Psalm 19

For my weekly quiet time this week, I will blog about Psalm 19 and its interpreters.

One of the messages of Psalm 19 is that the heavens declare God's glory, without even saying a word. The meaning here is that God's creation communicates who God is---his vastness, his greatness, his power, etc. But some Christian interpreters have problems with this interpretation of Psalm 19, not because they're against the notion that nature displays God's glory, but rather because Romans 10:18 applies Psalm 19:4 to the spread of the Gospel throughout the world. Paul's argument is that Israel heard about Christ, for the word of God has gone forth throughout the world, and he applies to the Gospel what Psalm 19:4 says about speechless nature.

Augustine and John Gill try to make Psalm 19:4 more compatible with Romans 10:18's use of it, and they seek to do so by interpreting Psalm 19:1's "The heavens declare the glory of God" in light of the Gospel, rather than the natural world. Augustine relates Psalm 19:1 to the evangelists, in whom God dwelt as in the heavens. John Gill states that v 1 speaks of the Gospel, which is from heaven. Gill wants to have his cake and eat it too, though, for, elsewhere in his commentary on this Psalm, he interprets the Psalm in reference to God's revelation through speechless nature. But Augustine and Gill both want Romans 10:18 to be faithful to the meaning of Psalm 19:4, and so they attempt to demonstrate that Romans 10:18 is correct to apply Psalm 19 to the proclamation of the Gospel.

Some Christians have sought to do the exact opposite: to show that Romans 10:18 is about God's communication through nature, the topic of Psalm 19. The idea here is that God communicated the Gospel to the world, including Israel, through nature. Perhaps the adherents to this belief think that people should be able to look at nature and to conclude that God is great but that they are sinners, and so they need a savior. (I think here of Paul's arguments in Romans 1.) Then there are those who maintain that the stars actually convey information about God's plan concerning Jesus Christ. E.W. Bullinger takes this route, and there are other Christians who interpret Capricorn, Pisces, etc., in light of Christ.

Interestingly, even some Jewish interpreters have sought to read Psalm 19 in reference to God's activity in history, not just in terms of God's communication of his own glory through the regularities of nature. The medieval Midrash on the Psalms, for example, contains the view that v 2 is talking about specific acts of God in history: God performed wonders by day, as when he caused the sun to stand still, or influenced the stars to fight Sisera in the day of Deborah (Judges 5:20), and by night when he killed the firstborn of Egypt, or sent an angel to murder the army of Sennacherib. There is also an eschatological interpretation of v 6, which says that nobody is safe from the heat of the sun. A few rabbis cite Malachi 3:19 to argue that God will one day consume evildoers with the heat of the sun, but the Midrash then goes on to say that those who occupy themselves with the Torah will be safe from such judgment. After all, right after v 6 says that everything encounters the heat of the sun, v 7 affirms that the law of the LORD refreshes and enlightens people!

That brings me to another point: Not only do religious interpreters use Psalm 19's praise of nature as a platform to exalt God's activities in history---such as the Gospel, or God's wonders in the Hebrew Bible---but so also does Psalm 19 move from nature to God's historical activity, in this case, the Torah. There was a time when biblical scholars believed that Psalm 19 was from different authors---since the first part exalted nature and appeared to contain a poem glorifying the sun, whereas the second part concerned God's Torah. But there came a point when scholars were not so sure about this division, for both parts of Psalm 19 seemed to be beautifully inter-related. The Mesopotamian god Shamash was not only the god of the sun, but he was also the god of justice, and so it's not surprising to see Psalm 19 glorifying the sun, right before it talks about the Torah and the Psalmist's desire for God to cleanse him from hidden sins, to keep him from presumptuous sins, and to make him blameless from the great transgression (which may refer to adultery or original sin, according to Peter Craigie, who at least refers to the existence of ancient Near Eastern parallels to justify the "adultery" interpretation). In Mesopotamian thought, the sun was connected with the world of ethics and divine punishment for sin, which is the topic of the second part of Psalm 19 (since the Psalmist wants to prevent divine punishment of himself).

This is not to suggest that Psalm 19 views Shamash as a god, but rather that it may be drawing from an ancient Near Eastern association of the sun with ethics and divine justice, in order to make the point that the same God who made nature revealed the Torah, which actually resembles the sun in certain features. On page 81 of Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis expresses the view of many scholars when he states that, in Psalm 19, "the searching and cleansing sun becomes an image of the searching and cleansing law." In the process, Lewis states, nature is emptied of her divinity even as she becomes "an index, a symbol, a manifestation of the divine." E.W. Bullinger inter-relates the sun with the Torah in Psalm 19 in another manner (which is rather eccentric): as the sun dwells and moves about (or at least appears to us to move about) in the heavens, which contain God's revelation of Christ in the zodiac, so does the pious person dwell and move about in God's written word.

I'd like to use something else that C.S. Lewis says in Reflections on the Psalms as a bridge to an issue that relates to Psalm 19:13. On page 62, Lewis states:

"Paganisms were a constant temptation to the Jew and may in some of their externals have been not unlike his own religion. The temptation was to turn to those terrible rites in times of terror---when, for example, the Assyrians were pressing on. We who not so long ago waited daily for invasion by enemies, like the Assyrians, know what they must have felt. They were tempted, since the Lord seemed deaf, to try those appalling deities who demanded so much more and might therefore perhaps give more in return. But when a Jew in some happier hour, or a better Jew even in that hour, looked at those worships---when he thought of sacred prostitution, sacred sodomy, and the babies thrown into the fire for Moloch---his own 'Law' as he turned back to it must have shone with an extraordinary radiance."

Many biblical scholars may dissent from some of what Lewis says here, for there have been scholarly arguments that Canaanite religion (or, more accurately, the religion of Ugarit in Syria) was not as bad as the biblical authors portray it---that the biblical authors were demonizing the Canaanites in an effort to distinguish Israel from other nations. But Lewis still makes a valid point: one can view the Bible (and, I would suggest, any wholesome set of morals) as "sweeter than honey" when it is set into contrast with base immorality.

But the bridge to Psalm 19:13 is Lewis' discussion of Israel's relationship with foreigners: her fear of invasion by the Assyrians, her practice of foreign customs, and her insistence that the Israelite religion was better than that of other nations. The Hebrew Masoretic Text of Psalm 19:13 says, "Also from presumptuous sins withhold your servant." The word for "presumptuous sins" is zedim. But the Septuagint obviously read zarim---"foreigners"---which is not surprising, since the resh and the daled are similar looking letters. The Septuagint interprets v 13 to be the Psalmist asking God to keep him safe from foreigners, so that they do not gain dominion over him. The fourth century Christian exegete Theodore of Mopsuestia says that the Psalmist feels that he will be better able to avoid sin when he is relaxed and free from the danger of enemies. That reminds me of what Lewis says above: that the Israelites fled to foreign customs when they were in danger from the Assyrians, but they could reflect on the goodness of God's law in a happier hour. (Whether that is true or not may depend on the situation. It can be easier to do good in times of rest, but there are also cases in which trials can bring people closer to God.)

But I wonder if there is another way to interpret the Septuagint of Psalm 19:13: that the Psalmist wants God to preserve him from foreigners, for they could contaminate him with their sinfulness and their pagan customs. That reminds me of C.S. Lewis' statement that the Israelites at times reflected on how their religion was superior to that of other nations. But what would be ironic in such a case is that Psalm 19 reflects the ancient Near East in so many areas: in viewing the sun in reference to justice, and in its recognition of the possibility of "hidden sins," sins that a person does not know about because he committed them in ignorance. According to the Intervarsity Bible Background Commentary, the Assyrians and the Egyptians had such a notion as well. An Assyrian prayer, for example, refers to sins that could be committed in ignorance---eating something that's forbidden, being in a prohibited area, etc. The deity knew about the hidden sins, but the sinner did not, and so the sinner sought forgiveness because he might have made a mistake. Psalm 19, like much of the Hebrew Bible, reflects its historical and cultural context, and yet there are cases in which the Hebrew Bible repudiates elements of ancient Near Eastern religion---or what its authors believed to be elements. In a sense, they proved all things and held fast to what was good. Psalm 19 may be an example of Israelite xenophobia---if the Greek translation of Psalm 19:13 is correct, or simply if Psalm 19 was moving from natural religion to the Torah to highlight that Israel had something that other nations did not have. And yet, the author of Psalm 19 had obviously learned from non-Israelite cultures, in some manner.