Tag Archives: Preferential Option for the Poor

Psalm 94 Thy Kingdom Come

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Marc Chagall, Solitude (1933)

Psalm 94

1 O LORD, you God of vengeance, you God of vengeance, shine forth!
2 Rise up, O judge of the earth; give to the proud what they deserve!
3 O LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exult?
4 They pour out their arrogant words; all the evildoers boast.
5 They crush your people, O LORD, and afflict your heritage.
6 They kill the widow and the stranger, they murder the orphan,
7 and they say, “The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob does not perceive.”
8 Understand, O dullest of the people; fools, when will you be wise?
9 He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?
10 He who disciplines the nations, he who teaches knowledge to humankind, does he not chastise?
11 The LORD knows our thoughts, that they are but an empty breath.
12 Happy are those whom you discipline, O LORD, and whom you teach out of your law,
13 giving them respite from days of trouble, until a pit is dug for the wicked.
14 For the LORD will not forsake his people; he will not abandon his heritage;
15 for justice will return to the righteous, and all the upright in heart will follow it.
16 Who rises up for me against the wicked? Who stands up for me against evildoers?
17 If the LORD had not been my help, my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.
18 When I thought, “My foot is slipping,” your steadfast love, O LORD, held me up.
19 When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.
20 Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who contrive mischief by statute?
21 They band together against the life of the righteous, and condemn the innocent to death.
22 But the LORD has become my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge.
23 He will repay them for their iniquity and wipe them out for their wickedness; the LORD our God will wipe them out.

James L. Mays begins his comments on this psalm by quoting a line from Maltbie D. Babcock’s song “This is my Father’s world”: “Though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.” (Mays, 1994, p. 302) The opening line of the psalm names God as the God of vengeance, and yet God’s vengeance is necessary to avenge the wrongs done to the vulnerable and powerless who suffer in an unjust society. Because of this beginning this is sometimes called a psalm of vengeance, yet it is important to realize this vengeance is an action to restore society and to undo the work of those who utilize their positions of power to oppose God’s justice on earth and to oppress the ones God promised to defend. Much as the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer call for “God’s kingdom to come and God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven,” this psalm calls on God to act in concrete and visible ways to repair a society that has become controlled by those who have abandoned the ways of the covenant righteousness.

The proud and wicked have prospered in the society the psalmist lives in and they have turned the dream of a just society on its head. They have killed and oppressed the widow, the stranger, and the orphan who God has promised to protect, and who the leaders who work on God’s behalf are to ensure justice for. These arrogant evildoers perceive that they are not bound by the requirements of the law for the God of Israel has not acted to judge them. In their view, “without God everything is possible.” (Brueggemann, 2014, p. 407) These wicked ones view the LORD the God of Israel as either unwilling or unable to respond to their actions which violate God’s command, oppress the vulnerable among God’s people, and threaten God’s own heritage.

The psalmist testifies to the tension of an unjust present and a life in hopeful expectation of God’s intervention in the world. In the present the wicked are prospering and crime does pay. (NIB IV: 1019) To challenge this honest observation of the present the psalmist relies on the language of the wisdom tradition in scripture. The proud, arrogant, wicked evildoers who profit by oppressing and murdering the vulnerable and believe that God does not see or hear about their actions are foolish. The wise are glad to be disciplined by God and God’s law, but the foolish will ultimately perish. They may prosper in the moment, but that moment is an empty breath.[1] Yet, even though their time in power may be short the threat to the vulnerable is acute and needs God’s intervention.

In the meantime, the psalmist also testifies to the ways God has continued to provide respite and protection for the faithful ones in the midst of injustice. In times where their feet were slipping, God held them fast. When their worries were great God provided consolation. Without God’s protection they would dwell in the silence of the dead. These actions of God may not have brought about the fullness of God’s kingdom for the psalmist, but they have been the necessary provision and protection in their time of waiting and the actions which renewed their hope for God’s intervention which they trust is coming.

For people of faith a part of the desire for God to reign as king comes from the experience of injustice in this world and the desire for the God of vengeance to bring God’s justice to those who exploit God’s people and God’s world. When wicked people sit in the positions of power and the laws and statutes that should provide protection have become warped and utilized to oppress, the faithful cry out for God’s reign and God’s vengeance to create a society where the vulnerable are protected and justice prevails. (Mays, 1994, p. 303) The work of the wicked is a concrete and visible reality in the world of the psalmist and the cry of the psalmist is not for some otherworldly deliverance from the toils of this earth. The psalmist demands the judge of the earth to rise up and cause justice to return to the righteous. The prayer is for God’s justice to be a concrete and visible reality which displaces the injustice of the world.

[1] This is the Hebrew hebel which is translated as vanity in Ecclesiastes. The word means ‘vapor, mist, or emptiness.’ It is an evanescent word which points to the impermanence of the object it describes.

Psalm 82 The God Who Upholds Justice for the Vulnerable

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Council of the Gods Giovanni Lanfranco (1582–1647), Galleria Borghese By Architas – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70138442

Psalm 82

<A Psalm of Asaph.>
1 God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
2 “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
3 Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
5 They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk around in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
6 I say, “You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you;
7 nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince.”
8 Rise up, O God, judge the earth; for all the nations belong to you!

The vision of a council of gods presided over by the God of Israel seems strange to many modern readers who view the world through a secular lens. The activity of one God who remains active in the midst of the creation may seem difficult to imagine, much less numerous gods responsible for various regions or powers. Despite the distance between the ancient view of the world and our own this short poetic vision of a divine council reiterates the central Hebrew idea of justice and the role of God in ensuring justice for the vulnerable. The foundations of the creation are sunk into this justice for the weak and needy. The neglect of justice by these gods has undermined the foundations upon which the world rests.

Most modern readers of the bible assume that the Jewish monotheism meant that they did not believe the gods of the other nations existed, but throughout the Hebrew scriptures it assumes the existence of the gods of the nations while maintaining the superiority of the God of Israel. The signs and wonders[1] that the LORD the God of Israel used to bring the people out of Egypt are written in a way that demonstrates the LORD triumphing over the gods of Egypt. Elijah’s victory over the prophets of Baal likewise demonstrates the superiority of the LORD over Baal. Elijah may ridicule Baal for being busy or asleep, but Elijah never claims that Baal does not exist. There are moments where the Hebrew scriptures do move towards a monotheism where the idols of the nations are merely the work of human hands, but the faith of Israel grows in a polytheistic world where different nations worshiped a collection of gods and where the people of Israel continually struggled to maintain their trust in the LORD the God of Israel when these other gods were viewed as attractive alternatives.

Psalm 82 is a vision that presumes the superiority of the LORD, the God of Israel, over the gods. The God of Israel summons all these deities, asks them how long they will remain unjust and partial to the wicked, and charges them to maintain justice. For Israel The role of leaders in society was to be modeled on God’s role of protecting the vulnerable. As Brueggemann and Bellinger state:

The proper role, so defining for Israel’s faith and ethics, is to be guardian, protector, and guarantor of the vulnerable—the weak, the widow, the orphan, the lowly, the destitute—all those who lack the resources to sustain and protect themselves. (Brueggemann, 2014, p. 355)

Yet, one of the persistent dangers of religion and its proximity to power is to reimagine the ‘gods’ of the nations as authorizing the rule of the powerful. The gods, and by extension their servants in the nations, have served the powerful and those who have not upheld justice. Instead, these gods and their representatives on earth have become powers of oppression instead of justice. They have corrupted their calling and now they are called to judgment in the divine council.

In verse five the pronoun changes from second person plural to third person plural (you to they) and this may represent a change in tone or a change in voice. I am reading this as a change in voice, where we see the entrance of an unnamed accuser[2] who declares that these gods are so corrupted that they lack the knowledge to change. These gods exist in darkness unable to see how their unjust ways jeopardize the foundations of the creation. It is possible that the poet stays with the God of Israel speaking and changes the tone moving from charge to realization of the gods’ inability to embody the justice they are called to defend.

The voice shifts in verse six back to the God of Israel pronouncing judgment upon the assembled gods. They are all lifted up as children of the Most High, but they will not reign forever. Being ‘gods’ has not granted them immortality and they are told they will perish like mortals. They have been unfaithful in their administration and appear unable to change. Rather than continually imperiling the foundations of the earth and the practice of judgment their time they, and the systems they represent, will come to an end. Finally, another voice, perhaps the poet who has this vision revealed to them or a member of the LORD’s party, calls for the God of Israel to rise up and judge the earth and the nations in the ways of justice. The LORD is to establish justice for all the nations.

Neil Gaiman’s creative fantasy American Gods imagines the American landscape as a polytheistic space where the ‘old gods’ which the immigrants brought with them from their homeland come into conflict with the ‘new gods’ of technology and power. All of the gods in Gaiman’s story are interested in their own power and often stand behind the powerful and authorize their actions. The God of Israel has a ‘preferential option for the poor’ to use the famous phrase of Liberation theology. The biblical witness points to the God of Israel as the protector of the lowly and destitute and the one who brings down the might from their thrones when they become the oppressors of the vulnerable. Within this brief poem any religion whose gods authorize the oppression of the powerless by the powerful is a danger to the foundation of the earth and stands under God’s judgment.

[1] Most people refer to these as the plagues, but Exodus continually articulates these as being signs and wonders.

[2] This is the role of Satan in the book of Job, but it could be any member of the council of the LORD. This short poem leaves the figure unnamed and merely suggested.