Jeremy Duncan: I think that's a really interesting way to think about our sense of self and our embodiment in the world. Your emotions in your body are not separate things. Like, soul and physicality are not as divisible as you think they are. Sometimes I think we forget that anger or jealousy or joy even actually have physical impacts on our bodies. Over the past four weeks, we've also been looking at the Psalms together.
And another one of the incredible things about this role I get to play at Commons is that every once in a while, I get to go away on vacation, and I get to jump on YouTube, and I get to listen to such incredible voices lead and teach our community. Of course, that's always Bobby and Scott and Yelena. You guys know them and love them. But this summer, for us to get to add Alexandra and Ben to our teaching team, this is an incredible gift for us. You might not know this, but part of how we work together as a team is that every year or every week, we will write our sermons, and then we share our manuscripts with the whole team in the week leading up to the Sunday.
And we do that so that we have a chance to offer feedback perspectives to work together. And because of that, I was able to get to read both of those sermons ahead of time, which was already a lot of fun. But then to get to tune in and watch those voices and faces on the stage this summer, it was just really incredible. I hope that you understand how fortunate Commons is to have all of these incredible voices that lead us in concert together. It's just it's amazing.
It's a lot of fun to be a part of. Today, I get to add mine to that conversation with one more summer song. Before that though, why don't we start with a prayer? Gracious God, we come today carrying all kinds of stories with us here into this room. Some of us perhaps feel misunderstood right now.
Some of us carrying hurt that no one else really sees. Some of us perhaps like the psalmist today are angry or tired or wondering whether justice will ever arrive. And so today we are thankful for scriptures that never ask us to pretend any different. For psalms that teach us we can bring our whole selves in front of you. And so as we reflect today, give us courage to be real with what's happening in our own hearts.
Help us distinguish between our desire for justice and sometimes our temptation toward vengeance. Teach us to trust your wisdom, your righteousness, and ultimately your peace as the path to walk us all the way home to you. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Today is Psalm seven.
And to look at that we'll cover pop music, our necks, our noses, and our righteousness. But right now the Odyssey is in theaters. Saw it last week. Incredible. But all of a sudden because of that everyone on the internet has opinions about ancient poetry.
So why don't we start today by reading an ancient poem. This is Psalm seven and I'm gonna read it in its entirety today. Lord my God, I take refuge in you. Save and deliver me from all who pursue me. Or they'll tear me apart like a lion, rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me.
Lord my God, if I've done this, if there's any guilt on my hands, if I've repaid my ally with evil or without cause rob my foe, then let my enemy pursue me and overtake me. Let him trample my life to the ground. Make me sleep in the dust. But you arise, Lord, in your anger. Rise up against the rage of my enemies.
Awake, my God. Decree justice. Let the assembled peoples gather around you while you sit enthroned over them on high. Let the Lord judge the peoples. Vindicate me, God, according to my righteousness, according to my integrity, oh Most High, and bring an end to the violence of the wicked.
Make the righteous secure. You, the righteous God, who probes minds and hearts. My shield is God most high, who saves the upright in heart. And that God is a righteous judge, a God who displays wrath every day. But if he does not relent, and he will sharpen his sword, he will bend and string his bow, He's prepared his deadly weapons and makes ready his flaming arrows.
Whoever is pregnant with evil conceives trouble and brings birth to disillusionment. Whoever digs a hole and scoops it out falls into the pit that they've made. The trouble they cause recoils on them and their violence comes crashing down on their own heads. So, I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness and sing the praises of the name of the Lord Most High. That's Psalm seven and that is an interesting poem.
Just like any old ancient poem, there are also very modern debates about how we should read that poem. However, one of the first things that you should do when reading something ancient or otherwise is do a bit of work to determine exactly what genre this piece of literature you're looking at fits within. Now, sometimes a piece of literature doesn't fit nicely in any genre. And even when that happens though, that's usually because the piece is trying to subvert some kind of expectation that you've brought with you to the text. So genre's important.
Well, this piece of literature is interesting because right before verse one, if you take a look in your bible, there will be a little superscription that tries to help you place this poem in genre. And all of these superscriptions in the Psalms are interesting because they're not numbered as verses in your bible. Sometimes they'll say zero. Sometimes they're just there. That's because they're not original to the Psalms themselves.
They were added at some point by an editor who was trying to help give context. However, they are very ancient. We don't know exactly who added them or when, but we do know they were generally added to the Psalms before the Septuagint was written in about the third century BCE. That's the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. And we also know the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written about a century before Jesus, they also include most of these superscriptions in our Bibles today.
So they're very old. Likely, we think they were added in what we call the second temple period. Although some of them, particularly those liturgical notes that say things like what instruments to use when you sing the song, Those we think may have even gone back to the first temple period. So that would be like five to six hundred years before Christ. All that to say, this Psalm seven comes with one of those superscriptions that's intended to help us.
And this one says, a Shigeon of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning Cush, a Benjamite. Now the problem here is we don't know what a Shigeon is, and we don't know who Cush a Benjamite was either. Both of those references only show up here in this contextual superscription. So, mean how helpful is that? Not that much.
It does give us a few clues to work with though. Because the roots of this mysterious word appear to come from an Akkadian word that meant a dirge. So a dirge is like a funeral song, a lament that you sing. And the fact that this is directed at a Pacific person, Kush, a Benjamite, someone we can't identify, but someone who comes from the tribe of Benjamin, so is a Hebrew like David, but also comes from the tribe of David's predecessor, Saul, who he replaced, so maybe holds some animosity for David. That leads us to loosely identify this superscription as quote, a song for the falsely accused.
Now, maybe you look at that and you're like, okay, that seems a little too specific. Do we really need an entire genre designated to songs for the falsely accused? I mean, right? Let's do a little test here. Perhaps you recognize these poetry lines.
I don't like your little games. Don't like your tilted stage. Don't like your perfect crime, how you laugh when you lie and said the gun was mine. That sounds like a false accusation. Right?
That's Taylor Swift. Look what you made me do. Maybe this one. My foes and friends watch my reign end. I don't know how it could have ended this way.
Smoke billows from the ships in my harbor. People look at me like I'm a monster. Another false accusation. That one, of course, Castle's Crumbling by Taylor Swift. See if you recognize these lyrics.
All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put me together again because all my enemies started out friends. I mean, that's the archer by Taylor Swift. We all know that one. Let's try one more here. I think I've seen this film before, and I didn't like the ending.
You're not my homeland anymore, so what am I defending? You were my town. Now I'm in exile seeing you out. I think I've seen this film before, so I'm leaving out the side door. That is one of my favorites.
That's Bon Iver. Sorry. I read that wrong. That's Taylor Swift featuring Bon Iver. But you know what I don't care I lowkey love Taylor Swift.
I think she could have written a song so come at me bro. You get the idea though right? Like we have all kinds of these songs regardless of what kind of music you listen to. Songs about being falsely accused. That's literally all of our soundtrack from, like, '13 to '28.
It's all through our pop music, and that's why it's a theme that we also see popping up even in our religious poetry. It's a feeling we all relate to. It's an emotion that is incredibly intoxicating, which is also why if we're not careful, it's the kind of poetry that can deeply skew our perception of the world. So I think a psalm like this is important, but also needs to be read carefully. So let's take a closer look at this psalm.
And we'll begin with the opening stanza, which is the first five verses. And this part of the song is kinda grim. Verse one. Lord my God, I take refuge in you. Save and deliver me from all who pursue me.
Why? Because if you don't, they will tear me apart like a lion, rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me. For the record, it's actually a lot worse than that. What the writer says here is not that they will tear me apart. It says they will tear apart my nephesh.
That's a bit of a play on words. Nefesh is often translated in the scriptures as your soul or your spirit. Think of it as like the essence of who you are. That's where we get me. You're tearing me apart in the translation.
But in one sense, what's being attacked is yourself. Literally though, what's being attacked is your nephesh, which is also your neck. So that's where your voice and your breath reside in your body. So in the Hebrew imagination, that's your soul. So in one sense, the idea here is your whole identity is being attacked by a false accusation.
Then on another level, the image here is like literally a lion who's tearing out your throat. As a scholar Nancy de Classe says, the brutality of the image is the point. And what I want you to see here is right from the opening line, the poet is using not just metaphors, but actually dual meanings of words that really can't be captured in English translations. That's good poetry. And it's speaking to all the ways that betrayal hurts, not just our sense of self, but actually we feel that in our physical bodies, which is probably why then we hear the poet go on to say things like, what?
Look. If I've done anything wrong, if I caused this, if I'm at fault, fine. Bring on the pain. But if not, if I'm innocent, then, God, can't you do something about this? I think that's part of why this song is so relatable some twenty five hundred years later.
Like I don't know what David's beef was with Kush the Benjamite. Cut him off in chariot traffic one day or forgot to Venmo him his portion from lunch. I don't know. Clearly something has happened between these two dudes. But importantly, we have no context here.
Which means I'm not even sure we can decide whose side we're on in the story. But I do know this. I know what it feels like to be on David's side of the story. Not necessarily innocent, but maybe at least in the moment feeling completely convinced that I was. And that is precisely what is so great about the Psalms.
What's really important about them actually, they're not objective. They're not verifiable. They're not historically accurate or independently authenticated. We don't know if David's speaking truth here at all, but they are deliciously subjective. Look, even that biblical editor who wanted to add some context so that we could understand the psalm as a personal conflict between David and Kush, he doesn't feel the need to tell us who's in the right, who Kush was, even what was supposed to happen between these guys.
He just wants us to know this is a personal conflict. It's something we've all been through before. And let's be honest, looking at David's track record throughout scripture, I'd be fifty fifty on whether I thought he was in the right here. Who knows if he's speaking truthfully? That's not what the song is about.
The song isn't about who's right. The song is about what it feels like to be right. And that's an emotion we all know, one that can be incredibly difficult to escape from. Look at the second stanza. Arise, Lord, in your anger.
Awake, my God, and decree justice. Vindicate me, my God. That's the big theme here. And now we've established, like, there's some kind of conflict going on. We know David is very convinced he's in the right.
And now he turns to God. He wants some resolution for this. But again here, there's some hidden imagery in this text. In particular, the first full line here is, arise Lord in your anger. Rise up against the rage of my enemies.
So what the writer wants here is for God's anger to match the anger that he perceives coming from his adversary. However, you might notice here, he speaks of God's anger and an enemy's rage. Two different words. That's because these are two slightly different words in the Hebrew underneath it. And what we have here again is an image contrasted with an emotion.
This is very similar to what we just saw with Nefesh a couple minutes ago. You see, a far too literal translation of this line would be something like, God arise in your nose. Flare your nostrils against the fury of my enemies. And that might sound weird, little funny, but one is emotion, one is an action. The fury of the writer's enemies, and the other is well, it's talking about anger.
That's the right translation into English, but it's it's an image. It's it's a picture. It's a description of what anger looks like. The word here is, initially that meant nose in Hebrew. Slowly over time, it also came to mean anger.
And think about that from an ancient Hebrew perspective. Your nephesh and your neck. That's where your breath and your voice come from, so that's also your soul. Well, when you're angry, your face gets flushed and your nose gets red, your nostrils flare. Well, that's where your anger lives right here.
By the way, I think that's a really interesting way to think about our sense of self and our embodiment in the world. Your emotions in your body are not separate things. Like, your soul and physicality are not as divisible as you think they are. Sometimes I think we forget that anger or jealousy or joy even actually have physical impacts on our bodies. Ancient peoples knew that well.
But all of that is interesting because now we can see the poet doesn't just want justice, and he isn't looking for God to just intervene and vindicate. Now we see the writer actually wants God to be as angry as he is. And importantly, he wants God to show it. Again, I find this all fascinating because if you take the words of this psalm at face value, the writer is very diplomatic, deliberate, like very measured. If I'm wrong, fine.
Let it be on me. If I'm innocent, though, I deserve justice. That's all I want. I just wanna be vindicated. All I'm asking for is the truth to come out, God.
Is that too much to ask? That's pretty hard to argue with. Like, who's gonna take issue with that narrative? And yet underneath all of that very respectable diplomatic language lies all of this very provocative, maybe even hyperbolic imagery. God, they are trying to rip out my throat.
Can you not just throw up and breathe fire on them? It's almost like there's two very different levels this poem is operating on. The logical and the emotional. And that feels very real, doesn't it? Like, here's a question.
How many times have you said entirely reasonable words with so much vitriol that no four letter word in the world could have ever captured your disdain more clearly. You know what I mean. Right? Like, there's the words you said, and then there's the words that you got across. And I'll tell you what, as someone who is pretty good with language and works with it most of the week, I know to my shame, I'm very good at cutting someone down while simultaneously making it sure that I sound like the good guy while I do it.
Right? I think that's part of what this poem is getting at. Sometimes we are falsely accused. Sometimes we do need to be vindicated. Sometimes even a guy like David really is in the right and does need to stand up for himself.
But in those moments, it's natural to feel angry, to want vindication, to turn to God. It's also though very easy to fall prey to this temptation, not just to defend ourselves, but to slowly, completely confuse our emotional state with God's. And I think what this poem does quite wonderfully is acknowledge this incredibly delicate line between longing for vindication and actually looking for vengeance. The irony here is that whether we really understand that line often depends largely on the emotions that we bring with us to the text to begin with. And I'll show you what I mean here.
This is the third stanza, the big finale here. The writer says, God is a righteous judge, a God who displays his wrath every day. We got a third word for anger here. This one, not about God's nose. This one is actually concerned with God's actions in the world.
So really this word wrath here is talking about God scolding or cursing the wicked. In other words, the writer is saying God is righteous because God works against the plans of the unrighteous. However, here's what he's getting at with this bigger picture. Next line. Verse 12.
God is a righteous judge, a God who displays that righteousness every day. But if he does not relent, he will sharpen his sword. He will bend and string that bow. He's prepared his deadly weapons and makes ready his flaming arrows. Now big question here.
Who is that talking about? Because the text is legitimately ambiguous here. It is just a he. And the question is that scholars have debated for years is, are these verses talking about God? If God does not relent, he will sharpen his sword and string his bow and prepare for war.
Or is this poem saying to the wicked, if you don't relent and you continue to sharpen your sword and string your bow, war will come for you. Textually, both of those are absolutely legitimate translation of what it's saying. The subject is very ambiguous, which leaves us with a bit of a translation dilemma here. Now personally, I happen to really like the way the NIV has left this up to us as readers. I think that's part of the poem, and I think translations that over translate for clarity, that can be kind of problematic at times because you end up reading someone else's theology instead of just engaging scripture itself.
And I'll give you an example here. I have praised the NRSV many times, particularly the updated edition, which I love. I do not like what they have done with this line. They have gone with, if one does not repent, then God will wet his sword. What they've done is just arbitrarily split the subject here in the middle of a line.
Presumably because they don't want God to be the one who's repenting, and they do want God to be the one preparing the sword. So they just changed the pronouns in the middle of a sentence to reflect this being two different subjects. Now, I'll say, I don't think you can defend that from the text. I think you can make an argument. This is all about God.
I think you can argue for why this is about the wicked. I don't see how you get to switch back and forth for convenience here. But again, I think the ambiguity is the intrigue of the poem. We know David's been saying all the right things all along. We also know from the subtext that he's carrying with him all of this explosive emotion and anger about the situation.
And now the climax of the poem, the question for us here is, which side will he land on? See, I think if you're just reading this poem, moving through it, and you get to this section, I think I think you could go either way here. Just like when I find myself in this kind of situation, as a human being feeling like I've been betrayed or falsely accused, I could go either way knowing I could just as easily land on vindication and the truth coming out or vengeance where I crushed someone who wronged me. And I think we're supposed to empathize with all of that. We're supposed to arrive at this point in the poem wondering about which has won out in David's heart and perhaps by extension asking ourselves which will win out in ours.
And then he lands the plane because God is a righteous judge. Now if he doesn't relent, he'll sharpen his sword and bend his string, his bow. He'll prepare his deadly weapons and make ready his flaming arrows. But I will trust that whoever is pregnant with evil conceives trouble and gives birth to disillusionment. Whoever digs a hole and scoops it out falls, pray to the pit that they've made for themselves.
The trouble they cause recoils on them. Their own violence comes crashing down on their heads. And so for me, I will give thanks to the Lord who is righteous And praise the name of the Lord most high, I will choose a different path. I I think this poem is brilliant because I love the way it starts with all the right things that we know we're supposed to say and yet hints at this anger that's boiling below the surface. That feels very real to me.
I love the way it builds that frustration slowly to a climax. It brings us with David to the edge of no return, offers us an image flexible enough for us to bring all of our presuppositions to it, faces us with the question of whether we want a God who's modeled on our own anger or when it's forged in divine righteousness. And it actually tells us that all of that is very legitimate emotion to carry into the presence of God. You don't need to sanitize your frustration before the divine. Bring it.
But then in the final moments, the poem also reminds us that that presence of God, where we bring our anger and our frustration, all the human emotion that comes along with being falsely accused, it's that presence of God where all of our illusions of vengeance and warfare are met with the clarity of divine peace. But the one who does not repent, the one who sharpens his sword and draws his bow, the one who digs a hole and scoops it out, the one who turns to violence instead of God, that's the one who has the violence crashing down on his head. And in that moment, in the end, even a man like David is able to choose peace and trust in God at least for right now. Now does he do that consistently? Not really.
Do any of us? Probably not. But again, think this is precisely why poems are so important because they help us to hold our best and our worst angels together at the same time. And in that, perhaps a poem like this can help us do the work of feeling fully, knowing our frustration, naming our anger, bringing it to God, and yet still working for justice and vindication, all while striving to hold onto the path of peace that Jesus walked before us and invites us to follow. Let's pray.
God, we are so grateful for these poems that offer us a window of our own selves. The complexity of what it means to be human and all of these emotions that swirl in us, through us, that take up residence in our bodies. For a poem that reminds us it's okay to bring all of that in front of you, even the anger we might be a little bit of ashamed of, and to name it. To have it healed, to be restored, to be pointed back to the work that we have to do to bring justice, not just for ourselves, but for those around us. But to do that not with the tools of warfare, but with the tools that you have demonstrated for us.
Grace and peace and the path that you call us to walk the world. The path that builds your kingdom stone by stone. The path that leads us away from war and back to you. Might we find the courage to bring our full selves before you, to lay it all in front of you, and then to be slowly drawn back to the path of Christ. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray, Amen.
Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials CommonsChurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.