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For my weekly quiet time today, I will blog about Psalm 25 and its interpreters. Here are three items:
1. The Psalmist starts out Psalm 25 by saying that he lifts up his soul to God (v 1). What does this mean? Among medieval Jewish interpreters, I found answers that include offering one's afflicted soul to God as an expiatory offering, depending on God for assistance, dedicating one's soul to the service of God, and directing one's consciousness to God in prayer totally, without being distracted. Scholars Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler in the Jewish Study Bible interpret the phrase to mean that the Psalmist is turning to God for protection. I can imagine a suffering person having all of these emotions and thoughts when turning to God in a time of trouble. The sufferer may say that he has suffered enough for his sins and now has paid his debt, or feel powerless and utterly dependent on God for protection, or focus totally on God, or resolve to serve God if God will deliver him or her. These are spontaneous emotions and thoughts that can arise in the mind of a suffering person who turns to God (only many Christians would deny that their own suffering can atone for their sins, which is why they believe that they need Jesus as their Savior). At the same time, Psalm 25 is not exactly spontaneous, for it is a carefully crafted acrostic, which may have been for the purpose of easing memorization. (In Psalm 25, however, vv 18-19 both start with resh, and there is no qoph, which is why Peter Craigie emends v 18.) But an acrostic can convey the complex emotions that can perplex people while they are suffering and crying to God for help.
2. Speaking of complexity, there is a tension in Psalm 25 between the Psalmist's felt need for God's grace, and his realization that God primarily regards the righteous. The Psalmist asks God to forgive him for his sins---even those that he committed when he was young. In vv 7, 11, he asks God to forgive him for the sake of God's goodness, which may indicate that the Psalmist does not believe that he deserves God's deliverance, for he appeals to God's graciousness and desire for glory rather than to any personal merit on his part. The Psalmist also appeals to his own suffering, as if he expects that to move God to pity, and he also refers to his trust in the LORD. And yet, v 10 says that God's paths are mercy and truth to the people who keep God's testimonies and covenant. V 14 affirms that the LORD's sod (often translated as "secret" or "counsel") is for those who fear him. (I prefer "counsel" because of the Psalm's emphasis on God's guidance, and sod indeed can mean "counsel", as it does in Proverbs 15:22 and other verses.) In v 3, the Psalmist asks that those who transgress without cause might be ashamed. And, in v 21, the Psalmist asks that integrity and uprightness might preserve him, and Peter Craigie feels compelled to clarify that the Psalmist here is not self-righteous, but rather is cognizant of his own integrity. The Psalmist affirms a system in which God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, but he realizes that he himself falls short in such a system, which is why he desires God's grace.
The Psalmist may be trying to do right, even as he remembers times in his past when he did wrong, for which he needs God's forgiveness. But he does not believe that he himself has arrived at a state of righteous perfection, for, in Psalm 25, he continually asks God to teach him and to guide him (vv 4-5, 8-9, 12). The Psalmist is a work in progress.
Patrick Miller in the HarperCollins Study Bible states regarding v 11: "The realization of God's faithfulness to those who keep God's instruction (v. 10) leads the psalmist, who is mindful of failure to do that in the past, to insert a prayer for forgiveness." This is a way to account for the combination of different themes in this Psalm: a desire for deliverance and security, a prayer for forgiveness, etc. But does the Psalmist desire forgiveness and divine guidance because those things would protect him from suffering and premature death? Perhaps, but I do not think that the Psalmist's desire to follow God's ways is necessarily based on an ulterior motive, at least not solely, for v 10 says that God's paths are mercy and truth to those who keep God's covenant and testimonies. This could mean that God is merciful and reliable towards those who keep his covenant and testimonies (which could be the law, the mark of the covenant, and yet Calvinist commentator John Gill says that the covenant that the Psalmist wants to maintain is one of grace). But the orthodox Jewish Artscroll commentary says regarding the verse that "The goodness and truth of all the commandments of Hashem's Torah can be understood by those who adhere to them..." This implies that the commandments are valuable by themselves---that they are inherently good and true---and that those who observe them come to understand how they are good and true.
3. In v 22, the Psalmist asks God to redeem Israel from all of its troubles. Some hold that the Psalm about the individual's plight was applied to the nation in its plight, meaning that v 22 was added. Others contend that the Psalm itself is about the plight of Israel. I would like to believe, however, that the individual sufferer was learning to think beyond himself and his own afflictions---and to think about others as well, and to desire for God's blessing upon them. It's easy for me to become solipsistic, and so I need reminders that I should have a vision that includes more people than me.
