Selah:

Sacred Songs of the Psalter

 

Max A Forsythe

 

© Anno Domini 2002

From the pulpit at Pilgrim’s Rest

Presbyterian Church in America

Psalm 11

05      The LORD assays the righteous,
                but His soul hates the wicked:
                all who love violence.
06      He shall  rain burning coals on the wicked;
fire and sulfur:
 a scorching wind shall be their lot.

TEXTUAL RESOURCES

English Standard Version                                   Interlinear NIV Hebrew-English Old Testament
New Geneva Study Bible (NKJV)    Bratcher & Reyburn. Translator’s Handbook on the Psalms
Authorized (King James) Version     Barthelemy.  Pre & Int Rpt on the Hebrew OT Text Project
New American Standard Bible                                         Dahood.  The Anchor Bible: Psalms 1-50
The Jerusalem Bible
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Assayer of Men
For the Lord’s Day:  the 21st of September 2003

Introduction:  We begin our study today with some textual difficulties that must be explored and explained.  In this explanation we begin to comprehend the subtle differences between the older Revised Standard Version and the newer English Standard Version which refines and evangelically enhances the older translation.  Bratcher & Reyburn’s Translator’s Handbook argues for the RSV, among others, where the translation of verse five would read:  “The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked, And his soul hates him that loves violence.”  And possibly, the translation you are following says something similar.  However, here is the rub.  Listen to the older and more orthodox rendering, exemplified by the ESV again:  “The LORD tests the righteous, but His soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.”

Do you see the difference?  The reformed or as we should really call it, the biblical emphasis is not that the God of heaven and earth merely examines all men before hating those who are violent!  But, rather  while He merely tests those accounted righteous, He has a profound hatred for all the wicked, violent or not! 

Calvin comes close to saying the same thing in his own time, place and way.  The English translation of Calvin’s rendition reads this way: “Jehovah approves the righteous man; but his soul hateth the ungodly, and him who loveth iniquity.”  He then comments “The Hebrew word … which we have rendered “to approve”, often signifies “to examine” or “try.”  But in this passage I explain it as simply meaning, that God so inquires into the cause of every man as to distinguish the righteous from the wicked.  It is farther declared, that God hates those who are set upon the infliction of injuries, and upon doing mischief.”

Delitzsch notes that God “tries the righteous.  He knows that in the depth of his soul there is an upright nature that will abide all testing, so that He lovingly protects him, just as the righteous lovingly depends upon Him.”  Of course, that quotation could be used to further either argument before us at this juncture.  However, to his credit he gives the example of Job.

Development:  It is precisely in this manner that we would encourage the understanding of the passage before us.  In fact, both this week and last we have used the specialized word: “assay” - from the field of metallurgy, precisely to emphasize the concept here in mind.  The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia has this to say about the subject:  “In the various Bible references the refining of precious metals is used figuratively to illustrate the kind of trial God’s children are called upon to go through.”

Now, we all have our crosses to bear for the Lord as we understand our calling.  Some of course may be lighter than others  but the challenges and temptations of life do indeed come to all who belong to the Lord of all the earth.  Times and places also contribute to the load that the church and her members must contend with.  P&B behind the Devil’s curtain have a completely different perspective from our own.  The saints described in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs have a different and even more grim view of the same realities  Given ongoing developments within the Canadian Parliament  the true churches in Canada may very soon face public persecution for only proclaiming what God’s word has to say about the emerging Sodomite culture and all the wickedness wrapped up therein.  And I do not choose that issue at random, because it is precisely in the next verse that we read reminders of our righteous and holy God’s attitude towards such perverse nonsense. 

As we look carefully at verse six, once again we have some minor translation difficulties.  “Let Him rain burning coals on the wicked; fire and sulfur:  a scorching wind shall be their lot.”  Spurgeon, among many, works with a text that reads this way:  “Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.”

My Translator’s Handbook has this note:  “The first punishment in the Masoretic text is the plural of the word for “trap” (LXX, Vulgate), which seems to be a scribal error for the plural of the word for “coal”, which is nearly the same in Hebrew.”  Some would argue that the Masoretic text means a wider sense of “misfortunes.”  Certainly, we can agree with the broader category of misfortune, but given the specific references in the remaining portion of the text  it would seem logical to go with the Sodom & Gomorrah example which so quickly comes to mind.  But let us be certain that we understand these “burning coals” to be of a kind like those thrown out by volcanic activity. 

More than once have I burnt a pile of downed branches and leaves and become concerned with the blowing ashes that they might spread the fire more widely than I would like.  Some years ago, one of the boys accidentally started a fire in the neighbor’s corn field with the blowing ashes from a trash fire.  It was too dry to burn and he didn’t realize it.  Once the insurance company and everything was settled, the neighbor thanked me because he said he made more money from the acre of burnt corn than he would have it had been harvested!  It is a small blessing to have friendly and understanding neighbors.

But, I digress  we have a better image to imagine the scene noted here.  In Genesis, Lot’s wife was reduced to a pillar of salt.  But, who can forget in the aftermath of 9/11 the sooty creatures that emerged from the terrible rampages of ground zero. 

Unfortunately for us and the world at large, the Muslim clerics have taken a too literal joy in one possible phrasing of our text:  “Let Him rain burning coals on the wicked.”  While those linguistics are possible, Delitzsch would argue that the phrase “assumes a declaration of something that is near at hand.”  He further argues that the word form here “is opposed to our rendering [it] as expressive of a wish.  … Thus it here affirms a fact of the future which follows as a necessity from” the earlier verses in this psalm.   In another decade, we could well allow the ESV phrasing here, but let us be circumspect and leave the Lord to do His work as He has determined.

And I do not say this lightly, even the Sodom & Gomorrah implications of the phrases here we must be reminded of the New Covenant passage in John 7:53  8:11 where the conservative church would understand that Jesus hereby sets aside the immediate death penalty for consenting adults in these intimate matters.  We of course understand that He is reserving His just punishment for later and only instructing the Church to be circumspect in a more cosmopolitan environment than that in which the Old Covenant community ministered theocratically.

I have always wondered at the more liberal edge of the church, who would claim that this Johannine passage is so suspect that it should not have the authority of scripture?  But of course such liberals do not always appreciate the blessings for which they and all their more perverse kin do sometimes benefit, just because the scriptures are sometimes interpreted strongly by those who ordinarily might be expected to have an axe to grind with the wicked. 

Be that as it may, the immediate punishments for the grosser sins may only be stayed for a time.  And if the average life-spans of that portion of the population are taken into account, God does not delay His judgment and punishment as long as we are accustomed to presume!

Application: The “snares” of some translations are just as violent as the “burning coals” of other translations.  J.M. Neale writes that “After the judgment follows the condemnation: pre-figured as we have seen, by the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Verse five and six is telling us nothing more than this: the righteous judgment of verse six brings forth the final punishment in verse seven.  Calvin notes on the first phrase of verse six that “David now, in the last place, lays it down as a certain truth, that although God, for a time, may be still and delay his judgments, yet the hour of vengeance will assuredly come.”

And amazingly, as if he had seen our own time and comprehended it as well as that of his own and David’s, he writes for our encouragement in the Twenty-first Century and he makes three essential points, these almost prophetic words:  “We see how by degrees [David] rises up to the hope of a happy issue to his present affliction, and he uses his efforts to attain this, that the social and moral disorder, which he saw prevailing around him, might not weaken his faith. 

1.  As the tribunal of God remains firm and immovable, he, in the first place, sustains and comforts himself from the consideration, that God from on high beholds, all that is done here below.

2.  In the next place, he considers what the office of judge requires, from which he concludes, that the actions of men cannot escape the inspection of God’s omniscient eye, and that although he does not immediately punish their evil deeds, he hates all the wicked. 

3.  Finally, he adds, that since God is armed with power, this hatred will not be in vain or ineffectual.  Thus while God defers the infliction of punishment, the knowledge of his justice will have a powerful influence in maintaining our faith, until he actually show that he has never departed from his watch tower, from which he beholds the actions of men.”

And of this we may be certain, just as He loves those who are cleansed with the blood of Christ, so too does He desire to do justice to all of those who have no regard for our Lord and Savior.  The wicked may rant and rave about His righteous justice, but in the end it and they will all be blown away in the fire and indignation of His holy wrath.  May, we like David be refined like silver in and through the Lord’s loving gaze and thus be prepared for His final coming in glory at the end of the age.  Come quickly, Lord Jesus, come quickly.  Amen.
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PREACHING RESOURCES

Calvin, John:  Commentary on Book of Psalms.
Delitzsch, F:  Commentary on the Old Testament  Psalms.
Patch, James A.  “Refiner,” International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia.
Spurgeon, C.H:  Treasury of David.
The Westminster Confession & Catechisms.
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