The fifth lament is often labeled "a prayer."  This wicked nation has finally admitted its guilt and asks God to "remember," "restore," and "renew" His covenant with them.  What did it take to make them reach this point?  Being shamed and disgraced for all the world to see.  Before, they viewed themselves as the greatest nation in the world because they had been "chosen" by God.  It made them indomitable, they believed.  God would never suffer disgrace Himself and that is exactly what would happen if the people He was supposed to protect were conquered.  Their pride kept them from seeing the Truth—when they broke the covenant, God was no longer bound by it.  His bride had been unfaithful and He cast her off.  Finally, their pride was broken. 

            Remember, O LORD, what has befallen us; look, and see our disgrace! ​
       Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to foreigners.
           We have become orphans, fatherless; our mothers are like widows.
           We must pay for the water we drink; the wood we get must be bought...​
          Slaves rule over us; there is none to deliver us from their hand. ​
         We get our bread at the peril of our lives, because of the sword in the wilderness.
          Our skin is hot as an oven with the burning heat of famine.
          Women are raped in Zion, young women in the towns of Judah. ​
          Princes are hung up by their hands; no respect is shown to the elders.
        Young men are compelled to grind at the mill, and boys stagger under loads of wood. ​
          The old men have left the city gate, the young men their music... ​
​          The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us, for we have sinned!
          (Lam 5:1-16)

Now they can admit their sin and their dependence upon God, and ask for His forgiveness.

​          Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored! Renew our days as of old-- (Lam 5:21).

And what can we learn from this?  Pride may be one of the worst problems this generation has.  We are imbued with the notion of self-esteem from birth, it seems.  The inability to admit wrong and lower oneself in the presence of One more mighty and righteous has made it impossible to teach anyone about God and His Laws.  Everything is judged by emotion and "the right" to an opinion, instead of black and white Truth. 

I have heard more people, including Christians, arguing with God, denouncing God when things go wrong, telling God exactly what they expect Him to do for them than I ever have before.  "Why, after all my faithfulness?" they ask when a trial comes, as if God owes them a perfect life here on earth. 

There is little appreciation for the seriousness of sin, especially those "little ones."  In fact it has become something to joke about.  The fact that all it took to ruin this world was one bite from a piece of fruit seems to escape everyone's notice.  That one little bite was an open indictment of God by His creation.  "You're just being mean not to let us eat this," Adam and Eve were saying, falling headlong into Satan's trap.

In the church today we have a problem similar to Israel's.  God's people then still showed up every Sabbath Day and offered every sacrifice the Law required.  We think that because we are so careful to keep every ritual exactly the right way that we are immune from any judgment.  We have become "the chosen."  Meanwhile, our hearts are just as bad as our neighbors' and our care in following the Biblical pattern doesn't extend beyond the church house door.  A pattern of lifestyle--"conformed to the image of His Son"—never enters the equation.

The only way to reconcile ourselves to God is to surrender, to admit wrong, and to prostrate ourselves and our hearts before the Most Holy.  "The just shall live by faith,"  God told Habakkuk as the Babylonians approached, a faith that accepts the will of God and stays faithful in all areas of life, no matter how rough things may get. 

"The Babylonians" may yet fall upon us in our lives, either individually or as a group.  I can see the day drawing near in the things happening in our culture.  It's time to reject our pride and self-sufficiency if we hope to avoid the things this people had to endure in whatever fashion they may take.  Perhaps we won't have to learn these things as they did--the hard way.
 
Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the LORD! ​Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven: (Lam 3:40-41)
 
Dene Ward

For the chastisement of the daughter of my people has been greater than the punishment of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, and no hands were wrung for her. (Lam 4:6)
            The fourth Lament may be the hardest one to read.  Many of the ladies in our study shuddered involuntarily as the verses piled horror upon horror in their ears and minds.  Even the pagans were astounded at the wrath of God.  The kings of the earth did not believe, nor any of the inhabitants of the world, that foe or enemy could enter the gates of Jerusalem. (Lam 4:12)
            Then we turned back to the original covenant.  Read Deut 28:28-57 today for your daily reading, and then find the fulfillment of all these things in the fourth Lament, as well as scattered in the prophets.  But here especially, verse after verse, reminds the people exactly why they are experiencing these horrible things. 
            "But we are the chosen people," they said again and again as they ignored prophet after prophet. …He will do nothing; no disaster will come upon us, nor shall we see sword or famine (Jer 5:12). "God won't destroy us," which in their minds meant "God can't destroy us because of all His promises."  They forgot one thing.  Precisely because of the covenant, when they broke their end of it, God was forced to keep His end to remain righteous, and His part was administering justice.  He could not remain holy and faithful and not punish them. 
            And so what is the lesson for us?  We have a new covenant with God.  He has told us several times what will happen with those who have "trodden underfoot" the blood of his Son, the blood of that new covenant.  The religious world wants to assuage your fears with the same sort of talk as the false prophets of old, crying, "Peace, peace, when there is no peace" (Jer 6:14).  A loving God would never punish or destroy; He would never send anyone to hell, they say in all their theological sophistication.
            The writer of the fourth Lament would beg to differ.  God did it once.  He will most certainly do it again.
 
See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. (Heb 12:25-29)

Dene Ward

The third Lament begins exactly like the first two—long lists of the terrible things God's people had to endure.  But there is a difference here too.  While the first two are written in third person or as Jerusalem herself, this one is personal and individual:  I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath; (Lam 3:1).  He goes on to describe his afflictions in detail, but suddenly, in the middle of all this despair, for the first time, he interjects some hope.
            Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ​“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” (Lam 3:19-24)
            If you have read the entire lament, the first thing you will think is, "Wait a minute!  The writer just said in verse 18 that his hope has perished."  Evidently, according to Evan and Marie Blackmore in Let Us Search Our Ways, this is a type of construction common to Hebrew poetry where a thought is put out for consideration and then discussed.  Eventually the writer dismisses the notion of a lost hope.  And why?  Because of "the steadfast love of the Lord." 
            "Steadfast love," or "lovingkindness" in other versions, is covenant language.  After a while you begin to recognize certain words and phrases that automatically point to the covenant God made with His people.  Despite the people's failure to keep that covenant, God continues to keep his promises to Abraham and David.  He continues to love these feckless, unfaithful children of His because He is righteous, not because they are.
            The ASV on 3:22 makes this most apparent.  It is of Jehovah's lovingkindnesses [steadfast love] that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. (Lam 3:22)
            Even looking at all the horrible things that have happened to the people, the writer says that without God's love, things would be even worse.  The fact that God's care for them can be seen at all—they are still alive!--gives them hope. 
            Later on the writer lists three reasons to hope:
            1) For the Lord will not cast off forever, (v 31).  Even this well-deserved punishment will come to an end. 
            2) But, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love. (Lam 3:32)  After the punishment God will show pity and compassion on His people.  He will once again bless them.
            3) ​For he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men. (Lam 3:33). God did not send this punishment because it pleased him, but to bring about repentance and to repair the broken relationship.
            And so in the midst of our trials today, we can still have hope.   Remember that it will eventually end.  "This too shall pass," we often say, and it will.  Not only that, but God will have pity on us.   His blessings will not cease.  We may just have to look a little harder for them for a while.  And God never sends trials out of spite.  Even if our trials are not for punishment as theirs were, God always has some goal in mind—strength, clarity, wisdom—something that He expects us to glean from our troubles.  They are never pointless.
            And God's compassion never fails.  No matter how bad things are, His goodness is visible in something close by.  Thorns may pierce, but the roses still bloom.  Bees may sting, but they still make honey.  God has not promised that we will never travel through dark valleys, but He has promised to go through them with us.  Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me" Psalm 23:4.
            Add to all that this one constant:  grace.  The worst day we ever have is better than we deserve.  If you cannot see the hope in your trials, you will ultimately fail them. 
 
The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. ​It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. ​It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. (Lam 3:25-27)
 
Dene Ward        

Question 4 on our lesson sheet for the second lament was "What is the focus of this lament?" 
             Almost in unison came the answer:  "The anger of God." 
            You couldn't miss it.  The poet uses three Hebrew nouns 7 times along with two verbal expressions for anger.  Then you have the list of things God did in His anger—and there was no quibbling about it:  God did them, not the Babylonians.  He "laid waste his booth," " laid in ruins his meetingplace," "spurned king and priest," "made Zion forget Sabbath," "scorned his altar," and "disowned his sanctuary."  He destroyed the very worship he had set up for his people and the people seemed to have no trouble recognizing that God had every right to do it.  They broke the Covenant.  It was all their fault.
            Today we all want to focus on the God of love.  I know it when I hear things like, "God wants me to be happy.  He would never be angry about such a little thing.  He would never _______________."
            First of all, what God wants is for us to be holy so we can spend an Eternity with him.  We cannot if we are anything less than pure because we couldn't—wouldn't—give up the pleasures of even the smallest of sins, and that means that sometime we won't be very "happy."  "Sin separates you from God."  If, after all the blessings I have received from Him and after the huge sacrifice He made for me, I am so unspiritual that I cannot make a relatively insignificant sacrifice for Him in order to make myself acceptable, I deserve His anger and whatever punishment goes along with it.  Yes, He will too ____________, and even these stubborn, selfish, prideful, ungrateful, unmerciful, and unfaithful people of His eventually figured it out. 
            For us to picture God as a one-dimensional Being who only forgives and loves is nothing short of arrogant.  God as our Creator has every right to be angry with the created ones who break His laws.  When unbelievers blast God for that anger—"How could a just God allow these things to happen?"--don't think you have to apologize for Him.  He doesn't need us to explain it away in order to make Him more palatable to a shallow, ungodly, and disobedient world now any more than He did then.
 
The Lord has swallowed up without mercy all the habitations of Jacob; in his wrath he has broken down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought down to the ground in dishonor the kingdom and its rulers. He has cut down in fierce anger all the might of Israel; he has withdrawn from them his right hand in the face of the enemy; he has burned like a flaming fire in Jacob, consuming all around. He has bent his bow like an enemy, with his right hand set like a foe; and he has killed all who were delightful in our eyes in the tent of the daughter of Zion; he has poured out his fury like fire. The Lord has become like an enemy; he has swallowed up Israel; he has swallowed up all its palaces; he has laid in ruins its strongholds, and he has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation. (Lam 2:2-5)
              
Dene Ward

As we said last time, the first lament is one of overwhelming sadness.  In a mere 22 verses, the writer uses tears, weep, cry, and mourn a total of five times; distress, affliction and misery a total of seven times; sigh and groan a total of four times, and no comfort and desolate a total of seven times.  That is more words describing grief than there are verses in the lament.
            The speaker is Jerusalem herself.  She is no longer a "princess" but a "widow."   She whose streets were once full of people, is now lonely.  Her friends have become her enemies.  Even her roads mourn because they are no longer traversed by happy families traveling to celebrate the Jewish festivals. 
            In verses 8 and 9 she recognizes her sin, but at this point seems more embarrassed at the disgrace than anything else.  The pagans have seen her nakedness so she "groans and turns her face away."  "The Lord is in the right," she says. "I have been very rebellious, BUT…"
            Look at poor little me.  God has been so hard on me.  Everyone is laughing at me.  No one will comfort me.  See my suffering.  Yes, she is suffering badly, far worse than any of us ever have, but something is missing, even in her confession of sin.  She has more to learn about the purpose of punishment and the correct way to view it. 
            However, the grief itself is not wrong.  God has made that plain throughout his Word.  Even righteous men are shown to grieve, Abraham, David, Hezekiah, and Paul among them.  Even Jesus cried.  Paul told the Roman brethren to "Weep with those who weep," not look down on them and rebuke them for crying.  The promise we have ultimately is that God will wipe away all the tears from our eyes—then, not now.
            But our grief is to be different.  "We sorrow not AS those who have no hope" (1 Thes 4:13), not "We sorrow not."  And if on occasion, our grief is caused by our own sin, as with these people, we have an even larger obligation in our grief.  Godly sorrow works repentance (2 Cor 7:10).  These people are still working on that.  Eventually they will get there, but not quite yet.
            God made us to grieve.  It is human nature to miss a loved one, to be frightened by a bad diagnosis, to be overwhelmed by a loss of physical things, and especially by a spiritual loss.  It is even correct to grieve in such a dramatic and lengthy way as these people did.  As sinful as they were, when you read these laments and see what they went through, you still feel compassion and pity for them.
            But as with everything God made, He made grief to serve a purpose.  It can bring repentance, it can bring strength, it can bring clarity, and help us learn priorities.  Use it, not as self-pity, but the way He intended. 
 
Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like streams in the Negeb! ​Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him. (Ps 126:4-6)

Dene Ward        

My Tuesday morning class just finished a study of Lamentations, the first study of that book I have ever done.  Which means, of course, that I learned a lot of new things, and despite this being some of the saddest material in the Bible coming as it does immediately after the fall of Jerusalem, I have fallen in love with these little gems.
            That is the first thing I learned.  Lamentations is not one book that we have divided into five chapters.  It is five separate psalms of lament.  Once we figured that out we decided to study each one separately rather than go seamlessly from one to the other and perhaps have to stop in the middle of one if class time ran out and lose the train of thought.
            Another thing we learned:  each lament is an acrostic poem.  The patterns are not always the same, but the use of the Hebrew alphabet is prominent in them all.  In numbers one and two, each stanza has three lines and the first word of each stanza begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, all 22 in order, making 22 verses in our English Bibles.  Number three is a bit more complex.  Each stanza has three lines and each line within the stanza begins with the same letter that is next in the Hebrew alphabet, making a total of 66 verses in our English Bibles.  Number four follows the pattern of numbers one and two except each stanza has only two lines instead of three.  Then you reach number five, which is not an acrostic in the strictest sense, but which still has 22 stanzas in a nod to the Hebrew alphabet.
English poets are prone to look down their noses at acrostic poems as contrived and uncreative.  They served a real purpose in their time.  Those people did not have Bibles lying on their coffee tables.  They were used to listening and memorizing.  Knowing what letter the next stanza began with was a useful tool in that memorization. 
            Acrostics also had literary symbolism.  Using every letter of the alphabet meant a full expression of the emotion under discussion, in this case, grief.  After all this expressiveness, from A to Z we might say, nothing remains to be said.  And a study of these five poems will show you that is so.
            Number one is a poem of overwhelming sadness.  After we went through the verses and the figures of speech, the repeated words and synonyms and the nuances of expression, I read the poem aloud to the class.  They began reading along with me, but one young woman suddenly sat back, closed her eyes a second, then opened them and listened even more intently.  This poem will cut you to the heart.  You will want to weep out loud with this conquered people.
            Number two will shake you to the core.  Anger, fury, indignation, and other synonyms for the wrath of God appear several times both as nouns and verbals.  Enemy, foe, swallowed up, without pity, without mercy leave no question that what has happened is the doing of an angry God.
            Number three dwells on punishment, the reason for all this devastation and ruin, but suddenly turns close to the middle to remind the people that God is faithful.  A good God still punishes sin.  He would not be good if He did not.
            Number four brings home the consequences of breaking the Covenant.  Drawing heavily from Deuteronomy 28, the writer shows them item by item that God had warned them that this would happen, that making a covenant with the Creator involves the personal and corporate responsibility that the people had sworn to so many centuries before.
            Number five rounds out the collection.  Finally a humbled people feels remorse and repents.  They beg God for restoration and renewal, and the writer leaves it with a Hebrew idiom that seems to indicate that God's response will be positive.  After so much pain and terror, there is finally real hope.
            Do you see how the writer covers all the bases with these psalms?  Not only in the acrostics within the poems, but also by changing his focus from one psalm to the other, he has shown every possible emotion the people were feeling after the Babylonians destroyed their nation. 
And that means we can use these words in our own struggles too.  We will all have trials in our lives, but most of us will never experience what these people did.  Surely if their grief can find expression and relief in these words, ours can too. 
 
All her people groan as they search for bread; they trade their treasures for food to revive their strength. “Look, O LORD, and see, for I am despised.” “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger. (Lam 1:11-12)      
 
Dene Ward

If you have been with me awhile, you know I have been teaching a Psalms class with lessons I compiled after a long, hard summer of study.  {You can read snippets from those lessons in the category “Psalms” on the right sidebar.}  I am still reading books about the Psalms and the last couple have brought a new idea my way that I would like to share.
            Of course, the early church, the apostolic church, as scholars often call the first century Christians, sang the Psalms.  The practice came from the Jewish heritage of the first congregations of Christians in Judea.  In fact, one of the books I read said this:  “…in the English-speaking world use of the psalms has often languished as hymns and worship songs with catchy tunes have tended to displace the psalms…This trend would have appalled the apostolic church…one may hope this modern failure to appreciate the psalms…to be a blip,” Gordon J. Wenham, The Psalms as Torah.  I find myself agreeing with Mr. Wenham.
           But here is something I had not realized:  The Psalms were often prayed by the early church and that practice lasted for centuries.  Mr. Wenham devotes a whole chapter to the affect that praying the Psalms would have on us if we did it.  Try this today.  Read the following verses from various psalms out loud.  All right, wait until you are alone if you want to, but don’t forget to do it.

I said, “I will guard my ways, that I may not sin with my tongue; I will guard my mouth with a muzzle, so long as the wicked are in my presence,”  Ps 39:1

I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High, Ps 9:1-2.

I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the LORD, in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the LORD! Ps 116:18-19.

I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. — Selah.  Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. — Selah Ps 32:5-7.

I will ponder the way that is blameless. Oh when will you come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house; I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me. ​A perverse heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil. Whoever slanders his neighbor secretly I will destroy. Whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not endure. I will look with favor on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; he who walks in the way that is blameless shall minister to me. No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes, Ps 101:2-7.

            That should be enough for you to get the point.  Many of the psalms are written in first person.  When you pray it, you are praying for the same things the psalmist prayed for, and allowing the psalmist’s attitude to become your own.  You cannot pray these things without it affecting how you live—unless you are a hypocrite. 
          But shouldn’t we read all scripture that way?  Shouldn’t we read the epistles in such a way that we are praying to be what we are told to be, to speak as we are told to speak, to live as we are told to live?  Shouldn’t every recitation of a memory verse be a phrase we are willing to live by?  Yet how often do we quote what we have learned by rote and then continue to live as we always have, never taking to heart the words that have just left our lips?
           Maybe if you start with these few verses from the Psalms today you can train yourself to pray the prayers of the saints gone by instead of the selfish carnal prayers we usually pray—for physical blessings and physical convenience and physical health--and maybe, just maybe, we can start to be the people we talk about being every time we read our Bibles.
 
Dene Ward

If you are under 50, this will take some explaining.
            Back in the "olden days," as my boys used to call them, you only got a couple, or maybe three channels on your television set—usually one each of the Big Three national networks back then.  And none of this hour long set up and downloading and hooking up to satellite dishes or cables.  You bought the thing, you took it home, you plugged it in, turned it on, and, voila! you could watch TV.
            One more thing you had to do was unfold the antenna, usually two metal rods, telescoped inside themselves.  You pulled out each rod to the desired length, then moved them around until the picture cleared up.  They usually wound up in some sort of V, which accounts for the name you might have heard your parents or grandparents use, "rabbit ears."  Depending upon how far away you were from the station, or in which direction it lay, your antenna might look more like an L than a V, or one side might be much shorter than the other.  Once you figured it out, you just remembered that ABC was a perfect V, CBS was an L that looked like nine o'clock, and NBC was an almost perfect straight line—or whatever configuration yours needed to get each channel.
            Everywhere we lived we got all three channels, but one was always a little snowy.  Sometimes it had ghost images.  Sometimes the horizontal and vertical holds wouldn't "hold."  In fact, we had one that we had to whack on the top to get the vertical hold to work.  And here is where the tin foil comes in.  Sometimes you had to take a square of aluminum foil (I have no idea why we all called it "tin foil") and wrap it around one arm of the antenna, creating a shiny silver flag on one end.  Sometimes it took one on each arm of the antenna.  And usually, when the person putting it on walked up to the TV, the picture improved so dramatically that we all shouted, "Stop!  Don't move!"  But of course, we couldn't expect anyone to stand perfectly still for the entire program, especially if his arms were halfway up ready to wrap the foil flag in place, and most especially if he couldn't watch the show himself during that time.
            I am sure that sounds incredibly primitive to many of you younger folks.  I am told that the reason the foil flags worked was that they increased the bandwidth of the antenna and the aperture so you could receive more of the incoming radiation.  Sounds like so much gobbledy-gook to me, but it did work.  Which leads us to today's lesson.
            Upon occasion, some have asked me if saying a prayer silently really counts.  If you will check out the 57th and 59th psalms you will see that they are described as "Maskils," and were prayed when David was hiding from Saul in a cave.  While most of those Hebrew designations for specific psalms are unknown, some scholars will make what amounts to "educated guesses."  C. H. Bullock suggests that "maskil" might refer to "silent prayers."  Most of the time Jews prayed aloud—it was the custom.  But at least once, when David was hiding in the back of a cave, Saul was sleeping in the front of the same cave.  Praying aloud might have defeated its purpose!
            When we try to lay restrictions upon prayers, our stance, their wording, and their occasion, I wonder if we aren't being a little like people trying to put tin foil on antennas.  We keep thinking we can make the reception better.  God doesn't need tin foil flags on your prayers to hear them.  His end of the matter works just fine.  It's more a matter of what you need on your end--a receptive soul, a humble spirit, a penitent heart.  It might come at a time when praying aloud would be inappropriate or simply impossible.  You don't have to worry.  He can hear those prayers just fine.  No snow.  No ghost images.  No problems with vertical holds or horizontal holds.  Just a crystal clear picture of a Father who loves you and a Lord who died for you, two Beings who want to hear from you every chance they get.  If David can pray silently, crouched in the back of a dark, dank cave, trying his best to breathe quietly and stay absolutely still, it seems to me that God is not nearly as picky as some of my brethren are.
            Just pray, folks, silently or aloud, standing or lying, in whatever words your heart needs to say.  I guarantee you won't need a box of tin foil to be heard.
 
 And it shall be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people's way.” For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite (Isa 57:14-15).
 
Dene Ward
 

We finally got there in our Psalms class—the infamous imprecatory psalms.  And yes, if you just start reading one of them without any sort of preparation they shock you with their intensity.  Is this really the Bible?  Should a Christian have anything to do with these vicious prayers?  And so we show our ignorance—just as I did for years and years and years.
            You will find all sorts of explanations for these psalms, including the assertion that they are not inspired.  Considering the fact that they are quoted by approved men in the New Testament (the apostles and even Jesus himself), I think we should take a careful step back and completely ignore that one before the lightning strikes.  Look at a few of those psalms yourself without preconceived notions and read carefully.  Psalms 35, 55, 59, 69, 79, 109, and 137 will explain themselves if you let them.
            The psalmist in each case has his relationship with God in good order.  He is under attack, but not for anything evil he has done.  His cause is the Lord’s cause.  He asks God to act “for thy name’s sake.”  His own personal faith has not been affected, but he is concerned that what the weak see will turn them away from God and destroy their faith.  In short, this is not about personal vengeance.  It is about justice.  It is about God keeping His covenant.  Remember when the people stood on Mt Gerizim and recited the blessings of the covenant?  The other half of them stood on Mt Ebal and recited the curses—that’s what an imprecation is—a prayer to curse.  Curses are every bit as much a part of the covenant as blessings are.  These psalmists are asking God to keep the covenant for His sake, not theirs.  (I must make a quick thank you to Tom Hamilton for showing me this.)
            And there is this obvious point:  inasmuch as I cannot become indignant at evil and injustice in the world, I cannot rejoice at the good in the world.  They are two sides of the same coin, a coin that points inevitably to my own moral compass.
            Do not for a minute think imprecations are only an Old Testament concept.  Besides quoting the psalms themselves, the New Testament has a few imprecations of its own.   But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.  Gal 1:8.  That is as obvious an imprecation (curse) as you can find anywhere, and then for good measure, Paul repeats it in the next verse.  Flip over to chapter 5 and read verse 12.  I wish that those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves.  Whoa!  Sounds “pretty severe” as one of my students quietly understated.  Want some more?  Try 2 Tim 4:14,15.  In fact, hang around that book for a good while.  Have a look at Rev 6:9,10.  There is a place for judgment in the New Testament just as much as in the Old.  We would do well to remember that.
            And please notice this:  in many cases the plea comes because of injustice, but in the New Testament nearly all of them are directed at people who are hindering the gospel.  What they are doing keeps new people from listening or undermines the faith of the babes.  This is not about personal vengeance any more than the psalms—it’s about spreading the gospel, about sharing the message of salvation to a lost world, and those who try to keep that from happening.
            So let’s turn this around.  Would it be possible for someone to pray these prayers (curses) about me?  What do I do or say that will impede the spread of the gospel?  Do I complain about my brethren to my neighbors, effectively turning them away from the church?  Do I stand in the parking lot and provoke strife between brothers and sisters with my gossip?  Do I incite rebellious attitudes toward the leadership?  Do my words and actions, and the world’s knowledge of where I hang my spiritual hat, cause people to look down on and turn away from the church and their opportunities to hear the gospel?  Anything that hurts the reputation of the Lord’s body in the community or causes dissension and conflict within makes me a worthy target for an imprecatory prayer. 
            The psalmist always left his request in the hands of God to do His own will, and God very often said yes to those imprecatory prayers.  Read some of those psalms listed above today.  Do you want God to even consider saying yes to those things about you?
 
Dene Ward

Oh come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!  Psalm 95:1,2.
 
            Psalm 95 is generally thought to have been one sung during the Feast of Tabernacles.  Meribah and Massah are used in its body, a time in the wilderness when God taught His people a hard lesson.  But this psalm starts just as you would expect a festival psalm to.  Come let us sing, let us make a joyful noise. 
            Just as an interesting point, the Hebrew word translated “sing” in this passage is not a musical word.  Ranan means to emit a stridulous sound (not exactly how I would want my singing described) or to shout, and is indeed translated shout, cry out, rejoice, joy, or triumph half the time in the KJV.  And that makes that opening couplet much more parallel to the second one, “make a joyful noise to him.” 
            About that “joyful noise:” that particular Hebrew word means to mar, especially by breaking, to shout, or to split the ears.  In our words we might say, “He burst my eardrums he was so loud.”  Think about standing at a football stadium in the middle of the game, or beneath a jet engine as it revs for take-off.  That’s the noise we are talking about.  In fact, this word is translated “blow an alarm [with a trumpet]” a couple of times.  As the second verse continues, we are to do this in psalms of praise so singing is involved, but the point of these two words is not the melody but the volume, caused by unabashed joy and celebration.
            You find this often in the psalms.  Noise and clamor seemed to be a part of the Jewish worship.  Perhaps the psalmist, and God as his inspiration, had noticed.  Right in the middle of the psalm, he throws what amounts to a cold bucket of water on all the festivities. 
            Their celebration of the feast had made them forget what the wandering was all about—and it wasn’t fun and games.  An entire generation died because of their faithlessness.  Toward the end of verse 7 he interrupts their self-congratulation that God loves them and cares for them with, Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof.   
            Yes, God made a covenant that He would be with them and protect them, but only if they performed their half of the contract.  Their ancestors did not.  God goes on to say that He loathed that generation.  That English word, I am told, is far too mild for the Hebrew idea.  It means they disgusted Him, they nauseated Him, as in “I will spew you out of my mouth” nausea.  Because of that, they did not receive the promised rest, a rest like God’s, a Sabbath rest not because you are tired, but because have finished the task (Heb 4:1-11).
            Those people seemed to think, as the prophets testified, that all it took was loud worship to please God.  The tendency is to judge our own worship as lacking because of this, too.  We ask, “Why don’t we ever do that?” as if anything solemn and quiet is not sincere worship and certainly not acceptable to God.  It is easy to think, as they did, that volume is all that matters. 
            “If you hear his voice” the psalmist says and then makes it clear that hearing involves reverence and obedience.  In order to underscore this emphasis, the psalmist does not go back and say, “Okay, get on with the celebration now.  I just wanted to interject a warning.”  No, this is where he ends it.  He wants this to be the last thing on their minds as they finish singing this psalm:  “Therefore I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest.”
            What started out as a jubilant service ends up with the wrath of God.  I am sure their songs were not quite so ecstatic, their noise not quite so loud, for who can be carefree when he contemplates the wrath of the Almighty, the one the psalmist has already reminded us created everything and holds it in His hand? 
           
Take away from me the noise of your songs; for I will not hear the melody of your viols. But let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream, Amos 5:23,24.
 
Dene Ward.