Psalm 30: The Pit and the Principles

"A Psalm. A Song at the dedication of the temple. Of David.
1 I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up,
and did not let my foes rejoice over me.
2 O Lord my God, I cried to you for help,
and you have healed me.
3 O Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol,
restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.
4 Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones,
and give thanks to his holy name.
5 For his anger is but for a moment;
his favour is for a lifetime.
Weeping may linger for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
6 As for me, I said in my prosperity,
‘I shall never be moved.’
7 By your favour, O Lord,
you had established me as a strong mountain;
you hid your face;
I was dismayed.
8 To you, O Lord, I cried,
and to the Lord I made supplication:
9 ‘What profit is there in my death,
if I go down to the Pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?
10 Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me!
O Lord, be my helper!’
11You have turned my mourning into dancing;
you have taken off my sackcloth
and clothed me with joy,
12 so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you for ever."

I. Introduction

This remarkable Psalm is made more remarkable by two distinct features. First is the tone of personal anguish and satisfaction that suffuses the whole. Even though the Psalms are meant to be "Israel's Praise Book," they sometimes also break through what one might call the formal communal sense and breathe the air of personal torment and deliverance. This Psalm does that. Second, this Psalm devotes almost half of its verses (1-5) to stating the basic principle in view: God delivers the one who cries earnestly to God. Normally a Psalm will have a sort of "title" verse or two verses, where the basic principle is articulated; then the balance of the Psalm goes into detail to show why this principle is true (e.g., Ps. 32). Not so here. The Psalmist lovingly states his principle in various ways in vv. 1-5. It is almost as if he is trying to communicate to us that the lesson learned occupies as much of his mental space as the experience of loss, cry for help and deliverance. He is an author who is concerned about what he learned and not simply about what he went through.

Let's divide these thoughts into those two sections: (1) What the Psalmist learned (vv. 1-5); and (2) What the Psalmist experienced.

II. What the Psalmist Learned (vv. 1-5)

One of my favorite scenes in the Wizard of Oz is when Dorothy is speaking to the Good Witch of the North and her traveling companions after having returned to the Emerald City with the Wicked Witch of the West's broomstick. Oz pulled things from his bag of tricks to give to the Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man, but there was nothing in his bag for her. Instead, he decided to take her on a balloon ride, a trip back to Kansas, a trip which he calls "a hazardous and technically unexplainable journey into the outer stratosphere." But Oz doesn't know what he is doing, and the balloon flies off with Dorothy and Toto still in the Emerald City. The company is dejected. In the midst of their dejection, they notice the telltale bubble of Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. She is there to help. Dorothy throws herself at Glinda, begging for information on how she can be sent home. Glinda responds that Dorothy already had the power to return home, but that she didn't tell Dorothy about it earlier because Dorothy wouldn't have believed her. In other words, there was some kind of experience of loss that Dorothy needed to experience in order really to appreciate and accept the advice of Glinda.

Glinda then said, "She had to learn it for herself." The Tin Man then looks at her, "What have you learned, Dorothy?" Dorothy responds hestitantly at first, before gaining steam and confidence: "Well, I think that it, that it wasn't enough just to want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em. And that it's that--if I ever go looking for my heart's desire gain, I won't look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with. Is that right?," she asks. Glinda assures her that she is right.

This homey story from our collective literary and cinematic past illustrates the point--that one is ready to "state one's learnings" after a series of challenging, frightening and exciting things has happened. The Psalmist feels the same way. In the first five verses he extols God for his being "healed" (v. 2), for being brought up from "Sheol" (v. 3) and for being restored to life from the Pit (v. 3). This deliverance leads him to make a pronouncement about God. God's anger is only temporary, while God's pleasure is for a lifetime (v. 5). The Hebrew text is then very vivid. In five short words (and one ancient version lops off one of the words), it says: "in the evening, there is tears; in the morning, joy."

That is the lesson which is on his heart, and which is a great lesson for us today. We tend to want to read meaning into today, into our experience of this moment. The Psalmist encourages us to extend the scope of our time before interpreting the meaning of the things that have happened to us. Just as the four Hebrew words take us from weeping to joy, so it is sometimes a mere matter of moments until reversal comes in our life. But, as we will now see, that reversal can be either from satisfaction to distress or from distress to joy.

III. What the Psalmist Experienced (vv. 6-12)

Verses 6-12 (7-13 in Hebrew) describe in more vivid language the kind of situation that led to the penning of the Psalm. If you wanted to teach/preach on this section of the Psalm, I would emphasize four things. First is the Psalmist's smug self-confidence. He thought he was established in security, and said "I shall never be moved" (v. 6). In this he becomes like the rich landowner in the Gospel of Luke who surveys his crops and barns and decides to build bigger silos, confident that he can eat, drink and be merry for many years to come. We face this kind of self-confidence in our culture today. We are confident about our wealth, or health or relationships lasting forever. We say in our confidence, "I shall never be moved."

Second, however, is the suddenness and completeness of personal reversal. The words at the end of v. 7 describe it neatly: "you hid your face; I was dismayed." These words (four in the Hebrew) indicate the suddenness of the reversal the Psalmist faced. The notion of God's hiding the divine face and dismay following is perfectly reflected also in Ps. 104. After describing the dependence of all nature on God, the Psalmist says, "When you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed" (27-28)." The great Psalm of personal dismay is Ps. 6, where the word translated as dismay here (nibhal) is used three times. I don't want to reproduce that text here; read it and you will have a rich interpretive context for this Psalm.

Third, there is the cry to God for help. This cry (vv. 8-10) actually consists of a bit of protest language before the actual request for deliverance. God can't help a person in Sheol. Therefore, there is no value if the Psalmist perishes now. With this in mind, he just asks God to help him. "O Lord, be my helper!" Finally, there is the narrative of deliverance, in vv. 11-12, the sense that the Psalmist's pain has been changed into dancing. No mention is made of the specific nature of the illness/disease/threat or what happened to bring the Psalmist back to "life," but we now know he was dancing. What a wonderful picture with which to end this Psalm.

Conclusion

Work is about working and talking about work. Life is about living and talking about living. Faith is about experiencing the full array of the human condition and then speaking of the results of faith to whoever will listen. The Psalmist teaches us to do it by giving us this most personal hymn. I, for one, am grateful for it.

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