He brought me out into a broad place;
he rescued me, because he delighted in me.
(Psalm 18:19)
At the end of a rather detailed description of a near death experience from which God delivered him, David concludes with the words “he brought me into a broad place.” It occurred to me as I read these words this morning that this probably strikes most modern readers as an odd conclusion to such a passionate, majestic outburst of praise for a remarkable, last minute divine rescue. In fact, it can seem down right anticlimactic, especially for an agoraphobe. What is so special about YHWH’s deliverance culminating in a wide, open space?
It might help to recall that one of the most common biblical metaphors for danger, trouble, near fatal experiences, whether caused by one’s enemies or one’s own sin and self-destructive behavior, is confinement. Biblical authors describe such experiences as the world closing in on them, as being stuck in a passage so narrow as to be rendered completely immobile. In fact, one of the OT’s favorite words for distress is tsar which literally means “narrow.” I wonder if this imagery is related to the experience of being buried with the ground surrounding and enclosing one’s body, of entering Sheol where mobility and options are extremely limited. In fact, Psalm 18 itself describes the danger from which YHWH delivered the psalmist in terms of death and Sheol.
The cords of death encompassed me;
the torrents of destruction assailed me;
5 the cords of Sheol entangled me;
the snares of death confronted me.
Jesus warns us, however, that this is exactly the wrong way to go. “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction.” The wide gate and the broad way actually lead to confinement, restriction, a life so limited it is not worth living. The narrow gate and the narrow road, however, lead one to the broad places and wide open spaces where one is free to grow and live and enjoy genuine freedom and unlimited joy. How deceptive are appearances! People look at the Christian life with all of its “restrictions” and its insistence on Jesus as the singular, exclusive way to the Father and they say, “That’s too narrow, closed minded, and restrictive. That can only lead to bondage.” All the while they are swirling down an ever-narrowing funnel that ends in total paralysis – a tiny prison whose bars were forged in the fire of their own raging, uncontrolled passions.
Now back to Psalm 18. David really knows what he’s doing when he crowns his testimony of salvation with the words “he brought me out in to a broad place.” In fact, elsewhere in the Psalms, God’s law, God’s very detailed, narrow, and restrictive commands are praised for their liberating effects, for their culmination in an unimaginable freedom.
I will run in the path marked out by your commands, for you have set my heart free! (Psalm 119:32)
AMEN