A Pepper Grinder Post
What Can Man Do To Me?
In this post and the next, I want to look at something that was probably a song sung as part of worship in Israel at the time of King David. This song starts out with a kind of call and response format, but the verses I especially want to focus on are verses five through seven, when the song has moved away from that. Here's my translation of the first seven verses of Psalm 118:
I will praise Yahweh because he is good. His lovingkindness lasts forever.
Let Israel say, "His lovingkindness lasts forever."
Let the house of Aaron say, "His lovingkindness lasts forever."
Let those who fear Yahweh say, "His lovingkindness lasts forever."
In my distress I called to Yahweh, and he answered by freeing me.
Yahweh is with me; I won't be afraid. What can man do to me?
Yahweh is with me and helps me. I will look out over all my enemies.
The word I've translated as "distress" in verse five is interesting in the Hebrew. It comes from a root with a literal meaning of tight or confined. The songwriter is saying that he felt boxed in and trapped when he called to the Lord. When the same verse goes on to say the Lord answered by freeing him, the Hebrew literally says that the Lord brought him out into an open space. He has been released from his cage.
That's cool, but what really struck me about this psalm when I first read it was the way the author said, "Yahweh is with me; I won't be afraid. What can man do to me?" Clearly, the expected answer to that question is, "Nothing," but that makes no sense to me. What can man do to me? Plenty!
Some psalms have notes at the start saying who the author was, or what tune it should be sung to, or something like that. This psalm is one of a fairly small group that has no note at the start (a group referred to as the "orphan psalms"). However, to me, it feels like a psalm of David. Assuming David was the author, let's think about his life for a minute. He spent years on the run and in hiding because King Saul was trying to kill him. Even though God didn't allow Saul to kill David, Saul certainly managed to make years of David's life very unpleasant. Then, years after David became king of all Israel, he was forced to flee Jerusalem because his own son was staging a coup and trying to kill him. Yes, David's life was preserved, but "man" was able to do plenty to make his life miserable.
Whether or not David was the author, it doesn't take much thinking, either about events in the Bible, or history, or the current world, to come up with cases where sincere followers of God were subjected to all kinds of horrible treatment and often killed. Didn't "man" do something to them?
This reminds me of a verse in Psalm 51, which starts with a note explicitly saying it was written by David after he was confronted about his sin with Bathsheba by the prophet Nathan. In verse four we read: "Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight." (NIV)
Now, wait a minute! David had lusted after Bathsheba, used his royal power to sleep with her, and tried to cover up his misdeed by tricking Bathsheba's husband Uriah into thinking the conceived child was his. Finally, when that plan had failed, he deliberately had Uriah killed, and added Bathsheba to his group of wives. I would have said that would count as a sin against Uriah, and, regardless of how Bathsheba felt about David or her departed husband, David led her into a relationship that was wrong, and when God's punishment fell, it brought the death of the child Bathsheba had borne. How can David possibly say that he had only sinned against the Lord? My thought is that David was so focused on the Lord, that his sin against God overwhelmed all other thoughts. In a similar way, I think the author of this psalm has such an intense focus on God, that anything which people might do to him seems like nothing.
The other thing to remember is that this is poetry. When the Beatles sang, "I want you, I want you so bad, I want you so bad, it's driving me mad …," I strongly doubt that the songwriter literally thought his desire for a woman was leading him into insanity. In the same way here, I think the psalmist is saying that God's ability to reward and punish far surpasses what any person can do.
Finally, think about these words of Jesus:
"I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him." (Luke 12:4-5, NIV)
Can people cause us intense pain in this life? Absolutely. But this life is one miniscule sliver of eternity. If we place our trust in God, and live our lives for him, we will suffer in this life, but we will experience God's goodness for all eternity. Just as the memory of a dream, which seemed all-encompassing when we were having it, quickly fades when we wake up, so the things people have done to us in this life will be forgotten in the enormity of God's presence.
- Pepper
Posted 2020-09-19