For my weekly quiet time this week, I will blog about Psalm 96. I have two items.
1. Erhard
Gerstenberger contends that Psalm 96 was risky within its exilic or
post-exilic historical context. Here Israel is, subjugated to a foreign
nation, and Psalm 96 boldly declares that the gods of the other nations
are mere idols; calls upon the nations to worship the superior God of
Israel, who reigns; and anticipates a time when the God of Israel will
come in judgment. According to Gerstenberger, such a message
would probably strike Israel's foreign captors as rather subversive, and
so Psalm 96 most likely was not proclaimed publicly within the
"police-controlled imperial states", but rather was used in modest
congregations and "closed worship services".
What's ironic
about what Gerstenberger is saying is that Psalm 96 does not appear to
be a Psalm that encourages the Israelites to tip-toe daintily in
proclaiming their beliefs about God and the nations. Rather,
it encourages the Israelites to declare God's glory among the nations,
and it calls upon the nations to worship the God of Israel. That's
pretty bold! Gerstenberger acknowledges that Psalm 96 may express a
desire that Israel bear witness to God's glory before the nations during
the Persian Period, and Daniel and Esther come to Gerstenberger's mind
as examples of such witnesses. Gerstenberger's point may be
(and perhaps I'm reading things into his comments) that Daniel and
Esther bore witness to God's glory, yet they did so in a non-subversive,
non-threatening manner.
2. An issue that comes to my
mind as I read Psalm 96 is eschatology. Psalm 96 expresses the
anticipation that God will come to judge, and that even nature should be
happy about this. I think about Romans 8:18-23, in which Paul
affirms that all creation groans for the manifestation of the children
of God, when it will be delivered from corruption. In my opinion, it's
important to highlight that God is to be God, not only of a tiny sect of
people, but of all of the nations and ethnic-groups, as well as all of
creation. That shows a vast extent to God's care and concern! And yet, Psalm 96 upholds the unique status of Israel when it calls on the nations to come into God's courts with an offering----they are to honor God's sanctuary in Israel.
While
Psalm 96 has high expectations about the future, it also appears to
encourage the Israelites to rejoice in the present. V 2 says that they
are to show God's salvation on a daily basis. And Psalm 96 affirms that
God, even now, is above the gods of the nations. In a sense, Israel,
even in a state of subjugation (assuming that Psalm 96 indeed does date
to the exilic or post-exilic periods), can taste of God's salvation and
rejoice in it----either because she has intense hope that God will bring
about God's righteous rule, or she is experiencing God's goodness right
where she is sitting, or both. Her song may be new because she
is expecting God to perform a new act of redemption, or because she
feels a fresh wave of appreciation for God's goodness (and both have
been argued by interpreters, as they have sought the meaning of the "new
song" in v 1). Maybe both are true.