Meditations on the Psalms: Kevin Youngblood

⁷ I will tell of the decree:

The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;

today I have begotten you.

⁸ Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,

and the ends of the earth your possession.

Nestled in the second psalm of the Psalter is a memory, a recitation that the Davidic king repeats to himself in the midst of raging nations and quarrelsome kings who are rattling their sabers and breathing out threats. Both in the eyes of these kings and in his own eyes the Davidic king seems small, far from equal to the forces that oppose him. Who is he to confront these super powers? His kingdom is a backwater, a mere midget among giants on the world stage. As the king of Assyria once said to Hezekiah, “I’ll give you 2,000 horses if you can even find enough riders to put on their backs, just to make it a fair fight!” (Isa 36:8; 2 Kgs 18:23).

Intimidated and daunted by what he’s up against, the Davidic king takes a deep breath with the threats and taunts still ringing in his ears and he closes his eyes and he repeats to himself the words that YHWH spoke to him on the day of his coronation: “You are my son. Today, I have become your father. Just ask and the nations will become your inheritance, the very ends of the earth your birthright.”

Meditations on the Psalms: Kevin Youngblood

My reading of Psalm 37 this morning revealed to me a connection I had never made before. The psalmist makes two references to those who will inherit the land. The first in verse 9 refers to these people as “those who wait on/hope in the LORD.” The second in verse 11 refers to them as “the afflicted/meek/gentle.” Both of these statements occur in the larger context of warnings not to fret over the deeds of the wicked, not to let them get to you and disturb your peace. In other words, do not let the wicked provoke you to wickedness. Do not let them trigger you to thoughtless sinful reflexes, angry knee-jerk reactions.

What I had never considered before was the connection between “waiting on the LORD” and meekness, gentleness, tolerating a certain amount of persecution for the sake of a greater goal or cause. It would appear that as we wait on the LORD the Spirit cultivates in us our savior’s own gentleness. Of course, these verses are famously recalled in the third beatitude of our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount where, arguably, the extent of the inheritance expands to encompass the whole world – the new creation. Wait on the LORD long enough and the world itself becomes yours! Exercise increasing gentleness and the next thing you know you’ve “conquered” the world! Meditating on this psalm reminded me this morning of just how counter-intuitive the psalms are. They reveal to what a great extent the world has messed with my head and challenge me to think differently, to declare my independence from this present age’s conventional wisdom.

Father,

Thank you for reserving the eschatological inheritance for those who in gentleness wait for your vindication and intervention. Teach me not to fret nor to allow my actions to be dictated by the perverse provocations of the wicked. Increase my immunity to such provocations. May they lose their impact on me as I pursue your holiness and love. Through your psalms continue to detoxify my mind of polluted thoughts. Sober me up with the psalms that I may no longer be “drunk with wine” but rather be filled with the Holy Spirit whose fruit is gentleness and patience.

Amen

² but his delight is in the law of the Lord,

and on his law he meditates day and night.

I will tell of the decree:

The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;

⁸ Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,

and the ends of the earth your possession.

⁹ You shall break them with a rod of iron

and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

Psalm 1 & 2 stand in a parallel relationship with each other such that the wicked in Psalm 1 correspond to the conspiratorial kings of the earth in Psalm 2 and the righteous one of Psalm 1 corresponds to the messiah of Psalm 2. In other words, parallelism is not just a line-level feature relating the smallest units of poetry together, it is also a “psalm-level” feature pairing certain (by no means all) adjacent psalms, as well. Psalm 1 & 2 are a perfect example.

One of the clues to this relationship is the fact that the two psalms share a key word: “meditate.” This is obscured in English translations that render the same Hebrew word (יהגה) “meditate” in Psalm 1:2 and “plot” in Psalm 2:1. This technical observation has led me to a powerful spiritual realization. What does it mean to meditate on YHWH’s instruction?