Psalms 53-55

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POST XX OF LX

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The Book of Common Prayer (1979) includes a plan for reading the Book of Psalms in morning and evening installments for 30 days.  I am therefore blogging through the Psalms in 60 posts.

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Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,

that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life,

which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ;

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

—The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 226

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The benighted man thinks,

“God does not care.”

–Psalm 53:2a, TANAKH:  The Holy Scriptures (1985)

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In Psalm 53, nearly identical to Psalm 14, the standard English-language translation of the opening is that the fool thinks that there is no God.  The wording varies slightly, but it is usually quite similar.  The translation in TANAKH:  The Holy Scriptures cuts to the chase.  The word “benighted,” according to the germane note in The Jewish Study Bible–Second Edition (2014), is quite strong, for Amnon, who raped his half-sister Tamar in 2 Samuel 13:13, was a benighted man.  A benighted man denies the ability of God to punish sins and hear prayers, so he lives as if God does not care.  He will learn that God does indeed care deeply.

The authors of Psalms 54 and 55 understood that God cared; they asked God to vindicate them.  Interestingly, the author of Psalm 54, oppressed by strangers, anticipated divine vindication yet did not thank Him in advance.  (Did I detect a transactional aspect to that relationship?)  The author of the longer Psalm 55, betrayed by a friend, asked God to bring

those murderous, treacherous men

down to the slimy, slippery, muddy, and filthy pit of Sheol then noted that he trusted in God.

“You have heard that they were told, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’  But what I tell you is this:  Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors; only so you can be children of your heavenly Father, who causes the sun to rise on the good and bad alike, and sends the rain on the innocent and the wicked.  If you love only those who love you, what reward can you expect?  Even the tax-collectors do as much as that.  If you greet only your brothers, what is there extraordinary about that?  Even the heathen do as much.  There must be no limit to your goodness, as your heavenly Father’s goodness knows no bounds.”

–Matthew 5:43-48, The Revised English Bible (1989)

By that standard and by the power of God, whom we ought to glorify anyway, may we be extraordinary.  Regardless of how much we fall short of that high standard, may we continue to strive for it.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

AUGUST 10, 2017 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF WILLIAM WALSHAM HOW, ANGLICAN BISHOP OF WAKEFIELD AND HYMN WRITER; AND HIS SISTER, FRANCES JANE DOUGLAS(S), HYMN WRITER

THE FEAST OF SAINT LAURENCE OF ROME, ROMAN CATHOLIC DEACON AND MARTYR

THE FEAST OF SHERMAN BOOTH, ABOLITIONIST

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