Psalms Lesson 29

Introduction to national lament Psalms; Psalm 44:1-2

…the largest category in the Psalter, although we will not take a proportional sample of these Psalms, this is by far and out the largest group in all of the Psalms in all of the Scriptures. And it’d be a good time to go back and look at the overall division that we have made, a four-fold division in the Psalm types. We have said that there are Psalms that have to do primarily with an individual and Psalms that have primarily to do with the nation. That’s one way of dividing it. Another way is dividing is whether they emphasize petition or whether they emphasize praise. So out of this we have four categories, the individual lament, the national lament, the individual praise, either of the declarative type or the descriptive. Then we are going to have national praise but that gets involved and we’ll deal with that later.

We dealt first with the categories of the individual; we’ve dealt with the individual lament Psalms and we’ve dealt with the individual praise Psalms of those two types. Up to now everything has been individually centered and largely centered upon David. Therefore at this point we are going to shift perspective and move from the individual experience of David to the national experience of the nation Israel.

Again it would be well to review what practical lessons we have learned from the Psalms so far. Worship, according to the Psalms is what function; in other words, how may you divide worship? What are the two parts that you see over and over and over again in the book of Psalms that have to do with what we call worship? Worship in the Psalms always has two parts, praise and petition. Now that in a nutshell is what worship is. This is why it is so difficult, I think, for some people to understand what a worshipful atmosphere is. A worshipful atmosphere is basically an atmosphere that allows you to concentrate, and if you need stained glass windows to concentrate to find some place where you can look at colored glass. But ideally you should have a situation where you have something to concentrate. We try to provide a worshipful atmosphere for you because a worshipful environment is an environment where concentration is possible. So we have these two polls of worship, the poll on one hand of praise and on the other hand of petition, and good worship will have both. At times you’ll emphasize petition far more than you will praise. Other times you’ll emphasize praise a lot more than you will petition, so you don’t have to have 50/50 every time.

Let’s look at petition a moment; what are some things you’ve learned about petition so far in the Psalms, thinking back through the time we’ve been in the book of Psalms so far. Has anything impressed you that was kind of unusual in the area of petition? One thing I think we’ve all been impressed with, I know I have been, and that is the amount of what we sacrilegiously call “Jew-ing” God and that is a thing that you notice over and over and over in these Psalms, where the Psalmist comes to God and demands an answer on the basis of certain things God has written. And he’s not very timid about doing it; it’s real bold stuff. If you want to see the exact opposite of this think of the prayer at a football game where they pray about the birds and the bees and a few other things; that is the kind of prayer that is not in Scripture. Biblical prayer has this boldness about it of coming to God and demanding answers on the basis of His word, period, and God, if you don’t answer me than you’re not true to Your character; it’s that kind of boldness. So that’s the first thing we’ve learned about petitions.

Another thing I think you have noticed about petitions is that the enemies of the Psalmist are to be judged. There is supposed to be a petition, usually a petition that if he’s being oppressed that those who are oppressing him get clobbered. Now we’re going to have a lot of fun with this on the national lament Psalms because now we’re going to get into the imprecatory Psalms. God, bash their babies heads against the wall, and other phrases that make the Psalter so endeared to liberals. But the enemies are requested to be judge, God is asked to just clobber the enemies.

Another thing about the petition, basically the other side of the coin, that the elect deserve to be saved, not on the basis of their own merit but on the basis of the fact that they are by position the elect. Be careful we don’t get too off here, we’re not saying that prayer deserves to be answered because of the merit of the one who does the petitioning. The prayer deserves to be answered because of the position of the one who does the praying. So at least we can say these three things about petition that we have learned so far: (1) I have boldness to go to God and hold Him to His Word. (2) A demand that the oppressors be destroyed, in this case, applying it to the Church Age it would be the principalities and powers of darkness, the demonic agencies operating in men’s minds and souls. (3) That the elect or the ones in whom the Holy Spirit has begun a work, that they have the right to be delivered.

Is there anything else that anyone has noticed about petition that has struck you. [Someone says something] All right, he brought up the personal reaction of God to us; we react personally to what He does, but how many of us have thought very seriously that God personally reacts to what we do. I think the reason we don’t think this way is because many of us are fogged up with a false concept of one of God’s attributes; God’s immutability. We’ve got the idea that He has a granite face and just kind of sits there like one of Michealangelo’s statues forever contemplating the world generation in and generation out but that’s not the way God appears in His revelation. When God reveals how He is Himself, He reveals Himself as interacting, as responding, He’s getting hacked at what believers do, of rejoicing in what believers do. Now this at first glance, I will admit, struck me as unusual, but that’s because I too shared the human viewpoint picture of what God is like, namely that He’s an immutable thing that never reacts, never responds in a personal way.

Anything else? [Someone says something] All right, moving to the area of praise we could say that in almost every case it was brought about by some suffering situation. Because remember, praise is always an answer to a lament and what’s the lament? Reaction to a suffering situation. So it seems therefore that in history we have a tremendous precedent that before praise actually seems to occur with us fallen rebellious creatures is that we have to get our heads beat in through some sort of a suffering situation and after that occurs and then God delivers us from it then we have praise. God must get tired of beating believer’s heads in but this evidently has gone on for a number of years and I suspect will for a number more years.

Praise, then, we could define as thankful response to God’s progressive revelation; praise is a thankful response to God’s progressive revelation. That’s the other side of worship. The first side of worship is the petition, the second side of worship is the praise. Singing hymns is a form of praise and shows, I think, the first thing we can say about praise, something I have learned here, is that the praise in the Bible is full-orbed, meaning that it can be verbal or it can be more than verbal; it can involve the emotions and most often music. So praise can take a number or response and music is one of the key methods of response. And with all due apologies to certain groups the music is instrumental music that is involved in the book of Psalms. So praise, then, takes this kind of form.

The next thing I think we have learned about praise is that praise starts with a specific and moves to the general. Praise never begins in some sort of abstract world. The Jew would never have gone to Plato and said oh how interesting, I praise God for the insight. That’s not the way it works; the Jews started with the flow of history, with specific things in the history and then after that he got his generalization about God’s character, and so on. So you start with the specific and move to the general. Then finally praise is always public; praise is always public and this is the public testimony.

Now we come to the next category, the national lament Psalms and as we have done with the previous categories of Psalms, this is the overall structure. There are five parts to the national lament Psalm. I warn you, don’t try to ram, cram and jam the Psalm into the structure; just relax and use these as insights to help you read the Psalms. We can get very legalistic about forcing Psalms into a mold and I warn you against doing that. What was the categories of the individual lament; what was the first part of an individual lament Psalm? It had the address; remember the address sometimes had a very brief lament in it, a very brief petition, but it was always the address. That is the first part of a national lament Psalm also, but with the following notable exception: contained within the address of a national lament Psalm and not contained in the address of an individual lament Psalm is a short section of declarative praise in which the Psalmist recounts past acts of God for Israel. So you’ll usually have that stuck in the address, there’ll be a review of history, in other words a historical survey of God’s words and works, right in the address.

Now let me show you why this is happening and why it doesn’t happen with the individual. Here you have the individual and he comes to God in the address. Say the individual’s lifetime say is seventy years. In that seventy year interval he’s naturally limited as to the kind of direct revelation, because he’s only lived for seventy years, so the individual is so limited that he doesn’t give a personal accounting of all of God’s acts. But now when we come to the nation we have a peculiar psychology and you might as well get used to it now because you’re going to get this over and over, if you’ve watched the Old Testament you’ve seen this, maybe never noticed it before, and this is a way you might of thinking of you and it goes back to the fifth divine institution, tribal diversity. In the Bible there is no such thing as race; in the Bible there is no such thing as nation in the modern sense of the word.

In the Bible there is one concept and it is the concept of tribe, and that is the mentality of Scripture; not race, not species of men, tribes. And the person would think of himself as a son of the founder of the tribe, and in the Hebrew he would have beni, son of. And they would trace their lineage back. Today the modern Arabs, it was thought by liberals that, for example, all these genealogies you read, so and so begat so and so, so and so begat so and so who begat so and so who begat so and so, all this was made up, nobody could possibly have these genealogical records until one man, I think it was in the 1940s, Nelson Glick was doing some surface explorations east of the Jordan River and he had Arab guides and he would camp out in this flat plain at night with the Arabs and they’d sit around the fire and he wanted to watch what these Arabs did because Arab culture is very conservative; Arab women and their relationship with Arab men are just identical to what the Old Testament Scriptures are. And this is why the great scholars have gone to live with the Arabs for a couple of months or so to learn the personal observations today, the Bedouin type Arabs, not the ones that live in Cairo or something, but the ones that are still living out nomadically trotting around on camels, they have preserved the culture of the Old Testament, even to this day. And this Glick was sitting by the fire and these guys would start to recount their genealogy, and Dr. Glick just sat there in amazement because these Arabs could go back, there wasn’t one in his party that couldn’t go back in his family history forty generations; he had been drilled and drilled and drilled by his father until he could say beni dot dot, beni dot dot, beni dot dot and so on, forty times at least, some of them could go back sixty. And this shows you the fantastic individualness of these men that can trace their genealogies all the way back. So therefore why do the genealogical tables of Scripture seem so unusual? They seem only unusual to a westerner who is not used to that form of culture.

But under the fifth divine institution your identity is the identity not of you, but of your ancestors. Therefore you will find in the Psalms Israel, the nation, has identity of the man Jacob. Many of you, I think, forget that the word “Yisrael” is a man’s personal name; it was Jacob’s other name, it’s not the name of a nation, Yisrael is the name of a man, Jacob. So when they think of themselves as a nation they think of Jacob. This is why in these Psalms you have a mysterious shift from the singular to the plural and back again. Constantly these Psalms are going from singular to plural, singular to plural.

If you turn to Psalm 44 you can observe this shifting back and forth between singular and plural and it shows you the mentality of the Psalm writer. Notice how he begins Psalm 44:1, where it’s plural, “We have heard with our ears,” there’s the plural. But then in verse 4 he shifts back to the singular, “Thou art my King, O God,” but then in verse 5 he goes to the plural; verse 6 he goes to the singular, verse 7 he goes to the plural. You see the oscillation back and forth between singular/plural, singular/plural, singular/plural. What’s happening here? It’s because the Psalmist is taking on the individual identity of Jacob. He sees himself from poll to poll, one moment he’s visualizing himself as I am Jacob, we’re all locked together in a psychic unity; modern psychology has not come to this. Probably [can’t understand name] is the closest one that has thought up the concept of collective unconscious but Scripture does teach something like this, that tribes have a psychic unity to them, and that all of us in America, we come from varied backgrounds. But if you could trace your family tree back far enough and trace it to one of the sons of Japheth, and most of you come from one of the sons of Japheth, you would share with your ancestors back many generations a sort of psychic unity and if you thought about your family biblically you would see yourself embedded in this psychic unity.

This is important to see because when God makes the new tribe through personal regeneration in Jesus Christ there’s the same concept; there’s the psychic unity of the new tribe’s head, which is Jesus Christ, passed on to those who are His sons. But you can’t appreciate that little tidbit that comes out in the New Testament until you’ve firmly got your mind set up from the Old Testament to think in terms of this psychic unity.

So this is what’s happening, and this is why in the address of a national lament Psalm you have the destiny of Jacob because here’s Jacob, and say here’s the sons of Korah singing this thing, this particular Psalm, let’s say Jacob was 1800 BC, this Psalm was say, maybe 200 or 300 BC, so you have fifteen centuries of experience that’s gone on here. So now you see the collective person wrapped up in one, Jacob Yisrael has fifteen centuries of corporate experience that have happened to him, singular. So the address of the national lament Psalm speaks about this one single collective experience in history. That’s why if you’ll glance at verses 1 and 2, “We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us what work Thou didst in their days, in times of old; [2] How Thou didst drive out the heathen with Thy hand, and planted them; Thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out.” That’s a personal running history. So once again, the first part of a national lament Psalm is the address and included within the address is a historical lesson, or declarative praise, a recounting of the history. Do you see now why Dr. Albright, for example, at Princeton, said there’s no nation on earth that has the historic memory of Israel. Why did they have historic memories? Because it was their life. A Jew without his history would be like a man without any breath; history was the only place where they contacted God, of course they had to have historical memory.

The second part of a national lament Psalm would be the lament, just like the individual lament Psalm. Sometimes this part is very, very small. It usually has three parts to it, something about the foes, something about me, and something about Thou, three parts, what the enemies have done, what I have suffered, Yisrael Jacob, and what Thou hast done, usually, not always, usually. So that’s the second thing, the lament.

The third part, another part to the individual lament Psalm. Trust, there’s a trust section here too and like the individual lament Psalm what is true to the trust section in the order and sequence; what did the trust section do? Was it always in the same place? It was floating, and you’re liable to encounter it in the middle of the rest of them. But look for the trust section. How do you distinguish the trust section from this little declarative praise section? The difference is that the declarative praise looks to the past, the trust section is a statement of present reality, I now trust you, O God. So the trust section is there.

Then what would be another section? Petition, and the petition section sometimes grows so large in these Psalms that it takes over the whole Psalm, the Psalm becomes one big fat petition and the rest of the pieces just kind of assimilate to it. The petition can grow very large. The petition usually is made up of two parts, like the other ones, what to do about our enemies and what to do for us, damn the enemies and save us, that’s the essence of the petition. This is why the imprecatory Psalms are written.

Then the last section, what was it in the individual lament Psalm? Praise, and so here, except this section usually does not occur. And this is a very strange thing about the national lament Psalms, their praise section just kind of fades out, and oftentimes it just ends with a petition; it’s not like the individual lament Psalms.

Let’s go to Psalm 44 and see if you can pick out the sections in Psalm 44. It’s a pretty straightforward Psalm. Let’s read it and let’s go through it. [1] “To the chief Musician for the sons of Korah, Maschil. We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us what work Thou didst in their days, in times of old: [2] How Thou didst drive out the nations with Thy hand, and planted them; how Thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out. [3] For they got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them, but Thy right hand, and Thine arm, and the light of Thy countenance, because Thou had a favor unto them. [4] Thou art my King, O God; command deliverances for Jacob. [5] Through Thee will we push down our enemies; through Thy name will we tread them under, who rise up against us. [6] For I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me. [7] But Thou hast saved us from our enemies, and has put them to shame who hated us. [8] In God we boast all the day long, and praise Thy name forever. Selah. [9] But Thou hast cast off, and put us to shame, and goes not forth with our armies. [10] Thou makes us turn back from the enemy, and they who hate us spoil for themselves. [11] Thou hast given us like sheep appointed for food, and hast scattered us among the nations. [12] Thou sellest Thy people for nothing and dost not increase Thy wealth by their price. [13] Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and a derision to those who are round about us. [14] Thou makest us a byword among the nations, a shaking of the head among the peoples.

[15] My confusion is continually before me, and the shame of my face has covered me. [16] For the voice of him who reproaches and blasphemes, by reason of the enemy and avenger. [17] All this is come upon us; yet have we not forgotten Thee, neither have we dealt falsely in Thy covenant. [18] Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from Thy way; [19] Though Thou hast severely broken us in the place of jackals, and covered us with the shadow of death. [20] If we have forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out our hands to a strange God, [21] Shall not God search this out? For He knows the secrets of the heart. [22] Yea, for Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. [23] Awake, why sleepest Thou, O Lord? Arise, cast us not off forever. [24] Wherefore hidest Thou Thy face, and forgets our affliction and our oppression? [25] For our soul is bowed down to the dust; our belly cleaves unto the earth. [26] Arise for our help, and redeem us for Thy mercies’ sake.”

You can obviously see the theme of the Psalm is unjust suffering, it’s actually like the book of Job and it deals with a critical question; a calamity has occurred but there doesn’t seem to be any reason why, they can’t find any area of rebellion, they can’t find any area of disobedience, yet nevertheless they suffer. Why? And this Psalm is grappling with the problem of undeserved suffering. Why has this happened to me, O Lord, I can’t find anything, You haven’t convicted me of any wrong, why then do I suffer at the hands of my enemies. So this is a tremendous problem encountered by believers in all ages and I’m sure as we deal with you’ll be interested in the answers.

Now let’s look at the overall structure, see if you can find and locate these five parts. [Someone says something] The address is 1-3, okay. Anybody else on the address? No competing answers. All right, the next section, where do you find the lament? Be careful. [Someone says something] It would seem that way, 7-26, except there’s petitioning going on in there. [Someone says something] Verse 9-26, anybody else. [Someone says something] 9-22, okay. The lament section, the enemies, us, Thee O God, the lament section.

What about the confidence or the trust section? [Someone says something] 4-8, good, okay. [tape turns] … a little bit, but a Maschil means that the writer has done something and he wants to show you that there’s some clever design in this. The reason for a lot of this, let me show you another Psalm, hold the place and let me show you an obvious thing that’s been done, turn to Psalm 119. These Psalms were memorized, they didn’t have the Bible and therefore they had to invent systems to help them memorize. If you wanted to write a hit song you had to write it so people could memorize it. So therefore, many of the more popular Psalms were written with a format. Now Psalm 119, if you have a King James translation, and I hope the modern translations have kept that, do you see where it’s divided, where it says Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth, etc., those are letters of the Hebrew alphabet and that means that the person memorized the Aleph section, and then they’d memorize the Beth section. Now that doesn’t help you in the English but in the Hebrew every single verses, verses 1-8 begins with the letter Aleph, and in the Hebrew every single letter from verses 9-16 begins with Beth, and in that way the people could memorize the thing. They had a nice little built in category and that helped them memorize it.

Now Psalm 44 has a similar system to help people memorize it and that is the lines, the number of lines. Now in the English one verse generally equals one line of Hebrew, generally speaking, two sentences one line. So the English verse usually has two statements and that’s considered one line. In this Psalm that rule operates except for two verses; verse 1 has an extra line, verse 1 has two lines instead of one; verse 2 is one line, verses 3 has two lines and verse 4, 5, 6, and so on are one line each. It turns out that you can make a very neat outline, and I’m not the one who thought of this many men have worked on the Psalm, that verses 1-8, the address and confidence section go together and make ten lines. Verses 9-16 go together and make 8 lines, that forms part of the lament. Verses 17-22, the last part of the lament, forms six lines. And then finally verses 23-26 form four lines.

Now look at the structure. This was considered to be a pyramidal structure for the Psalms so that the Psalmist started out with a broad address, then he build upon that, just like you’d build a tower, and the petition to God is not made until he has built his tower and he’s at the extreme top of his building and that is when he launches his petition. That’s part of the Maschil structure of this Psalm. In other words, the Psalm is built with an image in mind that you have this base on which you come to God and then you make your final petition to Him when you reach the top story of the tower that you have made.

We’re going to deal with verses 1-8; we’ll just have time to work with the first section. And before we do that let’s do a little guess work, when do you think this Psalm was written. We can’t be dogmatic because it doesn’t tell us; the Psalm heading doesn’t say, but one of the keys is verses 17-18, and to save you some time, may I suggest, the observation that many men have made, that verses 17-18 never occur elsewhere in the Old Testament. When you’re looking at verses 17 and 18 you are looking at an utterly unique statement. This statement never occurs in connection with Israel, ever, except in Psalm 44. Whatever is going on in this Psalm something very unusual is going on because of the statement made in verses 17-18.

Now when do you suppose this statement could even mildly be true. See, this is going to be hard to work on; when do you suppose this kind of statement would be valid? One suggestion that has been made down through history that it is David’s day because of the fact that in David’s day they individually did have apostasy; nationally speaking under David they were under the King and therefore under Yahweh’s authority, they had not yet officially prostituted themselves as they did in the latter days of Solomon. That would be one possibility and thing going for that view is what we call the cultist, or the temple worship was purist in David’s time. That’s one possible time.

Another possible time would be in the times of the Greeks, long after 586 BC, remember the nation went into captivity in 586, returned from captivity in 516, came back under the Persians and then the Greeks came in. Does anybody remember the famous Jewish patriot, several books in the Apocrypha are named for him and every once in a while you’ll hear a Jewish resistance movement that’s named for this man. The Maccabees, it was a family, Judas Maccabeus, who was sort of the George Washington of the time, he launched a revolt against the Greeks and they were fighting with Antiochus Epiphanies, who is a forerunner of the antichrist; Antiochus Epiphanies walked into the temple, the restored temple, and placed his image there and demanded that he be worshiped. Antiochus Epiphanies slaughtered, just to anger the Jews, he brought in swine, which was the unholy thing, and he had them slaughtered inside the temple. So Antiochus Epiphanies did everything he could to anger the Jews, and finally the Jewish tempers exploded in the second century under the tremendous story of the Maccabean family.

There was a story about how Antiochus Epiphanies’ officers walked into this village and this man and his sons were there and they had to worship, and this turncoat priest was going to go ahead and offer this sacrifice as dictated by Antiochus and so one of the Maccabeans took a knife out of his robe and stabbed the priest in the back. And that was how the revolt began because he would not sacrifice to the Greeks and to their system and it touched off a tremendous and violent war led by the Maccabeans. And so this is why today the Maccabeans are very much of a symbol, even to this day, for the Jewish people, of the great heroic resistors.

Now during this period of time the Jews had sins, but their sins were legalistic, not idolatrous. So verses 17-18 could refer to that time period. I myself, of the two views prefer the time of the Greeks, for the reason that this is when they are living under the times of the Gentiles. The Kingdom of God is not functioning in a direct way in history so you have the problem of undeserved suffering. In other words, you don’t have God ruling in history in a catastrophic direct way. You see, back between the years of 1440 BC and 586 BC you had this kingdom of God functioning and during this time of the Kingdom of God, when it was functioning, God ruled in a very, very specific way, so that the moral cause and effect in history was made clear. Between 1400 and 586 if the nation sinned, God cursed; if the nation was on positive volition, God blessed. So there was a strictly valid moral cause and effect that was observable empirically in history. But after 586 which is the era of history we are in, the Kingdom of God has gone out of existence in a political physical way, so that men now are not used to seeing miracles on a large scale, they’re not used to seeing blessings, etc. in the spectacular way that was shown between these centuries.

So after 586 you have philosophic crises that develop over the problem of suffering in that after 586 you can have a person on positive volition and he still gets cursed, whereas before 586 a person on positive volition operating inside the Kingdom of God was guaranteed blessing under the provision of the Mosaic Law. So I suggest it was the second viewpoint and we’ll bring out other reasons for this.

Turn to Psalm 85, you can see a Psalm that was written during this time period and I want you to notice because it’ll cure you of a mistake some Christians make, the book of Psalms is not written chronologically. Look at Psalm 85, what do you see in verse 1 that clues you to when it was written in history? They’re back from the captivity so that must argue this Psalm was written after 516 BC. What kind of a Psalm is it? It is “A Psalm for the sons of Korah.” What is your next Psalm? It’s a Psalm of David, which means it was written in 1000 BC, so remember the Psalms are not set in the book in chronological order. Now the reason for the [can’t understand word/s] nobody has figured it out yet, as to why these Psalms are ordered this way, but they’re collected, evidently the book of Psalms evidently was collected over many years. Why they are arranged this way we don’t know, but it’s not written chronologically.

[Someone says something] Not usually, because they never saw themselves going into Egypt as a nation. The question is would not Israel think of the bondage under Egypt as a captivity. The answer is that the nation Israel has no national consciousness of what happened in Egypt because nationally they were born at the Exodus and they don’t have any prenatal memories. The national consciousness goes back only to the Exodus, beyond that they have no national consciousness, it’s just the family of Jacob and they just don’t think of themselves as a nation.

Now in Psalm 44, verses 1-8 we’ll consider as one section, and the thought we will summarize as follows: Israel prays for deliverance because he trusts in God as he has been taught to do from history. It’s important that you understand the last part, he trusts in God as he has been taught to do from history. We divide it, it’s a ten line section into five lines; verses 1-3 and verses 4-8. verses 1-3 is the address; Israel has been taught to trust God from history. Verses 4-8, Israel now trusts in God. So that’s the two part, and you recognize why we divided it because if you follow the form analysis, verses 1-3 is the address, verse 4-8 is the trust section, so it’s natural that the outline be broken at these points.

Let’s look at verse 1, remember the Psalm heading is part of the verse, yet I know of no Bible translation that starts verse 1 at the beginning of “To the chief Musician,” but that is verse 1. “To the chief Musician for the sons of Korah,” the “sons of Korah” were a group of Levites who were musicians who sang these things. And this is certain instructions, apparently the word “Maschil” also meant something to whoever it was that was in charge of music that day, but it’s certain instruction for him that when this Psalm goes, do something; we don’t know what he’s supposed to do but there’s some instruction there. Then as this would be sung, the sons of the Korah, there are ten Psalms in the Bible that are called Psalms of Korah and they all tend to explore theological problems. If you have anything in common with the sons of Korah Psalms they all seem to explore a problem theologically. Which if true shows you what deep kind of music they have; the music explored great theological problems, far, far, far removed from “Do Lord.”

In verse 1 we have, “We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us what work Thou didst in their days, in times of old.” Now what does verse 1 tell you immediately about the mode of teaching, oral or written? Oral, and most of the Bible came into existence as oral tradition, an epic, and this is why the Bible is written the way it is in certain places; it’s written to be memorized. The other thing you will notice, there’s a strange shift here in God, Notice God is called “God” in this Psalm, not Lord. Notice verse 4, O Elohim, the Jewish people had two nouns for God, three actually, well, many, but two main ones; one was Elohim which was the name, the generic title for deity. Then they had the Tetragrammaton, Yahweh, which was the national title. It just turns out that the first book of Psalms, if you have an old-fashioned King James Bible you’ll notice that Psalm 42 is the beginning of Book II, in other words, Psalms 1-41 are contained in the first book of Psalms; this is called The Psalms of Yahweh Book because God is called by the name Yahweh. Psalms 42-72 is called The Elohim Book because God in these Psalms is referred to as Elohim. Now if you hold the place I want to show you this difference in structure.

Turn to Psalm 14, we’re looking at a Psalm inside Book I, at the same time turn to Psalm 53 and compare it. Notice what’s happened; you see it starts out in Psalm 14:1, “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.” Psalm 53:1, “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.” But then in verse 2 in Psalm 14 that’s written in Book I it says “The LORD looked down from heaven,” but Psalm 53 says “Elohim looked down from heaven.” And if you look at verse 6, this is repeated again, “Ye have shamed the counsel of the poor, because the LORD is his refuge,” there’s a similar structure in 53:5, “Because God has despised them.” So that’s just one illustration of what I’ve been trying to show you, that since now we’re operating in the second book of Psalms be prepared for the occurrence of Elohim more than Yahweh.

Verse 1, “We have heard with our ears, O Elohim; our fathers have told us,” meaning that the fathers had function under the third divine institution of family and had trained their sons. Notice the father/son training that’s going on, and they did it all without public education. How do you imagine they made it… but they had history and they knew history and every Jewish boy knew history cold. He had to, it was the only way he could praise his God. “…our fathers have told us what work You did in their days, in times of old.” That means that whatever we see in verse 2-3 must mean a long time before verse 1. In other words, this Psalm was written very late in history.

Verse 2, “How Thou didst drive out the heathen with Thy hand, and plantedst them;” but the Hebrew begins like this, and the emphasis in this Psalm is going to be on God’s grace, so you want to watch, in verse 1 it sets you up for it. Who is doing the doing in verse 1? The fathers of God? God is doing the doing! Verse 2 begins in the Hebrew this way, if we were to literally translate it. God! Thou! God, exclamation point, Thou, exclamation point. And it would go on, “God, You, You were the One that drove out the heathen,” that’s the way it should be translated to catch the force. So you see the emphasis is on who is doing the doing, God is doing the doing, grace. God is doing the doing! “You drove out the heathen with Thine hand, and You plantedst them,” now “plantedst them” sounds like it’s opposite to driving out, doesn’t it. You look at verse 2, He drives them out and He plants them. “He afflicts the people, and He casts them out.”

Now the answer to interpreting verse 2 is found in another Psalm, so turn to Psalm 80:8 I’ll show you the imagery that’s being used here is developed in Psalm 80 better and that will help you interpret verse 2. It doesn’t say what you think it says. This is the imagery that is used, this is the imagery that John 15 uses, “God has brought a vine out of Egypt, You have cast out the heathen and planted it,” even though it’s italicized, it’s talking about the vine, so who has planted, the heathen or Israel? Israel is the one who has planted, the heathen are thrown out. It’s a picture of someone starting a vineyard and ripping out the weeds so they can plant the vine. That’s the point. Now why do you suppose of all the trees or bushes the vine is picked out to represent Israel? Why didn’t he take some flowering plant, why is the vine used? It bears fruit, and what is the fruit of the vine used for? Wine. All right, and wine is enjoyable and so therefore God picks out the vine to represent Israel because Israel produces what is pleasing to God; that’s why God did it. And so the imagery of God enjoying His vineyard is the imagery of a man enjoying a good glass of wine. Now how does that go over? But that’s the point of why the vine is there, it’s not talking about trimming the vine, etc. That’s incidental, the point about it is that they enjoyed the fruit of the vine. Now granted, the alcoholic content in the Old Testament wasn’t what American wines are today so we’re not advocating going out and tying a few on or something. The point is that the wine here is a symbol of pleasure, and therefore Israel should function to please God. And we are called as those that are in the vine producing the fruit that pleases God in John 15, that’s what John 15 is talking about.

Psalm 80:7-8 define who it is that’s planted. Now in verse 9 there’s another verb form, You prepared room before it,” what’s that mean? You cleared the area for the planting, “and You did cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land.” Now the verb “filled” is the word “send out,” this is an odd one so that’s why I’m taking you here. The word translated in the King James, “filled,” is shalak, and it means usually to send or cast. Now having done this, from Psalm 80:8-9, let’s go back and finish what we started in Psalm 44:2.

Verse 2, let’s interpret what’s happening here. “How You, O God, did drive out the heathen with Thy hand, and You planted them” now who’s He planting, the heathen? No, this is the vineyard analogy so you have the first thing, “He drove out,” opposite, “You planted.” This is the Goiim, this is Israel. Now comes to the second part of verse 2, “How You didst afflict peoples,” literally. “Afflict” would be parallel to the first one, right, Goiim, what’s that analogous to? “Drive out,” so who’s being afflicted here? Israel? No, why do you know this on independent ground. I’ve just proved this to you on exegetical ground but from what you know of the form of this Psalm, why would it be wrong to interpret the people of verse 2 to be Israel? Just what you know from the form. The point is that in verse 2 it’s in the address and he’s supposed to be recounting great things that God has done and it wouldn’t be a great thing that God has done to clobber Israel, you see. So we’ve got two reasons for interpreting this.

I’m showing you this because every once in a while you have some nitwit that says anybody can interpret the Bible any way they please. I know probably 80% of you have run into this objection; if you run into it on the sidewalk somewhere a quick response to this objection simply is: when you send a letter to someone do you really expect that if you sent the same letter to 80 different people they’d interpret it 80 different ways; is that why you send letters. Do you speak to someone and expect anybody to take your words any way they want to? Is that why you communicate? Of course not. That objection is a nonsense objection, absolute nonsense, you can interpret the Bible any way you please. If you take that seriously it would mean all communication would stop; you couldn’t even say any interpretation because you couldn’t open your mouth because I listening to you would interpret your words any way I please. That’s just a stupid objection brought up by stupid people.

“Thou didst afflict the people,” this is addressed to the Gentiles, “and cast them out,” that is analogous to plant and the “send out” and it doesn’t mean cast out, it means to make it fill the space where you’ve planted the vine. So the word “cast out” is a very poor translation. The word “cast out” should be you made it fill out the area where you had the vine planted. That’s the point of verse 2. And this is the general background that’s going to be used in the prayer and next week we’ll finish Psalm 44. In the meantime read Psalm 44 and think how this Psalmist and the nation at this point is struggling with a problem of suffering.