By the Waters of Babylon

Meditations on the Psalms for the Solace and Renewal of the Soul

Benjamin W. Farley

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781625649270
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630873752
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The Psalms have long been the preferred prayer book of souls in quest of God's guidance and comfort. It has been a hymnbook for the soul and a trove for canticles and verses of the heart. The Psalms have served both Judaism and Christianity's religious communities as a favored source of rich and magnificent readings perfect for liturgical settings. Most significantly, they have nurtured the soul in its desperate times of brokenness and longing for God. This is true of both religions and of their various branches across the years. For that reason, the Psalter ranks among the noblest of spiritual masterpieces, cherished for its eloquent and poignant prayers that lift the heart to God even as they bring God down to mend the soul. We need such times of private and communal withdrawal into the sphere where God alone reins. Solitariness with God heals the heart's wounds, individually and communally. Alone with God, God sees us as we are and allows us to acknowledge ourselves as we are--at our best and worst, in our joy and folly. The Psalms remind us that God is inescapably present wherever we allow God in to renew, inspire, redeem, and fulfill the highest hopes of our human capacity. By the Waters of Babylon provides meditations on all 150 of the Psalter's hymns. They are written to speak to the heart as well as to the mind and soul in search of grace and consolation.

Book One

Psalms 1–41

1

From the Aspect of Eternity

[But] his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.

Psalm 1:2

It was the philosopher Benedict Spinoza who proposed that it is only under the aspect of eternity (sub quandam aeternitatis specie) that we come to understand anything. Until then, we are blinded by our emotions and the limitations of our time. The Apostle Paul held a similar view: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face-to-face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Cor 13:12 KJV). Long before Paul, the Psalmist had adopted a parallel view. It is only when we see the world from God’s perspective, that we begin to realize who we are and what our role in the universe can be.

For the Psalmist, it was God’s divine word, contained in the Torah that revealed that sacred perspective. It became his focal point of delight and meditation. Note, also, his emphasis on time: “day and night.” Our time is fragile and finite, compared with God’s time; ours brief and mortal, while God’s endures from eternity to eternity. For the Psalmist, the portal to God’s time was the Torah, alone replete with grace and wisdom to keep souls nourished and alive—like the trees in his metaphors. However, he also knew how important time itself is. For apart from a life immersed in the Eternal, we become like the chaff that the wind blows away.

As Abraham Heschel put it so aptly: “God is not in things of space, but in moments of time.” In context he was writing about the Sabbath, but his insight applies here. If we want to experience God’s “perspective” of all that is good and sacred, then time spent with God allows time for God to lift us into his holiness, where wisdom and healing abound.1 Clearly, the Psalmist invites us to experience that perspective today and every day for the rest of life.

Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain?

Psalm 2:1

In truth, we know why. Neither the kings of the earth, nor the rulers in their counsel treasure the LORD’S perspective. Nor, in the Psalmist’s mind, do they meditate on his grace and wisdom, either by day or night. Their “delight” lies in something else: economic competition, trade alliances, treaties of mutual advancement, spying, containment, and war. Little wonder that they have “set themselves . . . together, against the LORD and his anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us.’” They are too embedded in their geo-political enclosures to consider the saving wisdom of God’s “bonds” and “cords.” They wish none of it. Not even slogans declaring, “In God We Trust,” or belt buckles engraved with “Gott Mit Uns,” can save us from our noble intentions when our heart’s treasure lies somewhere else.

Let us leap forward, so to speak, under God’s aspect of eternity. Do you remember who said these words? “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matt. 7:13–14). As for God’s “bonds” and “cords,” “Take my yoke upon you and learn of me,” he added, “for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” That is why God, “who sits in the heavens,” smiles, and in his heart of hearts struggles against the temptation to hold mankind in “derision.” God is love, John reminds us. The Psalmist, for all his humility, knew God primarily from his post-Exilic side of time. How Israel learned it all the hard way! Still, he captures the essence of God’s promise of salvation: “I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me: ‘You are my son, today I have begotten you.’”

If only we could see sub quandam aeternitatis specie. That is why Luther defined us as “justified, yet sinful.” Why Paul explained: “That while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.” And why the Psalmist concludes his coronation tribute with redemptive words of grace and forbearance: “Blessed are all who take refuge in him” (Ps 2:11).

Many are rising against me; many are saying of me, there is no help for him in God.

Psalm 3:1–2

Tradition ascribes Psalm 3 to David. He penned it while fleeing Jerusalem in the year of Absalom’s rebellion. The northern tribes had united with David’s restless son to overthrow the aging king. David’s Court Historian, as he is known, captures the event in all its sordid and heartbreaking details. The revolt sent David scurrying across the Kidron Brook and across the Mt. of Olives, protected only by a handful of faithful guards and his life-long companion, Jo’ab, the commander of his army. Somewhere in the pitiful entourage, his favorite wives struggled to keep up, no doubt Bathsheba among them, and possibly Absalom’s mother, Ma’acah. Sometime that night, David crept into a cave and composed this first of the Psalmist’s laments. As such it is brief, scarcely seven verses in length, with an eighth added by the Psalmist. Was David able to see Zion in the starlight, aglow with the glory of all that he loved? “O LORD, how many are my foes! Arise, O LORD! Deliver me, O my God! I cry aloud to the LORD, and he answers me from his holy hill” (Ps 3:4 & 7).

We know the fate of Absalom. How David wept: “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!” (2 Sam 18:33) Neither David nor Israel ever got over it. Yet David loved God too much to fault anyone but himself. He rent his clothes, sobbed with remorse with all his heart; then, with painful sadness, endured Jo’ab’s deserved rebuff. Finally, he lifted his soul to God, and, as the historian continues, “arose, and took his seat in the gate” (2 Sam 19:8). To which the Psalmist adds: “Deliverance belongs to the LORD; thy blessing be upon thy people! Selah!” (Ps 3:8)

Historians and novelists have long recorded the story of humankind’s familial failures, tales of betrayal and discontent. One needs only recall Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, or Turgenev’s Of Fathers and Sons, or Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth to realize how universal the story is. We, the readers, know only too well of the skeletons in our own closets. It is not for us to judge either David or Absalom, or fault others for the same; nor to fail to seek forgiveness for ourselves. How honest of the Psalmist to place this Davidic “mirror” before us, immediately following the First and Second Psalms. I...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword - Luther H. Rickenbaker III
• Introduction
• Book One: Psalms 1–41
• Book Two: Psalms 42–72
• Book Three: Psalms 73–89
• Book Four: Psalms 90–106
• Book Five: Psalms 107–150
• Selected Bibliography