For my blog post today on my study in the Psalms, I will post Psalm
131 in the King James Version (which is in the public domain), and I
will comment on each verse.
1 A Song of degrees of David.
LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I
exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.
The
part about not exercising oneself in "things too high for me" rubs me
the wrong way, since it sounds so limiting. For one, it can be taken in
an anti-intellectual direction: You should just accept my
fundamentalist spiel rather than questioning it on the basis of things
that you're not qualified to study, let alone understand. Just accept
what I'm saying: My version of God knows more than you, so why ask
questions? I tend to shy away from that sort of attitude. Second, this
statement in v 1 can be taken in the direction of discouraging people's
dreams: don't aim for that, for it's too high for you! I'm
sure some of you were told that when you were growing up! My belief is
that we should not be afraid to learn, to study, and to reach for the
stars. Even if I'm unqualified to study, say, science, and even if you
should probably take whatever I say about science with a grain of salt, I
should not be discouraged from at least trying to learn and to
understand. I believe that all knowledge is God's knowledge, even if
that knowledge disrupts our neat picture of God and the world.
Notwithstanding my reservations about the directions in which v 1 can be taken, I still find some
value in the interpretations that I read, at least for me. There may
be times for me to rest in God's love rather than allowing my mind to
race about what I do not know or understand. There's also a place for
humility: for being content where I am rather than being jealous of
others who may have more or be more talented than me. If Psalm 131 is
somehow about David, could it concern David's humility: that David was
not aiming to advance himself politically but was humble before the
LORD? Of course, David did advance, but the biblical stories
don't depict him as one who had a great deal of personal ambition;
rather, David went about his life trying to honor God, and God exalted
him in God's own time. Isn't that the type of leader we'd want: one who
regards himself as under a higher authority (whether that be God, or
simply a moral code) and who cares for the people, rather than his own
advancement? Well, some argue that a degree of personal ambition is
actually important for good leadership (see here),
and that may be true. But I believe that, ultimately, a good leader
prioritizes the well-being of the people he or she leads.
2 Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child.
Within
the interpretations that I read, there was a difference of opinion
about whether the child was still nursing or had been weaned. If the
former is the case, then v 2 is about the child's dependence on his
mother for food. If the latter is the case, then the child is no longer
nursing and continually crying for his mother's milk, hoping for that
temporary satisfaction, and the image is about the person who is at
peace in his relationship with God: he's not crying for this or that but
is relaxed, appreciating the relationship. The Hebrew word so often
appears to concern weaning (Genesis 21:8; I Samuel 1:23f.; Isaiah 11:8),
and even Jastrow's dictionary on the use of the Hebrew word in rabbinic
literature listed the definition of wean. But, for some reason, Rashi
argues that the child in v 2 is still nursing! I read one scholar who
said that the Hebrew verb g-m-l concerns dealing bountifully,
and he somehow gets nursing out of that; but I could not find anywhere
that the verb had that exact meaning. Holladay lists examples in which
it can mean rendering good or evil, but I have a hard time going from
that to saying that g-m-l in Psalm 131:2 means nursing. Perhaps Rashi thought differently, however!
I
looked at another article that was going into different translations of
Psalm 131:2, and one translation said "like a weaned child in me is my
soul." V 2 is about the Psalmist quieting himself. Could he in that
case be like a mother to his own soul, quieting it? Many of us would
like inner peace, but could one path to inner peace be us taking the
initiative of quieting our own souls, our own selves? (Some may need
medication to do this!) And possible ways to do this may be to cease
envying, to be humble before God's greatness, and to rest in God's love
rather than stressing out about what one may not know.
I liked
what the Orthodox Jewish Artscroll commentary had to say: "The righteous
person is not arrogant because of his achievements or jealous of those
who are greater than he. For he knows that all success is bestowed by
God, each person according to his needs and mission."
Why desire
someone else's mission, when I have my own? Psalm 131 does not
explicitly say that, but perhaps one can take the lessons of Psalm 131
further by embracing such a concept.
3 Let Israel hope in the LORD from henceforth and for ever.
What
the Psalmist deems to be relevant to his own peace of mind and
attitude, he believes also to be relevant to the people of Israel, who
may be experiencing situations that don't make sense to them or that
they don't fully understand; still, they can hopefully rest in God.