’s use of the Red Sea to crush the armies of Egypt (cf Is 51.9-10).

He then speaks of “[breaking] Rahab in pieces” (Ps 89.10). This is puzzling to Bible readers who think only of the Jerichoan prostitute (Jos 2.1) when they hear the name. This is actually a completely different name; in Hebrew this name is Rahab, while the prostitute’s name is Rachab. This Rahab was a mythical sea monster, often spoken of among Canaanite peoples (Job 9.13, 26.12; Is 51.9 [note the use of the name here in connection with the Red Sea account]). The psalmist’s mention of it need not be taken as a sign that he believed it was real, though he may have. (Biblical authors almost certainly were wrong about various things—as all humans are—but the Spirit prevented them from saying anything untrue in their canonical writings [2P 1.21].) His point, clearly, is that God is greater than the most fearsome creatures imaginable—even those whose rampages might make the raging sea even more violent.

And now he moves beyond even the immensity of the sea to the exponentially vaster earth, and even the heavens—and I’m reasonably sure that this Israelite psalmist had no idea how really vast the heavens are, since light years hadn’t been invented yet.

He mentions one of the most impressive structures on earth, the mountains—specifically Hermon and Tabor. Hermon is the largest mountain in the region—tall enough to be snow-capped—and Tabor is a major landmark within the tribal allotments of Israel, rising over the plain of Jezreel. Living where he does, Ethan has chosen the most impressive topographical features he knows.

And God rules over them. In fact, he created them, brought them into being (Ps 89.11). A creator can do what he wishes with the products of his hands. The sea, the earth, the sky—it’s all his product and his servant.

Someone with this kind of power could be terrifying—a Godzilla, rampaging through the cities and destroying all in his path (Ps 89.13). But the psalmist reminds us that the Creator and Lord of all these powerful forces is not like that. He’s righteous and just, a reliable maintainer rather than a blind destroyer (Ps 89.14). Preceding him in his path through his creation are lovingkindess (hesed) and truth (emeth, a sister word to emunah). His enemies should be afraid of him, but we his people need not fear.

How do we respond to such a God? Our psalmist friend will get to that next.

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

Part 1: Getting Started 

The writer continues Psalm 89 with a hymn, listing reasons to praise God. The hymn is extensive; it runs 33 verses—which implies that we should expect a lot of reasons.

He begins, as many Palms do, with what the theologians call “general revelation,” so called because, unlike “special revelation” (the Scripture), it is given to all people. It’s as plain as the sun during the day, the stars at night, the air you breathe, and yes, the nose on your face.

The most obvious element of general revelation is God’s transcendence, his status as above and beyond his creatures. Most people have experienced that revelation when they have looked at the star-filled sky on a clear night and sensed something bigger, greater than they are—and perhaps they’ve even thought, “Whoever is out there, I want to know you.”

General revelation will do that.

The psalmist expresses this transcendence by asking, “Who in the heaven can be compared unto the LORD? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the LORD?” (Ps 89.6). The question is of course rhetorical; the expected answer is “no one.” No one can be compared to him; he is unlike all his creatures.

The biblical name for that incomparability is holiness. It is God’s foundational attribute, for in all his other attributes he is incomparable to anyone or anything else.

The structure of vv 6-7 is chiastic, or X-shaped. Verse 6, the question, addresses first the heavenly beings and then humans (“sons of the mighty”), while verse 7, the response, works its way back out in reverse order by concluding that “God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints,” and then “to be had in reverence [by] all them that are about him” (Ps 89.6-7). This structure reinforces the strength of the comparison and gives it a sense of roundness or completeness: the end addresses all the elements raised in the beginning.

The psalmist lists two specific attributes of God that set him apart as incomparable. First, he is faithful (Ps 89.5, 8). He has mentioned this attribute in the Psalm’s opening (Ps 89.1, 2), alongside hesed, which we noted in the previous post. The Hebrew word for “faithfulness” is emunah, which is where we get our word “Amen”; when we say the word, we’re saying, “May it be so!” or “That’s right! That’s true!”

God is like that. He keeps all his promises; he does not change; he is not frustrated by circumstances or other external forces. He is faithful.

The second attribute that the Psalmist specifies is might: “Who is a strong LORD like unto thee?” (Ps 89.8). This is the word for the kind of strength that impresses onlookers, that provokes awe. God never meets his match; his purpose is never delayed or diverted. If God is long in keeping his promises, it is because his purposes are best served by the length of time. There is no force that can affect his will or his accomplishment.

These verses call to mind Isaiah’s famous vision of the heavenly court (Is 6.1-4).God is “high and lifted up,” surrounded by flaming seraphs, with the doorposts shaking at their cries and the room “filled with smoke.”

The Psalmist specifies our appropriate response to these attributes of personal transcendence: we his saints (“holy ones,” because he is holy) should fear him, and those heavenly beings in Isaiah’s vision should hold him in reverence (Ps 89.7)—which, Isaiah shows us, they do.

I know that the “fear of the LORD” is not properly viewed as terror or dread; pretty much every Bible teacher makes that point when he’s defining the term. But you know, if we were to see the scene that Isaiah saw, we’d be scared. We’d know that we were in the presence of someone far greater than we are. I would hope that in that moment I would remember that this great God is my loving Father, but still, my eyes would be wide, my breath would be fast, and my pulse would be racing. I would fear him, and not just in a theoretical way.

The Psalmist starts here, because a vision of this great and incomparable God will profoundly affect the way we think about all the crises we face and all the evil we see.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Psalmist has more points to make first.

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

What do you do when you see evidence around you that God is not who or what he says he is?

This is not a hypothetical question. There is much not to like about the world we live in—and I’m a happier, more optimistic guy than a lot of people I interact with. Plenty of people are having a really rough time. If you talk to people who say they used to believe in God but don’t anymore, many of them will say that the reason they don’t believe is that they don’t see how a great and good God would allow the hurtful things they see all around them. And a disturbing percentage of them would say that those hurtful things came to them from churches or individual Christians.

So what do you do?

I’ve found that the Bible, though it doesn’t give pat, easy answers, does handle hard questions well, if you read it accurately and thoughtfully. As I sometimes say to a person asking me about this problem, “It’s a big-boy question, and it calls for a big-boy answer; if you want a 2-minute answer, you’re going to be disappointed. You’re going to need to read some books.”

And the first book, of course, is the Bible. Accurately and thoughtfully, as I’ve said.

One of several good places to start in the Bible is Psalm 89. I’d like to take a few posts to consider what it says.

__________

Like many Psalms, this one has a superscription. There’s a debate about the value of those; traditionally scholars have viewed them as later editorial additions to the Psalms, but there’s been discussion recently that suggests they might be part of the inspired text.

Whether they are or not, there’s certainly no harm in learning what we can from them.

This superscription says that the Psalm is a “Maskil,” or teaching Psalm. It’s intended to be didactic, to improve our understanding of its topic.

Well, we could all use some of that.

It says further that it’s by “Ethan the Ezrahite.” Some commentators say that the term should be “Zerahite,” which would make this Ethan the same as the one named in the long genealogy in 1 Chronicles (1Ch 2.6, 8). Maybe, maybe not. We know there was a Temple musician named Ethan (1Ch 15.17, 19), but he doesn’t appear to have any ancestors named Ezra—if that’s what “Ezrahite” means.

This Ethan does appear in 1 Kings 4.31, alongside a Heman, whose name also appears as a Temple musician in the Chronicles passage. The point of this verse is that Solomon was wiser than either of them—so apparently they were considered eminently wise in their day. (By the way, this verse doesn’t mean that Solomon must have lived after Ethan; since Kings was probably written during the Babylonian Exile, its author could have compared Solomon with those who came after him.)

All this may be a bit off in the weeds, but I love this stuff. And it’s my blog. :-)

The first stanza of the Psalm serves as an introduction that sets the tone for all that follows. It opens with words familiar and nostalgic to those of a certain age; those of us who were in evangelical youth groups 50 or so years ago often sang a chorus based on the KJV of verse 1. (You know who you are; you have the tune in your head right now.)

The Psalmist declares his intent to praise God, and specifically to focus on his “mercies” (KJV; “lovingkindness” NASB; “steadfast love” ESV; “faithful love” CSB; “great love” NIV). This is the rich and complex Hebrew word hesed, which I’ve written on before. It’s a commitment to a loving relationship, no matter what.

God is faithful to his people—and to those who are not his people, although no one, in or out of the relationship, is faithful to him.

That’s worth praising.

Next time we’ll dig a little deeper.

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash