Daily Verse Psalm 69:5 | Daily verse by Faithlife
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69:5 O God, you yourself know my foolishness While his enemies’ accusations were unfounded, the psalmist admits that he has done wrong. He argues that God knows his wrongdoings, which are not the cause for his current affliction.
John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Ps 69:5.
John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Ps 69:5.
69:5 This amounts to a confession of sin so that there is no hypocrisy (nothing hidden) that becomes a barrier in the psalmist’s relationship with God (17:1; 26:1; see note at 66:18–20).
Kevin R. Warstler, “Psalms,” in CSB Study Bible: Notes, ed. Edwin A. Blum and Trevin Wax (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), 876.
Kevin R. Warstler, “Psalms,” in CSB Study Bible: Notes, ed. Edwin A. Blum and Trevin Wax (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), 876.
PSALM 69:1–18
Passion Means Persecution
The leader’s. On Lilies [perhaps a tune]. David’s.
1 Deliver me, God,
because the waters have come up to my neck.
2 I have sunk in a deep flood;
there is no foothold.
I have come into torrents of water;
a deluge has overwhelmed me.
3 I have become weary with calling,
my throat has become dry.
My eyes have failed,
waiting for my God.
4 They are more than the hairs on my head,
the people who are against me without reason.
Many are the people who are trying to put an end to me,
my enemies, with deception.
That which I have not stolen,
then I must restore.
5 God, you yourself know my stupidity;
my guilty deeds are not hidden from you.
6 The people who look to you must not be shamed because of me,
Lord Yahweh Armies.
The people who seek help from you must not be humiliated because of me,
God of Israel.
7 Because it is on account of you that I have borne reviling,
that humiliation has covered my face.
8 I have become a stranger to my relatives,
an alien to my mother’s children.
9 Because my passion for your house has consumed me;
the words of reviling with which people have reviled you have fallen on me.
10 I wept with fasting myself,
and it became an object of reviling for me.
11 I made sack my clothing,
and I became a joke to them.
12 The people who sit at the gate talk about me;
[I became] the drinkers’ song.
13 But I—my plea to you, Yahweh,
is a time of favor.
God, in the greatness of your commitment answer me,
in the truthfulness of your deliverance.
14 Rescue me from the mud;
I must not sink.
May I be rescued from my enemies,
from the torrents of water.
15 The deluge of water must not overwhelm me,
the flood must not swallow me,
the pit must not close its mouth over me.
16 Answer me, Yahweh, because your commitment is good;
in accordance with the greatness of your compassion turn to me.
17 Do not hide your face from your servant,
because I am in trouble—hurry, answer me.
18 Draw near to me, restore me;
because of my enemies, redeem me.
I dreamed last night that I was being taken to court for preaching. The question “If you were prosecuted for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” is a cliché, but it’s a clever and thought-provoking one. When my wife recently drew my attention to a sensible article about the Christian faith in a British journal, it struck me that it would be harder to find such an article in a journal in the United States because of the intensity of the culture wars (the faults are on both sides). Both atheists/agnostics and Christians (or Jews or Muslims) can feel that they are being persecuted or treated with prejudice.
My dream may have been triggered by the fact that I had begun to think about Psalm 69 and about the idea that passion for God’s house had consumed someone. The phrase has a different meaning in the psalm from the one it has in John 2 where the disciples see it embodied in Jesus. When Jesus bullwhips people who are selling animals for worshipers to sacrifice in the temple, talk of being consumed by a passion for God’s house indicates the strength of his own feelings. In the psalm, passion for God’s house has brought trouble or persecution to the person who feels that passion, though this idea comes to apply to Jesus, too (Jesus quotes the psalm in John 15).
One could imagine the psalm being prayed by someone such as Jeremiah or Nehemiah. Through much of Old Testament times, Israelites took a free attitude to the worship they could offer in the temple, following their own hearts in this respect; for instance, they found it helpful to have an image of God to aid their worship (such as the gold bullock they made at Sinai). Prophets such as Jeremiah took a much more restricted and restricting view of the worship that people could legitimately offer. Campaigning for their more restrictive view naturally met opposition, and the opposition was not merely a matter of debate and argument. The temple was commonly under the control of authorities who were in a position to ban worshipers who opposed the restrictive line of such campaigners, and they could use their power to exclude people from worship, harass them, or worse.
One could draw a comparison with what Protestants and Catholics did to one another in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the Western church we sometimes talk about worship wars, conflict between people who like different styles of worship. In much of Israelite and Christian history, worship wars had much more serious connotations. We will be glad that we do not live in such centuries. Yet the difference also draws attention to the trivial basis for our conflicts. In those centuries, people were energized over the question of what kind of worship is appropriate to who God is. What kind of worship honors God? Our question is what kind of worship suits us.
So the psalm is for someone who has sought to be faithful to God in connection with that kind of question and who is consequently threatened by lynching or execution. People’s disregard of God spills over into a disregard of those who speak up for God, whose grief at what is done in God’s name makes them a joke. The reference to deception and false charges presumably indicates that these are ways of providing a more legal-looking basis for taking action against the object of people’s wrath, while the reference to stupidity and guilt indicates that the psalm is making no claim to sinlessness, only to an attitude of faithfulness to Yahweh and a willingness to stand up for such faithfulness. One might have thought that God would honor this faithfulness; there are many declarations in the Psalms and elsewhere that God would do so. But at the moment there is no sign of things working out that way. And God’s holding back is likely to mean not only the discrediting (or worse) of this individual but also the shaming of people who took the same stance.
John Goldingay, Psalms for Everyone, Part 1: Psalms 1–72, Old Testament for Everyone (Louisville, KY;London: Westminster John Knox Press;Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2013), 210–213.
Passion Means Persecution
The leader’s. On Lilies [perhaps a tune]. David’s.
1 Deliver me, God,
because the waters have come up to my neck.
2 I have sunk in a deep flood;
there is no foothold.
I have come into torrents of water;
a deluge has overwhelmed me.
3 I have become weary with calling,
my throat has become dry.
My eyes have failed,
waiting for my God.
4 They are more than the hairs on my head,
the people who are against me without reason.
Many are the people who are trying to put an end to me,
my enemies, with deception.
That which I have not stolen,
then I must restore.
5 God, you yourself know my stupidity;
my guilty deeds are not hidden from you.
6 The people who look to you must not be shamed because of me,
Lord Yahweh Armies.
The people who seek help from you must not be humiliated because of me,
God of Israel.
7 Because it is on account of you that I have borne reviling,
that humiliation has covered my face.
8 I have become a stranger to my relatives,
an alien to my mother’s children.
9 Because my passion for your house has consumed me;
the words of reviling with which people have reviled you have fallen on me.
10 I wept with fasting myself,
and it became an object of reviling for me.
11 I made sack my clothing,
and I became a joke to them.
12 The people who sit at the gate talk about me;
[I became] the drinkers’ song.
13 But I—my plea to you, Yahweh,
is a time of favor.
God, in the greatness of your commitment answer me,
in the truthfulness of your deliverance.
14 Rescue me from the mud;
I must not sink.
May I be rescued from my enemies,
from the torrents of water.
15 The deluge of water must not overwhelm me,
the flood must not swallow me,
the pit must not close its mouth over me.
16 Answer me, Yahweh, because your commitment is good;
in accordance with the greatness of your compassion turn to me.
17 Do not hide your face from your servant,
because I am in trouble—hurry, answer me.
18 Draw near to me, restore me;
because of my enemies, redeem me.
I dreamed last night that I was being taken to court for preaching. The question “If you were prosecuted for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” is a cliché, but it’s a clever and thought-provoking one. When my wife recently drew my attention to a sensible article about the Christian faith in a British journal, it struck me that it would be harder to find such an article in a journal in the United States because of the intensity of the culture wars (the faults are on both sides). Both atheists/agnostics and Christians (or Jews or Muslims) can feel that they are being persecuted or treated with prejudice.
My dream may have been triggered by the fact that I had begun to think about Psalm 69 and about the idea that passion for God’s house had consumed someone. The phrase has a different meaning in the psalm from the one it has in John 2 where the disciples see it embodied in Jesus. When Jesus bullwhips people who are selling animals for worshipers to sacrifice in the temple, talk of being consumed by a passion for God’s house indicates the strength of his own feelings. In the psalm, passion for God’s house has brought trouble or persecution to the person who feels that passion, though this idea comes to apply to Jesus, too (Jesus quotes the psalm in John 15).
One could imagine the psalm being prayed by someone such as Jeremiah or Nehemiah. Through much of Old Testament times, Israelites took a free attitude to the worship they could offer in the temple, following their own hearts in this respect; for instance, they found it helpful to have an image of God to aid their worship (such as the gold bullock they made at Sinai). Prophets such as Jeremiah took a much more restricted and restricting view of the worship that people could legitimately offer. Campaigning for their more restrictive view naturally met opposition, and the opposition was not merely a matter of debate and argument. The temple was commonly under the control of authorities who were in a position to ban worshipers who opposed the restrictive line of such campaigners, and they could use their power to exclude people from worship, harass them, or worse.
One could draw a comparison with what Protestants and Catholics did to one another in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the Western church we sometimes talk about worship wars, conflict between people who like different styles of worship. In much of Israelite and Christian history, worship wars had much more serious connotations. We will be glad that we do not live in such centuries. Yet the difference also draws attention to the trivial basis for our conflicts. In those centuries, people were energized over the question of what kind of worship is appropriate to who God is. What kind of worship honors God? Our question is what kind of worship suits us.
So the psalm is for someone who has sought to be faithful to God in connection with that kind of question and who is consequently threatened by lynching or execution. People’s disregard of God spills over into a disregard of those who speak up for God, whose grief at what is done in God’s name makes them a joke. The reference to deception and false charges presumably indicates that these are ways of providing a more legal-looking basis for taking action against the object of people’s wrath, while the reference to stupidity and guilt indicates that the psalm is making no claim to sinlessness, only to an attitude of faithfulness to Yahweh and a willingness to stand up for such faithfulness. One might have thought that God would honor this faithfulness; there are many declarations in the Psalms and elsewhere that God would do so. But at the moment there is no sign of things working out that way. And God’s holding back is likely to mean not only the discrediting (or worse) of this individual but also the shaming of people who took the same stance.
John Goldingay, Psalms for Everyone, Part 1: Psalms 1–72, Old Testament for Everyone (Louisville, KY;London: Westminster John Knox Press;Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2013), 210–213.